Tag: gold

Process, spot and Rory McIlroy – The 200 words project

I hope you’re having a nice weekend. Here’s this week’s 200 word idea thanks to Steven Pressfield’s blog post about Rory Mcillroy..

When golfer Rory McIlroy was having the tournament of his life at the British Open championship, reporters asked him, “Do you have ‘secret thoughts’ that are helping you play so well?” Rory confessed that indeed he had two specific words that he was repeating to himself. But, he said, he wasn’t going to say anything until the championship was over. He won – at age 25!

When reporters asked him again, he said – “I just thought ‘Process’ and ‘Spot.” He explained that “process” meant to him the consistent, repeated sequence of thoughts and actions that he performed before every swing. Then he would pick a “spot” on the green he wanted to roll over. So, he focused not on the hole but on rolling the ball over the spot.

There is great wisdom to what he did – by thinking “process” and “spot,” Rory detached himself from the outcome of each individual shot and just focused on making good decisions and good swings. Of course Rory wanted to win the British Open. But, he knew that to over-obsess about this ultimate object would be focusing on the wrong target.

Great results follow great processes.

Process spot Rory McIlroyRory at the press conference after the tournament
Source and thanks to: News.yahoo.com

“Nobody can control the outcome. All you and I can do is stick to our process and roll our ball over the spot. That’s enough. It worked for Rory.” | Steven Pressfield

Learning and digging gold

An inefficient gold digger needs many good mines to extract a good harvest of gold. An effective gold digger, on the other hand, needs only one.

Learning is similar. You don’t need to have 20 years of experience to have sufficient learning. You can extract 20 years worth of learning from 1 year if you set your mind to it. Growing old is not an option but growing up by making the most of the experiences life throws at you definitely is.

So, while “am I learning” is an interesting question to ask in a situation, it isn’t terribly useful. Yes, you are learning something most of the time. But, asking yourself “am I extracting maximum learning out of this?” changes the game.

Just one trait about effective gold diggers – they don’t stop when they get one mine right. They keep working and widen that gulf. Learning is not different. Ask those who take time regularly to read, for example, and they’ll remind you that there is no difference between the ones who don’t read and the ones who can’t. Learning, like any other skill, needs work – perfecting it requires constant deliberate practice.