“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”
This quote is attributed mainly to ice hockey legend Wayne Gretsky, though whether he was quoting advise given to him by a mentor or it was his own pearl of wisdom we’re note sure.
What we are sure of is that it reduces a very empowering message into a crystal clear sentence. If you want to fail, the best way of achieving that to simply never try.
Aside from being a pithy motto, it is also a valuable lesson in statistics for anyone attempting anything seemingly difficult. By simply putting yourself in the game, you stand a better chance of succeeding. And if you don’t succeed first time, staying in the game will see your chances of succeeding increase.
That seems obvious put like that, but take that idea in a totally different but common context; sales. You’ve probably had “junk mail” through the letterbox and thought; ‘what a waste of their money’. The thing is that a direct mail campaign with a 5% success rate may be regarded as a huge success. If a campaign of 1000 letters cost £500 in printing and postage, but 50 new customers came on board with a £50 spend, that’s £2,000 profit for a days’s work. Of course that is a simplistic example but imagine 5% of 10000 letters, or 200,000 emails? If you take more shots, you’ll score more often.
So keep writing, keep running, keep practicing drop goals, keep spending hours writing that code, keep driving forward.
Because I know one thing for sure, the one way the chubby, out of shape dad that I am is going to be guaranteed to fail to complete the MdS is to not show up at the start line in the first place.
