The Lionel Messi Of Content

If you’re a fan of English football, you’ll be aware of a few things

VAR being the only thing that anyone cares about anymore Jamie Redknapp absolutely stealing a living.

And the pundit obsession with ‘distance covered’ Players will get lauded for their ability to cover ground

‘He had a great game - as we can see here, he was everywhere - he covered 12.5km’

Which sometimes can be a useful measure - in some games, for some players, in some positions.

But not every time.

Lionel Messi is one of the best players to have played the game.

Yet spends most of his time walking around the pitch

Occasionally breaking into a light jog.

Scanning what’s going on, looking at distances between himself and defenders, reading the game.

Most of his efforts are very fast, explosive movements - 2 or 3 of which normally dictate the outcome of the game.

That’s not to say that every footballer should just stroll around like they’re at their local Leisure Leagues game

Just that we shouldn’t optimise for metrics that don’t really matter that much

Y’know - like coaches with content

‘You need to do this type of content to reach more people’

‘This is doing really well for people engaging with it at the minute’

‘Don’t ever do carousels, reels are going to be pushed to a new audience’

And…

‘So you know… more eyeballs on your stuff’

So..

And you have to really push people with this mindset for them to say ‘Well then you’ll make more sales and get more clients’

Oh yes, the point of this.

Too often we’re trying to focus on the wrong metric

No matter how many stories we tell of coaches with small audiences doing great, tiny communities meaning big profits - or the influencer coach who can’t pay their rent

Social media is a tool - a useful one. But remember you’re using it to optimise something else, not to optimise the tool itself

The Lionel Messi of Content

Connections

• [[Older Problems Are Harder To Solve - Evolutionary Economics]] — Distance covered is a new metric for a new problem. Messi solves the old problem — spatial awareness, reading human movement, exploiting gaps. Same frame: coaches optimise reach (new metric), neglect trust and conversion (old problems).
• [[The Red Queen]] — The content arms race is a Red Queen treadmill. More reels, more hooks, more frequency — running harder to stay still. Messi’s approach is the escape: stop running harder, start thinking better. Quality attention over quantity of output.
• [[Behaviour Modification Finished]] — Harrah’s didn’t compete on flashier casinos. They competed on paying attention to behaviour. Same principle as Messi: fewer, better-aimed interventions beat scattered high-effort activity. The solicitation calendar is Messi’s 3 explosive movements applied to client retention.
• [[What if you just looked up?]] — The behavioural nudges in everyday life are Messi-like: small, targeted, efficient interventions that dictate outcomes. An ATM message, a decoy price, a disorienting shop layout. None of these are “high effort.” They’re all precision.
• [[Have I spread myself too thin?]] — Direct tension. Messi says: do less, better. “Spread too thin” says: find a way to do them all. The resolution might be: do everything, but apply Messi-like precision to each — MVP, test, move on.

Tensions

• Messi can walk because he’s earned it. He has decades of mastery. A junior player can’t walk around the pitch and claim strategic genius. The “do less but better” advice only works once you’ve earned enough expertise to know which 3 movements matter. For newer coaches, the volume phase might be necessary to build pattern recognition.