The Munster Hurling Championship tends to deliver and this year's edition is no different in terms of its unpredictable nature.
Which means throwing permutations out the window and focusing in a laser-like fashion on the next assignment is the way to go for the players involved in the white heat of battle.
Brian Lohan's panel came into the highly anticipated Ennis opener against Limerick on 21 April off the back of the psychological boost of winning the Allianz League title by overcoming a recent bete noir in the shape of Kilkenny.
A Limerick comeback rained on their parade in the sunshine however. But the Banner rose to the occasion a week later by plundering their own reserves of resolve to beat Cork in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
In between, Cork have stunned Limerick; Waterford being on three points means the Déise already have more points gained than in 2022 and 2023; and Tipperary are still just about alive.
All of which makes it nigh on impossible to have a sense of who will be heading the top three places in the traffic jam out of Munster.
"You can have a result like last weekend where you think things are settling a certain way and you can predict how it's going to fall out (but) you have everything blown back open again
"I think the trick is probably actually just to focus on the Clare games and really think about what you can do for those matches.
"You get to enjoy those occasions. I watched the Cork-Limerick game the last weekend and it was just a fantastic game. It was a joy to watch it but I'm really watching as a supporter, I'm not trying to click all the permutations in my mind and thinking, 'Well, I want them to do this, I want them to do that', so it really is just sitting back and enjoying it and then the rest of the time focusing on what Clare can do."
The 2013 All-Ireland winner admitted that their own game against Cork was one the panel knew they "absolutely had to win" after coming a cropper against Limerick.
They did so and in hindsight, O'Donnell feels that the lack of time between the two fixtures did not allow Clare the "luxury" to wallow too much in a swamp of disappointment, which perhaps is one positive aspect of the condensed inter-county calendar.
The 29-year-old has been on record as largely liking the tighter nature of the inter-county season and would also be keen for the league to be dropped in an ideal world.
Having spent plenty of time in the US in 2018 and 2019 on a scholarship studying at Harvard University, seeing the NFL at close quarters has given him some ideas about what GAA can learn, albeit with the recognition of the vast differences between a professional setting and an amateur game.
"I definitely think we can take learnings from NFL and those things. These professional sports, obviously you're not going to replicate what some of them can do because of their professional nature but there's some aspects of the games there that just make sense and I think we could definitely adopt," he said.
"I think in some ways we're a little bit fixed on how things have always been and maybe reluctant to break away from that and I think that's something that we can look with a more holistic view as to what is actually the best showcase for hurling and I wouldn't think that if we had a blank slate, we would settle on the structure we have at the moment basically."
How long O'Donnell anticipates playing under current or future structures is open to question. Earlier this month, he pointed out that given his commitments and ambitions outside of sport, his involvement with Clare is decided on a year-by-year basis.
And, as he suggested then, it has meant he appreciates every moment in training and matches that bit more.
Liam MacCarthy Cup success came very early to him, the hat-trick of goals in the 2013 All-Ireland decider arriving in his first year on the panel when he was just 19.
As many sportspeople who succeed early on would attest, it can lead to a sense that glory days are almost the norm.
But 11 years on, Clare haven't been back in an All-Ireland final since. So if they do manage to get to the top of the mountain this summer, O'Donnell knows he will appreciate it even more than the blur of 2013.
"Looking back with hindsight we could probably say that was maybe our perspective. We had come from a minor team that had won a number of Munsters, then we had a '21s team that had won three Munsters and three All-Irelands and then my first year at senior, we won the senior All-Ireland, so you do certainly get lulled into this false sense of 'this is just how it is, these are the opportunities that are presented each year' and you just have to go out and take them," he reflected.
"I've realised in the last ten years that is obviously not really the case and I think the opportunities we've had in the last couple of years and the matches that we've got to play in, they've been incredible occasions and ones that I'll remember.
"But I'll be extremely disappointed to end my career without that All-Ireland again and I think I would savour it more than I did ten-plus years ago."
Of course, the mastermind of 2013 was the gentleman who will be over Waterford on Sunday and O'Donnell still retains affection for Davy Fitzgerald.
"I've always had a good relationship with him. I don't talk to him that frequently, since he's stepped away from Clare, I don't maintain that line of communication.
"But he's been very good. Like two years ago when I got an All-Star he would have texted me and stuff like that, intermittent contact every now and again and it's always been very friendly and positive. I've nothing but good things to say about Davy."
While O'Donnell is acutely aware that Fitzgerald's Waterford will be another tough nut to crack, Clare can still draw on the confidence and muscle memory from the league final breakthrough.
"It's kind of tinged with the fact that we had to contend with a two-week break between that league final and the first round of championship, so that was challenging from a physical perspective," he said.
"But psychologically, it certainly does give you that confidence and having turned over Kilkenny as well is also a positive.
"I know it's somewhat a cliche to say it's only the league but it was a result that we wanted to win. We wanted to beat Kilkenny in that game and that was certainly something we were able to draw some confidence from.
"But it's probably something that physically hindered us a small bit but we've got through the acute phase of that as well."
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