Since we are now in the middle of football season and I enjoy watching games on Sunday afternoon while thinking some about my work, I thought I’d attempt to connect leadership ideas to mathematical research.
Bill Walsh’s “The Score Takes Care of Itself” offers more than just football wisdom. The legendary San Francisco 49ers coach built his championship teams around a deceptively simple philosophy: focus on perfecting the process, and success will naturally follow. While Walsh was talking about football, his principles translate remarkably well to the world of mathematical research.
Three Core Principles
At its heart, Walsh’s philosophy can be distilled into three interconnected ideas:
Control what you can control. Instead of worrying about factors beyond your influence, channel all your energy into the elements you can actually affect. In football, this means focusing on preparation, fundamentals, and execution rather than obsessing over the opponent’s strategy or the referee’s calls.
Do your job. Excellence comes from everyone executing their specific role at the highest level. Walsh didn’t want his players thinking about the quarterback’s decisions or the coach’s game plan during a play, he wanted them to master their own responsibilities completely.
Run your own race. Rather than constantly measuring yourself against others or getting distracted by external noise, maintain your own pace and strategy. You’re still competing and working toward goals, but you’re not letting other runners dictate your approach.
The Mathematical Research Connection
Mathematical research might seem worlds away from professional football, but the psychological challenges are surprisingly similar. In both domains, you’re working toward goals where the breakthrough moment is largely unpredictable and outside your direct control. You can’t force a mathematical insight to happen on schedule, just as you can’t guarantee a perfect game.
But what you can control is your preparation, your understanding of fundamentals, and the quality of your daily work habits.
Control what you can control in research means focusing on the systematic work of understanding definitions, working through examples, and following logical arguments step by step. When facing a difficult conjecture, instead of being overwhelmed by the full scope of the problem, you can zero in on specific components; understanding particular cases, exploring related smaller problems, or building up the technical machinery you need.
Do your job translates to focusing on your own mathematical development rather than constantly jumping ahead to try to solve the big problems. Walsh’s emphasis on fundamentals mirrors how mathematical insight often comes from really mastering the basics. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is spend time deeply understanding a definition or working through a “simple” example.
Run your own race is particularly relevant in academic environments that can feel competitive and comparative. It’s easy to get distracted by what others are publishing or what problems they’re solving, but that energy is better spent on deepening your own understanding and developing your own mathematical intuition. Maybe another researcher is working on a flashier problem, or someone just published something that makes you question your direction, but you stick to your own mathematical path.
The Psychological Power of Process
The real strength of Walsh’s philosophy lies in how it reframes setbacks and frustration. Mathematical research is full of natural discouraging moments: when you realize an approach won’t work, when you discover someone else already proved something similar, when you’re grinding through technical details that feel endless.
Having that internal sense of “I’m doing what I can control, I’m putting in the work” helps maintain confidence during those inevitable stretches when research feels stuck. Instead of seeing failed approaches as failures, you can view them as necessary parts of the process, you’re systematically ruling out possibilities and building understanding.
This mindset shift from “this problem is too hard” to “here are the specific things I can make progress on today” can sustain momentum through the long periods where breakthrough feels distant. The focus moves from unpredictable outcomes to controllable actions.
Excellence in the Details
Walsh was famous for his obsessive attention to detail, he scripted the first 25 plays of games, insisted on perfect practice habits, and created detailed standards for everything from how players dressed to how they interacted with media. This wasn’t micromanagement; it was building a culture where excellence became automatic.
In mathematical research, this might mean developing rigorous note-taking habits, carefully documenting your thought processes, or maintaining organized records of what you’ve tried and what you’ve learned. It’s about creating systems that support your best thinking rather than leaving success to chance.
The beauty of Walsh’s approach is that it makes the work itself more satisfying. Instead of constantly measuring yourself against external benchmarks, you develop an internal standard of quality. The daily work of research becomes its own reward, not just a means to an eventual publication or breakthrough.
The Score Takes Care of Itself
Walsh’s central insight was that if you focus on doing everything correctly, from preparation and attention to detail to building the right culture and systems, success will naturally follow. In mathematical research, this means trusting that consistent, thoughtful work on the fundamentals will lead to the insights and breakthroughs you’re seeking.
The score, in other words, takes care of itself.
This doesn’t mean abandoning ambition or big goals. It means recognizing that the path to those goals runs through the daily work of controlling what you can control, doing your job, and running your own race. The breakthrough moments will come, but they’ll come through the steady accumulation of understanding, not through force of will or constant anxiety about outcomes.
Mathematical research, like football, is ultimately about preparation meeting opportunity. Walsh’s philosophy ensures you’re ready when that opportunity arrives.