Starting at the age of 4, I played football for 15 years. To be precise, for 15 years I went to group training twice a week and played a game each weekend. I’m not sure I ever played football.

One day, my club played against a Brazilian team. Some of the players played on a level I couldn’t even imagine. They caressed the ball, danced and flirted with it. Nothing they did with the ball had anything to do with my game.

I learned everything about strategies, excelled in workouts and followed the instructions of our coaches. Yet, nobody ever looked at me and said: “This is all good but it’s still mediocre unless you understand how to form an emotional connection with the ball.”

We tend to inflate our presentations with empty slides that make no difference. We undervalue quality and overvalue quantity. Restaurants suffer from this defect. Create three dishes that I will drive 2 hours to enjoy, don’t add 50 items nobody cares about.

Malcolm Gladwell talks about 10,000 hours to become perfect but I believe you need more than just the pure hours. You need to deeply care about it. I didn’t care enough to add 10,000 hours of practice to reach the level of my opponent. I cared about other things on a more passionate level. Sure, I could have continued with my football routine but I decided to stop.

I rather focused on things I really cared about, I was willing to take risks for and put the hours in without even thinking about. When you don’t care enough, you need to leave the situation. You need to resign your job, leave your spouse. We all need to find things we care enough about to make our life matter. And create things that matter.