1. Invest our time, don't spend it. Nick Saban promotes this within his Process.
2. Have a morning routine. Include elements vital to you. According to Tim Ferriss in Tools of Titans, eighty percent of the most successful people in America have a consistent, well-defined program.
3. Read. Filmmaker Werner Herzog says, "just read."
Steve Forbes reads fifty pages a day, Kevin Eastman two hours. Steal great ideas. "The difference between who we are today and the people we become in five years is the people we meet and the books we read." What book are you reading today?
4. Take a breath. "That's for sissies." Really? "Be like Mike." One mindful breath a day beats none. A mindful routine propelled Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant to elite careers. Access free meditations here.
5. Study the game. Listen to a podcast. Find a great blog like pickandpop.net. Use Twitter feeds like RadiusAthletics, BBallImmersion, BBallBreakdown, Gordon Chiesa, Coach Liam Flynn. Don't spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to access vast amounts of information online.
6. Keep notebooks including playbooks, drill books, and lists of educational videos. Google Drive is a wonderful resource for all of the above. FastModelSports has wonderful play designing and storage software that stores your plays.
7. Use multidimensional resources. I use MasterClass to access other thinking platforms. Usher urges us to "study your mentor's mentors." My mentor's mentors included John Wooden, Dean Smith, and John Killilea. Coach Killilea had the loudest voice ever.
8. Consider forming a "Personal Board of Directors" (PBOD). Your PBOD becomes another source of support, ideas, and advice...both personal and professional.
9. Find ONE GOOD IDEA each day. It could be a concept, play, drill, quote, story. A young person will accumulate over a thousand good ideas in three years.
10.Write. Writing forces us to think, organize, and edit. Bob Woodward preaches including a minimum of SIX key pieces of information in every column. Writing helps imprint those concepts into our basketball lexicon.
11.Practice gratitude. Gratitude (thankfulness) is part of the Don Meyer and Shaka Smart gospel. Harvard researcher Shawn Achor has a 21-day gratitude challenge.
Lagniappe: Here's a design for early Flex-like action against a 2-3 zone. Adjust to your personnel.
You could elect to cut the 1 through as the initial screener, but I prefer the seal by 5.