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Idiom: Hockey stick moment
Ever noticed that life is full of long stretches of boredom followed by sudden and sometimes unexpected moments of activity or growth?
If you can answer yes, then you have already experienced a hockey stick moment or two in your life.
You see, a hockey stick moment occurs when all of your preparation finally comes together, and things suddenly skyrocket.
It’s a relatively new term in the English language, first used in 1999 to describe a climate change graph.
There is a graph that indicates a long period of reasonably steady climate cooling (a straight line gently sloping downwards) followed by a rapid increase in temperatures), a line sloping upwards at a very steep angle.
The graph loosely resembles the shape of an ice hockey stick, and the term remains in use today.
The term hockey stick graph is especially popular when describing tech startup growth.
Tech startups often begin very slowly, with financial losses for many years until the stars align and there is a sudden increase in customers, income and growth.
Many startups are waiting for their moment so they can sell the company for a huge profit.
I feel that life is full of hockey stick moments.
As an example, we go through three years of high school where nothing seems to change very much.
Then suddenly, we’re moving away from home, beginning a new life in a different town and studying at university.
After four years of sameness at university, there’s another hockey stick moment when we move yet again and begin a new life in the working world.
Life goes on, a series of hockey stick moments until we venture into the great unknown.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 9th-grade education (age 15).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 59.
The higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100, the easier the passage is to read.
