Translating Sports To Life
Not every lesson learned from playing or watching sports applies to the workplace or in life.
In a sport, there can be one and only one champion. It is truly zero-sum and the very definition of scarcity. In optimizing your chances of being champion, I believe that mentality leads to some decisions that do not translate well outside of sport. Some examples are:
Endless investment of effort well past the point of diminishing returns to get an edge
Constant focus on attacking and eliminating weaknesses
Asking people to do less than they are capable of because of roster construction
Reliance on a tried and true formula because it’s comfortable and known
A strong fear of missing out (FOMO)
These concepts work very differently when there is scarcity versus when there can be more than one successful person, group, or entity.
Work ethic and effort are great - and it should be applied to the next most valuable activity that can gain the most and produce the most upgraded result from that effort. The scarcity of time requires that smart marginal investment decisions should be made.
In sport, when someone isn’t good at something, you should attack and exploit it over and over again until that option isn’t available. In real life, you can build a team where all the strengths required to complete the mission are spread across several activities. People should invest in getting better as something because they want to, not because they are being berated based on a misused philosophy of attacking your weaknesses.
In sport, everyone can’t have the ball and score at the same time, so people have to take on other roles. In most situations, there is no singular constraint like a ball. So we should be designing organizations, processes, and systems so that everyone can contribute most or all of what they have to offer. Many people have more than one elite ability - why not let them use it?
In sport and under pressure, you want reliability because you will miss out on the chance of a lifetime. Most other endeavors can be designed so that you have more than one chance to achieve and it often requires experimentation and trying new things to learn and grow. There doesn’t have to be a time or outcome constraint that doesn’t allow for or embrace the inevitable - change.
In sport, championships come around every year or two or four and careers are short, so you only have so many opportunities and so the fear of missing out on one is understandable. I happen to think that outside of sport if you spend more time trying to find ways to give yourself more than one opportunity to achieve your goal, worrying about missing out becomes less important and motivating. So I would advocate going for creating more abundance if possible.
Please share your thoughts and insights. I am curious to create space and workplaces where we all can enjoy what we do and drive to achieve amazing missions and outcomes with no more pain than necessary.