"The only shortcut to mastery is mentoring."
An ICU PA asks "what life advice do you have for an ambitious young man or woman?" Let's find answers that clear the decks for success.
Adopt winning habits. James Clear's Atomic Habits builds winning habits by making good habits (like exercise) easier and bad negative habits (e.g. watching too much TV) harder. Be consistent. "Don't miss twice." Track how we invest our time, our resources, our money. Buying a three-dollar coffee daily adds up to over a thousand dollars a year. Decide whether that's a good trade.
Become a learning machine. The more knowledge we have, the more inputs we have for decision-making. Director Werner Herzog advises, "Read, read, read, read, read." Former Celtics' assistant and Clippers VP of Basketball Operations Kevin Eastman reads two hours a day. Business tycoon Steve Forbes reads at least fifty pages a day. Legendary investor Warren Buffett spends half of his time reading. Don't only read but summarize the message of your study.
Learn how to study. That can include breaking up study periods between study and brief breaks (25 minutes on, 5 minutes off), self-testing, and spaced repetition.
Use available tools including summaries. Beware persons with discrepancies between their words and actions.
This passage from Moliere's Tartuffe shows the distinction.
Focus. Buffett encouraged leaders to make a list of twenty-five possible action items and then prune it to five. Focus relentlessly on those. He says that if you put all your eggs in one basket, watch that basket carefully.
Focus or attention are learned skills. Some students suffer dyslexia or ADD and cannot focus. Mindfulness is a skill proven to improve attention, even in elementary school-aged children and those with ADD. MRI before and after training shows that mindfulness increases brain density in learning and memory centers and reduces it in the brain's "stress center," the amygdala. Scripts are available free from UCLA Health.
Mindfulness is a tool used by former NBA legends (Jordan, Kobe) and contemporary ones like LeBron and Karl-Anthony Towns.
Here's my favorite mindfulness short video. "Lion Mind"
Commit. Do the work. Excellence takes belief and patience. This parable about training from Charles Ngo reinforces that message. At a UCONN women's practice, the women took two laps before practice. Nobody cut corners. Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich reminds players that they can't skip steps. "Pound the rock" until it breaks. "The magic is in the work."
You won't regret time invested in Coach Pete Newell's triad of 'footwork, balance, and maneuvering speed.' You play one hundred percent of the game with your feet. Not sure what footwork to practice? Go to USA Basketball.
Be a fan of Box Drills for footwork and balance to beat defenders with technique.
Become a great teammate. Everyone can be a great teammate. Take responsibility for the success of teammates. Cheer them on. Thank the passer for an assist. Communicate. Also, remember that nobody is unhappy when a bad teammate leaves.
