By Muyiwa Adetiba
We have had many thrilling moments in this World Cup. We have seen extra-ordinary skills from extraordinary talents. As we salute those skills, we must also pause to appreciate the hours of devotion and discipline that have produced those inspiring achievements.

Today, I want to pay a tribute to the self-sacrificing devotions that have produced our World Cup moments.

First, let me confess that this headline is not original to me. I came across it in a daily devotional booklet and it struck a chord in me; especially in these days of multi tasking.

But before I get ahead of myself, let me explain what the devotional meant by ‘planned neglect’. It is the ability to deliberately ignore or neglect everything that might detract you from your goal. Taken into the secular realm, it is the ability— mental and physical— to hone your trade by forsaking all others. In other words, those light fingers of an accomplished pianist caressing the black and white keys of a piano like soothing feathers are as a result of years of painstaking practice.

That stirring, haunting note from the instrumentalist that transports you to the world of the surreal would have taken years of practice to achieve. That high note from a solo vocalist that draws appreciative applause is not achieved by a couple of month’s work.

The surgeon that performs intricate, life-changing operations must have worked on hundreds of rats and cadavers in the laboratory. And the hours needed for this honing of skills can only be found through a planned, deliberate neglect of other things.

A surgeon once told me that fingers are very lazy and the only way you can perform quick, delicate incisions is by practicing often. Otherwise, your mind will say something and your fingers will say another thing.

But it is in the area of sports that the need to continuously hone skills through continuous practice is most pronounced. Most athletes spend about 80 per cent of their waking hours working on their trade. Mohammed Ali’s working day used to start with a run at 4am. He jogged, trudged and sparred through many inclement conditions to strengthen his mind, legs and body muscles.

Tiger Woods, the famous golfer, spends hours practising different shots from different angles; and that’s after spending time at the gym toning his muscles. He once displayed his awesome upper body strength when he hit a shot from a thick growth. When asked about it, he smiled and said ‘that is why we spend hours at the gym; to be able to hit shots like that’.

The incredible shot making skills from Federer and Nadal are products of constant practice that started early in life. David Platt, a British footballer once played an incredible shot that streaked into the net. The applause was deafening; but doubters were many. It was a lucky shot, they said. His reply was ‘The more I practice these shots, the luckier I get’.

What the power of planned neglect teaches is the ability to discipline your mind and body from distraction and focus on one or two things that mean something to you. Rafa Nadal was an accomplished footballer in his younger days but he had to give it up to concentrate on tennis. Ditto Michael Schumacher who left football to focus on Formula One. Pete Sampras and Wayne Rooney gave up golf and rugby respectfully in order to take their sports to higher levels. Jack of all trade can indeed be master of none.

Apart from learning not to put too many irons in the proverbial fire, planned neglect teaches you to focus your mind on the most important thing of the moment. Very few problems will defy solutions if we can focus on them exclusively for six to eight hours.

After all, no dart player covers the whole board with one dart; just as a skilled archer concentrates on only one arrow at a time. Andre Agassi, an eight-time Grand Slam tennis winner once said ‘if I can focus on one shot at a time, I am very difficult to beat’. Planned neglect teaches you to forget the appreciative roar of the last shot, to ignore the racing ahead of the mind to the match point and concentrate on the very next point.

This is not to say that forsaking all others while concentrating on just one thing does not have its draw back. The world is full of prodigies who have what one might call ‘arrested growth’ in many other critical areas of their lives because of planned neglect.

One would have to look at the lives of Michael Jackson and Jennifer Capriati to illustrate the point. So, while frustration awaits many talents who allow themselves to be distracted, those who ignore the other aspects of human development can also find that the world has moved on too quickly.

The key is to find what is important in life and find a balance. In this wise, a narration from an industrialist who has had many successful ventures comes to mind. He said he always adopted the attitude of a child. A child learning to walk would get up and concentrate on the first tentative steps before sitting down with a sense of accomplishment.

So this industrialist would concentrate on the first tentative steps of his company in a manner of planned neglect. But once the company was able to walk, he would sit down and come up for air before looking for another venture. He would never, take up another venture so soon after the first one.

This can be a happy medium between multi tasking which can leave you with a cluttered mind along with a cluttered desk and mono tasking which can lead to arrested growth in other areas. Success in sports as in life is about discipline and focus. So is finding the right balance.