With Speed! With Speed!
If you have ever watched an Arsenal game with me, there is a decent chance you have heard me repeat this refrain over and over again throughout the match.
One of the keys to soccer is the transition from defense to attack. Teams who are defending deep might get a key interception and have a chance to quickly progress up the field. These “counter-attacks” can be especially lethal as, instead of the usual 4-6+ defenders you would face against an opponent who is in formation, you find 2-4 defenders who are frantically back peddling and trying to get back into position. Counter-attacks can change the course of entire games and often give chances for underdogs to upset the competition, but the execution is of the utmost importance. There is a slim window with each counter-attack where you may find yourself out-manning the opposition, but if you dilly dally on the ball too long the other team will surely get back into position and negate any danger they may have previously faced.
So whenever Arsenal have a chance to counter-attack, I will likely be encouraging them to move quicker to take advantage of the situation before it passes them by.
I am pretty sure I got it from my Dad who is deathly allergic to players who slow-down play or have a habit of passing backward. Even some of Arsenal’s all-time great players like Henry and Sanchez have fallen out of favor with my father due to their proclivity to slow down our play.
Soccer is very much a game of momentum, but the unique beauty of the sport is how one single passage of decisive action can totally turn a game on its head.
I think life is a lot like soccer. It’s a momentum game. A game generally more of miles than milliseconds. But ever so often there is an opportunity that requires decisive action to capitalize on.
Back to School
I’ve been thinking about momentum recently as I have navigated the transition from the working world back to academia. As I discussed in my last post, the process was less than smooth. To top it off, we arrived in Philly the day after Hurricane Isaias swept through the area, flooding our building’s basement and knocking out our A/C. Unpacking in the Philadelphia summer was never going to be a life highlight, but doing so with no A/C turned it into a herculean effort. One which we lost badly. Once we were finally able to get our A/C back online we discovered that our movers had left us with a special going away present: COVID-19.
Suffice to say, our first couple of weeks in Philly didn’t exactly go according to the script. I had been so energized to hit the ground running and get the apartment straight ahead of school starting and instead I got absolutely stuffed on my way to the rim.
Life is like that sometimes. All the momentum in the world can come to a screeching halt due to something totally unforeseen or out of your control. It is impossible to avoid these speedbumps, so the real challenge lies in how quickly you are able to dust yourself off and get back up to speed.
It’s been slow going so far, but I am happy to report that I feel like I am starting to get my feet under me again. Caitlyn and I both feel 1000x better than we did at the beginning of the month and successfully navigated our isolation without exposing anyone else. Our apartment is (mostly) unpacked and school has gotten off to a great start. Normal classes start on Tuesday, but for the past two weeks, we have been engrossed in a business simulation course that was about as interesting and engaging as I could ever expect from a virtual course. The professor did a great job of leveraging the technology available to drive engagement like breaking us up into discussion rooms, utilizing real-time polls to gauge class sentiment, and encouraging us to share questions and comments in zoom chat. It is clear that the human element and opportunity for serendipitous conversations in the hallways are missing, but there are benefits to the remote classroom environment as well. As with many aspects of remote work, one is not inherently superior to the other for the majority of circumstances. It simply requires you to understand which trade-offs you are making and take action necessary to ameliorate downsides.
One of my biggest concerns headed into school was what the social scene would look like. The number one reason why I wanted to pursue my MBA was not the education itself or the credential but the network. And less the “network” as in alumni or professional network and much more the fact that people who are willing to take themselves out of the workforce and potentially spend hundreds of thousands of dollars investing into their career are the exact kind of risk-on, long-term thinkers I want to surround myself with.
Would people still be able to socialize? Would other students move to Philly? Would there be safe ways to engage with one another?
I am pleased to report that the social side of things has gone about as well as I could have hoped. There are way more social activities than I could ever participate in even if it was is all I did. People are taking the initiative to get creative and come up with safe and responsible ways to build relationships. Just as I expected they would. It’s not perfect. I think it can be especially hard for students who are not in Philly even with the regular occurrence of virtual events, but it is about as good as I had any right to be optimistic about a few weeks ago.
Momentum Games
So much about life is maintaining positive momentum and recapturing lost momentum when life inevitably trips you up. I feel like I have more or less been successful in doing that after the gut punches of the last couple of months, but I know that it will occur again.
There are few abilities that are as important as one’s ability to roll with the inevitable punches. To be able to intercept the ball when their back is to the goal and to counter-attack with speed.
This ability to execute at speed was by far the biggest indicator of success that I came to recognize after spending the last two years as a VC. The companies that were successful weren’t the ones with the best ideas or the most funding. They were the companies that were able to quickly try something, learn the key lessons, and to iterate. They ran experiment after experiment and eventually worked their way to the solution.
I have written about the power of these kinds of loops before, but I also think of Boyd Varty’s tracking metaphor for life. You often won’t know exactly where you are going, but if you pay attention to the broken twigs and footprints in the mud, you can eventually work your way to the solution.
I am trying to build up structures in my life to support maintaining my own positive momentum and quickly getting back on track when I fall short. Something that has been absolutely key to keeping me on track recently is developing a weekly review. I spend 30-60 minutes on Friday afternoon taking stock of my surroundings and planning for the week ahead. I was inspired by Diego Forte’s thinking on the subject, but customized it for my own needs.
Here’s my current checklist:
This structure has really helped me to pick my head up and evaluate whether I am spending my time the way I want to be. A few items of note: I wrote about my attempts to be more intentional about crafting my identity here. I am utilizing that sweet, sweet student discount to get Superhuman’s help with achieving the mythical inbox zero on a consistent basis (it 100% lives up to the hype. Leave me a comment if you want a referral!) I’ve written about my Personal CRM before and am more grateful than ever that I have built some good habits around being intentional about staying in touch with people as I drink from the social and academic firehose that is grad school (I went ahead and updated my public Personal CRM template if you’d like to give it a shot!)
I’ve also been trying to be more diligent in blocking time for activities in my schedule which has helped a lot. These strategies may seem like a lot and I wouldn’t recommend trying to add them all at once. Pick one or two things to work on and slowly build on top of that foundation as you pick up speed. Putting in structures like a weekly review checklist is the absolute best way to keep yourself from sliding too hard when your life gets flipp-turned upside down.
My system is by no means perfect. My next step is to build out monthly and quarterly check-ins for myself as well. I also know that I will likely need to continue to reassess my priorities and chop things that are not worth the time I am investing in them, but that is a discussion for another day.
Life is gonna hit you. And it is going to hit you hard. You won’t always be able to avoid those punches, but you can be proactive about crafting systems that help you bounce back into the ring afterward.
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