Know the Game

I'm not good at things because I'm talented or motivated. I'm good at them when I know what game I'm playing.

For a long time, I measured my days by how busy they were.

Slack open all day. Answering every question as it came in. By the evening I'd responded to everyone and felt productive. Then I'd ask myself whether the most important thing had actually moved, and the honest answer was often no. The worry came after: have I done enough, how is this going to be received? Lots of energy. Lots of activity. Not much added value.

I assumed the problem was effort. It wasn't.

The problem was that I hadn't decided what winning looked like that day. When you don't know the goal, the plays, or how your role connects to everyone else's, you're flying blind. Whoever messages you next sets your priorities. It feels like losing every day, even when you're busy all day.

What changed it for me was knowing what good looks like each day, even if I'm the one defining it. Three questions:

What's the goal?

What's one action I completed toward it?

What's my next step?

That's it. And once your mind knows what to look for, it starts finding it. You notice what moves the goal, and you notice faster what doesn't.

Here's how the feedback loop works in practice. I looked at a stretch of my own days and saw the pattern: I was answering everyone's questions first, and the highest-priority work got whatever was left. So I changed the next day. I worked on the one thing that moved the needle before I opened Slack. Then I went in and prioritized the messages instead of answering them in the order they arrived. Same hours. More of what mattered actually moved.

That's the loop. Look at the result. Adjust tomorrow's play. Run it again.

Here's what I think is going on

Activity isn't progress. Busy is what happens by default when you haven't decided what matters. The real work is deciding, prioritizing those decisions, and then doing the thing. Not just doing what other people want next.

Activity isn't progress. Busy is what happens by default when you haven't decided what matters.

And when you haven't decided what winning looks like, you end up handing the verdict to someone else's reaction. That's the one thing you don't control. Decide first, and their reaction becomes information you can use to adjust, not a verdict on you.

Think about a football team.

In 2016, the Philadelphia Eagles went 7-9. The next season their starting quarterback tore his ACL in December, and the backup, Nick Foles, took over. They won the Super Bowl anyway, beating the Patriots. The most famous play of that game was a trick play on fourth down where the quarterback caught the touchdown pass.

The north star was obvious: win the Super Bowl. But nobody wins it alone. There are 11 players on the field, and each one controls their own role. They know the play. They run it in sync. They see the result, whether it worked or not, and they adjust, because they have more plays.

That's the whole method. Know your north star. Know your plays well. Then run them. Not study them forever. Analysis paralysis feels safer, but you never find out whether a play works until you run the whole thing in real life.

The same goes for long-term goals. A big goal can't be finished in a day, and if you judge it like it can, you'll feel like you're failing. So break it into plays you control. "Close the partnership" isn't something you can finish today. "Send the NDA and log the follow-up" is. That's a play. Run it, see what comes back, choose the next one.

The gym taught me this before work did. A program says bench press, 8 to 12 reps, three sets. You know where the start is and where the finish is. Losing half a pound a week is a real goal because it maps to things you fully control. Work rarely hands you that clarity. You have to build it yourself.

This doesn't apply cleanly everywhere. In your first weeks somewhere new, you might not know the game yet. Learning the rules is the play. And not everything should be scored. Dinner isn't something to win.

I also haven't fully solved this. I still catch myself confusing busy with progress. It's something I have to filter for regularly. The questions aren't about being perfect. They're about noticing faster.

If you want to try this, start this week:

1. Name your north star, whatever you decide it is. Then turn this quarter's piece of it into plays you control, actions where doing them counts as done. 2. Each morning, answer the three questions and do the one action before you open your inbox or Slack. Then prioritize the messages instead of answering them in order. 3. Each evening, check: did today's action move the goal? If not, change tomorrow's play. Once a week, cut one thing that won't get you there.

Know the goal. Know your plays. Run the whole play, see what happens, and run the next one better.

Marc

P.S. What's one thing you stopped doing because it was keeping you busy instead of moving you forward? Tell me about it. I read every message.