Profligacy: The Unintended Consequence of A Mindset of Abundance.

 

Whatever you take to the extremes always comes with some disadvantages. A mindset of Abundance is one of the best things you can possess as an individual. It creates endless possibilities for the possessor. However, when it is taken to extremes, it could result in profligacy. Profligacy is just a big word that means wastefulness. It is a word that is used mostly with regard to strikers in football matches. When a striker keeps squandering chance after chance, we say he is profligate.

Profligate strikers cost their teams matches, crucial points and at the end of the day trophies. How would you feel like a coach when the striker you depend on misses chance after chance and shows little to no remorse or effort to get better at taking their chances? Before long, you will be tempted to find a more clinical striker.

I am a strong proponent of people not crying over spilt water but at the same time I want them working on ensuring that I future the water spills less often. Optimal utilization of chances and opportunities happens as you take steps to get better at making the best use of them. If you are responsible for taking freekicks in your football team for example, you want to perfect and vary your technique in such a way that you are getting better at it and also reducing the possibi9lity that your opponents will figure you out. You want to maintain a degree of uncertainty in their minds concerning where and how you will place the ball. As professional footballers will tell you, this doesn’t come by chance. It takes hours upon hours of practice to become good at it. Cristiano Ronaldo who is one of the most prolific goal scorers of the modern era was known to spend a lot of time perfecting his freekick technique at Manchester United. As a result he became very good at scoring them overtime. By the time he was leaving for Real Madrid, he was the undisputed Freekick taker of the team.

No one is 100% efficient

It is true that no one can get it right all the time. You only need to listen to Michael Jordan talking about how many shots he missed. We are talking about The G.O..A.T of basketball. Here is what he had to say. ‘I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.’ We clearly see that he missed some pretty big chances in his career. Efficiency doesn’t mean that you won’t miss some. What it means is that every time you do, you check your performance with a view to doing better next time. That Thomas Edison got it wrong more than 10000 times with the light bulb doesn’t mean that he was mindlessly doing the same thing. Each failure took him closer to what he was working towards. Can you say the same about the chances you have squandered in the past?

All is not lost.

What makes a mindset of abundance a recipe for profligacy? I would like to emphasize that this mindset is a beautiful thing to have in spades. You do not want to be those who stare too long at a closed door while there are many other open doors ahead of you. Once you miss a freekick, penalty or big chance in life, a mindset of abundance comes in very handy in reminding you that there will be other opportunities to get it right. Those who get it wrong make one huge error. They do nothing to get better at taking their chances in the intervening period between one chance and the other. They fall for what Albert Einstein calls insanity-doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Profligacy happens when you fail to grow from your failures of yesterday. It happens when you don’t take the time to reflect on what happened the last time you squandered your chance, opportunity or moment. The best thing you can do for yourself to be cushioned against profligacy, is to get used to the idea of looking back over what happened with a view to picking the lessons you need in order to move forward. When you do that, then future opportunities are less likely to go to waste.

How to guard against profligacy

Be mindful of your performance. If you want to improve your performance, it begins with opening your eyes and paying attention to how you have done in the past and in the last time you attempted something. Whether it is a product you are developing or a goal you are pursuing, mindfulness will go a long way. A mindful attitude will help you take note of details that would escape you otherwise. It will give you what to work on in order to improve your technique.

Once you are clear on what is ailing you and your ability to take your chances, it is time to employ what is known as deliberate practice. James Clear defines deliberate practice as a special type of practice that is purposeful, systematic and requires focused attention with the specific goal of improving performance. This is one of the greatest things you can do to get rid of or reduce profligacy. When you are clear on what is missing, you are better placed to work on getting it to work so that you are functioning optimally overtime.

Be open to mistakes but seek to grow from them. It is important to note that you will not move from wasteful to efficiency in one fell swoop. It will take many little adjustments to get there. The best thing you can do is to be comfortable making mistakes and learning from them every single time. You should be ruthless enough with yourself to not allow repetition of mistakes but open to making new mistakes at a higher level.

Leverage on the failures of others. More often than not, what you are doing or trying to do has been done by others in the past. There is nothing much that comes from constantly trying to reinvent the wheel. Just because experience is a good teacher, doesn’t mean that you have to learn from your own experience. The target should be to learn as much as you can from those who have gone ahead of you so that you are starting on higher ground.

Pay attention to feedback. It is said we tend to play better when we are keeping score. Evaluation of performance is critical whether by self or others. A coach will go a long way ion helping you get better if you allow them to. Who do you listen to concerning the area where you are trying to be more efficient? It will help you to improve your performance if you are listening to someone and acting on their feedback even if that someone is yourself.