Words that caught me: B is for 'Better over time'
Yesterday,
I read some really sad news on the airline industry,
Which
has been badly hit by COVID-19.
Thousands
of pilots and crew have lost their jobs.
Hundreds
of expensive planes are grounded.
Others
have been returned to the lessors.
And
new orders canceled.
When I
was little, my dream was to be a pilot.
I yearned
for a life in the skies, and setting foot in all the countries
And cities
I’d be able to visit and, possibly, call home.
So it
was inevitable that I’d notice the news,
And that
it would touch a soft spot in my heart.
We
know millions have lost their jobs
And
many businesses, especially small family businesses,
Are staring
at immense losses, and possible permanent closure.
The
pain is real.
It’s
not just a meltdown.
It
feels more like a wipeout!
And
it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
But
this is precisely the moment
When
we must remember
That ‘feeling
overwhelmed is a choice’.
“There
is a great amount of luck involved in which cards you get.
(Fact
is, none of us gets an opportunity to choose!)
But
there’s also a great amount of skill involved in deciding
What
to do with those cards,
The
bets you place,
And the
way you conduct yourself at the table.”
We
can’t deny or avoid the cards we are dealt.
But
we can choose what to do with them.
That’s
the first step. Accepting the card as is.
Easy?
Not by a fat chance!
That’s
why the second part of the equation is important.
You must
have come across this situation in your own life:
A super
talented person who is not successful,
And an
average person who became a master.
What explains
this conundrum?
Many
have mulled over this for a long time,
And it
just so happens that the answer is really simple.
Time
and consistent, deliberate practice.
It
really doesn’t matter where you are at, right now,
Or your
level of skill.
On
any given day, you may be lucky or terribly unlucky,
But the
most successful players better their odds over time.
That’s
the truth.
Not
immediately. But over time.
It’s
a new normal, and we are all beginning somewhere.
We
may not be beginning at the same place. But we are all beginners.
And
the players with consistent, deliberate practice,
Will surely
and definitely, better their odds over time!
You
wanna’ bet?
*This post has been inspired by Seth Godin and Play Bigger, a book by Al Ramadan, et al. Below is an excerpt from Play Bigger:
"If you play poker, you know of Greg Raymer... He’d played lots of poker in college—“ we were all pretty pathetic,” he recalls. And then, while working in Chicago, he decided it was time to learn to play well. He read poker books and started entering tournaments, perfecting his game as he played. In 2004, he won the World Series of Poker—a $ 5 million prize. At the World Series of Poker the following year, he did something unprecedented in a game that seems to involve so much luck: he followed up his first-place victory by finishing in the top tier again, taking home more than $ 300,000. By 2013 he’d made more than $ 7.4 million playing poker. Uh, and he quit his day job. We talked to Raymer about how someone can increase his or her odds in a game that has so many factors that can’t be controlled...“A lot of people don’t think about luck and skill properly,” he told us. Most people, he explained, think of luck and skill in any particular endeavor as a zero-sum continuum—a straight line that puts luck at one end and skill at the other. That would mean that if you’d say that an outcome is determined by 40 percent luck, it must be 60 percent skill; or if it’s 90 percent luck, then the outcome must rely on only 10 percent skill. But luck and skill, Raymer insisted, “are not on the same axis.” And that makes all the difference. 14 Of course, Raymer used poker to illustrate. There is a great amount of luck involved in which cards you get. But there’s also a great amount of skill in deciding what to do with those cards, the bets you place, the way you conduct yourself at the table. On the luck side, the odds for everyone around the table are the same. On any given hand, you might be terribly unlucky, and there would be nothing much you could do to win. But the most skillful players essentially better their odds over time. If the odds are the same for everyone, more skill results in better decisions with the cards you’re dealt, and ultimately gives you a better chance of winning. “You have to be realistic about how much luck is involved in whatever you’re doing and after that kind of ignore it,” Raymer said. “Then you have to say, what’s the smartest decision I can make and ignore results in the short run because they are irrelevant.” Raymer’s consistent success shows that good outcomes don’t happen by accident even in chaotic multidimensional games like poker." (Emphasis ours)
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