In my view, Lionel Messi is the world’s best footballer. If that’s not your view, he’ll be in your top two.
The picture above is from Stamford Bridge in 2018, the only time I’ve seen Messi play live. The game finished 1-1, with Messi scoring Barca’s goal. It was a typical Messi strike. Darting into space just inside the box to receive a simple pass from the left, and tucking the ball into the bottom left-hand corner of the goal.
When you see Messi play live - and particularly when you know it might be the only time you get the chance - you spend a lot of the match just watching him. The rest of the game tends to pass you by. At least it did for me.
The picture is a typical view of Messi during a game. Watching, walking, waiting. As I heard some of the pundits saying after Argentina’s win against Austria in the World Cup the other night, in a game where he scored two goals to add to the three he bagged in the previous match, he spends a lot of time just wandering around.
He really does. Other great players do too. There’s a film about Zinedine Zidane (“Zidane - a 21st Century Portrait”) in which you follow an entire match by just watching him. Like Messi, it’s striking how little he actually does during a game. At least to the casual observer. In fact someone has edited a version which includes all the bits where he actually touches the ball. It’s just 3’26” long.
A data analyst who knows nothing about football might suggest that Messi should think about running around a bit more. The data might well show that almost all of Messi’s goals (and assists) come straight after he’s run a little bit. If he’s only running for 10% of the game time, surely if he ran for 40% then logically he, and the team, would score more goals, right?
But that (obviously) misses the point. In every moment where Messi or Zidane isn’t moving very much, he’s reading the game, and thinking about where he needs to move next to make an impact.
The slow bits are the work. They’re what make the fast bits effective.
You could say that the slow bits are akin to strategic and creative thinking, the fast bits the execution. The latter needs the former.
I think you can see where I’m going.
We all need time to take in the field of play, to see where the space exists, and to plan the most impactful move.
But there’s a danger that we’re automating the slow bits out of work. We’re trying to maximise the number of fast (impactful) parts. But like ordering Lionel to run around more, it’s unlikely to get us to the best result.
Automation squeezes processes. But some parts of the process shouldn’t be shortened. We need breathing room in our schedules. Time to read the game, to think, ponder, cogitate, mull, and daydream.
Some say that automation of the mundane creates that space and time. But I think that mundane, administrative tasks have often served a purpose. They give our brains a break.
Just like an athlete can only sustain their maximum heart rate for a short period before needing to slow down and recover, our brains can’t work at full capacity for very long. OK, we might not want to do that all the time - our brains, like unexercised muscles, could atrophy - but sometimes it’s useful to get stuck into something less cognitively challenging.
You’ll probably have seen the much-cited study from Boston Consulting Group published in the Harvard Business Review which found that the efficiencies created by AI are causing more stress than they’re alleviating.
Why? Because the expectation (demand?) is that we can do more in less time. Tasks pile up as the natural pauses between project stages disappears. Ideas move forward at such a pace they’re not given the time to brew. Projects advance at a speed that doesn’t allow for critical thought and analysis. We look for shortcuts, even when we intuitively know the result isn’t as good as it might be.
It’s like Messi is trying to pass the ball, but it’s attached to his foot by a piece of elastic.
I don’t have an answer, by the way. There’s no grand conclusion to this ramble. What I do know is that Messi is the twelfth-oldest player in the World Cup, with the record number of goals scored in the competition. Most of them have come since he turned 35 years old. He’s got better over the years, even if he hasn’t got faster.
There’s something to be said for the slow bits.