Playing to Win

Hey all,

Sorry for missing last week's newsletter. I took a break because my week was busy with finals, travel, and catching up with some old friends I hadn't seen since the summer. So please forgive me for that.

Over these two weeks, though, I've had a lot of good conversations, read a lot, and watched a couple of good YouTube videos on the topic of "Playing to Win," so that's the topic I'd like to talk about today.

I think a useful intro to this topic of "Playing to Win" is this video by Michael MacKelvie.

If you don't want to watch the whole video, it is about this phenomenon in sports where almost all teams in all sports start playing worse when they are ahead and better when they are behind. After introducing this topic, the video dives into many of the reasons this phenomenon may occur, but in the end, many of them boil down to the fact that when teams are winning, they often play "not to lose" while the losing team "plays to win."

For instance, while a losing soccer team might start playing a more aggressive high-risk-high-reward playstyle after falling behind, the winning team may never exploit this aggressive playstyle because they fear losing their lead rather than being focused solely on winning the game. Therefore, it becomes more likely for the losing team to start coming back.

By playing so conservatively, the winning team loses opportunities it might have if the score was even, and they play worse as a result. For the winning team, not taking any risks becomes a risk itself.

I think this is a relevant idea in many of our lives because, in many aspects, we play not to lose when we should be playing to win.

Here are some examples I've noticed in my own life recently:

When I disagree with other people, sometimes we argue more about who's "right" when we really should be talking to solve a problem or come to a mutual understanding.
Sometimes, I get the urge to only pursue a "safe" way of living my life, without realizing that I can always fall back on stability if things don't work out.
- In some ways, I think I have to remember that I have no "lead" to defend, and by choosing stability over everything else, I'm losing the opportunity that comes with the privilege of being where I am more than I am keeping my or my family's place in the world.
Even in regular social interactions, I sometimes forget to lean into the joy of talking and making jokes because of fear.

My big takeaway from the past two weeks was that I have to balance thinking and doing better. Sure, I can talk and think about doing more things and stretching my time thinner, but if I never try pursuing any of the opportunities I'm offered, I relegate myself to being a shell of who I could be.

Anyway, that's about all I've got today, and I'm sorry if you didn't get the sports analogy (basically, I wanted to say that there's a lot of danger in playing things safe). Plus, for those of you who did get it, I hope you learned something or thought of an area in your life where you want to start playing to win.

Thanks for reading, and have a great week!

-Ethan