Friday, April 12, 2024

Basketball and Life Achievement

Everyone is a critic. If you don't win the title, you're a bum. If you don't win the title twice (e.g. Doc Rivers), you're a bum. Talk about a crowded trade. Think again.

Learn the Achievement Equation:

ACHIEVEMENT = PERFORMANCE x TIME

Few of us are single-minded in our pursuit of daily excellence. Why? It's exhausting, 'soul-crushing'. It distorts work-life balance.

And the search can disappoint, like Hemingway's Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea as he pursues the great fish. 

Consider rethinking the Achievement Equation. Restate it as: 

ACHIEVEMENT = APPLIED GROWTH x TIME

Applied growth and time inform our management of what we control - attitude, choices, effort. 

Over time we choose how and where we want growth. Grow as a parent, as a coach, mentor, communicator, whatever. 

Grow the courage to fail. Sara Blakely, billionaire proprietor of Spanx, shares that her father asked the children weekly, "what have you failed at this week?" That gave her strength to leave her comfort zone. 

Grow our habits. "We make our habits and our habits make us." Habits can be pleasurable - a walk, a workout, reading, mindfulness, writing. Attitude is habit. I read a suggestion to put an elastic on our wrist and switch to the opposite wrist every complaint. That makes complaining obvious. One of James Clear's signs to change habits is "make it obvious." Change the elastic a few times in an hour and grievance is real. 

Grow our use of analogy. Thomas Edison believe that innovation arose from imagination, persistence, and analogy. A thousand lightbulb failures taught how not to make one. A coach is a teacher, leader, conductor, film director, minister, general. Few generals win every battle. 

In his MasterClass, Michael Lewis articulates the accidental story of Michael Oher and the Tuohy family in The Blind Side. He calls it a "weird kind of Pygmalion thing." Lewis describes the left tackle position as "an elephant and a ballerina." We see analogy where and when we look. "Billy Beane and Michael Oher had this in common. They were both misvalued when they were young...in opposite directions." 

Grow our knowledge. Knowledge isn't wisdom, but neither is absence of knowledge. 

Grow our humility. Learn servant leadership. Dean Smith's said, "a lion never roars after a kill." And "thinking less about ourselves doesn't mean thinking less of ourselves." John Kennedy's reality speaks, "victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan." 

Grow our gratitude. Nobody grants us tomorrow. Choose gratitude over grievance, how things often went well instead of awful and awry. How often beauties seek Botox and billionaires chase bucks. Smell the roses. 

Grow our communication. Michael Lewis shares this slide from MasterClass about "parallel plot structure." 


These can be for better (e.g. protecting the Blind Side and the rise of Michael Oher) or for worse (e.g. understanding psychopathy of serial killers and rise of the Behavioral Analysis Unit, e.g. Mindhunter). 

No single path leads to self-improvement and achievement. Be open to the characters, ideas, and principles around us. For example Taylor Swift and Caitlin Clark follow the ascent of women. Then consider the alternative, how some will try to bring them down. Choose wisely. 

Lagniappe. "The exceptional kid is going to take the hard choice." 

Lagniappe 2. "Five out" offers opportunity for teaching and executing offense. 

 Lagniappe 3. "Strength up the middle..." baseball, football, checkers, chess, basketball? 

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