Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and the 4 Stages of Competence

My tennis coach explained the 4 stages of competence when talking about the difference between Federer and Nadal –

Level 1 – Conscious incompetence

You know you are bad but do it anyway. When you pick up a tennis racket for the first time and just play..

Level 2 – Unconscious incompetence
This is a very broad group. This involves all of us who think we are good because we have put in the hours, but in truth, our basics are not good enough. So, we play under the illusion that we know stuff. This typically characterizes the rung below the professional elite.

Level 3 – Conscious competence
Also known as the zone – when you’re able to flush out great strokes. This is what happens to a top level player in a game. The more he can ‘be’ in this zone, the better he will do..
Level 4 – Unconscious competence
Also known as genius. This is a level when everything you do is just based on instinct. Examples of unconscious competence is Pete Sampras in the 1999 Wimbledon final against Agassi when Agassi termed him to be ‘walking on water’ or any one of the many Federer grand slams during his peak.
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Here, we had an interesting discussion about Federer and Nadal. And his point made a lot of sense.
He termed Nadal a freak – a natural right hander who played left because his uncle told him it would help him attain unqualified success. As a result, he is a manufactured player – a player whose concentration levels are so high that he stays for amazingly long periods in the ‘Conscious Competence’ stage. Of course, that is in addition to his amazing levels of fitness.
Federer, on the other hand, is a natural right hander. He plays so much in harmony with the natural laws of the game that he is capable of creating new strokes with no apparent difficulty. Federer in his peak was capable of constant genius i.e. unconscious competence and that requires tremendously high levels of confidence (which seems to be a big problem at the moment) as like most other individual sports, tennis is played very much in the mind. And what differentiates Federer from most others is that even in his peak, when he was not at Level 4, he was good enough to catch that, switch on and play at Level 3.
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Now, let’s shift the discussion to ourselves for a bit. I think is one key question we need to ask ourselves –
What area in life do we think we can get into ‘Level 4’ i.e. What area(s) in life are we capable of genius?
Here, the answer may be ‘none’ now. Let’s not forget the 10,000 hour rule. Federer is where he is thanks to years of practice. But, the big question is – where does our untapped potential lie? Where are we capable of genius? And if we know where we are capable of genius, are we putting in the hours necessary?
Or are we putting in those hours in areas that don’t count? (i.e. surfing, chatting etc :))
I feel it is a question worth asking..

Too Big to Fail

I always wanted to read up on the crisis but the thought of delving deep to understand ‘credit default swaps’, ‘leverage’ etc didn’t feel appetizing enough.
Inspired by a friend’s blog post, I started reading/hearing the audio. And right from minute 1, I was hooked. I normally leave thoughts on books for my book review blog and despite the fact that I’ve already reviewed ‘Too Big to Fail’, I simply had to blog about this one.
– TBTF is pulsating. There’s no other word for it. A comparable audio book (~19 hours) that I simply loved took me about 2 months to finish. This book, I finished in 3 weeks because I couldn’t get enough of it!
– TBTF looks at the crisis from the points of view of the personalities in the crisis i.e. all Wall Street CEO’s, key deal makers and the US treasury officials. This seemed tailor made to my interest – of understanding the people, their minds and the rationale behind why they did what they did.
There were many moments that stood out in the book. A few are listed below –
– When JP Morgan’s bankers ‘discovered’ a 20 billion dollar hole in AIG’s balance sheet. I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine what it must have felt to realize that they had to raise an extra 20 billion in 3 days.
– When the annoyed bunch of Wall Street CEO’s ended up having a competition on games on their Blackberry after a discussion with the Fed officials (Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner)
– Bank of America’s CEO Ken Lewis’ wife telling Dick Fuld not to call as he wasn’t willing to talk to him. Dick Fuld, the longest tenured CEO at Wall Street, was for the first time, beginning to taste failure..
– How every Wall street firm tried to merge with every other..
– How everyone ended up going to Warren Buffett whenever there was trouble.
– Lehmann going down – unfortunately and without logic.
– How the smartest financial men in the world tried hard to save the financial market but couldn’t undo accumulated ‘sins’ over 10 years.
– How constant success had bloated so many ego’s and bank accounts to disproportionate degrees..
– George Bush incredulously asking Paulson ‘Does an insurance company do all that?’ when Paulson described the risk that the market faced if AIG went down and thus explaining all of AIG’s businesses.
– How everybody important is from Goldman Sachs
I could go on and on. The book was an eye opener in many ways and of course, extremely educational. During the course of the book, I felt up close and personal with each of these characters. In time, I actually felt lots of sympathy for Dick Fuld – the Lehmann CEO who was painted as the villain as he was probably among the few people present who wasn’t acting in his own self interest and just trying very hard (too hard at times) to save Lehmann, the firm that he loved so. I understood why Jamie Dimon was painted the big hero thanks to the circumstances and his tact and felt a sense of connection with each of those characters.
In fact, one part of me was also heaved a sigh of relief that the US Fed had people of the stature of Hank Paulson (ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs – but, of course) among others. Without men like him, the situation could have been far worse..
A great book – but right at the end, Andrew Ross Sorkin poses a great question. He asks if he have really learnt from the crisis. And I wondered about it too as this note about Jamie Dimon on ‘Time‘ (for being one of the most influential people in the world in 2011) sent a chill down my spine –
‘Dimon, 55, had the wisdom and the long view to prevent his employees from succumbing to the insane greed that enriched so many bankers while destroying their firms, not to mention ruining millions of lives. As a result, JPMorgan caused far less damage during the financial crisis and emerged more powerful than ever, while Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Countrywide and WaMu collapsed. For this, Dimon deserves enormous credit.

But at the same time, JPMorgan has had its share of scandal, and Dimon opposes regulation of financial-sector pay, reform of the rating agencies, tighter regulation, greater transparency of derivatives (JPMorgan and four others control 95% of the global market) and, obviously, any move to break up the largest banks. Which means that if in 10 years we have another crisis, Dimon will have to share the blame as one of its architects.‘

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As I warned somewhere in the middle, I could go on and on about this book.
In 1 word, it is fantastic. Go get it!

Checking in on your Bucket List

Once I watched the movie – Bucket List, I simply had to make one of my own. And guess what, it was loads of fun!
I did this as a part of my yearly review process at the start of the year and left it at that.
Having ticked a couple of these dreams thanks to visiting the desert and watching 2 football games, I thought it was time for an update.
The geek within couldn’t help put some numbers in it. And I ended up adding ‘Importance’
and ‘Years’ columns.
Importance moves from 3 (VERY important) to 1(Good to do)
Years basically indicates when I plan to tick them i.e. 20s, 30s etc
A sample small portion of the list is here..
And thus, the 50 point (at this stage) list developed. I had great fun figuring out which of these goals were really important and which weren’t and dreamt a bit as to how I could tick those boxes.
Also, I realized that this year has been a great year as I have ticked 4 items off the list! Writing a list makes a huge difference.
So, have you begun working on your Bucket List yet? :)

PDT Part 2: On PDT’s i.e. Prioritized Daily Tasklists

This week’s learning draws inspiration from ‘The Ten Natural Laws to Successful Time and Life Management’ by Hyrum W Smith.

Smith tells us a poignant story..

Jake, one of Hyrum’s clients had come to meet him. Jake shared with him how he had gone back home after a workshop from Hyrum two years ago and actually, for the first time, thought about his governing values.

He realized ‘Family and the well being of my son’ was a value but yet, it never found it’s way to his daily ‘To-Do’ list.

So, from that moment on, Jake began ensuring he had ‘1-on-1’ time with his son. Over the next few months, Jake and his son spent lots of time playing baseball together, watching movies, taking walks in the park etc.
A year later, his son was diagnosed with cancer and he lost his fight to the deadly illness within two months.

Both Jake and Hyrum, at this point, had tears in their eyes. Then, Jake said simply – ‘ Hyrum, all I can say is that if it wasn’t for you, I might have drowned myself in regret. But, atleast now, I have the satisfaction that I did all I could.. And that made all the difference in the world’

We often associate ‘getting organized’ to just being more efficient, when it is actually a lot more than that. When done right, it is a way of life that is a path to happiness..

Hyrum’s powerful method of thinking of PDT’s or Prioritized Daily Task Lists involves us considering the pyramid above.. And planning with our values in mind. For example – if ‘Growth’ is a key value, then an example long term task could be to read 15 books in the year which could in turn mean 30 minutes of book reading every day, and so on. And, just to help you along, here is my learning from Hyrum on writing down my governing values.

Here’s to creating value based ‘prioritized daily task lists’ this week! :)