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Before we continue with the main article of this newsletter: our latest OPS typing class is out now. This time, it’s on tennis player Roger Federer.

Unfortunately, this is our last OPS typing class for the foreseeable future.

For the past one and a half years, Holly and I had been coached in objective typing by Shan from Objective Personality. These classes grew out of our collaboration with Shan because we wanted to share what we've been learning from the student's perspective.

But, as we announced in our previous email, Shan will no longer be coaching us, so we decided to shift our focus away from producing those classes.

However, Holly and I are still devoted to better understanding ourselves, each other, and the people around us, so we can live our best, most fulfilled lives, and help others do the same.

We still plan to create content on personal development that may be more or less related to OPS, but we won't publish on a regular schedule as we did in these past months.

We will still make videos together, and this might even include the occasional typing class with our best guess on a celebritys's type. But I, in particular, will focus more on writing and synthesising what I learn about personal development from psychology, cognitive science, and philosophy.

So, if that sounds good and interesting to you, and you want to stay connected, you don't have to do anything at all. The next article will arrive in your inbox in the next couple of months.

But if you were mainly here for our OPS classes with “officially” confirmed types, feel free to unsubscribe through the link at the bottom of the email. It was nice having you here!

Without further ado, here’s this issue’s article on the importance of finding the right match between what you do and who are.

Finding Your Match

Tiger's story

Tiger Woods is the quintessential athlete.

His story is the perfect example for cultivating excellence in a narrow field. It follows the deliberate practice framework, the gold standard for acquiring expertise, to a T.

He's probably the most famous case of an athlete who started his journey as early as humanly possible and followed it through with relentless focus.

At merely 6 months old, Tiger's father intuited his talent for athletics.

At 7 months, Tiger started fooling around with his first putter and dragged it everywhere he went.

At 10 months, he began imitating the swing he’d been watching his father practice in the garage.

At 2 years old, he appeared on The Mike Douglas Show, where he demonstrated his swing in front of comedian Bob Hope and golf legend Sam Snead.

At 21 years old, he became the youngest player ever to win the Masters.

Tiger Woods grew up to be the most dominant golf player the sport has ever seen.

He not only displayed athletic talent before he was a toddler, but he also actualised it through long hours of quality effort. Tiger was the best because he started the earliest and practiced the most—at least, that's how the story usually goes.

However, this article is not a story about Tiger Woods.

While his career is in accordance with (some of) our scientific understanding of developing expertise, it is not relevant for most people.

As it turns out, it's not even relevant for most world class athletes.

Most people don't find the one thing they feel motivated to do and perfect year after year, decade after decade, at age 2. It's questionable that such a thing would even exist for everybody. And even if it did, how would you find it?

But if you're 12, 22, 32, 42, or older, and you haven't found your one special thing yet, I can assure you not all is lost. Starting as early as possible with focused practice isn't the be-all end-all.

This article is about someone who exemplifies that a late(ish) start can be a good thing, and whose background is much more relevant to most people. His story suggests that there's something more important to figure out before you should narrow down and focus.

Often, the discussion around deliberate practice forgets that you can't just pick any random thing and stick with it. If it's not right for you, you will lack the long-term motivation.

Grit can only get you so far.

Before you focus on anything, you have to spend some time on finding the thing that's right for you, the thing that's a good match for you.

And one person who shows us the truth of that (maybe) surprisingly well is Roger Federer.

Roger's story

Just as Tiger Woods, Roger Federer is an extreme outlier.

No one before him had been as dominant in the open era of tennis as he was at his peak. Roger spent 310 weeks in total ranked as the number one men's singles tennis player, including 237 consecutive weeks from February 2004 to August 2008—which is still the all-time record. He won 20 Grand Slams, a silver and a gold Olympic medal, more than $130M in prize money, and many, many accolades more.

While Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic surpassed some of his records since then, it's probably fair to say that his success paved the way for theirs.

I'm not saying Roger's career is relatable to most people, but I'd argue that key aspects of his journey are more relevant to you (and generally more common) than you might think. Roger's level of success as a professional athlete is comparable to Tiger's, but how he got to the top displays several remarkable differences.

Roger did not start focusing solely on tennis as early as possible. At one point, he might have been even considered behind compared to other young players his age.

His mother was an avid tennis player, but she never pushed him in any specific direction, like Tiger's father did with his son. Instead, Roger's parents encouraged him to sample a wide array of sports. Possibly mainly because the boy became unbearable if he had to sit still for too long—according to his mother.

Roger played tennis from an early age. But he also played squash with his father, and dabbled in skiing, wrestling, swimming, and skateboarding. He played basketball, handball, table tennis, and football. As long as a ball was involved, the sport didn't matter to him.

Roger would later credit his hand-eye coordination to the wide range of sports he played.

He only gave up on other sports—most notably football—to focus solely on tennis around the time he was 12 years old. At that age, other talented junior players were already working with strength coaches, sports psychologists, and nutritionists.

Roger was behind but, as we know, this didn't hinder his development in the long run. He was still ranked number one in his mid-thirties, a time when most professional players are already retired.

But doesn't this conflict with the tenants of deliberate practice? You start as early as possible and focus on one thing. Roger did neither. At least, not at first.

Long hours of deliberate practice in a narrow field are necessary to excel—Roger's story doesn't invalidate that—but it indicates that there are other important factors to consider.

As it turns out, Roger's path to exceptional skill isn't all that weird or unusual. In hindsight, it's the Tiger story that's more surprising, because in most cases, before you can effectively narrow down and focus, something else needs to happen first.

The right match

How do you sustain the necessary motivation to develop deep expertise?

After all, while innate talent might make a difference in the progression of your practice, you won't get good at anything without copious hours of effort. No set of genes in the world can change that.

The motivation you need to consistently challenge yourself to get better should be rooted in a high degree of so-called match quality.

Match quality is a term economists use to describe the degree of fit between the work you do and who you are, your abilities and proclivities. Essentially, discipline or grit will only get you so far if you see yourself forced to constantly work against your own interests.

Match quality is about working with yourself, instead of against yourself.

But if you're not Tiger Woods, finding the right match takes time and requires personal experience. It may require to sacrifice a head start—which is where the surprise comes in.

As science journalist David Epstein explains in his book Range, studies showed that the vast majority of people who find personal fulfilment in their lives are not Tigers, they're Rogers.

The Dark Horse Project (a Harvard study conducted by author Todd Rose and neuroscientist Ogi Ogas) discovered that most people who find happiness and an individual sense of success follow unusual, winding life paths on the hunt for match quality.

These Dark Horses look at their current circumstances, their motivations, their preferences, interests, and opportunities to figure out the best match for their next step. They're all short-term planners.

The young Roger Federer was no different. He followed his natural inclinations without a long-term vision.

His parents didn't lay out a plan for him, either. They didn't force him to narrow down. He got free rein to sample as many sports as he wanted for as long as he wanted.

His decision to pursue a career as a professional tennis player was rooted in a personal sense of agency and his individual experience.

Roger had maximised the match quality between himself and what he does throughout a sampling period characterised by a series of short-term oriented personal decisions.

The very same pattern holds true for many professional athletes. They don't pick just any sport at random and stick with it for long enough to become great. No. Successful periods of focused specialisation are usually preceded by a sampling period for acquiring broad general experience.

In other words, before you can become an exceptional specialist, you need to be a decent generalist.

Roger's personality

However, I don't believe that the result of Roger's sampling period was completely arbitrary. It just makes too much sense for his personality type.

Holly and I typed Roger as FF-Ti/Si-SB/P(C)#4 in our latest typing class.

A specialised role as an athlete in a sport that's (mostly) played solo where he can compete for control within a clearly defined narrow box sounds perfect for him. It allowed him to put a tremendous amount of pressure on himself to work hard, to work smart, to blame only himself for his losses, and to reap the joys of being celebrated for his wins.

Being a professional tennis player matched his needs perfectly.

But I don't believe you will find your ideal match through theoretical self-knowledge alone—no matter if it comes from introspection, or from a capable personality expert.

It's not that easy.

If you want to find your right match, you have to go through the experience of a sampling period yourself.

Your personality type may guide you on your next step, and it can help you evaluate your last one, but it isn't a substitute for experience that affords you new knowledge about the world and yourself.

In the end, we learn who we are by living—and not before.

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