I’m glad not to be a football player

Imagine that you work as project management and, as you are working on a report, a random guy screams from the other side of the room: “Hey, that’s a shitty spreadsheet, you moron! Boo!”. He doesn’t work with you. At most he likes the company you’re working at. At night, when you get home, you turn the TV on the Management Post to find your report being analyzed by a series of “specialists”, some of them incapable of opening an Excel document. They say they don’t understand what the company is doing with you there. “There’s no future with this guy.” How would that make you feel?

Throughout the world, the dream of most boys is to become a football player. Fame and money lead the dream. And also the idea of doing something fun for a living.

And I could talk about a lot of negative aspects of the football player profession, like possible injuries, lots of travels, and problems with career management. But my focus here is this aspect of being constantly in the spotlight. Not only to your team but to everybody.

The money would be a good argument to accept this torture. But I question that a lot. Others would suggest that we shouldn’t worry about what people say. That’s true. But not easy. You can also say that other professions have similar dynamics. But the sports world is special. And I’m writing about football because it’s the most popular one.

Being analyzed by the way you kick, the way you move through the field, if you are running enough, if you’re fit or fat, if you’re not meant to be there... That’s hard to take. So I’m fine here trying to sell software and being analyzed and pressured only by my director and CEO.

Maybe you wonder where did all this thought come from? 

I constantly look for reasons to justify the choices that I made and the path that I’m in. It’s kind of a happiness audit, in which I look for reasons to justify my happiness. And a lot of that involves thinking about the alternatives that didn’t become real. Essentially, the train of thought is “it could be a lot worse”.

This exercise suits me well. And as I write this I’ve just performed a happiness audit: no one in TV questioned my last report. Life is good.