It has been a while since I last wrote. Little kids, being a Dad now, you know how life goes!?
Well I am back and I have missed writing because it challenges me to think deeply and sparks my creativity.
I want to explain my thoughts on why certain people choose to play tennis, why it can become the foundation for lifelong success in many ways, and how the need for the lessons tennis provides is increasing in our accelerating technological age.
First, we have to discuss a concept called time preference. Time preference is simply how much people value present satisfaction over future satisfaction. A person with high time preference has a preference for immediate consumption. The opposite is a low time preference which indicates a person is willing to delay gratification for future gains. There is a famous Stanford marshmallow experiment that identified that children who were able to delay gratification tended to attain levels of success throughout their lives.
Tennis is likely the most physically, mentally and emotionally demanding sport in the world. On top of that it is an individual sport. In order to really excel at high levels of tennis you need to have high time preference traits. One needs to be willing to do boring, repetitive, and detailed technical work. One needs to put countless hours into strength & conditioning. One needs to prepare mentally and emotionally for competition.
Using tennis to develop and learn the lessons associated with these traits does wonders for youth. Realizing the work they are doing and habits they are developing pay off 6 months or a year plus from now is powerful. Contrast that with the technology we interact with. Those apps are designed to give us immediate gratification and farm our attention, stimulating low time preference traits.
I believe you are wise enough to be able to draw your own conclusions as how playing tennis can develop positive traits at impressionable ages. This also does not mean that technology is bad, in fact it can be used to enhance training and coaching. I believe the kids who have or learn to develop low time preferences also tend to be the ones whom play tennis and do so for a lifetime.
