The importance of Keeping scores

Cricket is a competitive sport. I am a big cricket 🏏 fan and with the world cup going on I am in front of my television 📺 each day to get my daily dose of cricket we have recently had a very competitive match between Pakistan and South Africa it was a treat to watch with all its twists and turns the drama and emotion was on its peak.

This is one such occasion when I can again not 🚫 keep cricket away from self development, cricket 🏏 is the second 🥈 most viewed sport in the world 🌎 next only to soccer ⚽. The reason is they keep score in any popular game they keep score.

Scoring means business

Keeping a score is what makes the game more enticing, competitive and lively we have all seen friendly or practice matches where scores don’t matter and this reflects in the players performances, they may not put their heart ❤️ into it as nobody is keeping score and nothing else matter.

But when a score is being kept things change, it breads compitition everyone is charged up to try to reach a certain score or stop the other team/ person from doing so. Scoring means business.

Books taught me

Well no matter what I write about, I often find myself referring back or flipping pages of either “Atomic Habits” or “Someday is Today”, this I one such occasion In Someday is today” The author Matthew Dicks writes that he does not do YOGA as there is no one to keep score, which I suppose makes yoga not so competitive and not so fun. The essence of competition is all over that book but the best part was, the competition with our own self with a stopwatch by the side consistently trying to reach or beat the previous best and saving time in the process. Time to be productive, time to be creative, time for family, time for hobbies, time for ourselves and in the process achieve success.

In another audiobook named “The 12 Week Year” the concept of being competitive surfaces again. This time again the competition is you, trying to get through your daily goals to achieve a long term result. The concept I understood was; little things each day are achievable and if we are keeping scores of how much we are achieving each day we will definitely end up reaching our long term goal.

My Thoughts

I have changed my basic approach to life after reading books although I still am functionally an illiterate in the words of Jim Mattis I am trying to get there and eventually I believe I will, reading some books got me to understand that:

• Having a Goal in mind is great
• Working towards reaching it is wonderful
• But only having a long term goal or an yearly goal is foolish

I would prefer not being a fool I have already wasted 30 plus years of my life that way, I have a goal in mind, a future version of me I have visualized, An old person in dapper clothes standing wearing trendy boots on a heap of money. Who at 70 years of age still has a life is socializing, joking around and teaching. Now to reach there I have to do a lot of things:

• Have a presentable physique ( I realized that I need to work on this)
• Save/ build money
• Have knowledge
• Have good communication skills
• etcetera ( this is the first time I have written the full spelling of etc.)

This can just not be a long term goal where I check my progress yearly. I need to work towards achieving this everyday, its not just the last drop of water that filled the pot it was every drop that came before the last one.

• I read at least 5-8 pages daily.
• I was reading 2 research papers but these days I have cut it down to one, so yes one research paper daily.
• I am investing every month
• and a lot more I at least plan to do, if not do it.

This is what I do on a daily basis to reach to my long term goal

The book “The 12 Week Year” says its better to keep scores as even if you only complete 65% or 70% of what you set out to do in the beginning of the day you will far better than what you would have been had you reviewed your progress annually or worse if you hadn’t at all.

I always set like a to do list, of the major things I have to do on a daily basis that, I believe propel me towards my long term goal. At the end of the day I mark myself sometimes in percentages, sometimes by slashing through the things I did do from my to-do list. I believe the part were I strike through things I did from the list is the most exciting part of the day. It is almost like that game Fruit Ninja. The bottom line is no matter how I do it I KEEP SCORES. It has proven helpful as well as now I see myself moving forward each day every day, no matter how small the step is but I do move towards that distant bald headed 70 year old stylish man standing on the heap of money waving at me and smiling with those amazingly white dentures. I AM MOVING TOWARDS MY LONG TERM GOAL.

Conclusion

I have come to notice, examine, and believe that small steps small measured steps will propel you to a path that leads to your long term goal and leads you to success, measure yourself daily, so that you compete daily, so that you work daily, that is the only way I see of reaching somewhere. I am on that Journey and would really like you to start yours if you haven’t yet, I wish you luck if you are already on it.

See You On The Other Side