I had just come out of college and taken a job as a sportswriter. One night while watching a hockey game, I noticed the man next to me. He followed the action on the ice, clicking his watch on and off for no reason that I could see.
During the 12 minutes between periods, I asked what he was doing. It turns out he worked for the home team, the New York Islanders. And he had a job — a vital one for a team that had allowed the most goals in the league in its disastrous first season.
“I click on the watch when the puck comes into our zone,” he said. “I click it off where the puck goes out.”
This simple measure told the team how much time it had spent defending its own area of the ice. Coaches could use the data to guide their practices, to teach, and to rate players. Soon the team was allowing fewer goals and by the end of the decade the Islanders won the championship. Fifty years later, a friend of mine is coaching a high school hockey team. Memories of that man with the stopwatch come back, so I decide to try it. Sitting in a warm lounge above the ice, I try to do what that man did. Right away I learn that this task requires much more effort than I thought. It is, in fact, devilishly hard. Everything in the building seems to be trying to take my eyes and mind off my job. Sometimes I just plain forget to turn it on and off. Other times my finger misses the button and nothing happens. Now I think about those who work the clock at big-time events like the Super Bowl and the NCAA hoop tournament. They work unknown — until they make a mistake! It occurs to me what separates winners from losers — not power and speed alone but an ability to give uncommon focus to the most routine of tasks. Whether doing dishes, making a bed, or keeping a stat, you decide what level of effort and focus you will bring. You choice will lead where it may — either to excellence or something well short of that. /////
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