Catching The Ball

With a thundering applause I knew my eyes were not deceiving me, Alshon Jeffery really did just make that one handed grab in a critical juncture of what might have been the most important football game I’ve ever attended in my life. The University of South Carolina standout wide receiver had just helped propel his team to a monumental upset. The crowd went wild.

Flashback five days prior when a baby faced Jeffery boldly predicted a victory against the number 1 team in the nation to an ESPN reporter, before smiling ear to ear with an optimism reserved for only our bravest youth. As the video clearly shows, Mr. Jeffery did in fact do his part to beat the top ranked Alabama team.

The ball was thrown to this budding receiver because, no matter the blanket-like coverage by the man defending him, his quarterback knew he was prepared to catch the ball. In business, often we are faced with great obstacles that are directly in the way of catching that shimmering sphere of success that so few businesses ever obtain, and if we aren’t fully prepared, fully capable, and in a place where we can excel, no matter how hard we try, we won’t be able to succeed in building a business to a successful state.

Jeffery had spent countless hours preparing himself mentally, physically, and emotionally for that moment. No doubt, his natural gifts are far superior to most in that realm, but no matter, he prepared like he was trying to catch a ball with no hands. In business, we must prepare that way. Shortcuts don’t work, outsourcing everything doesn’t work, making excuses, blaming technology, or undermining business partners surely won’t help. We must, at the end of the day, keep our goals crystal clear, and work wholeheartedly at achieving them.

Twelve years ago, as a high school senior, I was excited for a game against our at-the-time archrival, Vallaha. I remember vividly coming out of the end zone for player introductions at the start of the game screaming with excitement as I nearly sprinted to the rest of my teammates standing on the 20-yard line. As fast as I could run out of that end zone, my coach was there to greet me with some loud and clear advice, calm down. At the time I didn’t know why, I was ready to go, isn’t that how we’re supposed to come out to play the game? Years later I realized, no, we aren’t to waste our energy on worthless introductions, but rather keep ourselves quietly primed, to, when the call is made, late in the game no doubt, catch the ball no matter what’s in our way.

Here is video courtesy of Rivals.com of Jeffery’s blog-post-inspiring catch.

Polaroid Dreams

If I could only remember my dreams, like I do reality. So many amazing stories are told in my dreams, so much more compelling than I could ever purposely create. Stories chock full of rich details about people and places that are often totally foreign to me in reality. Do you dream of people you know? I dream of strangers, often violent tormented tales of people going through extraordinary situations that involve life and death. As long as I can remember I’ve had, what until recently I thought of as a nighttime curse. Just the past few months I’ve concluded it may not be a bad thing to have such lucid dreams of terror and intrigue. Maybe, just maybe, if I can take a picture or two back to reality of what is happening in my dreams, something real can come of them.

As bloody as things can be in my dreams, they are often offset with calming portraits of places far away, on some rare occasions I dream of otherworldly design. Last night I dreamt that I was in a Japanese greasy spoon somewhere in Tokyo. It was no ordinary burger joint; rather it was all white lacquer from floor to ceiling. Furniture sat embedded in boxes shaped like enormous milk crates. Even the kitchen was splendidly different, with brushed tin boxes dispensing hamburgers, as a postal worker would mail into PO boxes. I briefly woke up, and then did my best to try to get back to that place, just so I could try to bring back a snapshot or two of what the design of that far off place looked like.

Naked Ambition

So many so often put so much extra, utterly unnecessary, stuff on their goal list each day. Item after item, agenda after agenda, we keep stacking up books of goals until the leaning tower tips, and falls into nothing. In other words, often we are so apt to achieve so many things that nothing gets done at all. In the process an inevitable great pain ensues, primarily from knowing that, through the simple state of goal-forced chaos, not a single goal was achieved. In the wake of some humbling news this week, may I put forth a humble idea?

Kill 99.9% of what you want to achieve, and go after that .01% directly. Forget multitasking, it waters your effort down to mediocre-at-best status. Focus on a singular thing until you get it exactly where you want it to be, and then select only one more thing from the newly revised goal list. Keeping a list of only a few goals to achieve, and keeping an even smaller list of goals under active pursuit will ensure success, and in the end produce a much higher quality result than the scattered-brained gibberish that so often emerges from the overworked under slept world we inhabit.

Postscript

Listening can be a goal, in such cases, one would actually put down the cell phone, flip closed the laptop screen, and actually take time to digest what the person talking to them is saying.

Passing Ideas

Great ideas dance through my mind, like a dog might a field of peanut butter. If I don’t take action on these great ideas immediately, within minutes they disappear. If I try to do them all as they dance about my mind, I end up with too much of a good thing, similar to how a dog might feel after she attempted to eat a field full of peanut butter. The gifts that are ideas never stay long enough to really let us know they are any good, yet at the same time ideas need to be cultivated diligently to stand any chance of success. In other words, at some point in the process of a great idea, you just have to say screw it, and take an educated guess as to whether a given idea will evolve into a profitable business or not.

The challenge for entrepreneurs in 2010 and beyond is not to gather information, as might have been the case in times past, circa the telegram era, rather it is to sort the glut of information that is transmitted to us each day. Business intelligence is as much about knowing what information to toss out, as it is what to keep. Without hard numbers, a business cannot exist, yet with too much of it, failure is assured. The same principle that makes nurturing a great idea possible happens to play a big part in decrypting the sandstorm of data that a typical business inherits each day, aggressive intuition.

Whether it’s a great idea, or a pile of revenue predicting pie charts, aggressive intuition will serve your needs well. Instead of being diplomatic with every idea you get, every piece of data you’re asked to assess, take what matters most and run with it. Whatever else is left over will die anyways without careful analysis, so give it an early death and move on. Too many ideas are wasted each day for lack of aggressive intuition, and far too many emails, spreadsheets, memos, and PowerPoint presentations are developed unnecessarily in the process. Be particular, be clear, and be prompt with what you do, and how you do it, and the results you seek will rarely pass you be.