Victories are Measured in Seconds and Inches

I love sport, pretty much any sport. It is one of the few things I watch on TV, I love to see people at the peak of their game, true champions.

It has occurred to me often how similar sport is to life. My favourite sport is football and I have long thought that the difference between players at my local club who are currently playing in the non league and players like Christiano Ronaldo, world player of the year is smaller than people would think.

Sometimes you watch a game, any sport and one team wins by a comfortable margin. It is said they are miles better than the other team but in truth they aren't - they are inches better.

Last week Manchester United beat Derby County 4-1, were they 4 times better? If you look at each goal you see that in fact they were better by inches and seconds, not by miles. The goals are made up of individual actions. A player will get the ball for the attacking team, the opposing team approach him to tackle but he passes, the tackle was a second late, the pass goes to his team mate despite the effort of the defender who was 2 inches away from the ball. The player with the ball runs and is chased by the defender who is a second or 2 too slow, he crosses the ball. Attacker and defender jump together, the attacker gets 3 inches higher, he heads towards the goal, the goalkeeper dives but misses it by 2 inches GOAL!!!!

As so on, in last weeks case another 3 times. Each time the winning team are just inches and seconds ahead.

We sometimes look at winners in life, in business and think that we could never emulate that success but the truth is that often they are not that much better than us, it's just that time after time they take the action that gets the results. A successful recruiter makes 5 calls, the loser quits after 1, the winner does this every day the loser takes a few days off. The winner spends his lunch break reading 30 minutes of a book or article that will improve him. The loser sits in the next office with all his friends criticising anyone who is achieving. Not much difference but day after day it makes a difference.

What are you doing today (apart from reading this awesome blog ;-)) to be a second better than the competition?