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“Fear is the mind-killer.” -Frank Herbert
“It’s your responsibility more than anyone else to manage your career” -anonymous mentor
“A Sense of Urgency.” -Signs posted throughout Per Se by chef Thomas Keller
You all remember that story of how I got cut from the lacrosse team trying to walk on my freshman year in college?
The one where, the summer after I got cut I worked out with my dad almost everyday- I’d wear a scuba weight belt and one of those fishing vests with all the little pockets. They were filled with weights too. How I’d pull my younger siblings on a makeshift sled behind me, connected to an equally makeshift vest I was wearing? Yeah- this was before people actually made things specifically for those types of workouts. My dad was ahead of his time.
Well this isn’t that story, although I’m sure I’ll tell you that one at some point. It was a long time ago now.
This is the backside to that story- the one that I don’t really tell, because it isn’t perfect. There’s no clean ending, and in many respects it’s a story of about what can happen when you get complacent and content with what you’ve already achieved.
I feel like I’ve mentioned it to you, but here goes…
To Make a Short Story Long…
I walked on to the Georgetown University lacrosse team as a sophomore after being cut as a freshman. Things went well. I was awarded All-American 2 years in a row. I graduated, went to work on a trading desk in the fall, and came back to play a post-grad season in the spring while taking grad school classes with the year of eligibility I had remaining.
I didn’t work out or train as much in the lead up to that final spring season. A bunch of stuff got in the way- work, life, you know- “reasons”.
I could have woken up early to work out, not gone out and seen friends after work- any number of the somewhat uncomfortable things necessary to improve. I guess I didn’t want it as much.
I arrived back on campus that spring. Life was good. I bought a moped.
I had made it, after all. Success and a 3rd All-American award in a row were a given.
All I had to do was show up.
I was content, complacent and happy.
I slowed down.
About halfway through the season, I’m sure in part due to a lack of preseason training, I tore my hamstring and only played sporadically from then on out. As Coach Urick used to say, I went from 'Who's Who' to 'Who's he?' to 'Who cares?' in the blink of an eye.
Like I said, boo hoo.
For all the accolades and epaulettes I got playing lacrosse, what I think about (if I think about it) is the partially missed season that happened because I got too fat on my own story. The what-if of it all.
I stopped grinding.
There’s a word at the intersection of contentment and complacency- contplacency?, comptentment? (I’ll see myself out…)
Contentment and complacency are sports career killers, and they are the professional mental athlete career killers as well.
“Sports career” (loose air quotes) over. For good this time. Now what?
I went to work on a trading floor- people love to lean on the analogy that trading is the frenetic, competitive environment of sports, transported to finance- but the palimpsest is definitely there.
So many stories from that period, good and bad lessons, and good and bad mentors to study and learn from. But did I learn that lesson?
No.
Here it came creeping again.
There were times when I was trading as a portfolio manager, tending to my book of business, my models, when I had a good day and I actually thought to myself, “hey maybe this ‘stock market’ thing isn’t so hard after all.”
The temporary PnL(profit and loss) coffers were full, I was “doing my job.”
I had a single excel cell in the top part of my PnL sheet that was formatted to be black or red based whether I was making or losing money at the time, in real time.
A black day meant I was a winner. A red day meant I was a failure.
The sum total of my intellectual bandwidth and capacity winnowed down to a single excel sheet cell, L8.
After a prolonged streak of winning days, I’d sit back in my chair, fold my hands over the back of my head and think, again, “you’ve made it”.
Long exhale.
Except of course, I hadn’t.
Record scratch, window break.
Like clockwork, a couple of days after these thoughts crept into my mind I would get smoked by the market and have a big down day. The market really knows how to give a beautiful humbling(band name?).
I stopped grinding, stopped being worried, and lost the sense of urgency to outperform.
Grinding is the proactive resistance to these feelings.
Grinding is identifying your weaknesses and doing boring, slightly painful deliberate practice to improve.
I got burned enough times that my response to these creeping thoughts became Pavlovian.
If I feel job contentment creep in now, my spider sense tingles, rising up like hackles.
It means someone, somewhere else is not content in their situation, grinding, hungry, doing all those little things I’m unwilling to do, to close the gap on me.
Paranoid? Of course.
Heller said in Catch-22,"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”
And Andy Grove said as much.
When things are going well, that’s precisely the time to double down, to grind, to see what’s out there.
Step your foot on the gas.
Find a new challenge, a harder problem, a steeper curve.
Reinvent (a piece? of) yourself.
Fail, fail again, fail better.
Things can (and may) turn to shit before I know it.
The more I know, the more I learn that I don’t know (mi suegro me enseñó esto).
It’s time to remind myself that I’m just an “ant”, a nobody.
An old trading boss called me this once. Good times!, but true.
I go and get my ass kicked at jiu jitsu class. Ever want to be humbled, reminded that there is always someone out there better than you? Get yourself into a position where you are forced to physically or verbally ask someone to stop hurting you. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a great destroyer of the illusions of self-importance.
Seek out a steep learning curve to start in front of.
Time is running out. It will all be over so fast.
Montaigne said, “by diverse means we arrive at the same end.”
Grind, especially when you are playing with house money.
Especially when you feel the desire to let up or sit out a round, double down.
Good things will happen.
Things that aren’t even on your radar right now are just out of your reach, just slightly out of frame.
Charlie Munger said, “to get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people.”
My want is for you three to keep grinding, but be kind and grateful.
Whoops.
Oh, I’m sorry.
You thought this was for you?
Oh well. As it turns out my friends, we’ve arrived at our shared ending all the same.
I told you there’d be some stories for my kids.
Don’t slow down.