"Little things make big things happen." - John Wooden
Basketball Friday examines concepts, a drill, and a set play. Marginal gains allow us a means to grow exponentially. Our theme includes 'TIA' - teamwork, improvement, and accountability.
Find attainable gains to make us our best self. Weigh granular ideas that apply to us. To paraphrase Howard Marks, "if our behavior is conventional, we’ll get conventional results." Work to stack successes in each area.
1. Waste less time. Nick Saban says it with a question, "are you spending time or investing it?" Sometimes there's a fine line. I do the New York Times mini crossword daily, shooting for a personal best (41 seconds). It is better to read a great book twice than ten bad ones once. Abandon bad books.
2. Eat better. Eat more fruits and vegetables and fewer processed foods and refined sugar. Coaches can't eat like players.
3. Exercise. Tailor to our individual needs and limitations.
4. Sleep. Shakespeare wrote of "sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care." Because the half life of caffeine is 5-6 hours, avoid caffeinated beverages 10-12 hours before sleep. Seek a minimum of 7-8 hours of sleep daily.
5. Focus. Better focus enhances learning. Mindful meditation improves attention in children as young as elementary school-aged. It's not a big time commitment. "Lion Mind" is only seven minutes.
6. B+ (Be positive). Positive coaching training had benefits for both athletes and coaches including athlete experience and coaching retention.
7. Be happier with gratitude. Shawn Achor's 21 day gratitude exercise asks us to record three examples of gratitude each evening for three weeks.
8. Need a shortcut? Start your "jar of awesome."
9. Slay smaller dragons first. Break bigger projects into smaller bite-sized pieces. Author Neil Gaiman says, "The importance of dragons isn't that they exist; it's that we can defeat them."
10.Sweep. Forget magical ideas. Carpets don't vacuum themselves. Dishes don't dance into the dishwasher or clothes into the 'welcome'. Leave the gym in better condition than we found it.
11. Don't take it personally. The State Department has the "Dissent Channel." Heat coach Erik Spoelstra favors a positive culture of disagreeing.
12. Hold fire. Widen the distance between receiving information and responding to it.
Drill. Free throw conditioning. Touch the sideline one, twice, three times.
Set play. UCONN zone offense from "two high" front.
A false positive is a test result which wrongly indicates that a particular state is present. A false negative is a test result which indicates that a particular condition is absent.
“False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.” ― Charles Darwin