Scoreboard Quotes

Games are won by players who focus on the playing field –- not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard.

The FUTURE of this world has long been DECLARED; the final outcome between GOOD and evil is already KNOWN. There is absolutely no question as to who WINS because the VICTORY has already been posted on the SCOREBOARD. The only really strange thing is all of this is that we are still down here on the FIELD trying to decide which TEAM’S JERSEY we want to wear!

Do you really expect me to fall apart every time another woman throws herself at you? Because, if that's so, I'll be a nervous wreck before the honeymoon's over. Although, if they do it in front of me..." He went still. "Did you just propose to me?" She bristled. "Do you have a problem with that?" The scoreboard lit up, and he gave the world a high five. "God, I love you.

Step out of the crowd of average people. Enter that game and change the values on the scoreboard.

But baseball was different. Schwartz thought of it as Homeric - not a scrum but a series of isolated contests. Batter versus pitcher, fielder versus ball. You couldn't storm around, snorting and slapping people, the way Schwartz did while playing football.You stood and waited and tried to still your mind. When your moment came, you had to be ready, because if you fucked up, everyone would know whose fault it was. What other sport not only kept a stat as cruel as the error but posted it on the scoreboard for everyone to see?

We all stared at the scoreboard in stunned silence. Only Carter was able to get anything out. "That," he told Robert exuberantly, "is how a bird in the hand gets up before the early worm." "That doesn't make any sense," said Roger. Carter pointed at the scoreboard. "Neither does that, but there you have it.

When we start being too impressed by the results of our work, we slowly come to the erroneous conviction that life is one large scoreboard where someone is listing the points to measure our worth. And before we are fully aware of it, we have sold our soul to the many grade-givers. That means we are not only in the world, but also of the world. Then we become what the world makes us. We are intelligent because someone gives us a high grade. We are helpful because someone says thanks. We are likable because someone likes us. And we are important because someone considers us indispensable. In short, we are worthwhile because we have successes. And the more we allow our accomplishments — the results of our actions — to become the criteria of our self-esteem, the more we are going to walk on our mental and spiritual toes, never sure if we will be able to live up to the expectations which we created by our last successes. In many people’s lives, there is a nearly diabolic chain in which their anxieties grow according to their successes. This dark power has driven many of the greatest artists into self-destruction.

Yes, I want to tell her, and maybe I even do say that, but I am crying because whatever gifts, the pieces of good buried inside and under so much that I feel is bad, is wrong, is twisted, are less clear than the ability to hit a ball with a bat and break the scoreboard or do a triple pirouette in the air on ice. My gifts are for life itself, for an unfortunately astute understanding of all the cruelty and pain in the world. My gifts are unspecific. I am an artist manque, someone full of crazy ideas and grandiloquent needs and even a little bit of happiness, but with no particular way to express it. I am like the title character in the film Betty Blue, the woman who is so full of...so full of...so full of something or other-it is unclear what, but a definite energy that can't find its medium-who pokes her own eyes out with a scissors and is murdered by her lover in an insane asylum in the end. She is, and I am becoming, a complete waste. So I cry at the end of The Natural.

You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty." Levin nodded thoughtfully. "The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either.

That moment, when you first lay eyes on that field — The Monster, the triangle, the scoreboard, the light tower Big Mac bashed, the left-field grass where Ted (Williams) once roamed — it all defines to me why baseball is such a magical game

life is one long motherfucking imaginary game that has no scoreboard, no referee, and isn’t over until we’re dead and buried.

I hate it that they even count errors,' Ethan said. . . . 'What kind of game is that? No other sport do they do that, Dad. There's no other sport where they put the errors on the freaking scoreboard for everybody to look at. They don't even have errors in other sports. They have fouls. They have penalties. Those are things that players could get on purpose, you know. But in baseball they keep track of how many accidents you have.' * * * Errors . . . Well, they are a part of life, Ethan,' he tried to explain. 'Fouls and penalties, generally speaking, are not. That's why baseball is more like life than other games. Sometimes I feel like that's all I do in life, keep track of my errors.' But Dad, you're a grown-up,' Ethan reminded him. 'A kid's life isn't supposed to be that way.

Some people can make mistakes, make amends and move on." Grayson kept right on looking at the scoreboard. "And some of us live with each and every mistake we make curved into us, into hollow places we don't know how to fill.

And each year, more gunters called it quits, concluding that Halliday had indeed made the egg impossible to find. And another year went by. And another. Then, on the evening of February 11, 2045, an avatar’s name appeared at the top of the Scoreboard, for the whole world to see. After five long years, the Copper Key had finally been found, by an eighteen-year-old kid living in a trailer park on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. That kid was me. Dozens of books, cartoons, movies, and miniseries have attempted to tell the story of everything that happened next, but every single one of them got it wrong. So I want to set the record straight, once and for all.

Neil was moving before the ceiling lights turned on, crossing the inner court to the court walls. He pressed his hands to the thick, cold plastic and looked up, where the scoreboards and replay TVs hung over the court's ceiling, then down to the glossy wood. Orange lines marked first, half, and far court. It was perfect, utterly perfect, and Neil felt at once inspired and horrified by the sight of it.

Then, on the evening of February 11, 2045, an avatar’s name appeared at the top of the Scoreboard, for the whole world to see.

Because life is one long motherfucking imaginary game that has no scoreboard, no referee, and isn’t over until we’re dead and buried.

Also,' McCoy continued, 'this is the yearly reminder that our beloved scoreboard's birthday, the anniversary of its donation to the school, is coming up in just a few short weeks. So everyone get ready, prepare your offerings, and be ready to celebrate this great occasion!' The PA system went quiet. I stared at the ceiling. Did he just say 'offerings?' For a scoreboard?

I have grown weary of talking about life as if it is deserved, or earned, or gifted, or wasted. I'm going to be honest about my scoreboard and just say that the math on me being here and the people who have kept me here doesn't add up when weighed against the person I've been and the person I can still be sometimes. But isn't that the entire point of gratitude? To have a relentless understanding of all the ways you could have vanished, but haven't? The possibilities for my exits have been endless, and so the gratitude for my staying must be equally endless. I am sorry that this one is not about movement, or history, or dance. But instead about stillness. About all of the frozen moments that I have been pulled back from, in service of attempting another day.

I did not even look at the scoreboard when my routine was done in 1976. My teammates started pointing because there was this uproar" (Nadia Comaneci). These remarks highlight an important feature of those practices that entail skilled and active engagement: one's attention is focused on standards intrinsic to the practice, rather than external goods that may be won through the practice, typically money or recognition. Can this distinction between internal and external goods inform our understanding of work?

I've come to the conclusion that it's all about fear- fear that your kid won't come out on top, be a success. Forcing him into these brutal encounters will a) make a dame sure he is a success, and b) all you to see evidence of that success with the added bonus of a cheering crowd. This means that sports are supported with an almost desperate enthusiasm. The football team gets catered dinners before a fame. Honor Society is lucky if it gets a cupcake. Academic success-forget it. That requires too much imagination. There's no scoreboard.

Baseball, in its quiet way, was an extravagantly harrowing game. Football, basketball, hockey, lacrosse--these were melee sports. You could make yourself useful by hustling and scrapping more than the other guy. You could redeem yourself through sheer desire. But baseball was different. Schwartz thought of it as Homeric--not a scrum but a series of isolated contests. Batter versus picture, field verses ball. You couldn't storm around, snorting and slapping people, the way Schwartz did while playing football. You stood and waited and tried to still your mind. When your moment came, you had to be ready, because if you fucked up, everyone would know whose fault it was. What other sport not only kept a stat as cruel as the error but posted it on the scoreboard for everyone to see?

Even the most well-meaning government policies have unintended consequences that have harmed the economy. If government policies were today held accountable the way private businesses are, the scoreboard would say government is failing to help people...and this is a fact.

People play differently when they’re keeping score,” the 4DX authors explain. They then elaborate that when attempting to drive your team’s engagement toward your organization’s wildly important goal, it’s important that they have a public place to record and track their lead measures. This scoreboard creates a sense of competition that drives them to focus on these measures, even when other demands vie for their attention. It also provides a reinforcing source of motivation. Once the team notices their success with a lead measure, they become invested in perpetuating this performance.

After all, no matter how long you live, there aren't too many really delicious moments along the way, since most of life is spent eating and sleeping and waiting for something to happen that never does. You can figure it up for yourself, using your own life as the scoreboard. Most of living is waiting to live. And you spend a great deal of time worrying about things that don't matter and about people that don't matter and all this is clear to you when you know the very day you're going to die.

A balanced scoreboard needs to provide the balanced view of business progress; perhaps it also has the “unbalanced” nature to do prioritization.

Metaphorically, if the enterprise is a vehicle, Enterprise Performance Management is like the gas pedal with speed scoreboard.

Boy, Whitey, I hope I never see my name up there. To Whitey Ford during scoreboard tribute on opening day to recently deceased Yankees.

the locker room,” Alex counters. “No way, it has to be on the ice. He’s going to take her to the rink tonight, flip on the scoreboard and play porn while he fucks her over the goal. They’re both wearing skates of course, porn everywhere, blaring through the speakers, there’s a hockey stick involved somehow, and he’s all veiny and sweaty and says things like my semen are scoring tonight.

It’s the private victories that matter most and are felt the deepest and last the longest. It’s the internal triumphs that aren’t recorded on scoreboards or broadcast on the eleven o’clock news that define who we are. Ollin is what determines success in our lives, instead of the conventional measure of winning and losing. With that as a definition of success, it is possible for everyone to win all the time.

The goal in any sport is to finish with the best score, but it would be ridiculous to spend the whole game staring at the scoreboard. The only way to actually win is to get better each day. In the words of three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Walsh, “The score takes care of itself.” The same is true for other areas of life. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.

I glance from him to the scoreboard and back, my smirk telling him without words that he may go home with Iris, but it’s as a loser who got his ass handed to him on the court. I made him my highlight reel bitch, and she witnessed every second of it.

THE OBSESSION WITH GRADES HAMPERS LEARNING अंकों से प्रेम, विद्वत्ता क्षेम

Those who do not study their businesses do not stay in business.

Saban’s process is exclusively this—existing in the present, taking it one step at a time, not getting distracted by anything else. Not the other team, not the scoreboard or the crowd. The process is about finishing. Finishing games. Finishing workouts. Finishing film sessions. Finishing drives. Finishing reps. Finishing plays. Finishing blocks. Finishing the smallest task you have right in front of you and finishing it well. Whether

take their time removing our bindings. Morning orders her crew to undo their nyxian transformations before we can get a look at the night goggles they used. Longwei and the others look up at us, confused about what happened. All we can do is shrug back as Defoe and Requin appear on the platforms above. They lead everyone through a side hatch. We walk by one too many scoreboards on the way back, one too many reminders of how we’ve failed.

Masculinity is not about being the biggest, the fastest, the strongest, the one who sleeps with the most girls, and the one who has the most money. The one who has the most accomplishments is not the most masculine. In fact, it is often the men who covet these things most who are covering and compensating for the greatest insecurities. Let us revere the one who loves others deeply, loves himself deeply, and has a dream that he is inspired to live with and by and through. He is a man. He does not stand unmoved or untouched in the face of truly moving experiences. He does not judge the totality of his life or anyone else’s life by the totals on the scoreboard as the clock ticks down to zero. He does not use money as a proxy for emotional connection nor material possessions as the measure of his self-worth. He does not define his manhood by the number of women he has conquered. He does not always fight fire with fire; sometimes he doesn’t need to fight at all. He does not meet seriousness with silliness when it is seriousness that is required. He does not take risks for risks’ sake, because he does not hide from his frailty, his mortality, or his humanity. He does not pretend to know everything about anything, nor is he afraid to admit when he knows nothing about something. And perhaps most important of all, he does not walk around thinking he’s The Man. No, the masculine man goes through a journey, a process of self-discovery, and figures out what he needs to do to acquire the tools, knowledge, wisdom, grace, love, passion, and joy to pursue his destiny. His destiny is his dreams. Those may evolve over time, but in their pursuit, he is not breaking down anyone else or hurting anyone else. He is not at war with other people, conquering them. He is the one joining forces, searching for the win-win. He is the one who is lifting others up, inspiring others through his journey and his own process (in which he is finding ways to create value along the way). He is the hero of his own journey. And in so being, he is looking for every way to have the best relationships possible with his family, friends, his romantic partner, his colleagues, or his customers. He’s finding ways to be the best possible version of himself. Masculinity is about discovering yourself and owning what you find. It’s about being kind to others, and pursuing your dreams with all the passion and energy you can muster. It’s about doing something that is meaningful to you that brings value to others. That’s how you build a legacy.

All A players have six common denominators. They have a scoreboard that tells them if they are winning or losing and what needs to be done to change their performance. They will not play if they can’t see the scoreboard. They have a high internal, emotional need to succeed. They do not need to be externally motivated or begged to do their job. They want to succeed because it is who they are . . . winners. People often ask me how I motivate my employees. My response is, “I hire them.” Motivation is for amateurs. Pros never need motivating. (Inspiration is another story.) Instead of trying to design a pep talk to motivate your people, why not create a challenge for them? A players love being tested and challenged. They love to be measured and held accountable for their results. Like the straight-A classmate in your high school geometry class, an A player can hardly wait for report card day. C players dread report card day because they are reminded of how average or deficient they are. To an A player, a report card with a B or a C is devastating and a call for renewed commitment and remedial actions. They have the technical chops to do the job. This is not their first rodeo. They have been there, done that, and they are technically very good at what they do. They are humble enough to ask for coaching. The three most important questions an employee can ask are: What else can I do? Where can I get better? What do I need to do or learn so that I continue to grow? If you have someone on your team asking all three of these questions, you have an A player in the making. If you agree these three questions would fundamentally change the game for your team, why not enroll them in asking these questions? They see opportunities. C players see only problems. Every situation is asking a very simple question: Do you want me to be a problem or an opportunity? Your choice. You know the job has outgrown the person when all you hear are problems. The cost of a bad employee is never the salary. My rules for hiring and retaining A players are: Interview rigorously. (Who by Geoff Smart is a spectacular resource on this subject.) Compensate generously. Onboard effectively. Measure consistently. Coach continuously.

What are they doing?” he whispered. The pinball machine’s scoreboard was full, the bank’s windows fogged. They were so involved- so cofaithed- that they didn’t know we were there. The VW’s face joined, “Are they hurting each other?” I took a breath. “There’s risk involved, because of what they can’t see. Plus the risk of trust. But no-they’re not hurting each other.” The bank whispered something in the pinball machine’s ear and the pinball machine giggled. “What are they saying to each other?” the VW said. “They’re expressing their faith, VW-sharing it.” Just then I heard a rustle, soft at first, then louder…Distracted by other things-the VW, the faith in the trees- I had forgotten to keep the mountain straight in my mind. I had let it go, and now it was changing, reversing itself, growing young: the leaves were turning from brown back to green… THIS was western Massachusetts-unpredictable; a changing moving bitch; a switcher of faces…how could I have many any progress here when mountains were mountains one moment and something else the next; when people were here one day and then GONE?

In the chaos of sport, as in life, process provides us a way. It says: Okay, you’ve got to do something very difficult. Don’t focus on that. Instead break it down into pieces. Simply do what you need to do right now. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize. The road to back-to-back championships is just that, a road. And you travel along a road in steps. Excellence is a matter of steps. Excelling at this one, then that one, and then the one after that. Saban’s process is exclusively this—existing in the present, taking it one step at a time, not getting distracted by anything else. Not the other team, not the scoreboard or the crowd. The process is about finishing. Finishing games. Finishing workouts. Finishing film sessions. Finishing drives. Finishing reps. Finishing plays. Finishing blocks. Finishing the smallest task you have right in front of you and finishing it well. Whether it’s pursuing the pinnacle of success in your field or simply surviving some awful or trying ordeal, the same approach works. Don’t think about the end—think about surviving. Making it from meal to meal, break to break, checkpoint to checkpoint, paycheck to paycheck, one day at a time. And when you really get it right, even the hardest things become manageable. Because the process is relaxing. Under its influence, we needn’t panic. Even mammoth tasks become just a series of component parts.

If the scoreboard isn’t clear, the game you want people to play will be abandoned in the whirlwind of other activities.

The updated scoreboard: Maccagnan 1,000,000,000,000, Idzik 0.

Time. The great human enemy. Maybe the greatest. It’s beaten everyone so far. The scoreboard doesn’t lie:   Time: an immense, incalculable number Us: 0

Your best is good enough.” Not perfect. Your best. Leave the rest to the scoreboard, to the judges, to the gods, to fate, to the critics.

Goals were literally scored on the posts with a small notch. Today goals are registered on electronic scoreboards but the expression “to score a goal” has stuck.

What if Wes was outed? What if the world found out that what he wanted most wasn’t to catch that shovel pass and make a breakaway for the end zone or to snatch that fade from Colton in the back corner of the end zone and rack up another touchdown on the scoreboard, but that he wanted Justin? He wanted to be on his knees, Justin’s cock in his mouth, Justin’s hands gripping his skull? To be balls deep in Justin, kissing him until his toes curled, until Justin’s ankles crossed behind his back and Wes ran his palm down Justin’s smooth thigh, gripped his ass as he thrust in, and in, and in?

KEN FOUND A QUIET BOOTH toward the back of La Crème, one that gave him a pretty poor view of the dancers but a great view of the older barmaid who’d brought Detective Broome to this den of sin. Earlier Ken had managed to get close enough to hear snippets of the conversation between Detective Broome and the barmaid he called Lorraine. She clearly knew a lot. She was clearly emotional about it. And, he thought, she clearly was not telling all. Ken was so happy, nearly giddy with joy over his upcoming nuptials. He considered various ways to pop the question. This job would pay well, and he’d use the money to buy her the biggest diamond he could find. But the big question was: How should he pop the question? He didn’t want anything cheesy like those men who propose on stadium scoreboards. He wanted something grand yet simple, meaningful yet fun. She was so wonderful, so special, and if any place could hammer that fact home, it was here at this alleged gentlemen’s club. The women here were grotesque. He didn’t understand why any man would want any of them. They looked dirty and diseased and fake, and part of Ken wondered whether men came here for other reasons, not sexual, to feel something different

Like his former boss Nick Saban, he didn’t believe in looking at the scoreboard.

I don’t care what the scoreboard says or what our record is. We could be winning by twenty or losing by twenty. We could be five-and-oh or oh-and-five. I don’t care because that’s all in the past. All I care about right now is seeing everybody on this team give everything they’ve got. You can’t let the last game or the last play beat you

In the preceding discipline, I argued that for an individual focused on deep work, hours spent working deeply should be the lead measure. It follows, therefore, that the individual’s scoreboard should be a physical artifact in the workspace that displays the individual’s current deep work hour count.

Do not judge a child by his scores in CLASS. Be more worried about what he will score in LIFE.

In investing, just as in baseball, to put runs on the scoreboard, one must watch the playing field, not the scoreboard.

Before I could give it too much thought, my attention snagged on Darius as he charged across the pitch like a stampeding rhino, tackling a member of the other team so hard that I heard something crack. My breath caught in my throat as the Starlight player groaned on the ground while Darius snatched the ball from him and launched it across the pitch with the force of a torpedo. A timer was counting down as the Starlight player failed to get up and Darius raced away from him without a backwards glance. I knew it was part of the game but it was insanely brutal. Although if I was being totally honest, watching all of them brawl like that and seeing the power they exuded even while they were losing, was totally hot too. Darius’s muscles pumped fiercely as he sprinted away from me and I found myself staring at his legs which were splattered with mud and somehow looked even better because of it. “Olef you’re Out!” Prestos yelled but the Starlight player still didn’t move. A pair of medics jogged onto the pitch and gave him a quick inspection. “Broken back!” one of them yelled. “This is a long heal, call in a sub once his time out is up.” My lips parted, I stared on in shock and I couldn’t quite believe what I’d heard. “Did he just say that Darius broke that guy’s back?” I asked in disbelief. “That’s the risk you take when you play,” Orion said darkly as he walked past me to regain his seat. Darcy raised her eyebrows at me and I returned my gaze to the match just as Geraldine tore up the pitch with a rumble of writhing earth magic, knocking the Starlight Waterguard off of her feet and forcing her to drop the ball. A huge -5 flashed into place on the Starlight scoreboard and I leapt from my seat in excitement to applaud my friend. “Go Geraldine!” I screamed and she flashed me a smile as she somehow managed to hear me. Seth almost missed the ball as it was thrown to him next while he was distracted by scratching his head. He managed to wrangle it with a gust of air magic and started sprinting for the Pit as the timer above us ticked down to ten seconds. The crowd started counting down, “Nine! Eight! Seven-” Seth leapt into the air, propelling himself forward with his magic but the two air Elementals on the opposing team threw their own magic up to counter him. “Three! Two-” Seth gritted his teeth as he threw even more power into his propulsion but he was out of time. The ball in his arms exploded in a blast of pure air which snapped his head back and sent him tumbling out of the sky. He hit the ground hard as the crowd oooohed in disappointment. For three whole seconds my heart didn’t beat at all as I stared at his prone body in the mud, wondering if he was dead. Seth coughed, pushing himself into a sitting position just as Darius appeared to offer him a hand up. He shook his head to clear it and my eyebrows rose all the way into my hairline. “This game is crazy,” Darcy breathed, her eyes wide with the thrill of it. “I think I love it,” I agreed. (tory)

Prestos jogged back to the edge of the pit, lifting a whistle to her lips. A huge timer appeared high up above, glittering with magic as it readied to count down from five minutes- was that all? Before I could ask Sofia for more information, Prestos's whistle screeched and Darius swung a fist right into the Starlight Captain's face. As he lurched sideways I saw the name Quentin on the back of his shirt alongside the position of Earthraider. “Oh my god,” I gasped as Darius lunged to pick up the ball, only to receive a knee right to his chin. Darius was ready, lurching back and throwing a kick while the entire stadium bellowed in encouragement. Quentin took the blow to the stomach, stumbling away and Darius grabbed the ball which looked pretty damn heavy. The second he had it, the two teams charged forward. Geraldine roared like she was going into battle, magically tearing up the ground beneath the feet of the Starlight team so they stumbled wildly, unable to get their hands on Darius. He made a beeline for the Pit as the four Keepers grouped in around it. “Go on!” Orion roared from my right, rising to his feet as more and more people stood up all around us. ... Max tried to knock her aside with a blast of water, but stumbled to a halt before he could cast it well enough, clasping onto his neck and rubbing like mad. “Ahhh it burns!” Tory and I fell apart into laughter as I noticed his skin was turning blotchy with violent purple patches. “Ahhhh!” “Rigel! What the fuck is going on?” Orion bellowed just as a blaring BUZZZZZZZZ announced Starlight getting the ball into the Pit. A scoreboard lit up above the stands, showing Starlight had scored one point but then words in red flashed beside it. ... “Now it's round two. Every round lasts five minutes. After an hour, it'll be half time then they play for a final hour. Just watch, it's about to get seriously intense.” She pointed to the four corners of the pitch. “There's only one ball in play per round, it'll be fired into the pitch randomly from the four Elemental Quarters. A Fireball is scorching hot, an Earthball is seriously heavy, an Airball is light and will be shot far up toward the roof and a Waterball is freezing to touch. If no one gets the ball in the Pit before the five minutes are up – boom!” She mimed an explosion with her hands and my mouth fell open. “Holy shit,” Tory breathed and I nodded in absolute agreement of that. “If the ball is dropped at any point in the game, including just before it explodes, the team loses five points. So everyone on that pitch is prepared for the injuries they'll get if it goes off,” Sofia explained. “That's insane,” I breathed. “Nope.” Diego leaned forward from his chair with a manic gleam in his eyes. “That's Pitball.” (darcy)

No,” I snarled before he could make the call official. “My father came to watch me play.” My gaze slid to the stands where my dad’s eyes were on me, filled with concern. Behind him, my step mother watched too and though she hid it from the world, I could see the pleasure she was taking in seeing me fail. I couldn’t let that stand. “If you’re going to keep playing then you need to suck it up,” Orion demanded. “Head in the game, work through the pain.” His favourite catch phrase had never seemed so literal. “I’m in,” I growled, forcing my thoughts away from the constant burn. I looked back at the pitch just in time to see an inflatable Pegasus sex toy floating over the Starlight crowd with Caleb’s name scrawled along its side and an arrow pointing at its open ass. Cal noticed it too and he fumbled his throw, his aim way off as he passed the ball to Darius who dove forward to try and save it. His fingertips brushed it but the Starlight Airsentry threw a gust of wind at the ball and it fell to the ground with a wet thump. My lips parted with horror as the scoreboard lit up with a -5 score to Zodiac and the Starlight crowd went wild. Darius snatched the ball back up and managed to hook it to Seth who slammed it into the Pit but that only brought us up to -4. “What the fuck is happening?” Orion murmured in disbelief. My time out of the game was up so I raced back onto the pitch to await the next ball without another word. I moved from foot to foot, trying to ignore the burning agony which had now firmly found its way between my ass cheeks. The whistle sounded, a flaming ball burst from the Fire Hole and once again the game was on. I just had to force my way through it until the end. (Max POV)

The goal in any sport is to finish with the best score, but it would be ridiculous to spend the whole game staring at the scoreboard. The only way to actually win is to get better each day. In the words of three-time Super Bowl winner Bill Walsh, "The score takes care of itself.'' The same is true for other areas of life. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead. What do I mean by this? Are goals completely useless? Of course not. Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress. A handful of problems arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goals and not enough time designing your systems.

With the revelation of an affair, suddenly the scoreboard of a marriage is lit up: the giving and the taking, the concessions and the demands, the allocation of money, sex, time, in-laws, children, chores. All the things we never really wanted to do but did in the name of love are now stripped of the context that gave them meaning.

Because instead of looking at the scoreboard, where images of his loved ones are flashing, he’s staring at me. Not his mom or sister. Me. The smile on his face just about kills me. There’s so much emotion in it besides joy and happiness, though anyone who doesn’t know him as well as I do wouldn’t just see those two things.

There is a complex but reliable law of cause and effect in biology. The body is a scoreboard of genetics and choices that can lead to disease, injury, and dysfunction.

The road to back-to-back championships is just that, a road. And you travel along a road in steps. Excellence is a matter of steps. Excelling at this one, then that one, and then the one after that. Saban’s process is exclusively this—existing in the present, taking it one step at a time, not getting distracted by anything else. Not the other team, not the scoreboard or the crowd.

daydreaming and talking about ideas do not put points on the scoreboard. It’s only when we make a real thing happen in the real world that our world begins to change and get better.

I stand on 42nd Street and Broadway looking at the sign flashing the news from Times Tower like a scoreboard: The World is losing.

For us, the scoreboard can’t be the only scoreboard. Warren Buffett has said the same thing, making a distinction between the inner scorecard and the external one. Your potential, the absolute best you’re capable of—that’s the metric to measure yourself against. Your standards are. Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.

But it doesn’t have the history of the stadium in Chicago. It doesn’t have the iconic hand-turned scoreboard, or the infamous ivy-covered brick. It doesn’t have the red marquee outside or the best fans in the world. And don’t even get me started on the hot dogs.

The game jostled back and forth, and then came the final inning. Some player named Casey came to bat, like his teammates, looking like a rock. Lightning ripped through the air as rain came down in sheets. The scoreboard said the horses were beating the rocks by two points, but there were two men on base. If Casey hit a homerun, the rocks would beat the horses. If not, too bad for the rocks. This man, Ben, and the two people with him looked horrified as this Casey came to bat. They had red shirts with horses painted on them. They jumped up and down for joy when they saw the final pitch, and Casey sulking back to the dugout. He had struck out. After the game, the four hiked back to a very small car.

Discipline #3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard

the individual’s scoreboard should be a physical artifact in the workspace that displays the individual’s current deep work hour count.

If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?

He had looked up at the scoreboard to watch the replay, and a video of the highlights from his season that Billy Wareham, the team videographer, made the previous day in case Crosby hit 100. It was set to the Rolling Stones song “Sympathy for the Devil,” a fitting, understated choice.

The kind of scoreboard that will drive the highest levels of engagement with your team will be one that is designed solely for (and often by) the players. This players’ scoreboard is quite different from the complex coach’s scoreboard that leaders love to create. It must be simple, so simple that members of the team can determine instantly if they are winning or losing. Why does this matter? If the scoreboard isn’t clear, the game you want people to play will be abandoned in the whirlwind of other activities. And if your team doesn’t know whether or not they are winning the game, they are probably on their way to losing.

Luck is capricious. It won’t always go your way, so you can’t get trapped in this idea that just because you’ve imagined a possibility for yourself that you somehow deserve it. Your entitled mind is dead weight. Cut it loose. Don’t focus on what you think you deserve. Take aim on what you are willing to earn! I never blamed anyone for my failures, and I didn’t hang my head in Nashville. I stayed humble and sidestepped my entitled mind because I knew all too well I hadn’t earned my record. The scoreboard does not lie, and I didn’t delude myself otherwise. Believe it or not, most people prefer delusion. They blame others or bad luck or chaotic circumstance. I didn’t, which was positive.

Metrics are the scoreboard. They are how you measure whether you are winning the game. Set up the scoring system, and the game reveals itself. No score, and you have no idea if you are winning or even if what you are doing is working.

John Wooden never wanted his players to think about the scoreboard.

Yes, Pilcher was a money-man. They were a type. It was easy to spot them. You could always tell one by that cold fire in his eyes. It was not the hot fire of the man who would never interrupt a dream to calculate the risk, but the cold fire of the man whose mind was geared to the rules of the money game. It was a game that was played with numbers on pieces of paper … common into preferred, preferred into debentures, debentures into dollars, dollars into long-term capital gains. It was the net dollars after tax that were important. They were the numbers on the scoreboard, the runs that crossed the plate, the touchdowns, the goals. Net dollars were the score markers of the money-man’s game. Nothing else mattered. A factory wasn’t a living, breathing organism. It was only a dollar sign and a row of numbers after the Plant & Equipment item on the balance sheet. Their guts didn’t tighten when they heard a big Number Nine bandsaw sink its whining teeth into hard maple. Their nostrils didn’t widen to the rich musk of walnut or the sharply pungent blast from the finishing room. When they saw a production line they looked with blind eyes, not feeling the counterpoint beat of their hearts or the pulsing flow of hot blood or the trigger-set tenseness of lungs that were poised to miss a breath with every lost beat on the line

there are four large screens on the scoreboard showing the score, replays of the game and fan participation. Throughout the game, the video screens showed highlights of games played in the past as well.

mental scoreboard: Syndicate 1, Nate and Lucy 0.

A scorecard assesses progress to strategic goals whereas a dashboard assesses performance to operational goals.

The scoreboard is strategy focused, and the dashboard is operation oriented.

The goals of applying scoreboard are to translate the vision and strategic planning into operational goals; communicate strategy and link it to individual performance.

The digital transformation scorecard allows you to focus on the most important things. Without scorecards, it will become like searching for a needle in the haystack.

The scoreboard read 2:2 with forty-seven seconds left on the clock. Cheerleaders, including Audrey, clapped, chanted, and danced. Jane, the mascot, in a knight’s suit of armor, jumped up and down with them. An announcer stood on the field with a golden microphone, as the teams got into their huddles and took up positions along the kill zones. Mal and Evie stood in the bleachers, watching Jay and Carlos down on the bench.

Back in Beijing, it was 9:56 A.M.—four minutes before the race’s start—and Phelps stood behind his starting block, bouncing slightly on his toes. When the announcer said his name, Phelps stepped onto the block, as he always did before a race, and then stepped down, as he always did. He swung his arms three times, as he had before every race since he was twelve years old. He stepped up on the blocks again, got into his stance, and, when the gun sounded, leapt. Phelps knew that something was wrong as soon as he hit the water. There was moisture inside his goggles. He couldn’t tell if they were leaking from the top or bottom, but as he broke the water’s surface and began swimming, he hoped the leak wouldn’t become too bad.4.18 By the second turn, however, everything was getting blurry. As he approached the third turn and final lap, the cups of his goggles were completely filled. Phelps couldn’t see anything. Not the line along the pool’s bottom, not the black T marking the approaching wall. He couldn’t see how many strokes were left. For most swimmers, losing your sight in the middle of an Olympic final would be cause for panic. Phelps was calm. Everything else that day had gone according to plan. The leaking goggles were a minor deviation, but one for which he was prepared. Bowman had once made Phelps swim in a Michigan pool in the dark, believing that he needed to be ready for any surprise. Some of the videotapes in Phelps’s mind had featured problems like this. He had mentally rehearsed how he would respond to a goggle failure. As he started his last lap, Phelps estimated how many strokes the final push would require—nineteen or twenty, maybe twenty-one—and started counting. He felt totally relaxed as he swam at full strength. Midway through the lap he began to increase his effort, a final eruption that had become one of his main techniques in overwhelming opponents. At eighteen strokes, he started anticipating the wall. He could hear the crowd roaring, but since he was blind, he had no idea if they were cheering for him or someone else. Nineteen strokes, then twenty. It felt like he needed one more. That’s what the videotape in his head said. He made a twenty-first, huge stroke, glided with his arm outstretched, and touched the wall. He had timed it perfectly. When he ripped off his goggles and looked up at the scoreboard, it said “WR”—world record—next to his name. He’d won another gold. After the race, a reporter asked what it had felt like to swim blind. “It felt like I imagined it would,” Phelps said. It was one additional victory in a lifetime full of small wins.4.19

I went from mediocre to a stellar performer when I told myself: To heck with worrying about the money and obsessing over the scoreboard. I’m just going to focus on being the best trader I can be and sticking to the rules. Then the money followed.

Does Life care about fairness? Not one hoot. Does Life compensate? Never by design. Does Life keep score? How could it? There’s no scoreboard.

ROZ: My sister and I became guarded with each other in the weeks and months after our mother died. I don’t think either of us had a handle on what it was about, but I, in my characteristic way, was eager to roll up my sleeves and iron out some issues with her. She, less given to argument, preferred to keep her distance. Many is the time I drove through the streets of Boston presenting my case in the most cogent terms to a full courtroom just beyond the dashboard, while she was safely closeted a state away. My birthday came and went and still we had not managed to get together; of course I felt all the more put upon. Finally I had the grace to ask myself, “What’s happening here?” and I caught a glimpse of the in-between. All the energy I had been expending to shape a persuasive argument was actually propelling us apart. And I missed her—acutely. I thought that if I could just see her we surely could find some solutions. So I called her, and invited myself to her house for breakfast, and got up in the dark and was down in Connecticut by seven. There in the kitchen in her nightgown I found her, looking like my favorite sister in all the world. We talked gaily while we drank black Italian coffee, and then we took a long morning walk down the leafy dirt roads of Ashford, Connecticut, while her chocolate Lab, Chloe, ran ahead and came back, ran ahead and came back, in long arcs of perpetual motion. What did we talk about? The architecture, and the countryside, and the cats that Chloe was eager to visit at the farm ahead. We revisited scenes featuring our hilarious mother. We talked about my work, and about a paper she was about to present. My “case” never came up; it must have gotten lost somewhere along that wooded road because by the time I got in the car—my courtroom, my favorable jury—it was no longer on the docket. Did we resolve the issues? Obviously not, but the issues themselves are rarely what they seem, no matter what pains are taken to verify the scoreboard. We walked together, moved our arms, became joyous in the sunlight, and breathed in the morning. At that moment there were no barriers between us. And from that place, I felt our differences could easily be spoken. My disagreements with my sister were but blips on our screen compared to the hostilities individuals and nations are capable of when anger, fear, and the sense of injustice are allowed to develop unchecked. “Putting things aside” then becomes quite a different matter. At the apex of desperation and rage, we need a new invention to see us through.

MICROMANAGERS manage every detail in a way that creates dependence on the leader and their presence for the organization to perform. INVESTORS give other people the investment and ownership they need to produce results independent of the leader. The Three Practices of the Investor 1. Define Ownership Name the lead Give ownership for the end goal Stretch the role 2. Invest Resources Teach and coach Provide backup 3. Hold People Accountable Give it back Expect complete work Respect natural consequences Make the scoreboard visible Becoming an Investor 1. Let them know who is boss 2. Let nature take its course 3. Ask for the F-I-X 4. Hand back the pen Unexpected Findings 1. Multipliers do get involved in the operational details, but they keep the ownership with other people. 2. Multipliers are rated 42% higher at delivering world-class results than their Diminisher counterparts.3

recommend the habit of a weekly review in which you make a plan for the workweek ahead (see Rule #4). During my experiments with 4DX, I used a weekly review to look over my scoreboard to celebrate good weeks, help understand what led to bad weeks, and most important, figure out how to ensure a good score for the days ahead.

KEY POINTS—EMBRACING ACCOUNTABILITY • Accountability on a strong team occurs directly among peers. • For a culture of accountability to thrive, a leader must demonstrate a willingness to confront difficult issues. • The best opportunity for holding one another accountable occurs during meetings, and the regular review of a team scoreboard provides a clear context for doing so.

When players on a team stop caring about the scoreboard, they inevitably start caring about something else.

This was the difference-maker. I taught my players that being successful had nothing to with the final score. Success could only be measured by whether you put in the maximum effort. You could lose on the scoreboard and still be successful if you gave your absolute best effort. You could also win on the scoreboard and be unsuccessful if you didn’t give your best. Regardless of what the final score says, only you can know if you’re successful because only you can know if you truly did your best.

Success is not something others can give you,” Wooden said. “True success can only be attained by knowing you did your very best to become the best you’re capable of becoming. That is how I define success. I don’t care what the scoreboard says, what your record ends up being at the end of the season, or what your job title is. If you give your best, you will be a success.

The epic, existential tragedy is that these last and final nuclear battle maneuvers cease to matter to anyone's scoreboard. Everyone loses. Everyone.