Making soccer simple

My son Niklas was the goal keeper for a soccer team that sucked. They had lost almost every match that season. They were humiliated on the pitch, often losing by 10 goals or more. The coach decided to quit and someone had to take over this demotivated team. By accident or a moment of brain lapse, I (Geir) ended up raising my hand when no one else would. I knew next to nothing about coaching a soccer team – not enough to make it complicated.

Starting off with a simple question for each player, “Why do you play soccer?”. Bastian, who usually played defence said, “I want to be the guy in the team the others can trust…But it’s not going well.” He looked down.

Having seen him played, I said, “You look kinda like a sack of potatoes when the ball comes your direction. Why is that?”. “It’s complicated…because I’m supposed to look at all the players, notice where Jason and Alfred are, and if Alfred is in an open position heading forward, I should play the ball to his foot, but when Jason is open and heading toward the goal, I should play the ball in front of him, and when none of them are available, I am supposed to take the ball forward while assuring that Fredrik is covering the defence, dribble the ball and pass it along to…”. He was only 9 and already rattling off a 3 page job description. I felt pity for this truly nice guy with the heartfelt purpose for playing soccer.

It was a 5-a-side game – one goal keeper, two defenders and two attackers. I drew the pitch on piece of paper, divided it into four and pointed to the lower left. “This is your part of the pitch”. “The only thing we need from you is that no one from the other team tries to score from your square.” He looked a bit confused and said, “But I want to also go up and try to score if I have the opportunity…”. I clarified, “You can do whatever you want; score goals, go take a piss or sit down a draw cute doodles in the sand…as long as no one tries to score from your area.”. He brightened up. He got it.

By making each player have just one simple delivery, we ended up winning 65% of the matches that season. We won 3-2 over the team that beat us 17-1 the year before.


Making everything else simple

Beauty is found in simplicity. Truth is more often simple than complicated. Remember that no epiphany is complex. Moments of “a-ha” comes with a delight of simplicity. Even in hard-core physics, this is the case.

  “The goal of physics, we believe, is to find an equation perhaps no more than one inch long, which will allow us to unify all the forces of nature and allow us to read the mind of God.“[1]

To lead a happy, successful and valuable life, try to make things simple. Got a message to convey? Make it short and to the point. A book to write? Make it simple. You really have to make a business process? For everyone’s sake, make it simple. A theory to hash out? Remember Occam’s razor[2]:

  “More things should not be used than are necessary.”

In keeping with this, let’s try to simplify even the simplest of books – the OnePageBooks[3]:

- ORGANIZATION - THE SIMPLE WAY: Break the organization down into small, autonomous teams and make sure each team has simple, clear deliverables, measure those and are self-correcting along the way.
- MENTAL TRAINING – THE CORE: Exercise your ability to be here & now by sitting still and not think or emote.
- FREE WILL: If free will can exist, it must be free of the laws of physics. It must be non-physical and “lawless”.
- #FAIL: Learn from your failures, but more importantly exercise failing to become less fragile.
- HOW TO HELP A FRIEND IN TROUBLE: Go for a walk, help your friend settle, then help him tackle the thing that bothers him the most and get him through it, then the next thing, etc.
- LISTENING – SUPERPOWER: Be mentally present and listen without preconceptions.
- AND…: Stop whining and do something about it, or not – but stop whining.
- YOUR KICK-ASS CV: Emphasize your factual, proven results.
- IMPRESS: To be successful, create impressive value for others.
- RECRUITMENT: Recruit people with a relevant proven record of measurable results.
- MAKE IT SIMPLE: Just make it simple.


[1] Michio Kaku on simplicity: https://aroyking.wordpress.com/tag/albert-einstein/
[2] Occam’s razor: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
[3] The OnePageBooks: https://isene.org/onepagebooks/