Matt Spielman - Inflection Points

1 1Thoreau, Henry David. (1854). Walden; or, Life in the Woods.

2 2Harter, Jim. (2020). Historic drop in employee engagement follows record rise. Gallup.com(2 July). https://www.gallup.com/workplace/313313/historic-drop-employee-engagement-follows-record-rise.aspx.

A typical NFL game lasts around three hours, from kickoff to when the fourth quarter clock ticks down to zero. The official game time is 60 minutes. And the actual duration of on-the-field action when the ball is in play amounts to 11 minutes.

By any of these metrics, a football game is an afternoon jaunt—over and done with in the time it takes to drive from Philly to New York, or half a sitcom's worth of actual gameplay action. But an immeasurable quantity of planning, practice, and preparation goes into each game. A battalion of coaches, assistants, analysts, physical therapists, groundskeepers, and other professionals spend Monday through Sunday prepping the strategy and conditions for the week's matchup.

As spectators, we get caught up in the moment-to-moment excitement, but we know that a football game requires careful administration. NFL coaches carry colorful laminated cards as they direct plays from the sidelines. These cards display 25 or more plays and game-specific considerations, so players will always have a plan to set into motion. These plays are written and drilled during team practices. The physical nature of the sport may look like brute chaos, but the mentality of football is to organize, through teamwork, toward victory. It reminds us of the old saying, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” You don't see NFL players going out on the field to “wing it.”

Our daily lives, like a football game, require discipline and a plan. Things can be fast, brutal, and confusing, and with mounting pressure. If you leave the house without a plan, you're more likely to end up pummeled to the ground. We simply do not know what will really happen one day to the next or how hard the metaphorical game might be. If you want to take charge and become your own champion, you'd better learn to prepare.

Sports provide meaningful philosophical reflections on human existence, but there is one key way in which the analogy is limited. Life is infinitely more complex than sports, especially when you talk about dreams and desires. The goal of a football game (and its outcome) is measured in strictly binary terms: you win or you lose.

Our discussion here is more nuanced and more complex. Sure, we all want to “win” at life, but the contours of winning and losing are vague and largely insubstantial. Furthermore, victory is not either/or. It is personal, situational, and dynamic. A fulfilled life does not concentrate on winning or losing, and it does not ask us to compete with others. I'd say it is a challenge, but not a competition. We must challenge ourselves to grow and to use our natural talents to their fullest expression. The more we flex our muscles, the more we learn. We participate in our own lives by deliberately creating them: knowing what we want, and making our plans come true. I believe a life well-lived is one where we challenge ourselves to enjoy it as much as possible (an enjoyment that is active, not passive). The challenge is to be honest. The challenge is not to settle for “good enough.” The challenge is to discover our energies and do the work required to follow them forward. To find those energies, we must make a map.

That's the key distinction between the Game Plan System (GPS) and other coaching models. It's not oriented around an achievement-based outlook that focuses on setting objectives and pursuing (and achieving) them. Rather, it looks at life through a lens of Positive Psychology, the branch of psychological study that examines happiness and well-being, which are the ultimate priorities in any kind of decision-making. The GPS starts with examining what drives you, what is meaningful to you, what your values are, and which outcomes are going to be most reflective of who you are and what you need.

My clients are high-performing individuals, many of them luminaries in their fields. They are the big names and leaders of companies you would recognize. And as top performers, they're very good at defining their what —what they want to do or achieve—and their how (the plan of how to get it).

But finding their why is not as straightforward, and that's where things can get muddled. Consider if you aspire to land a managerial position with a top media company. Much of my coaching practice revolves around helping you explore the motivation behind that desire. I don't ask questions as a way to plump your ego, or simply make you feel good. That's not enough. Do I want you to see how that job/activity/degree will be stimulating intellectually? That's better, but it's still not adequate.

The why behind the goal has to resonate with something deep inside you, a fundamental part of who you are—or who you strive to become.

I spend a lot of time with my clients just getting at what is going to represent or manifest who they are intrinsically. It is not merely what you should do, but what you could do if you made decisions based only on your innermost, heart-and-soul-level desires.

What emerges from within? The point is for your outer actions to be congruent with your inner self. Do your behaviors, your words, your work, and your time commitments align with who you truly are? If that's lacking, there will be a kind of disconnect that will always nag you and make you feel uncomfortable no matter what gilded title happens to grace your office door.

This may seem to be abstract, touchy-feely stuff, but the magic happens when we winnow down our mix of passions, desires, wishes, images, impulses, and hopes into a simple, physical document—your personalized Game Plan System. Your GPS will help you prioritize and make decisions, and it will give you the boundaries and motivations you need, emotionally and intellectually, to keep your steps moving. The key is that we write these things down . Not unlike an NFL coach's laminated Game Plan card, your GPS is a concise yet detailed single page (front and sometimes back) you can place on your desk or pin on your wall. In this way, it provides a constant visual reminder that keeps you on track (it's laminated, too). It would be easy enough to devise a life plan and consign it to some digital file, or keep it on the back burner of your busy mind (where it has to share space with a million other things). But our goal is action, serious and real action. You need to see your plan to believe it. Figure 2.1 shows what a Game Plan System looks like.

One of the strengths of the GPS is that it's intended to be shared with associates, colleagues, friends and family, mentors, partners, and other stakeholders in your life's mission. One of the best practices for staying on track with a life or career plan is accountability, transparency, and alignment, which is only achieved by drawing others into your plan. Also, it's wonderful to have support, and a resourceful system to communicate with—for your sake.

Figure 2.1 A Sample Game Plan.

One of the most famous examples of formulating a Game Plan was America's mission to the Moon, which captivated the nation and the world's attention throughout the 1960s. In 1962 President Kennedy announced, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” 1