Processing speed

Played tennis with Z yesterday, we will not discuss the results here. Let's just say that he played really well, I was proud of him.

All week long the meteorologists predicted that it would be breezy, and man were they right. There were gusts of up to 50 mph, or so they said. All I know is that it was really windy, and that we were the only ones out there fool enough to be trying to play a match.

On one side, the wind was more or less at your back, on the other, more or less blowing towards you. But there was also substantial cross wind. And, in tennis, you switch sides after every two games, which means the conditions were changing regularly. Add to that the natural variability of the wind, there was a lot of change to process.

Graham not too long ago had a neuropsych evaluation done, which determined that his cognitive processing speed was somewhere around the 18th percentile, while his verbal communications were something like in the 99th. That's a big gap. My sister Leslie, who works with kids on the spectrum, knows of others with similar gaps, and it's hard to coach them to bridge this gap.

It strikes me that I am probably something like that too. I am not really all that quick, which means that, from a young age, when guys were standing around trading barbs and whatnot, I was far from the quickest. I might drift off, think of something pertinent, and then be looking for a place to interject it, but the really quick and dominant guys (Cool, Whitey, Josh, Crabill) would have long since carried the conversation elsewhere. That's not where my core strengths were best focused.

A blog is just my speed. And, since all the research indicates that the number of people who can trade in the markets on a short-term basis and add value in a statistically significant way is vanishingly small, shepherding people towards long-term financial goals also makes a lot of sense, counter-intuitive though it may appear.

And this was particularly apparent to me yesterday out on the court. It is always hard for me to stay on message on the court. Usually it's best for me to try to run down balls and let the other person make a mistake, but it's boring and hard to stick to that. Shifting winds and trading sides added even more variables to the task of sticking to my game plan. But it was all good, I got some exercise, had some good yucks; it was a hundred times better than just going for a run.