Reactionary vs Revolutionary
Applied Skills as a figure skater to an entrepreneur
Nothing in my life taught me first hand the power of every action having an equal and opposite reaction than figure skating. It’s simply physics. Memorizing this principle from a book or article on Medium, for me was not going to necessarily help me as an entrepreneur. For me, testing, experimenting and doing it on ice is what gave me so many more insights to the nuances of this principle and discovery process that would lead to other innovations.
A lesson I understood from years of doing figure 8s
Yes, more than 10k hours of my life was spent round and round experimenting with this principle has given me a very unique deep understanding of many possible variables. The basic principle is simple, the edge going in when you change edge at a precise moment in time will create an equal and opposite edge coming out. This is much harder than the diagram or edges left on the ice will ever show. There’s many variable’s of the skater like their arm position, foot position, the pressure on the edge and rocker of the blade (think ball of your foot) placement even of your eyes looking down vs where you are going, controlling your breath before, during and even after wards that must all come together in perfect combination to achieve this simple equal and opposite edge. To keep this focused on a physics based examination, I will put aside the other deeper nuances levels of your state of mind and “getting into the zone” to achieve even greater execution.
For each skater’s attempt to achieve a specific pattern on ice, my coaches and I could go back to where the pattern was not where we wanted it to be. Knowing that every action was the equal and opposite of the proceeding action, the source of the problem was always before the moment where the edge went wrong. This is physics acting as our guide drawing out the recorded path of our chosen actions. Then we could address how we got to this proceeding edge and start tinkering or adjusting perhaps our body, speed etc. With each adjustment we could always return to the edges left on the ice, and see the results.
Coaches provided a very important view and often helped us examine our adjustments until we achieved our desired pattern on the ice. Figures was not about getting to the end of the figure, it was all about learning how to examine, adjust and control your desired outcomes. In practice it’s much harder said than done. What was most valuable to me was the combination of team work, process, and continual learnings that provided me a life long career as an entrepreneur.
An entrepreneurs doesn’t need to be told what to do, or where to go, but rather have the ability to discovery, test and most importantly adapt to create better outcomes.
Process Reactionary Entrepreneurs:
Follow other’s playbooks without critical thinking
Adjust after the problem occurs
Process of Revolutionary Entrepreneurs:
Explore and tinker with critical thinking
Anticipate and carve a new path to avoid problems
Don’t take my word for it. Test it out with your trusted resources, coaches together as a great entrepreneur could approach any complex problem with this frameshift I learned from skating.
