The Little Things

As I stood on the sideline this evening during practice, I found an agitation stirring within. For me, coaching has always been about a bigger picture than the game itself, it’s been about discovering those teachable moments, opportunities to challenge a player to become a better athlete and teammate…a better student in the classroom…a better person in general. If you coach right, you aren’t just teaching a sport…you’re teaching life.

So, this evening…as I watched the players going through both offensive and defensive drills, there were so many times I wanted to stop what was happening and teach/correct/challenge. The reality is, when you practice ugly, you’re going to play ugly; when you take shortcuts, you’ll be exposed in the most inopportune times.

It’s always the little things that make the big difference. Rarely does a huge mistake cost you a game. Sure, it’s easy for a spectator to look at a play here and there and oversimplify things by saying, “that play cost us the game.” But for a coach, we can see so many little things that took place within the course of the game that added up…and in effect, put us in position to allow one play to “cost us.”

But I’m not writing about basketball fundamentals here…I’m pondering the little things as they pertain to me…to my life right now. I’m thinking about the game of life and how I (or we if you’re still reading this), can be effective, inspire, and challenge both ourselves and those around us, to become the best we can be at whatever we set out to accomplish.

ONE-DEGREE OFF COURSE
The other day I was thinking about a principle I would share in meetings with my clients in a previous job. I would often refer to it as the “One Degree” metaphor. In the aviation world, it’s called the “1 in 60 Rule.” Basically, when a pilot is off course by only one degree, they will miss their intended target by 1 nautical mile for every 60 nautical miles traveled. Consider a flight from New York City to Denver as an example. The distance is roughly 1400 nautical miles, so flying one-degree off course on a flight of this distance would result in a pilot missing their mark by over 23 miles.

Now…consider this as a metaphor for life.

It’s rarely the big things that take us by surprise…it’s the little ones, the ones we’re not even paying attention to because they seem so trivial, so insignificant, and to get “hung up” on them would appear to be a waste of time. The big things can often be obvious, and if we are at all honest with ourselves, we know we need to address them. But those little things…. how often do we ignore or overlook them entirely?

That’s it, I won’t belabor the point. It’s just a challenge to consider the one degree shifts that need to be made in your personal flight plan if you want to land at your intended destinations in 2021.