Don’t go for the knockout
In boxing or in life
It’s my first sparring session after taking boxing classes for two and a half years. My heart rate had increased as soon as I stepped into the ring. After some initial faints, we started trading blows. Nothing serious — but still I’m not really used to getting punched in the face. :)
I was a bit scared. But at the same time, I wanted to punch harder and see my technique in action. I wanted to win.
The harder I wanted my punches to be, the more stiff I became. The harder I squeezed my fists, the more I was swinging without landing anything. At the same time, stiffness made me slow, un-creative and exhausted.
Let’s just say my first sparring was not a huge success.
Post-session, my trainer and I discussed my performance. One of the key learnings was that by being fixated on winning and on scoring that knockout punch, I had created a negative downward-spiralling loop that worked against me.
“Don’t go for the knockout,” my trainer said.
“The knockout happens by itself.”
That clicked immediately. I was trying too hard to win — and that was the reason I performed poorly.
What happens when you go for the knockout punch
If you try too hard to win by throwing the one punch that wins the match, it creates all these problems:
- You get stiff. Your hands, core, and legs move slower. At the same time, your punches are weaker. Powerful punches are generated by a whipping motion using the elasticity of the muscles and the kinetic energy of our body. To unlock this energy, we need to be loose and explosive, not stiff.
- You’re less focused and less aware. Being stressed, you don’t stick to your game plan, and you also lose your peripheral vision. You stop being able to see punches that come from unorthodox angles.
- You use more energy and get tired faster.
- You become predictable. Going for that knockout over and over makes it easy for your opponent to set up a counter-attack.
- You’re not mentally tough. Every time you think you’re about to land that knockout punch, but you don’t land it, you get disappointed. In the meantime, you’re getting hit in the face. Reality doesn’t meet your expectations, and when you’re mentally unprepared, it breaks you. (This is why I’ve started thinking of expectation management as the stamina of grit).
- … and the list goes on.
The knockout punch is just another punch
The knockout punch is made possible by great training and consistent practice. It comes from inputs like having a great coach, identifying/forming your own fighting style, eating well, improving your boxing technique, working on your mental grit, etc.
The best boxers are loose in the ring; they’re focused on their game plan, being present, on throwing their combos. They’ve developed automations through years of hard training.
They let their muscle memory take over when they step into the ring.
They’re on autopilot.
For them, the knockout punch is just another punch. It’s one of the thousands they’ve been practising with other sparring partners and in the gym. And the knockout punch was made possible in the gym many months before the fight.
In real life and entrepreneurship
It’s easy to forget this when you’re learning a sport. It’s probably even easier to forget it in life. Too often in our lives, we go for the knockout punch.
- We want to lose those 10 kilos in a month.
- We want to get in shape by going to the gym 2 months before summer.
- We want to get rich by buying crypto.
- We want to be successful entrepreneurs in no time.
And the list goes on.
We focus on the end result, not the process and the hard work required.
Survivorship bias doesn’t help us, either. We see someone else’s massive success, we feel the urge to go for that.
But emulating them won’t necessarily replicate their outcomes. Sometimes, people just get lucky — while most of the nameless people who did the same things ended up failing. We tend to forget the many who fail, remembering the few who succeed.
Survivorship bias plus the fact that we often underestimate the hard work required to achieve something undermines our success.
As entrepreneurs, we’re often victims of this mentality. We see other people raising huge rounds and becoming millionaires in a few years. Then, we want to emulate their success, launch a business, instantly hit product-market fit, have happy customers and be rich in no time. :)
Of course, we know deep down career tracks aren’t neat and tidy like that. But even at a lower level, we label certain key initiatives as the knockout punch, and we expect to succeed with those. For example, we think that “with this new Head of Marketing all our growth problems will be solved” or “this is the knockout feature that will improve our unit economics” etc.
Similarly to boxing, when we focus on the knockout punch in life:
- We don’t build our long-term odds of success. We optimize for fundraising events or quick hacks instead of focusing on what matters the most — the customer, the product, or whatever may be.
- We’re not mentally tough. Other people’s success distorts our expectations. When success doesn’t come easy, we get disappointed and get tired faster.
- We don’t think clearly. As in boxing, we become stiff, less effective, and more predictable to our competitors. We’re not loose enough to quickly react to our surroundings and the opportunities that might occur.
- Notoriously, we don’t take care of ourselves. We don’t get enough sleep, we overwork, and we expose ourselves to burnout. We want to win, but by not taking care of ourselves, we don’t realize that our “punches” actually become weaker.
Instead of thinking that this business or an investment is the knockout punch, we should ask ourselves: what are the inputs required to unlock a potential knockout?
It’s understanding your customer, the market, and your industry. It’s managing your own psychology through tough times and uncertainty. It’s staying creative. It’s constantly attracting fantastic talent, being great at sales, and maintaining excellent comms… you get the point.
Falling in love with the process
So, consistent hard work over a long period of time compounds, and it’s what makes a knockout possible. The challenge lies in this phrase: “consistent hard work over a long period of time.” :)
We need to be disciplined enough to go through the initial, often painful stages. Then, we need to be smart enough, or lucky enough, to fall in love with the process itself. That’s what makes it possible to keep going.
I think about this in terms of dopamine science.. Dopamine is a chemical that strongly influences how we feel and our motivation. As Dr. Andrew Huberman explains in one of my favourite podcasts of 2021, in order to increase our willingness to push through effort, we shouldn’t try to link dopamine releases with the reward, but with the effort itself.
Different substances and activities lead to different dopamine peaks and duration of the pleasurable effect. On average, chocolate increases dopamine baseline 1.5x, sex 2x, nicotine 2.5x, cocaine 2.5x, and exposure to cold water 2.5x.
For certain activities, like exercise, studying, and hard work, the level of dopamine release varies depending on how much we subjectively enjoy this experience.
The 27-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger had a super relevant (albeit politically incorrect) quote on this topic. He said, “the most satisfying feeling you can get in the gym is the pump… it feels fantastic. It’s as satisfying to me as cumming is. Can you believe how much I am in heaven?!”
He’s talking about the release of dopamine. If we do the math, he was experiencing a 2x dopamine release in every training :)
The training (and his genes) were the inputs, the five Mr. Universe and six Mr. Olympia titles were the output.
But the important thing is that he learned how to derive satisfaction from the input — from the process itself — and not just the outcome.
Final thoughts
After learning this lesson from boxing, here’s how I personally go about achieving an ambitious goal:
- Set a goal.
- Identify all the inputs and building blocks that make a knockout punch possible.
- Set your expectations around how difficult achieving this goal might be, so you have the mental grit needed to withstand the initial drawbacks. Negative visualization and stoicism are your friends.
- Start training on acquiring these inputs. No pain, no gain.
- Remember step number 3 because you’re probably a bit disappointed at this point. :)
- While training, fall in love with the process. Constantly remind yourself that these inputs lead to your goal. Rewire your brain to derive satisfaction not from the end goal but from the process itself.
- The work is done. Breathe and throw your combos. The knockout punch will happen by itself sooner or later.
PS1. You will doubt yourself many times in the process. You do need a great coach and a support network but similarly to boxing: you are alone in the ring. Don’t wait for some kind of superpower to help you. You are the best thing you have inside the boxing ring anyway. Do the best you can do.
PS2. Here’s a quote I really wish was true: “Believe in yourself, you can achieve anything that you set your mind to.” The reality is, I can’t be Mike Tyson. You can still fail to reach your goals, even if you follow all the steps and work super hard. Being self-aware, setting the right goals, choosing the RIGHT sport/career for yourself is crucial. While the above process won’t guarantee you becoming the best boxer or the best entrepreneur in the world, it will guarantee that you can be the best boxer or the best entrepreneur you can be. That’s pretty cool still :)
*Thanks Ellen Fishbein for being my sparring partner in writing this post.
*Thanks John Liahas for the boxing lessons and for giving me the inspiration to write this post.
Cheers,
