What can you learn from playing fantasy football? Games of strategy teach us a lot about who we are as people in the real world. We learn how chance can turn a sure thing into an upsetting loss, that sometimes less is more, and that planning is important. Here are five lessons fantasy football teaches us.
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1. Chance Is a Powerful Tool
How many hours do you sit doing research on this player or that player only to find the perfect mix, the greatest team, your roadmap to victory, only to sit slack-jawed as the perfect team loses to the underdog? Was it fate? No, not so much. Our best plans are often changed by something called chance. Play fantasy football long enough and the word chance becomes part or your vocabulary. Chance is everywhere. What fantasy football teaches you is that you should never discount chance, but rather try to control it by thinking of it in terms of probability.
2. Just Let It Be
How many times have you messed around with your starting lineup and changed players, only to have it all blow up in your face? The same thing happens in life. When you get good at Rotogrinders fantasy football, you learn to pick your players and then let the chips fall where they may. In life, it is the same thing. Fantasy football shows how important planning is. Hindsight is 20/20 they say, but that doesn’t do us much good in life, so we have to make choices that count.
3. Use Key Players for Strategic Partnerships
Ever notice how the quarterback is the focus of the team? There are reasons the defenders protect the quarterback. However, his glory is dependent on everyone else on the team. Pair the quarterback with a great wide receiver and both players benefit. Pair the quarterback with a weak wide receiver and both players may suffer.
The same is true in business. Great people come from great partnerships. Take a lesson from fantasy football and learn to build the best partnerships possible. In so doing, everyone wins.
4. Groom for Success
When you choose players, do you opt for those who have proven themselves capable, or do you choose the player that has undeveloped potential? This is an age-old argument, but consider it more a question of long-term planning. Even the best player ages and his skills decline. Recruiting a younger player that has potential and then grooming him for success is something that fantasy football teaches us about life.
5. Learning and Growing
In every game there are losers, but that does not mean they didn’t win anything. Fantasy football teaches us quickly how to learn from our mistakes. It teaches how to think critically and how to weigh the odds. There is an element of chance in everything from playing sports to living life. What we learn playing fantasy sports really boils down to learning how to recover and learn from mistakes we make.
What can your fantasy football team teach you about being a stronger leader and a better person?
