Like Football, Life is a 90 min game!

January 20, 2020

Football is a sport which I personally love and it can be argued that it’s the greatest sport in the world. But I’m not here to argue. A game of professional football lasts 90 minutes plus whatever’s extra time is added which can vary from 2 minutes to 10-12 minutes. I want you to think of each year of your life as a minute of a football match. You may be thinking that the average human age today is not 90(it’s around 60-70 at the time of writing this). And you are right, but most of the football matches are not 90 minutes long, a lot of amateur and semi-professional leagues are 40 or 60 minutes long. And if you take an average of all the different leagues and cups happening across the world, it would be close to 60-70 minutes.

So, what’s the point of all this?

First is, physical health is very important. If you can’t last the whole course, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll make it among the best. It doesn’t mean that you can’t make it to top-level without good health, but it’s highly unlikely and you always want Probability to be on your side(but that’s a discussion for another article). So, in short, it doesn’t matter what you do in life, it’s very important to eat healthy, exercise and take care of your body.

Second is, You don’t give up. Think about it, if a team is down 0-2 or 0-3 at the 20th or 30th minute(similar to the age group where most of the give up), do they stop playing? Do they stop trying? Well, if you watch a lot of professional football, your answer would be no. Most of the times, the teams at the top try to first consolidate and then recover. This is why you don’t see one-sided scores at the top that often. But if you have seen enough semi-pro or amateur leagues, you would know that the teams do give up. That’s the difference between a top team and a not so top team. Similarly, that’s the difference between a top person and a not so top person.

The third is, You don’t leave things to chance. It’s impossible to predict every aspect of a game. And this is why it’s important to have a philosophy of some kind of underlying principle. These principles help you in minimising randomness and take control of the situation. All the teams at the top have some kind of philosophy and they play according to that. These philosophies vary from “Tiki-Taka” to “Parking the bus” but they all help in optimising the end goal which is to win. If you are optimising for the immediate goal, you may win a battle but it’s highly unlikely that you’ll win the war.

There are so many more parallels which I can draw between football and real life but these are the major ones. But then again the crux of this article was life and not football.

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