I liked (and remembered) when you posted the comment. I like the blog post as well. It's a great mentality to live by but the level of discipline to stick with that mentality must be a real challenge. And discipline is already a major lacking factor in my life; insight on how to improve that would be welcome, from anyone.
At the end of the day ask yourself if you're above zero. If not, donate $100. Easy motivation, and then either way, you will be! :)
The idiom "Don't rest on your laurels" means essentially the same thing.
"to be so satisfied with your own achievements that you make no effort to improve"
At the same time, the best is the enemy of the good. Relax a little.
His example assumes that widening your lead in a rugby game when victory is already certain is in fact better.
Yeah, I wondered about that too. Part of the problem with the analogy is that it isn't clear that _is_ the best strategy. Players get hurt. Usually, if you are way ahead, you gradually take your best players out of the game to protect them.
I see where the advice is coming from, I think, but the analogy fails.
At the same time, on an individual level, you'd still expect players to play hard and be focused, right? I think that's where this applies. While the players on the field might not be the best players, they're still gonna play their best.
(...I was hoping the extended analogy would translate to life, too. But I'm not seeing it.)
Even then it's far more complex. Using football as the example rather than rugby, if a team is winning with minutes to go you'll often see them taking the ball to a corner flag and trying to kill the game, rather than still "playing as if it's nil-nil". On the other hand, there are times when a team who has a lead will adapt to defend the lead (changing tactics, taking off attackers and replacing them with defenders, etc.), will then concede a goal, and will end up worse off than if they'd kept the offensive strategy that gave them the lead.
I'd say the 'nil-nil' approach is the safe option. You CAN achieve greater things in the context of a season by conserving energy where appropriate, but it's a lot easier to get it wrong and end up losing net energy.
It's easier to think it in the morning than it is to feel it. To think it, all I need is to write myself a note or get an email sent to me each day. (I'm getting http://dailyhi.com/ and so far it's helped.) To feel it I often need to read something enjoyable, or get outside and exercise, or do something different from the day before.
"Play the point, not the score." - Brad Gilbert
He was our group's coach for a few weeks (I went to the Bollettieri tennis academy for high school) and it was apparent his philosophy of the game was on a different level than any of ours. There's a big difference from understanding the theory and putting it into practice- your emotions are not so closely connected to your rational mind, so what you set out to do can easily be interrupted by a natural frustration to losing.
It also does not matter if yesterday's score was 0-10 and you are down by 10. Don't get depressed, try scoring one today!
So, from a computer scientists point of view, you could say that the nil-nil philosophy is the greedy algorithm applied on yourself?
I prefer the more intuitive method. After some success, take a break. Then when you feel lazy, do something. Repeat.