Tom Brady clearly loves the game of football. Yes, it brings the wear and tear of competition and the risk of injury, but you can only fold so many sheets, wash so many dishes (apparently the wrong way) and spend your weekends watching other people doing what you love you to do, which is competing at the highest level. And if that’s what the blessed state of retirement was going to bring football’s greatest of all time, he preferred the cozy comforts of a well-protected pocket!
News that Brady would rejoin the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after just 40 days in the wilderness called “retirement,” came fast on the heels of last Saturday, when the 44-year-old made another stop on his “free-time” tour to take in a Manchester United soccer game in cold, grey England. There, another “greatest of all time,” Cristiano Ronaldo scored a hat-trick at the age of 37. After the game, the two global icons were taped talking on the field.
“All good?” asked Ronaldo of Brady.
“Doing great,” replied Brady, perhaps not entirely convincingly, prompting a follow-up question from Ronaldo.
“You’re finished, right?”
Brady visibly winced before mumbling something to the effect of “probably.”
Or not.
The exchange has been analyzed exhaustively. Did Ronaldo inadvertently help lure Brady out of retirement and back into football on that chilly day in Manchester? Did watching an aging “peer” continue to dominate remind Brady of what he could again do to opponents? We may never know, but one thing we do know is that retirement seems to have been the only game that Brady couldn’t master.
Or, to put a positive spiral on it, Brady still feels he has something to give to the game he loves to play, so why on Earth should he not keep playing it?
There’s no great mystery to Brady’s decision to unretire: the man loves his work and missed it. Every aspect of it.
“These past two months, I've realized my place is still on the field and not in the stands,” he tweeted Sunday evening. “That time will come. But it's not now. I love my teammates, and I love my supportive family. They make it all possible. I'm coming back for my 23rd season in Tampa.”
When professionals like Brady say they have the best job in the world, they’re not literally talking about a job. They are talking about the work—meaningful work that expresses who they are. We are living through a historical era that will be marked, among other things, as the time of the Great Resignation, a period in which remote working has shaken up the strict nine-to-five routine of millions of Americans.
Working remotely has created a double lens through which to look at America’s workforce. On the one hand, remote work and furloughs resulted in many people realizing how dissatisfied they were with their jobs, whether from rigid schedules, poor work environments, or lack of satisfaction with their careers. These folks left their jobs, some to no job at all, others to try their luck elsewhere.
A second group, however, found that they thrived in remote work. They missed their colleagues and friends but took enough joy in their work to find new ways of turning a difficult time into a period of newfound growth and freedom. With the relaxation of social distancing, this group is receiving a double blessing as they enjoy more flexible schedules and work-life balance while continuing to grow in the work they love to do.
If you are somebody who leads others, keep this in mind. High-performance teams are generally happy teams. At one of the country’s iconic restaurant businesses, Waffle House, for example, everybody has the opportunity of owning a piece of the business, from the dishwashers and line cooks to the managers. The chain’s leaders refrain from sequestering themselves in their offices, choosing instead to practice the “busy hands talk best” philosophy of their longtime executive Bert Thornton who understood that if you want to know what it’s like to work at your company, lead from the front.
And if you are somebody who leads mostly yourself, it’s never too late to introduce the word “grateful” into your vocabulary and to take a good look at what brings meaning and joy in your life. If it’s not your work, then ask yourself why, or what else, would. Maybe you’ll discover something you are better suited to doing.
Or, just maybe, you will be able to reframe your view of your current situation to take greater pride in what you do, raising your personal bar.
Even Tom Brady has some “unfinished business” he wants to take care of.
What’s yours?
