Make the Catch First – Then, Turn Up Field

Week 10 in the NFL, I noticed an error made by several players. During the morning games, two different times, a player turned his head up field before he had secured the ball. The “catch” was not complete – the ball dropped out of his hands. Fumble, and loss of down.

One of my lessons in life has been to correct this very thing: do one thing at a time. Patience AND focus. In the San Francisco 49ers game with the Giants in the afternoon, New York Giant Mario Manningham was wide open – no one around him to disrupt his catch. Yet, he reached for the ball, then turned away too quickly before he had secured the ball.

In the very next play, Victor Cruz was intercepted by 49ers Carlos Rogers – oops – who got underneath Cruz to intercept the ball. Did Cruz take his eye off the ball? That changed the momentum of the game. The Giants lost. What if Victor Cruz, who up to that point had the most yards of any player in the NFL, caught that pass? What if Manningham had NOT fumbled? The Giants may have won – we don’t know.

Many of us have a quick pace of doing things. Most of the time, it pays off. I can make one trip to a certain neighborhood and hit all my stops on one tour. No backtracking. But sometimes it backfires. In my effort to multitask, I once opened my mail at the same time as cleaning a counter and talking on the phone. I ended up throwing away a salary check. It took the company 6 weeks to cut me another one.  Not fun.

We need to slow down, focus, and finish one task before starting another.