| Not true at all at things that need practice and that are recurrent. From sports, to many other activities that have repetition, people know what they are generally trying to do. That doesn't mean that there is not a large degree of randomness, and some improvisation. Eg: 1. A penalty kicker knows what he/she is trying to do. Power over placement, what corner they want to shoot it, etc. They have practiced many times.
Same with the goalie. The goalie will try to guess, left, right, center, etc... They have practiced this many time as well. Both parties know what they are doing (at a professional level), yet there is always a degree of randomness, and improvisation. 2. A cop knows that in some corner it is much easier to catch people that are speeding, and they can give tickets easy. 3. A dentist has seen a root canal many times, and it is easy for him/her to just fill another one. All teeth are different, yet they are similar at the same time. Practice makes perfect. First time doing a root cannal, or an extraction must be tough/nerve racking. 10th time, a bit easier. 100th time, just another routine day. Anyways... but these type of articles are really good feel good articles. |
I think what the author is talking about is the space where things become so complex that it's hard to attribute any action to the outcome or, even worse, you can't even realistically measure the outcome.
Applying this to your penalty kicker: Sure, you practice, you get better. But so does everyone else. The question then is: How and what to get better than the other guys? Why does one guy succeed and the other doesn't? Yeah sure, because they hit the ball in such a way that it enters the designated space – but how do they set themselves up to accomplish that? How many of the 24 hours you have in a day do you spend kicking the ball from the penalty point? How much of it is recovery? When do you get up? Planing and theory? Mental strength exercises? Food intake? Massages, strength or balance workouts?
The failure is simply defined: You did not hit the ball in such a way that it entered the goal. Sure – but why? How do you adjust your routine in such a way that next time it's going to be better, relative to everyone else, who is also trying to improve?
In reality it's obviously more complex even still, because there is no "penalty kicker" in football. So to become the best possible soccer player, how much of your time should be allocated to penalty kicking at all? And then how does your penaltykickability scale while working on the other stuff that you are also looking at?
And then, when we are exiting game space, it gets really complicated, because all of a sudden it's not even clear what winning even means. In soccer a win is neatly defined. It's usually not the case in the real world. Is it a win to provide health care to all? Is Bitcoin a win for humanity? Is it a good goal to get people out of poverty or is the goal something else and we trust that this will be a side effect of that goal? You and I might agree on an answer, and then there is millions or billions of people who don't, in theory or at least in practice.
It's messy stuff.