It's all in the Details

I've been playing sports all my life, but the sport I love the most is volleyball. I was first introduced to volleyball at the age of 7 and have never looked back since. There's something about volleyball that is so satisfying when you get it right, but soul-crushing when you get it wrong.

In most sports, 1 inch or 1 second doesn't make the difference, but in volleyball, this is all that is needed to split winning and losing a point. If you're out by an inch in football, it's still in-play and probably doesn't matter. But in volleyball, 1 inch is the difference between a perfect set and a terrible one. It's all in the details.

As a team sport, volleyball requires you to be almost perfect if you want the team to win. My theory is that volleyball is one of the hardest sports to casually get into, because you simply won't have fun if you're not playing well. Unlike football and basketball, mistakes in volleyball are often unforgivable, sometimes an error is an immediate point lost. Even worse, the synchronisation of the team is required for you to be successful.

It's why volleyball is about showing up. Showing up to practice and working on those intricate details in real-time, so that during the game you can perform.

It's probably one of the reasons why I value details so much. Showing up every week and playing volleyball helped instil in me how important it is to get the details perfect. I used to hate finishing the last 20% of a project, but through volleyball I learned that that's the most important part.