This question was posed on social today. I chose to reply…
Twitter is context-poor as a medium, so here’s more of my argument.
2 Reasons We Over-Coach, Over-Analyze, and Over-Do Everything
Signaling- We want to be “seen” doing “the grind”
Perceived Importance- We want to be the golfer, not the caddie… and we are the caddie
Signaling
Remember the John Harbaugh article where someone followed him around and documented everything he did during a game week?
The one where he spent more nights sleeping on the futon in the Raven’s facility than he did at home with his wife…
That was the worst article ever written for our profession.
Why?
Because he was lionized for “working harder” than other coaches. Nobody prepared more. Nobody “grinded” harder.
It’s signaling, it’s unsustainable and it’s bullshit.
Too often we want to be “seen” doing something, instead of doing something for a better reason than that.
How to Ruin a Coach
Remember college? Ever crammed really hard for finals week?
Locked yourself in a library cubicle and studied from dawn until 2 am because the library “extended their hours to help you for finals week.”
Now instead of finals week, pretend it’s finals week every week for 30 straight weeks if you include:
Training Camp
Preseason
17 Week Regular Season
Playoffs
And I know what you’re going to say… “Drew, I felt fine after finals week in college.”
But that was 1 week in your early 20’s.
30 consecutive weeks in your 50’s does worse things to your physical and mental health. “The Weight” is real.
Perceived Importance
The other reason we are doing all this “grind” stuff is that we think we are more important than we are.
I love when Pep Guardiola uses the golf analogy when talking about his time at Barcelona. He says he plays the role of caddie. But the golfer ultimately grabs the club and plays the shot.
But man, we want to be the golfer. We don’t want to be the caddie.
We are the caddie. Embrace it.
We are the caddie. We are the guide.
We talk about the club we might select for the given circumstance. We give advice and ask questions to understand what the golfer is thinking and feeling.
But we aren’t the golfer. They create the shot in their head and execute that.
They do the work.
Pep also uses phrases that dampen the perceived importance of his role.
Phrases he uses when talking about his success at Barcelona:
“The stars aligned for me when I was there.”
“We had very talented players.”
“Most of that team had been playing together in our style since they were 12.”
This is not an article saying we abdicate all responsibility and throw our hands up and say, “anyone can do this job.”
It is saying that we influence, not control.
It is saying go for a walk, don’t reach for your 6th cup of coffee.
It is saying sleep in your bed with someone that loves you, not on a futon alone.
Ask yourself, “why am I really doing this?”