Photo by Alexandre Pellaes on Unsplash
I recently had the privilege of attending the World Congress of Science and Soccer in Glasgow. The event brought together researchers, practitioners, coaches, and industry leaders from around the world to engage with the latest ideas and thoughts around the game. I’ve been attending these conferences for a number of years and always look forward to them and the professional and personal opportunities they present.
If I am honest the first few days didn’t really live up to my expectations. In fact rather than the enjoying the opportunity to learn I found myself caught between the conference material and the demands of the day job. This led to me feeling more stressed and stretched rather than in a place to personally develop. Even though I was physically in Glasgow and had an out of office on I found my attention constantly getting pulled back into the day to day requirements of my job. I was seemingly spending more time thinking and worrying about what I should be, could be doing than what I had committed to.
At one of the conference lunches I bumped into some colleagues who I work with at a well known sports brand. We hadn’t seen each other for a while and so agreed to go for dinner to chat. This evening did more than provide an opportunity for a catch up it as it acted to provide an important perspective check and reset for my thinking around the conference. The setting, the excellent restaurant Stravaigin, (well worth a visit if you are ever in Glasgow https://stravaigin.co.uk) and a beautiful June evening may have also played their part I have to confess as they helped create a positive environment. We spent an evening talking about football and sport science and the challenges that these, individually and in combination, provided to us. There were also times when we drifted into bigger questions of the world today and crazy ideas about measuring movements speeds of people in different cities to see if they got quicker when the place was bigger. In the end we had to get kicked out of the restaurant by the staff who were eager to go home after a busy day.
So what was the reset. Well, I reflected around why I enjoyed this evening so much. My thinking led to me to one idea. I’d had an evening where people talked about ideas and shared thoughts rather than complain and be negative around their everyday work situations. These conversations seem quite commonplace in academia and high-performance sport currently so I end up in a fair few of these type of discussions. This change in focus to “what could be rather the perception of what was” brought so much energy and refocus to my thinking around the conference. I had a great opportunity in the remaining days to have more of these conversations. This type of stuff would clearly be of more benefit to me and my role in the medium and longer term than getting stressed and splitting my focus across multiple things.
We all need reminding at times that in a complex and every changing world we need to think about our development and the future rather than the task list that faces us in the moment. If you are attending a conference this summer and find yourself getting stuck in similar ways maybe you should go and find some stimulating conversation and a nice restaurant and remind yourself why you are there.
B.Drust@bham.ac.uk