FULL-TIME SCORES: ME 4 vs YEAR ’21 2
A Clinical Review and Analysis
How time flies! After a hard-fought, intense, unpredictable and enticing match, the final whistle was blown at the 525, 600″ ⏲. Oops, that looked like ample time? Nope, it’s just a calendar year that’s now become history. It’s safe to say 2021 will go down in the record books as one of the fastest years ever to have been witnessed by the human race.
My full-time prediction was 10–1. I had a strong feeling that I could smash the year (in review) by as much as nine-goal differential come full-time, imitating the likes of Manchester City in the English Premier League or Bayern Munchen in the German Bundesliga league — clubs popularly known for their ruthless executions in front of goals. It did not take long before reality dawned on me as I was faced with life’s reality.
In life, you win some battles and lose some others. The battle won is expected to reassure you of your potentials and the ones lost, encourage you to do better next time. So, above all, learning is the ultimate goal.
Without bias, I have decided to carefully analyse the full-time outcome of my encounter with the year 2021 (4–2) and how I came to this conclusion. A quick flashback to Day One of 2021, I remembered setting a personal, optimistic and realistic goal as I also wrote my new year resolution which sat on a tripod of:
Growth & Development
Value Networking
Mastery
“no one can win all the time. But you’ve got to learn from all you do — both successes and failures. Always do a self-assessment.” _Michael Sachs
I have learnt that cultivating self-discipline and a winning mentality isn’t a day’s job, it requires a consistent and deliberate effort. Like training or sweeping the floor, is something that must be done daily. Building self-discipline requires constant work to maintain it so that one’s objectives are met.
A short excerpt from one of my favourite books for the year — 365 DAYS WITH SELF DISCIPLINE by Martin Meadows which has been instrumental in my growth and development goes thus:
💠 The moment you put instant gratification back on the pedestal is the moment you start losing your self-control.
💠 The moment you decide it’s time to embrace the easy life and stay away from the challenge is the moment your life starts getting harder
💠 The moment you decide that you’re already strong enough and nothing can break your spirit is the moment you start losing mental resilience
💠 We’ve spent 365 days together, but the journey towards self-discipline doesn’t end here. Let’s grab the broomstick and start sweeping!
Just because we’ve done it once, doesn’t mean the floor is clean forever. Every day the dust comes back. Every day we must sweep. _Ryan Holiday.
I commenced the year by asking myself a lot of questions borne out of my curiosity to want to know. I was scared of what lies ahead and kept getting the rush for clarity of purpose. Some of the questions I asked myself include: ‘how can I be happy in my career?’, ‘how can I measure my life?’, ‘what next after undergrad; postgrad or business?’, ‘how can I remain motivated?’, ‘how can I avoid distraction and burn-out?’… these and many more were the questions I asked myself. There’s the popular saying that if you know the problem clearly, it’s half solved. I got some of the answers to my questions in books and others from mentors and friends and some others from meditation and my quest for knowledge. HBR’s 10 MUST READS ON MANAGING YOURSELF, one of my favourite reads of the year provided some answers to my questions. Some of the best answers I got from this book are highlighted thus:
The most powerful motivator isn’t always money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute and be recognized.
If you’re not guided by a clear sense of purpose, you’re likely to fritter away your time and energy on obtaining the most tangible, short-term signs of achievement, not what’s important to you.
In this review, I have summarized the strategies and tactics that I adopted and believed helped secure the win.
So, which formation did I use?
I went with a 4–3–3 formation (largely regarded as a balanced formation). You may be wondering how this worked out and here’s the trick: the best way to attack is by defending and vice-versa (every chess player knows this). Football matches are won by attacking (short-term) and the league is won through solid defending (long-term). This implies that for me to achieve my long-term goals, I have got to achieve my short term goals which include my yearly, monthly, weekly and daily goals doggedly. In the past eleven months, I’ve been pursuing a lot of things ranging from getting academic qualifications to volunteering and focusing on my career growth and development.
Getting actively involved in all these activities was overwhelming, but my passion and drive for success kept me in the loop. It was all about asking tough questions and making firm decisions. This was what kept the attack going (in the short-term) and is keeping the defence solid (in the long-term) ultimately making conceding quite a daunting task for the opponent (by opponent, I mean Year’21)
To attain my long-term goals — to be happy and attain health and financial freedom, there was the need for me to hit my short term objectives. Impressively, I always try to maintain a healthy work-life balance and don’t sleep on the opportunity to have fun when such arises as advised by one of my amazing mentors Bola Afuye
Talking Tactics, I would say I only leveraged on five key pillars, viz:
🔰 Network (People)
🔰 Mentors (from their wealth of experience and wisdom)
🔰 Books (acquired knowledge from great minds across the globe)
🔰 Time management tools/apps (Google Calendar app, Task app)
🔰 Hands-On engagement experience (both remotely and physically)
Here’s the secret to why I conceded some goals in the year:
I missed out on some opportunities I should have taken for personal reasons
I failed to follow up on some conversations and people for known/unknown reasons
I was not disciplined enough to quit some bad habits I planned to quit such as substituting beverages for water.
Hence, my reason for not keeping a clean sheet. Albeit, these are lessons learnt and a window for improvement. This is the way I see it and I believe reminds us of our very existence and definition as humans — IMPERFECT.
Despite conceding two goals, I am quick to remind myself that I deserve some accolades for my little wins and achievements made in the year having scored double the number conceded, that’s a victory for me! Hurray!!✨🎉🎆
“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection”_Mark Twain
This is only to show that there’s more room for improvement and that the future is bright whilst I look forward to more breakthroughs and achievements in the years ahead.
For me, the Year 2021 has been a great consolidation on 2020 and a nice precursor to 2022; my biggest highlights were the friends made and accomplishments.
“Self-assessment is the first step to all assessment”
Thank you for reading. Do feel free to share so that others may learn from it too if you find my experience insightful.
Cheers to a prosperous year ahead! Connect with Ibrahim on LinkedIn and Twitter 🌹
