Postcard from the Edge

The drug of performance

Photo by Christina Victoria Craft on Unsplash

Even for someone who is not a particular sports fan (except perhaps cricket, where explaining the idea of a five-day game to those who don’t follow it is a real test of communication skills ), it was a great weekend of sports. There wasn’t a match in the Six Nations that was anything other than great to watch, the excruciating penalty miss of the Italians heartbreaking, the last-minute result in the Carabao Cup exciting, and the inevitable roller coaster that is five-day Test Cricket compelling.

And this is for nothing more consequential than games. Yet, they have become something onto which we project our dreams and identity, from individuals looking for identity to nations looking to acquire respectability and, in doing so, command vast sums of money. The vast majority of us will have forgotten it all by Wednesday.

We have carried the same mentality into the workplace. An obsession with performance for its own sake in search of recognition and bonuses and the knowledge that we will only ever be seen as a function of how we performed last week. In the world of work, performance is a drug.

Work that matters follows a different cycle. I have huge respect for Jürgen Klopp, who has lived successfully in the world of the finite game, coping with success and failure, idolatry and ridicule, with his eyes on a different horizon. As he takes his leave of Liverpool on his own terms, I wonder what he will do next. I like this interview, which offers insight into his thoughts and the line that he had “fourth-division feet but a first-division mind”. The man is an acute observer and a master of orientation.

I think the problem with an obsession with performance is that it turns us all into players, forcing those with first-division minds to become fourth-division performers because we do not create the space for them to do what they are capable of in the medium to long-term.

Whilst reality dictates most of us have to survive in a performance-driven world, the artisan in us is always thinking in different terms, and looking for an opportunity to transfer.