My football team pulled off another unlikely victory this weekend. As I reveled in the afterglow, I cruised around the team’s website to prolong it as much as I could. Lately they’ve been posting short video clips of post-game locker room celebrations, and I found myself grinning broadly as I watched grown men–BIG grown men–jumping up and down and dancing. How fun is that?!
It struck me that football, like all professional sports, offers an opportunity most of us don’t get in our day jobs: constant, immediate metrics. Results. Every week, those guys either celebrate a win or mourn a loss.
Whoa. That’s a big difference from my daily routine. Of course, I have projects whose culmination can be measured in something akin to a win or loss, but certainly not as clearly. Even so, those are few and far between. Like most people, I spend my time keeping things running, plugging away at daily tasks and putting out fires. Sprinkle that with some strategic thought and ship steering (dinghy, in my case), and you have a picture of how I spend most of my time. Rarely do I go home and say I won today.
A weekly goal with definitive measurement? I think that would be fantastic. I’d love to go home knowing whether I succeeded or failed, and then gear up to do it all again the next week. Somehow, there’s got to be a way to make that happen even in a non-sports career. And I’m going to figure it out.