According to his book, The Science of Hitting, Ted Williams, one of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball, meticulously tested and tracked his performance. At one point, Williams broke down the strike zone into a remarkable 77 different cells the size of a baseball. In each cell, he wrote his batting average. Williams figured out that by swinging only at pitches in his “happy zone”, he could bat for a .400 average (an incredible performance in the game of baseball). By testing and tracking his own performance, he learned to stop swinging at certain pitches and increased his odds of success. That’s the opposite of how most hitters play the game, and how the majority of people go through life. Most hitters – and people – react to whatever is thrown their way. Successful people, like Williams, prepare to take action on the opportunity. This is done by testing and tracking what happens to you in life, and by applying the rule of cause-and-effect to everything that you do. This approach allows you to make little bets on your life where the odds are finally stacked in your favor. When you know what happens in certain circumstances, you can begin to make bigger and bigger bets because you have stacked the odds in your favor.
