5 Ways You're Holding Yourself Back in Football Without Realising It
Hey friends!
In today’s issue of Football Progression Path, I will discuss the 5 ways you're holding yourself back on your football journey.
Football is a competitive industry where you must do everything possible to progress your development, build relationships, and stand out from the crowd.
However, if you are aspiring or new to the game, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. This leads to procrastination, time wasting, and ultimately inaction. Preventing you from progressing on your football journey.
The cost of inaction is massive. You must be consistent in taking action.
Without consistent action you will:
- Never get started
- Fail to develop your knowledge
- Have a non-existent or stagnant network
- Not create opportunities in football
With that in mind, here are the 5 signs that you are failing to action on your football journey.
Consuming Too Much Content
If you’re finding yourself constantly reading, listening to podcasts, watching videos, and not actually doing anything with that knowledge, you’re consuming too much content.
The purpose of gaining knowledge is to distill, and share it. In fact, you actually learn and recall new things better by teaching them to other people. Stop spending all of your time consuming, and make time to create work and content.
The next time you watch a python tutorial, create something and share it on LinkedIn, or the next time you read a book write-up your key actions and share it on X.
Endless Research
You do not need more knowledge and information to get started, you likely already have the ideas in your head.
By spending endless time doing research for a project you are eating into the time you have to take action on it. This results in you creating content less regularly. This means less time to grow your network and share your work.
Can you spend 30 minutes brainstorming your best ideas for online portfolio content, think about the small wins you can have quickly. When the 30 minutes is over begin taking action on the easiest wins to get the ball rolling.
Perfecting Your Work
My work isn’t perfect, and neither is yours—stop worrying about it.
The most important thing is to take action and share your work online. It will never be flawless, your data will have flaws, and your scout reports will too. However, it’s vital to use what you have, create something, and share it. Obsessing over perfection eats into the time you could spend sharing your work with the world.
Striving for perfection prevents you from creating more.
Have a set allocated time for editing and improvements with a commitment to sharing your work straight afterwards.
Obsessing Over Tools and Tech
It fundamentally does not matter if you learn Python or R, it also doesn’t matter if you use Notion or Apple Notes for your scouting notes.
Looking for new tools and tech is simply procrastination disguised as productivity. Whilst there is a time and place to try new tools, in most cases it won't dramatically improve your work. Find what works for you, for right now and get going.
When you come across new tools and tech, allocate time to actually test them before going all in. Don’t stop your current work or project because you like something new and shiny.
Waiting For The Perfect Time
You don’t need to wait until March when clubs start releasing internships for next season to start taking action. Similarly, it doesn’t matter if you share your portfolio content at 10am or 7pm on X.
There never is, never has been, or never will be a perfect time for anything you do.
The best action is to be consistent, and commit to your journey over the medium and long term. Share content when you create it, apply for jobs when you see them. Commit and be consistent.
There you go, the 5 signs that you're holding yourself back on your football journey.
Are you consistently experiencing any of them? Do you need further help with them?
I’d love to hear about your journey. Just reply to the email, I read and reply to them all!
Have a fantastic week, and go well.
Liam
Whenever you’re ready there are 2 ways I can help you:
- The Online Portfolio Blueprint - My flagship course for helping new, current and aspiring football professionals. We give you the blueprint on how to grow your knowledge, network and opportunities in football by writing online through an online portfolio.
- Pro Scout Edge - Our scouting tool has been created by professionals and tested by experts in football. It’s the ultimate online scouting database you need for your scouting journey. It forms an all-in-one system for player and team scouting, with templates, dashboards and more.
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