Skip to main content

Kings will fall

Us wannabe-managers get flooded by offers for management-courses all the time. There are wonderful things to be learned: how to manage your time (hey, do you actually have any time left, that you would like to manage? What kind of manager are you?).They teach you negotiation skills (if you don't have them, the guy on the other side of the table will always outsmart you - minutes before you even get a chance to have a glance at your cheat-sheet, because as they say 'either you are at the table or you are on the menu'). Oh, and yes, team-building skills (just accept, that nobody wants to be in your team anyway, let alone have you as the leader, if you are not male, extremly handsome, witty, generous, nonchalant and self-confident). There are hundreds such training-camps every year, every place. And they all promise to help you. The more expensive the better.
But they don't. The best they can do, is open your eyes for your weaknesses, tell you some tricks, give you a brush-up at excel-sheet managment of your work life and hand you a box with nifty rules for pretending to be in control.
One thing you have to master before you even start thinking about leading a team, heading an institute, commanding the world: control your temper. If you can't switch your adrenaline-level on and off at will, you are the wrong person.
And there is no better way learning that than playing chess. Playing chess after a round of boxing, that is. Imagine opening a game of chess with an equally smart mate, interrupt that after two minutes for a round of boxing, get back at the chess board, boxing ring, chess board... until one runs out of time or is set check-mate (in chess) or get's knocked out (in the ring). You will have to switch from cold calculations to fiery bouts and back to an all focused brain again and again.
This sport does exist and it is on the rise. It is called chessboxing and it increasingly draws excited crowds all over the world. Started as a form of art by the Berlin based dutch artist Iepe Rubingh it now is in a phase of professionalization through its World Chessboxing Organization. Iepes goal is to have it as part of the Olympic games 2016. All looks like this is absolutely doable. 
But very short term, the film-maker David Bitton hopes to get the first documentary out. He has filmed a shipload of unique material and has the most comprehensive insider view on the competing Chess-Boxing organizations, the development of which is a thriller by its own. Problem is: he needs funding, fast. So please check out his kickstarter campaign. And contribute madly!
Now.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Academics should be blogging? No.

"blogging is quite simply, one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now" The London School of Economics and Political Science states in one of their, yes, Blogs . It is wrong. The arguments just seem so right: "faster communication of scientific results", "rapid interaction with colleagues" "responsibility to give back results to the public". All nice, all cuddly and warm, all good. But wrong. It might be true for scientoid babble. But this is not how science works.  Scientists usually follow scientific methods to obtain results. They devise, for example, experiments to measure a quantity while keeping the boundary-conditions in a defined range. They do discuss their aims, problems, techniques, preliminary results with colleagues - they talk about deviations and errors, successes and failures. But they don't do that wikipedia-style by asking anybody for an opinion . Scientific discussion needs a set...
8 comments
Read more

Left Brain, Right Brain

At a wonderful summer night I was lying in the grass, my little son beside me. We were staring into the dark sky, debating infinity, other planets, the origin of everything, observing falling stars that were whizzing through the atmosphere at a delightfully high rate. Why did we see so many of them that night? What are falling stars? What are comets. Why do comets return and when? The air was clear and warm. No artificial lights anywhere. The moon was lingering lazy in the trees across the river. Some fireflies were having a good time, switching their glow on and off rather randomly - in one group they seemed to synchronize but then it was random again. It reappeared: a few bugs were flashing simultaneously at first ... it started to expand, it was getting more. A whole cloud of insects was flashing in tune. Are they doing this on purpose? Do they have a will to turn the light on and off? How do those fireflies communicate? And why? Do they communicate at all? My son pointed at a fie...
5 comments
Read more

My guinea pig wants beer!

Rather involuntary train rides (especially long ones, going to boring places for a boring event) are good for updates on some thoughts lingering in the lower levels of the brain-at-ease. My latest trip (from Berlin to Bonn) unearthed the never-ending squabble about the elusive 'free will'. Neuroscientists make headlines proving with alacrity the absence of free will by experimenting with brain-signals that precede the apparent willful act - by as much as seven seconds! Measuring brain-activity way before the human guinea pig actually presses a button with whatever hand or finger he desires, they predict with breathtaking reproducibility the choice to be made. So what? Is that the end of free will? I am afraid that those neuroscientists would accept only non-predictability as a definite sign of free will. But non-predictability results from two possible scenarios: a) a random event (without a cause) b) an event triggered by something outside of the system (but caused). ...
8 comments
Read more