Sport Analogies
Many self help gurus say to wake up early and workout, but what if our most prized habits are not how we train our body, but how we train our mind?
Sport analogies are too common in business literature and self help books. Athlete’s hard training, winning attitude and team spirit seems obvious and easily transferable to business and management. Aren’t the same attributes that made Michael Jordan a great athlete also what could make any of us successful in business? Give it your best every day, be competitive, train hard and soon it will pay off. Maybe.
I guess some would argue that it all goes together. That by applying the discipline to work out hard, you can expand that attitude to other parts of your life.
Recently I watched a Sandi Metz conference talk, in which she compared writing her successful programming book “Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby” to a tough bicycle race. You just have to put one step in front of the other, or rather keep paddling and not give up. That’s how you finish a race and also how you finish a book. I would agree with the former, but not the latter. Just putting one foot in front of the other can get me to finish a Marathon, but it won’t make me write a readable book.
To write and finish a book I need creative energy, not just stoic determination 1. I need inspiration that translates into sensible thoughts and cohesive paragraphs. Of course determination and consistency will help me not to quit half way through. But it’s not enough to just set the alarm and get up early to sit at my desk. I can make my body get up early and just run. But I can’t as easily force my mind to just sit and write something useful. I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly is needed to force myself to hard work with the mind. I do think it’s more than hard demands on the body. Our bodies are easier to detach from and use as tools, while the mind can play games with us.
For those of us working with our minds, the goal should be more ambitious for the mind than the body. You don’t want to end up with impressive biceps and underdeveloped thoughts.