The real Super Bowl lesson wasn’t about revenge - The Boston Globe

The real Super Bowl lesson wasn’t about revenge - The Boston Globe


This article nicely captures my feelings about the New England Patriots' incredible come-from-behind win over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI. As a Pats fan it was sweet to have them win despite Brady's suspension for the first four games of the season due to allegations that the Pats lowered the pressure in their footballs.

But the satisfaction of getting this win (with properly inflated balls) pales to the spectacle of watching the Patriots methodically, relentlessly and calmly chipping away at the Falcons' lead. Meanwhile the Atlanta team could have easily added a field goal to put the game even further out of reach but succumbed to some head-scratching decisions. There easily were half a dozen or more plays that would have thwarted the Pats' comeback if any one of them had not worked in the Pats favor. 

It seems that everything is politicized these days. We know that Robert Kraft (the team owner), Bill Belichick (head coach) and Tom Brady (quarterback) are Trump supporters. We know that some of the players have said they will not attend the team meeting at the White House for political reasons. Yet it's great to see that both sides could set aside these differences (at least publicly) to work toward a common goal.

It was as if everything our parents, our teachers, our coaches had tried to teach us transpired in the last 18 minutes of this magnificent spectacle, this Super Bowl. In the end, it wasn’t about revenge. It was about not giving up, about perseverance, about not panicking, about having a backup plan if the original plan isn’t working, about believing in yourself and your ability and in one another.

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The roots of the comeback were embedded in another of our parents’ mantras: that you lay the groundwork for success in ways you often can’t see, simply by persevering. Even after they had fallen behind by so much, the Patriots were controlling possession and running the Falcons defense ragged. In the fourth quarter, and especially during the winning drive in overtime, the Atlanta defenders were gassed, exhausted. 

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So many of us had assumed that Tom Brady wanted to win this game so he could rub it in Goodell’s face. But it turns out he really wanted to win the game to put a smile on his mother’s face. There’s something much stronger, sweeter, and more satisfying than revenge. It’s called love.

Resilence and Choking: Federer vs. Cilic Wimbledon Match

Yesterday Roger Federer narrowly avoided being eliminated from Wimbledon at the hands of Marin Cilic. He was down two sets to none and even had a couple match points against him. Yet he prevailed. We think that Roger has nerves of steel and therefore never chokes but he did shank several balls, revealing that, yes, even Roger is human. In fact, I read a book on Federer recently that reveals he was very temperamental as a junior player. He had temper tantrums that made John McEnroe look mild. If he lost a match he would cry and pout for a while afterwards. Roger made a conscious decision to change his ways and become more Stoic.

This post by Allen Fox talks about how Roger handled choking by not panicking.

I should add that if there was anything to learn from this match it was that you can choke and still win as long as you don’t get rattled about it. And the topic of “courage” comes up when people think about choking. In my opinion, it doesn’t show courage to not be nervous and make the big shot on the big point. It takes courage to choke on the big point, not get upset about it; fight your way to another big point; and finally come through, either by making a good shot or your opponent missing.

Fox's point can apply to other situations beyond sports. That it's OK to tighten up under pressure as long as you recognize it and keep trying to do your best.
 

How I Lost 25 Pounds in 30 Months

Yes, you read that correctly. 30 months. Not 30 days. Not 30 weeks. 30 months. It's not very exciting, is it? It isn't. In fact, at times the rate of weight loss has been excruciating. But the weight has stayed off! When I decided to lose the weight on January 1, 2014 I weighed 208 pounds. This morning I was 183. Over the weekend when I played tennis three times and refereed a U11 girls soccer game I was as low as 182.5.

How did I do it? I've lost weight before using a variety of diets but always put the weight back on once I hit my target number. I also made the mistake of no longer weighing myself. I fooled myself into thinking I'd notice weight gain when my clothes started to get tight again or had to use loosen my belt. This time I decided to use a different method influenced by Gary Taube's Why We Get Fat and The 8-Hour Diet by David Zinczenko. As a result I changed what I ate, when I ate and what I didn't eat. I won't go into the details of why. The books I cited explain that.

What did I eat? Foods with low glycemic load. Food with high protein content. Fruits and veggies. Nuts. If I want snacks instead of munching on chips or cookies I'll have cocoa dusted almonds or Atkins chocolate coated almonds.

What did I avoid? Carbohydrates such as bread, pasta, cereals and cookies. Also watched my sugar intake. Notice I didn't say “eliminate carbohydrates.” I limit them. For instance over the weekend my wife and I went out to dinner with friends. I had the obligatory pre-meal piece of bread and my main course had risotto in it.

When did I eat? Between noon and 8:00 p.m. A form of intermittent fasting. The idea is that restricting calorie intake to 8 hours allows my system to burn other calories stored in my body.

A typical lunch consists of: Greek yogurt, carrots with dip, cheese sticks and an apple, pear or banana. Dinner is the usual: chicken and veggies, home-made soup, or microwave dinners by Weight Watchers or Kashi. (The ones with the lowest sodium content. Some have an astonishing amount of sodium! Some have close to 1,000 mg!) No seconds! And for dessert a Weight Watchers frozen treat.

It's been working! What's nice about this approach is that I'm not obsessed on counting calories. I do keep rough track of the total so that it stays below 1,500 calories a day, preferably 1,200. What's not so nice is that it takes a while to notice a change in weight. It has required steadfast patience and resisting the urge to give up in despair and dive into a bag of chips or cookies. At first I was averaging a pound a month. I've hit a plateau around 187 for several months before starting to nudge downwards again recently. At least it's not trending back up! And it's not going to.

Of course there have been some nice benefits such as looser clothes, being able to play more tennis, ski or referee soccer with fewer pounds to pound on my knees and just feeling better. My cholesterol numbers have dropped dramatically too.

I've also made it a point not to call what I'm doing “dieting.” Instead I prefer to think of it is a permanent change in what I eat and when I eat. It's a new and permanent regimen.

The Science of Productivity

This short article, The Science of Productivity by Gregory Ciotti, covers a lot of bases and gives good advice (I think) based on recent research on our the brain works. Ciotti leads off with the finding that willpower is a limited resource and "can be used up in it's entirety!" So it's important to manage this limited resource with the techniques in this article.

Before continuing I should note also the work of Jonathan Haidt who shows that there is a reason why we run out of gas with willpower: the subconscious mind, based on the oldest part of  the brain, represents thousands or millions of years of evolution while the conscious, rational part of our mind came much later. Haidt likens the relationship between the two as an elephant being directed by a rider. The evolutionary momentum of the ancient elephant can often over-power or out-last the will of the rider.

I've covered the limits of willpower in the review of Roy Baumeister's book, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.

Ciotti then talks about the role of "deliberate practice," a concept coined by Anders Ericsson who studied the practice habits of world-class violinists versus others. The key difference in how they practiced is that the top performers spent more time working on the hardest tasks, not just practicing on what they're already doing well.

This leads to Ciotti's key point: "discipline is best maintained through habits, not through willpower." From there he goes on to offer additional advice on how to break up practice sessions, break up projects into manageable, bite sized steps using an Accountability Chart and planning your next day's work the night before. He also shows how we fool ourselves into thinking we can multi-task when research shows that people who try to do more than one thing at a time actually accomplish less.

If there is a theme I'd say Ciotti recommends breaking things into small steps: from taking the first step on a project to breaking the project into small steps to taking breaks every 90 minutes or so.

Read the whole thing. It’s well worth reading.

Willpower

This article in the Boston Globe nicely summarizes a book I just finished reading, Willpower: Rediscovering The Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney.

He and others have also identified a host of things that can drain our willpower, including hunger and fatigue, while neuroscientists are struggling to understand exactly how the brain’s higher reasoning center - the prefrontal cortex - manages conflicting wants and needs to help us make the right decisions. The reason for all this interest? Willpower, it turns out, is one of the most important predictors of success in life.

I found this book interesting because it says something different from the self-help books I’ve recently read. Several books I’ve read talk about making change easier by offering tricks, tips and tactics to accomplish the desired change. However these books don’t explicitly say that you still need to by exert willpower to initiate whatever actions you do take. Applying their tips still starts with a decision to do something and the will to actually do it enough to see a change.