How American football makes me a better professional
I had never heard about American football until I started my bachelor’s degree in computer science.
I was living for the first time, in another city, being a new guy in a new place, so when a friend asked me if I wanted to start training on the new football team, I thought “ok, why not?” and that changed my whole life. And I never expected that improve myself for better (and to keep on improving).
How did I change?
I trained at Maringá Pyros for many years. On the team I was a RB / WR, after that, I was a football judge for a year, and after a few years I have a little experience as a sports commentator for a local radio station in Brazil, where I learned a lot about things that help me until now in my professional life.
Team Work
As football is a collective sport, teamwork is essential to make things work. Jointly it is essential to train, coordinate and engage the team as a whole to make the plays successful and consequently win the game. I find it amazing how in the same way that it works in football, in a software team, everyone has to be aligned to ensure the success of an operation.
Motivation
It’s simple if you’re an 80 kg guy with the ball in the middle of the field and the only way to advance on the game is to hit a guy with 150 kg, what do you do? Do you stop? You cry? Do you give up or retreat? There are no such options, the only way is to move forward, the whole team trusts you, the whole team is doing their best so you can do your best, all you have to do is give your all.
How can the last situation be applied to a software team? The principle is the same.
If you have a problem, you cannot just stop and give up. You cannot drop everything and fail with your team. You need to trust the team you have on your side, you have to do your best to jointly complete the task and make things work.
Competition
The biggest competition is not against the other peers, the biggest competition that exists is you against you. You should seek your best every day, seek out your weaknesses and make them better day by day, seek your strength and train your skills every day. You have to give everything you have, every second and every moment of your life.
But here’s an important tip, I’m not saying to exhaust your mind and push beyond your limits, I’m telling you to take care of your brain and your abilities as a muscle, they need rest, they need good nutrition and also need good training. Having the mentality of an athlete is important, learning to respect your limits and improve yourself.
Leadership
I don’t think that I’m yet a leader, but I’m always looking to encourage and motivate the team that I’m a part of. At times we need to inject motivation into our team, we need everyone to keep fighting and sometimes you can be the determining factor for your team not to give up. Even without being a leader, I’m always willing to assure everyone and help everyone.
Being in an office is not much different than being on a sideline. The sideline is much more emotional and there we can scream, encourage and help everyone AT THE TOP OF OUR LUNGS. While in the office, you can’t shout to motivate someone. But it is important for you to do the same job of encouraging your colleague and boosting colleague morale when he has to deal with a two-week bug.
Am I good at it? No. But I’m always trying to improve myself.
Communication
This is a new skill that I have to improve in my life, I have never been a good communicator and I have accepted the challenge of improving it. I significantly improved my speech when I had a short experience as a sports commentator. In the first recordings I did, I needed to write and read out loud. And yet it took several recordings to achieve more or less what I thought acceptable. I could not think and speak at the same time. And it took a lot of training to get better.
Now I’m working in the aiqfome, an amazing workplace, and I have to push myself everyday to improve my communication, because the company needs me to become more agile and to speak my ideas more clearly. I challenged myself and I made a hot wings interview, here’s my video:
Now, I’m significantly improving the way I speak and hitting the tone of my voice, I am not perfect, but now I believe that little by little I am getting better than the day before. And that has had an impact on my work as well, speaking clearly, with a clear tone of voice and being able to pass on to others what I’m saying clearly is a skill that makes all the difference at work.
For me it’s been a great victory.
Responsibility
I failed my team several times, three times I had the ball to win the game and I failed. I’ve already failed everyone who trusts me, and I’ve never shifted blame.
There is no excuse, no matter the reason, if I failed, I take full responsibility for it.
This is yet another teaching of American football that has made a big impact on my life of dev, because the principle is the same, you should never shift blame. I prefer to sleep well at night, knowing that I have all responsibility about my choices and knowing that I can improve so that these mistakes do not happen anymore.
The game
The sport is incredible, and the more you learn, the more you want to study. Making the right decision in milliseconds of pressure, keeping calm is what separates a good player from incredible players.
Parallel to development, this skill makes a big difference to enable you to do a good job even when the sky is on fire.
So I write those words to show you that other activities that have nothing to do with the work itself can make you a better professional, my focus is development, but I believe that makes a difference in every area.
Having a hobby is a good way to improve you as a professional, and you can bet it makes you a better person.
Until next time.
Cheers.
