Ping Pong
Today, I'm writing about ping pong.
Ping pong has become a part of daily life at work and it has long been a place to go get the wiggles out and breathe for a few minutes. But, the recent addition of the ping pong ranking system developed by Scott has created a stronger sense of competition and, honestly, I'm having trouble taking it lightly.
My question (to myself and everybody else) is why do we take things so much more seriously and become much more invested in the outcome when that outcome is documented and ranked?
Every business in the world tries to rank its sales leaders and find ways to see where the company stacks up against others.
We rank our tennis players and golfers. Even in sports where they play to determine the eventual winner, we love checking out "power rankings" or "top 25 lists." We are a culture obsessed with ranking and rating everything.
Is this important?
I believe most of this rises from a form of personal and societal insecurity. We can't be satsified just being who we are, where we are. We have to see where we stack up against everybody else. I don't care that my team is 20-1, I want to know if everybody else thinks they are the best.
I fall into this and I'm not sure it matters. Does it matter if I'm not #1 in ping pong...
...no it doesn't. But, I really want to be. I should be playing for the fun of it. The exercise and individual improvement is what's most important. It's like running a marathon. Most marathoners don't care where they end up in the race. They only want to improve on their own times.
Let's be more like that. Let's be a bit more introspective instead of competitive. Let's improve ourselves without comparing ourselves to others. I think that might make us a bit happier.
Ping pong has become a part of daily life at work and it has long been a place to go get the wiggles out and breathe for a few minutes. But, the recent addition of the ping pong ranking system developed by Scott has created a stronger sense of competition and, honestly, I'm having trouble taking it lightly.
My question (to myself and everybody else) is why do we take things so much more seriously and become much more invested in the outcome when that outcome is documented and ranked?
Every business in the world tries to rank its sales leaders and find ways to see where the company stacks up against others.
We rank our tennis players and golfers. Even in sports where they play to determine the eventual winner, we love checking out "power rankings" or "top 25 lists." We are a culture obsessed with ranking and rating everything.
Is this important?
I believe most of this rises from a form of personal and societal insecurity. We can't be satsified just being who we are, where we are. We have to see where we stack up against everybody else. I don't care that my team is 20-1, I want to know if everybody else thinks they are the best.
I fall into this and I'm not sure it matters. Does it matter if I'm not #1 in ping pong...
...no it doesn't. But, I really want to be. I should be playing for the fun of it. The exercise and individual improvement is what's most important. It's like running a marathon. Most marathoners don't care where they end up in the race. They only want to improve on their own times.
Let's be more like that. Let's be a bit more introspective instead of competitive. Let's improve ourselves without comparing ourselves to others. I think that might make us a bit happier.
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