Slow Your Swing

As many of you know, I love the game of golf, but unfortunately I have never really gotten proficient at the sport due to lack of practice. Being a perfectionist I have many internal arduous battles when I hit the ball and it doesn’t land exactly where I wanted it to land.

As any golfer knows if you don’t put the time into practicing you will never see any sustainable improvement in the game. With that known fact, and my schedule, I may as well sell my clubs and take up a sport I can handle, like dodge ball. At least that way I could alleviate some of the stresses from work. Haha!

The other day I made it a point to go to the driving range since it had literally been months since the last time I hit a golf ball. I was afraid to see how much my game had deteriorated over the past several months. Next to me was a man that had to be in his mid seventies, as I set up I noticed him crushing the ball off the tee. I warmed up and proceeded to tee up myself. The first strike was my usual slice. Nice to know nothing had changed since the last time I struck a ball. I dialed in a little better and started to keep them with-in sight. Every time I hit a ball, the older man next to me would hit the ball 60 or 70 yards past mine.

I guess my ego started playing with me, so I was starting to swing harder and harder. I noticed that the harder I swung the club, the shorter my drives were getting. The older gentleman just sort of chuckled. After it was obvious I was getting more and more frustrated, the man came over to me and said “You need to slow your swing down. It’s not about how hard you hit the ball, it is all about the groove, the plain, and where the ball strikes the club.”

The man took my club stood up and just effortlessly struck the ball. “Crack” it sounded like someone shot a gun. The ball flew down the range an easy 260 yards perfectly straight. While the things he said are all things I have heard several times over the years, I had never made the connection before with work.



It seems with today’s economy we are all trying to do more with less, which means less time for recreation and such. As we continue down this avenue, the stress begins to pile up and we lose our patience. This starts a domino effect of spending less time teaching and more time telling.

I continue to see more and more examples of managers taking on tasks that should be delegated to others, and less time spent working on the business. In other words, yes, we are ‘working harder not smarter’. Take some time to reflect, think of what the best solution is to complete a task and “Slow your swing down”. In the end you will reduce your stress and be more efficient at your job.