Knowing the rules, but not the game

Every year I go through the five stages of grief. Right now, I’m in the bargaining stage. 

What am I grieving? The end of baseball season, of course. 

The Major League Baseball season ends in early November. For a few days, I’m in denial. I walk around in a stupor, not remembering how to fill my time. Then I move on to anger, and then to bargaining. 

When I’m bargaining, I pitch myself on the idea of watching other sports. “Well, yeah, baseball may be over, but what about basketball? What about golf?” Most years, by early January, I stop trying to watch those sports, and just move on to the “depression” stage (where I remember my other hobbies, and wait out the off-season).

This year, I tried watching hockey. I never really watched hockey before. I didn’t play hockey. I don’t have any friends who watch hockey. As a kid who grew up playing many different sports, it was a strange and fun experience to watch a sport I never played. I had Chat GPT open on my computer next to the hockey game, asking it to explain the rules to me. 

After about a month, I got a grip on the rules. Even though I understand the rules, I still don’t understand the game. I can’t see what the players are trying to do. I can’t see the marginal advantages they gain by doing little things. I can’t see the game within the rules.

This mirrors my experience with business. 

When I started my career, I didn’t even know the rules. I made simple mistakes, stepped on toes, and missed easy opportunities. This was just the path I had to take to learn the “rules.” Once I learned the “rules” (more accurately, once I developed a set of rules that worked for me), I started to see the game within those rules. I saw how a small change in tone helped me win a pitch. I developed a communication pattern that made my clients happier. I called an audible in the middle of a project based on insights from previous ones. 

None of these things were “right” or “wrong” or “against the rules.” They were all just layers deeper—the game within the game. 

Looking back on my early days in business, I see how limited my understanding of the game was. I didn’t even know the rules, but I thought I had it all figured out. I’m just as prone now to get a big head about my new endeavors. I’m trying to remember that beyond the “rules” of anything, there is another game. There are deeper layers to everything, and a sharper understanding. It’s all available to me if I keep my eyes open, keep learning, defeat my ego, and stay vigilant. 

In business. In art. In life.

And in hockey.