Poonlosophy: Trusting The Process
I love sports. I love fantasy sports. Chances are, if you’ve found your way to this page, you do too (either that, or you’re a friend/known acquaintance of ours that, for better or for worse, has been exposed to our love for the vice that consumes us on a daily basis).
There are several reasons why I find myself so drawn to fantasy sports. For one, there’s the kinship you develop with not only those in your league, but others who partake in this game in one form or another. Some may scoff at that, but in reality it’s like a nationwide book club, but for bros (and girls, we’re an equal opportunity blog here at OTC Sports) that enjoy engaging in discourse as to whether or not Player X’s BABIP is sustainable over a full season.
On a secondary level, and what I find truly addicting, is using this space as a way to “test drive” ideas and practices that are scalable for application in all other aspects of life. My aim with the POONlosophy series is to explore those, putting pen to paper on my own thoughts/experiments (to which point we’ll find that sometimes they may not make sense, but those failures are just as important in the discovery process as the successes). The hope is, though viewed through the lenses of fantasy sports, there will at least be a broader audience appeal to those interested in taking some of these thoughts/experiments and applying them to the lives. Or, at the very least, help make my dynasty fantasy baseball league a little more competitive.
All of which brings me to the point of this first piece, the title of which I’m sure diehard SIXERS and NBA fans alike will recognize as an ode to Samuel Blake Hinkie. Mr. Hinkie resigned from the Philadelphia 76ers on April 6th, 2016. At the time, the Villanova Wildcats were a mere few days removed from being crowned National Champions of NCAA Basketball, filling me with a great amount of pride and happiness as a recent Alumnus. However, at the same time, I was entering the beginning of what would turn out to be a quarter-life career crisis. Just a week earlier, I had left what was essentially safe, but dead end job to pursue something a little riskier, but with the potential for much greater reward.
As fate would have it, that decision proved to be a beautiful disaster. What started as a “few day” delay in the hiring process turned into the complete removal of my to-be position, bleeding into months of what was essentially unemployment. While it’s easy to second guess oneself in situations like this, I found myself drawn to Mr. Hinkie’s letter of resignation to the managing partners of the 76ers. In it, he spends a great deal of virtual ink explaining how it’s just as important to reflect on the decision making process as it is to judge the ultimate outcomes, as we can learn as much, if not more, from “bad” outcomes founded upon “good” reason as we can from those we made that worked out in our favor. Particularly, I was most interested in a verse in which he mentions creating a decision making journal. From Mr. Hinkie’s letter:
“A way to prop up this kind of humility is to keep score. Use a decision journal. Write in your own words what you think will happen and why before a decision. Refer back to it later. See if you were right, and for the right reasons (think Bill Belichick’s famous 4th down decision against Indianapolis in 2009 which summarizes to: good decision, didn’t work). Reading your own past reasoning in your own words in your own handwriting time after time causes the tides of humility to gather at your feet. I’m often in waist-deep water here.”
This is a particularly useful practice to adopt as a fantasy owner, especially those of us in long term dynasty/keeper leagues. When faced with a decision that could materially impact your team (executing a trade, dropping an under-performing star, igniting a championship run or breaking down into a rebuild), it’s important to document the decision, evidence your line of thought, and make note of your expectations. There logic behind for this is two-fold: (i) we can explore biases and gaps that are identifiable only in hindsight, and (ii) we have something that keeps us grounded in future decisions. We can either keep forging down the path we’ve set when our expectations are in line with reality, or adapt given our newly discovered information.
Reflecting on the factors that led me to leave my previous job reinforced my belief that it was the correct decision at the time, while also learning I wasn’t properly accounting for the risks associated with doing so and planning accordingly. Since this reevaluation, I’ve begun utilizing this practice within the confines of my own fantasy leagues, honing it for integration into my broader life decisions. In future editions of this series, in addition to discussing factors and biases that limit our fantasy team’s potential, I’ll take a retrospective look at some of the decisions I’ve made as a fantasy owner, hoping that we as an OTC community can learn from my failures and short sights.
