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Tennis and consistency

In 2020, when we were all keeping distance from each other, I found a new hobby: tennis.

At first, I started playing just to get some exercise, but soon I learned it was much more than that. It was like meditation. I’ve played soccer all my life where I could easily stop thinking and just play.

Tennis was different at first, I would actually do the opposite: I’d think too much, and barely play.

Fortunately that has changed, I started to understand the game more, and I now let go more easily of my thoughts. I focus more on “finding the ball”, which allows me to see more clearly where the ball will go, and where I need to be to make clean shots. Timing, and mobility is something I’m still working on and probably will for as long as I play.

Winning at tennis requires being consistent. When I began, I tried to hit winners all the time. I quickly learned that this made me make a lot of mistakes, like hitting the ball too far or into the net.

I’m more consistent now and can hold longer rallies, as I’m able to identify when to attack, defend or have a neutral predisposition to the point, however, most of my mistakes happens when I’m in a high pressure situation during a game, because I tend to rush and play too aggressively, which makes me mess up more. If you have played tennis you probably have experienced this on a wide ball that you have to save on the run.

To really do well in tennis, you have to make few mistakes, and your opponent will always try to make it tough for you. That’s what makes the game interesting.

I like to figure things out, and I’m good at remembering my mistakes when the game is over, without feeling upset about them, I think about how I can do better next time.

To give myself a chance to pass the ball across the court, one more time, I’ve found that I need to be quick but not aggressive, and my mind needs to stay calm so I can react without emotional pressure, even when the game gets intense.

So, how do I handle this? I’ve noticed that the same thing happens in life. When there’s a problem, I want to fix it right away. But rushing can lead to mistakes.

Now I know that stepping back and thinking about the problem calmly helps me make the best decisions.

My plan is simple: notice what went wrong, think about how to fix it when I’m not playing, and remember potential solutions when I’m in a game. It sounds easy, but it’s actually hard.

This leads me to the most important point of this post: Being consistent means always thinking about what went wrong, figuring out how to improve, and keeping up with what works. Consistency is a requirement to be succesful, in tennis and in life.

Loving my mistakes as lessons helps me get better. It’s all about noticing them first, and then more importantly learning from them.

Making good decisions requires courage and reasoning from first principles

I went out with my wife for dinner, and we had an interesting conversation about some observations that I have been having in the back of my mind. I have also been playing with ChatGPT and it seems like a great opportunity to write this blog post.

I explained to my wife that lately, I’ve been noticing two distinct types of mindsets when it comes to making decisions: the optimizer mindset and the mindset of reasoning from first principles.

I asked chatGPT what the opposite of first principle thinking was, and this is what it had to say:

The opposite of first principle thinking is relying on assumptions or preconceived notions without critically examining the underlying principles or reasoning. This type of thinking often involves accepting information or arguments without thoroughly evaluating their validity, or making decisions based on tradition, authority, or convenience rather than on reasoning from first principles. It can lead to flawed or incomplete solutions to problems and may hinder progress and innovation.

Surprisingly, chatGPT is spot on. The bolded part in particular was the argument I was trying to make at dinner, and how I’d define the optimizer mindset. When making decisions through the optimizer mindset, we choose the option that feels safe and traditional. An example of a traditional decision might be a person deciding to attend a particular university because their parents went there, or because it is the most prestigious or well-known institution in their area.

I’m guilty of this, I sometimes make decisions based on tradition, authority, or convenience, and it all comes from not truly applying first-principle thinking, and not being bold and courageous in decision-making as often as I would prefer to be.

This is also highly influenced by this idea of mimetic desire by Rene Girard. In a nutshell, we want what others have.

Copying competitors in business

Let me illustrate my point with a business case. You’ve seen it: A business does something, and the competitor then follows suit to be able to remain “competitive”.

Apple if you measure by market cap is the biggest company in the world. It’s also the boldest company that I know of when it comes to decision-making around its products.

They’re famous for making controversial decisions that from a business perspective might often time feel anti-competitive.

I asked chatGPT about some of these controversial decisions, this is what it had to say:

The removal of the headphone jack from the iPhone 7, sparked a backlash from users who were accustomed to using wired headphones.

The decision to replace the traditional charging port on the iPhone with the proprietary Lightning connector required users to purchase new cables and accessories.

The removal of the home button and Touch ID fingerprint sensor on the iPhone X, introduced new gestures for navigation and introduced Face ID facial recognition technology.

The decision to switch to proprietary screws on the MacBook Pro made it difficult for users to open and repair their own devices.

Apple’s decision of removing the headphone jack

If we evaluate this decision through the lens of the optimizer mindset you would never agree with this decision: all your other competitors have a headphone jack and this might be a significant disadvantage in the market, a headphone jack feels like an essential part of a smartphone, and its been part of it since day one, you might argue.

I asked chatGPT why Apple removed the headphone jack and this is what it had to say:

Apple has not publicly commented on the specific reasons for removing the headphone jack from the iPhone 7. However, it is likely that the decision was driven by a combination of factors, including a desire to make the iPhone thinner and more compact, the increasing popularity of wireless headphones, and the potential to create new business opportunities by selling proprietary accessories.

Removing the headphone jack allowed Apple to make the iPhone 7 significantly thinner than its predecessors, which may have been seen as a desirable feature for many users. In addition, the popularity of wireless headphones had been growing in the years leading up to the release of the iPhone 7, and Apple may have felt that the time was right to make the switch.

Finally, by removing the headphone jack and replacing it with the proprietary Lightning connector, Apple effectively forced users to purchase new headphones or adapters if they wanted to use their existing headphones with the iPhone 7. This may have been seen as a way to generate additional revenue for the company and create new business opportunities for accessory makers.

I think this is accurate enough, the analysis for Apple probably went like this:

  • People want to listen to music and audio privately, a headphone jack exists to enable that through wired headphones
  • A headphone jack is not important if we allow people to listen to music and audio privately anyway
  • We’ll continue supporting the real reason people use the headphone jack: to listen to music and general audio privately with wireless headphones that make the headphone jack obsolete, which in turn opens up a world of possibility for us:
    • We’ll differentiate ourselves in the market by not having a headphone jack
    • We’ll make the iPhone more compact, and this will increase the demand enough to justify the potential loss of demand by not having a headphone jack
    • We’ll increase the popularity of wireless headphones and create a new business unit in the process

Apple is selling as many iPhones as it ever has, the company didn’t take a hit for removing the headphone jack, and funnily enough, some competitors are copying this decision, it also created a massive business with its AirPods, in 2021 they made 12.1 billion in revenue, for context, Shopify made 4.6 billion and Spotify 9.67 billion. Adobe the creative giant made 15.8 billion, and AMD made 16.4 billion.

Was this a decision that a business or person with an optimizer mindset would’ve been willing to take though? Probably not.

The strategy that allowed Apple to remove the headphone jack and create a 12.1 billion dollar business required first-principle reasoning. However, simply having the strategy was not enough. This type of decision-making also requires confidence and courage. Without both of these qualities, it is unlikely that truly incredible decisions can be made.

Why you should watch the world cup even if you don’t like soccer

My first proper world cup, where I followed every game, and even collected an album with all the players, was 20 years ago, with Korea and Japan in 2002.

My dad woke me up to watch Brazil against England, they were playing in the quarter-finals, and it started with Owen, my favorite player at the time scoring an amazing goal. I’ll never forget that match. It was at 3:00 AM, and England, the team I was rooting for, ended up losing spectacularly, thank you, Ronaldinho… He then went to FC Barcelona to delight us all with his technical ability and creativity, and despite him playing for the biggest rival of the team I like, I got to enjoy it too.

The world cup is beautiful, outside of the politics of it all, for all the small and large dramatic moments it presents within the month it’s played. 

There are 32 countries trying to win the tournament, after a long, and often dramatic qualifying process. A fact that I always like to remind myself, is that the winner needs to win 7 matches at the most, Spain won in 2010 by winning only 6 games. It sounds easy, but it’s not, there’s no room for mistakes, as one little mistake could take you out of the race even if you’re the favorite to win it.

Perfection is required. Drama is ever present, even in matches where countries without a big soccer tradition or famous players face each other, you’ll find beautiful moments of sadness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust, and happiness.

If you like to experience raw human emotion, but hate soccer, or don’t even understand it, I’d encourage you to watch the world cup, just pick a side, on any random game, and see how you react to near goals or goals against, even to smaller things, like losing a ball, or the referee not seeing a clear foul. 

Our beautiful game of soccer has remained almost unchanged for many years when it comes to rules. The offside rule is the only one that’s not intuitive to understand for those who don’t watch or follow the game regularly. 

I’m not going to try to explain it to you, but instead, I’d encourage you to google it, as it’s the most important defensive concept teams can exploit in their favor, but I guarantee you that your understanding or lack of it will not affect your enjoyment of the game, at times you’ll even feel frustrated because a goal was called off after an offside, and that’s part of the beauty of it all.

I look forward to continuing watching this world cup, every game I’ve watched has been exciting in its own little way. The drama in the world cup is unmatched in sports in my opinion, regardless of the quality of play that a match might present.

On the weekends or weekdays that I watch soccer I’m looking for quality of play, richness in tactics, and technical prowess, none of that matters in the world cup, it’s all about the drama of winning and losing, regardless of how they do it. For that, it’s the best introduction to the beautiful game of soccer, so please give yourself that opportunity.

Don’t be results-oriented

A common pitfall I see everywhere in our culture is judging the success or failure of a strategy through outcomes.

You might win with an inferior strategy, or lose with a superior strategy, so disregard results from your judgment.

All of us are operating on a daily basis with incomplete information, unlike chess, which is a game of perfect information.

In sports and business, you can have a good strategy and still a bad outcome. There’s luck involved, a mirage of factors that are outside of your control, and many unknown unknowns that handicap your ability to anticipate.

When evaluating if a strategy was good or bad, don’t look at the outcome, instead, evaluate what the strategy is trying to accomplish in light of the strengths and weaknesses that could be known at the time, anticipation is an art because you can never know for sure what other parties will do unless you’re cheating—winning strategies share anticipation as their main tenet, the ability to anticipate and navigate the unknown is everything but easy, and will never be perfect.

Don’t be results-oriented. Instead of saying “the strategy was good” or “the strategy was bad” by merely looking at the outcome, look deeper, understand what information the players had, and evaluate in lieu of that—could they’ve anticipated more than they did? What could they’ve done differently?

This framework will allow you to craft winning strategies in the long run, because if the strategy is sound, and your ability to anticipate was on point, eventually the outcomes will start to align.

We’ll fund TV shows and movies in the future and get dividends and capital gains in return

Hernan Casciari is always on the edge of content distribution and business models for creative work. He released all of his works for free and most of his novels and short stories were first published on his blog, and yet he still makes money and sells a ton of books.

Hernan’s brand new project is exciting, he’s producing a movie and he’s selling bonds, for up to $600,00, which is the total estimated production cost, the bonds already sold out.

He explains it as following: if they sell the distribution rights of the movie for $1,200,000 and you bought a bond for $100 you will get $200 back, similarly, if the rights to distribute the movie sells for $800,000, you’ll get $133 back. Effectively you’re buying shares and they’re sharing the financial upside with backers of the project.

You might lose all your money and perhaps the movie might never get sold, or it might sell for less than the production cost, or worse, it might never get made—very unlikely knowing the trajectory of Hernan, which I’ve been following for over 15 years. Despite all these risks, there’s upside in other areas as well, you’ll get a seat in the front row to the whole process of creating the movie, including voting rights for picking the cast and how the story evolves, setting the stage, etc.

If you’d like to learn more about Hernan Casciari’s project, go here. I’m proudly backing it—not for profit, though it would be nice, I’m backing the project because I like Hernan, I like the story, and I like the idea of participating in this project and having a glimpse of how a movie gets made.

How are we going to fund movies or TV shows and get capital gains and/or dividends for them?

Right now it’s the right time to see emerging new online platforms that enable creators to raise money, while backers can also be partial owners.

I’ve never been bullish on a particular crypto project, however, at this point, I can’t ignore the fact that the internet is primed to be revolutionized and the underlying technology powering crypto and NFTs might play a big part in it.

Without getting overly technical, NFTs and smart contracts, both relative new innovations in a space that’s innovating really fast, can be the foundation of this mechanism, where backers of projects are not just backers but also partial owners.

You could potentially sell the shares that you own on a project, and earn capital gains, or you could keep the shares and earn dividends.

The key difference is how easy this could be.

This will overtake crowdsourcing

Platforms like Kickstarter allows individuals to back projects, usually in exchange for the product, and perhaps for other perks, but never for a stake in the business or any financial upside.

What if you could have both? As a stakeholder, you’d also be incentivized to let the world know more about the project and you’d be a small part of its word-of-mouth distribution.

The early signs

Projects like Hernan’s are magical and are proof that there’s demand for this and there are creators willing to sell a stake in their projects. People from all over the world are backing it, and I’m pretty sure that from a legal and financial point of view replicating this as an individual would be very problematic.

Republic wants to democratize investing which is also an early representation of this, this platform was only possible, however, due to some changes in US investment regulations. The crypto world right now feels like the wild west, and we might see regulation in the future, but for now, there’s nothing that’d prevent this from being built.

You’re crazy!

Yes, this is a wild prediction, but we’ll see in five years. Right now, on Opensea you can only buy things that exist, but what if you could buy things yet to be created and you could have a financial upside for stakeholders, aside from bragging rights? It’s not that big of a leap…

What I learned coaching and managing soccer teams

I’ve had the opportunity to coach and manage different soccer teams.

A couple of teams were just kids, where I was mostly a coach. I also had a couple of amateur adult soccer teams, where I played the role of both coach and manager.

I like to make the distinction between coach and manager because I think it often gets confused.

A coach is a person that helps you perform better, they might say things like “run that way after you make that pass”. A manager is someone that provides a plan of action, they’ll plan the logistics of the game, they’ll have a contingency plan when a starting player gets injured, and they’ll try to anticipate as much as humanly possible.

They’re similar but not the same. With kids, I didn’t care about the results of competitive matches, whether we won or lost it had no impact, what I did care about was cultivating a great team culture, I focused on relationships and raw technical skills of the sport, rather than results as a team.

With adults it was the opposite, we were an amateur team, however, we cared about results, which without coaching and nurturing the team culture is impossible anyway.

As a manager, I planned every single training session. I planned the matches and the pre-matches presentation. As a coach, I did my best to help my players improve their fitness, understanding of the game, and improve their movements and skills, though I focused less on skills, not because you can’t improve that, because the highest impact on the team at the time was to make sure that we all followed our game plan, were in top fitness capacity and that we behaved as a coordinated team on the field. Time is finite after all.

Game plans are a dime a dozen. There are many ways in which you can win. You can win being defensive, playing the counter-attack, or you can win playing an attacking style. There’s no shortage of examples of teams winning one way or another.

What matters is two things: above all, the talents of your team, and secondarily the ability of the coach to convince the players to follow the game plan. If your team has great defensive players, playing a great defensive game, makes sense. Optimizing for what you have is the most rational way to approach the “how to play” problem.

Similarly, with training, there are many methodologies, each of them have their merits, there doesn’t exist one that’s the end-be-all of training methods, however, whichever helps me and my players achieve our goals is the best one, and that might change depending on the context.

A few key takeaways:

Show and tell

When explaining things to players, visually showing them, rather than using words was way more effective.

Ruts are bound to happen

In my first season with our adult soccer team, I only lost three games out of 15 or so that we played. It hurt when it happened and almost broke the team, we were used to winning, after that we fell into a rut, and winning became hard.

Winning is important for morale, but managing losses is key for team-building. Navigating the down moments together as a team, and using that as fuel for motivation is super important.

Trust is earned not given

As a coach and manager, you need to earn the trust of your players because if they don’t trust you, they won’t put into practice your game plan, and they’ll not play like a team. Instead, it will be like a dysfunctional family. The tricky part is that you don’t need to convince one or two, you need to convince the whole team, even people that might not be on the team but play supporting roles, like the team delegate. That’s why professional coaches usually bring their full-on team when they go to other clubs.

Have fun

This period of my life was one of my happiest. I had a lot of fun, and neither of these activities had anything to do with money, as I did it for free. The day-to-day is something that I miss to this day. Players also should have fun in the field, many at times were anxious and angry, however, it’s really hard for players to be in a state of flow and playing their best if they feel as if they have to win, the added pressure works well for some, but rarely for the majority. Going to the field with the idea of having fun will yield more productive results.

The score takes care of itself

The book with this title was highly influential in the way I prepared my sessions and competitive matches. I did my best to always communicate to my players what I wanted of them in terms of tactics in the field, but above all, I asked them to be happy and have fun in the field, which is counter-intuitive but super important. The best players in the world always look like they’re having fun: Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar, etc.

Very often something off-script will happen

As a coach and manager, I wanted to control as much as possible but in reality, the nature of the game doesn’t allow for that. Planning for eventualities is hard, however, understanding that off-script situations during the game are bound to happen and preparing your players for the unknown is key to deal with this situation. Being okay with this will make all the difference in the world.

How I keep track of my expenses

Keeping track of my expenses allows me to understand where my money is going. Tracking my expenses also helps me reach my budget goals, which I set up early in the year. I love to keep things simple so in my budget, I only include the following line-items:

  • Housing (rent)
  • Groceries
  • Hobbies
  • Eating out
  • Traveling
  • Health
  • Transportation
  • Utilities
  • Remittances
  • Shopping
  • Baby
  • Other

I use Spendee to track all my expenses. I like it because it’s very easy for me to add any expense on the fly.

Whenever I buy something, I open the app, and manually input my expense. It’s not great but automation is not an option for me right now, and it’s not nearly as bad as you would think, for me, it’s now a habit, I don’t even think about doing it.

I like looking back every once in a while and understand where my money went.

I rarely overspend but if I do, rectifying is easy. It’s either a mistake in how I did my budget projections or I bought something I didn’t need. Rarely do I find myself buying something that I don’t need, so when this happens is usually a mistake in my budget projections.

How I manage my productivity

Productivity is often mystified and a hot topic nowadays. To me, productivity is doing the things that’ll help me achieve my goals, whatever they might be.

I use a couple of tools that help me be more productive, these tools take the guesswork out of my day-to-day because I know exactly what I need to do and when.

We all have one key constraint: time. Productivity is getting around the time constraint and managing time in such a way that you can get things done.

There are many baseline skills that I’ve been cultivating that make me more productive.

Being fast using computers is one. I write at 100+ words per minute, for example. That does not mean however that the quality of my work must suffer because I’m going fast.

I always add quality controls to whatever I’m doing and I rely on technology whenever I can. This blog post was reviewed by Grammarly, so I don’t have to spend time looking for misspellings.

The tools that I use to manage my own productivity are:

I use google calendar to manage all my meetings but also to block time to do the things that I have to do, which I track in Notion.

In notion, I have a page for each month of the year. On each monthly page, I create weekly pages, where I then create 6 columns, one per weekday and another one for the weekend. Under each column, I type a list of to-do’s, and that’s how I keep track of what I need to do each day, as a bonus I can always look back at my calendar and notion and get a sense of what I did.

On Google calendar, I arrange my time around any meetings I might have to make sure that my to-dos have enough time to get done. Almost always I get everything that I want to do in a day, but if I can’t I move the to-dos to the next day.

Respecting my calendar and sticking to doing the things that I set up to do is the real secret, procrastination is real, but if you know what you have to do, and when, it’s easier to do the things that you set for yourself.

In the future, I might change the tools that I use, but the underlying principle of knowing what do to and when, will stay the same.

Resources

Notion template: this is not the exact same template that I use but it’s close enough.

What I wish I knew when I started a bootstrapped business as a young person

I’ve been trying to make money from a very young age. My first time was in second grade. Eventually, that same drive made me start many businesses. This is a collection of things I wish I knew when I started my first real business. Currently, I’m the founder of Kapa99 – Unlimited Graphic Design Help, you can read the whole story here.

Understand what’s a business

If you’re thinking about starting a business because you want to make money, that’s alright. However, if you want your business to be successful, you need to understand what’s a business.

In simple words, a business is an entity that solves problems in exchange for money.

This framework will help you understand all businesses in the world. If you want to understand any business, ask yourself this question: what problem is that business solving for its customers?

Be aggressive

In my first business, I was always very careful. I had little capital, to begin with, and I was risk-averse because of it. In hindsight in almost every business that I’ve worked on, I could have invested more aggressively in marketing for faster growth, hired faster, and overall move quicker in all business fronts. The upside is that you’ll learn faster and grow faster. The downside? You could burn cash too quickly—when you’re young, you have time to recover if things don’t work out. This is the moment to take risks.

Take risks

When you’re young the worst thing you can do is take whatever safe path exists. There’s no fun in that but more importantly, the safe path will always be there. Face your fears, in the process, you’ll realize that every single roadblock is something that you can overcome, if you don’t have money, you will work with that constraint, if you don’t have any knowledge on how to build the business that you have in mind, there’s at least one book or resource on the internet that can help you get started. Go for it and have no regrets.

Be ready to learn and grow as a person

In the E-myth, a book that you should read, there’s a prophecy: your business is a reflection of you. No matter what career or life experience you have, at this point, there are many unknown unknowns. Be ready to embrace that and never stop learning. Knowing a little bit of everything will give you an edge, and the more you know, the better equipped you’ll be to grow your business.

Triple-down on what works

This should be obvious, but when you’re young it’s not because you’ll not know when something is working. The best way I know to make this distinction is to ask yourself this question: are you getting more demand than the effort you’re putting to generate that demand? If the answer is yes, then you have a great shot. It’s time to triple down.

Rent over buying, when possible

A lot of businesses will need space, tools, and services. When possible, rent over buying, you’ll save money and you’ll be able to test different options. Renting gives you optionality and you should always strive for optionality, as that gives you flexibility.

Systematize as soon as you can

Building systems is your best weapon to do things in a repeatable way, which is key for growth. If you’re anything like my younger self you’ll feel like a beast or worse, like a machine, as if you could work 18 hours a day every single day. Believe me, you’ll not be young forever, but more importantly, your business will suffer from being reliant on you. Whether you like it or not, you will get sick or need time off from time to time. Your customers don’t care about that. Systems make your business stronger and therefore, more valuable.

Delegate as soon as you can

Before you can delegate anything you need systems. You need to be able to track that the work is being done to the standards that you have set for your customers. If you have this, then it might be time to make your first hire.

How do I decide this?

If your business can grow faster if you were to invest that time in other activities, then it’s time. This, of course, assumes that your business can financially support that.

Hire young talent over experienced people

This is not always true but in the early stages, I’d value more hungriness for growth in a small business than experience. I’d encourage you to do the same.

Marketing

Marketing is often misunderstood, some people think marketing is giving discounts or doing promotional activities, in reality, marketing is the simple act of crafting a strategy that connects people that have problems with a solution, ideally the one that you want to sell.

There are channels to help you make that connection, the internet has many like social media or email marketing, the real world also has a lot of channels, in the past TV, radio or printed media were big.

What really matters is connecting and for that, half the equation is to have a solution that truly solves the problem that people have, a big pre-requisite for this is knowing that the problem actually exists. Sounds obvious, but this is the biggest mistake I see in young people starting businesses.

Use prototypes and validate your idea first, always

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Before you spend a lot of money on your product(s) or services, make sure that there’s demand for what you have. Be creative. Validate that the problem that you’re going for is actually there.

You’ll fall in love with your solution, don’t make this mistake.

If anything fall in love with the problem, if it really exists, eventually you’ll land with a great solution that people will want to pay money for.

Quit fast

If you were not able to validate that the problem that you want to go after exists, then quit. You didn’t fail. You learned that the problem doesn’t exist and you should not waste time. You’re young but time passes very fast. Find a new problem and start over.

Move on emotionally

Your first failures will break your heart. Starting businesses is hard. Failing is common. I have failed many times and to be successful, you have to be okay with failing, but not just be okay with it, be prepared to learn from it, and grow from your failures. Be ready to start over and over again.

Embrace the unknown

I could type a thousand more things I wish I would have known, in reality discovering these things are part of starting a business, and you’ll never be prepared for everything, you can be better equipped the more experienced you are but new situations and problems will always happen as you grow and try more things, be okay with that and better yet, embrace it.

Tennis and concentration

I picked up tennis almost a year ago and now I’m in love.

What I love about tennis is that it requires my full concentration at all times. Everything is so fast and the slightest change in my racket angle can make an otherwise great shot a really bad one.

I started taking group classes and quickly moved to friendly matches and very small tournaments.

I came to realize that inner-talk in tennis is your worst enemy. Even though it’d be something that I’d do constantly.

In matches, I’d cheer myself and I’d narrate what to do as if I were my own coach.

Little did I know that this would make me tight. My concentration would shift from the game, the court, the ball, the position of my opponent, and the whole environment to my mind, and this back and forth, between playing and going to my inner self-talk is what made me tight, robotic-like, even.

This wasn’t my realization, but it was the clear conclusion that I got from the famous book: The Inner Game of Tennis. I read this book in desperation and anger, after losing a match that I shouldn’t have but did because I couldn’t play my best game, not even my C game.

After reading the book everything made sense.

Imagine that you wanted to dance, but instead of feeling the music and expressing how you feel the music you start an inner monologue on how you should move that would go like this:

Move your right feet to the right, now your left to the front, raise your hand, move your head side by side.

If you were to approach dancing this way, I guarantee it—your movements wouldn’t have rhythm, you wouldn’t flow and you would feel tight. You will look robotic.

That was me, trying to play tennis. I wasn’t flowing on the court.

For almost a month now, I’ve been focusing on being present while I’m playing. The easiest way to do this is to look at the ball at all times. Listening to how the ball sounds when it leaves my racket and having body awareness, especially feeling my feet.

Giving your full attention to the ball is intoxicating. It allows me to hit much better but that’s not the only upside. The real upside is getting out of my head, to be fully present, whether I’m winning or down in a match.

I already knew that playing football had this effect on me. It’s a great experience to feel the same playing tennis.

I now play tennis to improve my concentration.