The reason why the feeling of losing is worse than the joy from winning is the sunk cost associated with losing. Not only do you feel the despair of coming up short, but the effort prior to that loss is essentially wasted or misused that time that preceded that.

This was such a profound thought from this book, and it was too good not to share. 

This book hit home for me cause I feel like I entered a world I knew nothing about, at least in hindsight, and was forced to ‘figure it out.’ I feel like I am perpetually in a start up mode: always troubleshooting, cannot take anything for granted, have to learn a lot on the fly and hope for the best, not taking time to second guess myself but at the same time evaluating everything. Start up mode is a really hard and challenging environment to be in all the time. 

One of the areas that the book discussed was trying to engineer a baseball roster and manage that roster through analytics. The concept of using objective data in an environment like baseball is now commonplace, but not as accepted as you would think. At least from the pretense of non baseball guys inserting themselves using various data points. I empathize with this because when you are building a business, much like a S&C program you are grasping at straws a lot. So you start relying on data, but there is a sense that information is not wanted nor relevant.

I can say that as you are building out anything you are constantly in this mode of making decisions and immediately second guessing yourself. This is more so when you are not yet established combined with not having any validation that people value what you are doing. You get critique and feedback from your potential clients or friends and you are forced to make a decision. Let’s say that you made the original decision off careful calculation and were as objective as possible. That still wont change if it does not immediately work and people are giving their subjective feedback having huge influence on your future decisions. 

This is the core of any Sport Science – it has interacted with humans at some point. We have the best intentions of making logical, well thought out decisions, but that is all for not if we meet human opposition. We have to realize that unless we can display and present that information in a compelling way, that information will be just that. The book went into great detail about the nuance of integrating data and science into a world that was not accustomed to or flat does not want. Tradition is a hard thing to break. Inserting a logical and sound rationale is difficult with environments steeped in history of relying on instincts or that’s the way we all have done it. 

Great read, I really enjoyed this. It was romantic in a way that a couple of guys that never could, and still ended up buying a team. It was amazing how they were able to demonstrate their vulnerability of struggling with their identity. All the while having to put forth a confident persona when in front of the ones that can. I personally identify with the fantasy of being the one at the top and making the calls. It was refreshing to be reminded by being careful of what you wish for.