“It is a team sport. Trying to do everything on your own is a fallacy. On top of that, if you are part of a team you should accept your new position if you are moved around a bit. Here again, flexibility and a well roundedness is the key as opposed to a too narrowly defined specialty.” The Mixer Michael Cox
Design is a team sport. As are a lot of other human endeavors. Going all the way alone can be good in the beginning, but when you want the best possible outcome you really need other people for spreading the load and bouncing ideas off each other.
This of course does not mean that you shouldn’t be working or experimenting alone from time to time. Great work can come from someone working alone, but more often than not expanding the group improves the ideas. So train to get comfortable in working and trusting other people.
Just think of your soft skills. Working in a team helps you with a lot of the skills that nothing else can teach you. Respect for other people and their ideas. As well as abilities like communication, moving together as a coherent unit. Not working against each other. Building a team. Building a product. Building a brand. Building something you can be proud of. All this and a lot more what makes teams great can come from that. But like in sports just having a large group of talented individuals is not the same as having a team. A real team knows how to work together, achieve consistently and even scoring when the stacks are against them.
But if you have to work alone for some reason, if you are remote or an external freelancer working on your own the Internet still is the place to find other people sharing your vision and your ideas. When you have to work alone finding collaborators or mentors is highly recommended. get a mentor
This is one of the most amazing things today that mentors are available from all over the world. But for a mentor to be most effective it is important that he or she is a real person that is available to you and that you can have a conversation with.
The most important part of working in a team is communication and I really think that this is best learned by being part of a sports team. Sports teach you many things. Working together towards a goal under strict rules and the pressure of time constraints, with an opposition working directly against you. In the business world we often fall back into endless discussions but in sports, you always have the clock against you and a final score that tells you if you have been up to the task. This is an ideal environment to learn to act in unison and in the here and now.
Loosing is part of the game
Practicing sports teaches you to win but also how to loose. This is part of the game and it builds character. Always winning often leads to arrogant behavior. Being confident and self-assured is good. But too much of a good thing can turn into obnoxious behavior and makes you less attentive. Loosing humbles you. It helps you discover a side of yourself that you don’t like to go to. Some players blame losses on each other. But true team players, true athletes come together, analyze their plays together to find errors by discussing what might have gone wrong, analyzing your weaknesses, analyzing the opponent’s strengths. to devise strategies for training and playing to minimize the chances of the same things going wrong the next time around. Practicing this attitude early and in a protected environment develops a routine behavior that can set you up for great success. Especially when the stakes are high.
Building resilience
In my view sports is one of the best ways to form your character. Working out, learning how to work on yourself. Working hard. Learning to communicate as a team. Moving as a unit. And of course, sports is good for your health. It makes you agile, more resilient against a lot of things. There are really only few downsides (depending on what sport you are doing, of course).
So if you have kids, find out what they like and get them started early.