I love the way he describes streams. Since he ends with our own personal work, I&#x27;d like to draw another analogy.<p>I&#x27;ve spent 1-2 thousand hours playing and practicing ping pong. As a result, I&#x27;m better than the average person (though not overpowering). One of the things I&#x27;ve noticed about poor players is they take the point total for what it is at this exact moment. It&#x27;s not unusual for an average ping pong player to be up by 3 or 4 points midway through a match and - I swear - without fail you see them get excited. Breathing speeds up. Muscles tighten. Shots are a little harder. They&#x27;re winning.<p>These people are experiencing a spike.<p>On the other hand, my game doesn&#x27;t change just because the score is 7-11 and I&#x27;m down. Serves are the same and  shots hold their pace and breathing stays regular. Why? Because my game is a stream. I know I have more ping pong experience and better fundamentals, so I trust my game more than I trust the score. Spikes happen all the time in both directions. But streams win games.<p>But I wasn&#x27;t always good. When I was a child, my father and I would grab paddles and head to the garage. Every game I played for two years was a loss. 21-14, 21-18, 21-8, 21-9, 21-16...for years. He would never ever ever let me win. Never. I know, because I never did.<p>Until one day.<p>Like usual, we were playing a tight match and suddenly the game turned my way. 23-21, I won in overtime. I&#x27;ll never forget walking across the garage to shake his hand, look him in the eye and hear: &quot;congratulations, good game.&quot;<p>Well, I kept practicing (college was fun) and now I rarely lose.<p>The truth about streams lies at the heart of most important things in life. I call it direction. and you know what? When things are good, I think smart people know about direction. The real problems are when you are practicing <i>anything</i> and keep losing. For me, right now, that&#x27;s customer development. I&#x27;m scared to death to call a potential customer. Even though I know it&#x27;s ok when they say no. Those calls are practice and with enough training and practice I can &quot;win&quot;. But the idea still makes me shiver.<p>Direction matters more than the score.