Book Notes: Effortless by Gregory McKeown
Thoughts on making things easier for your team to be more succesful
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One of my favorite personal growth/development books is Essentialism by Gregory McKeown. I think every person…and coach…should read the book and apply its principles and I often find myself recommending it to people.
In that book, the author gives the reader strategies and ideas for living a life that focuses on the essential things that ACTUALLY matter - not all the trivial stuff we get distracted by.
So, when his new book, “Effortless”, came out, I pre-ordered it, got my copy early, and digested it pretty quickly.
The basic premise of the book is this:
identify the ways/systems to make your life easier…but still get the results you want
choose the things that bring you the most results and drop the best
sometimes working more is NOT the solution (working smarter is)
Here are a few notes on the book, along with some quotes I enjoyed, and some ideas to implement in your program:
What could happen in your life if the easy but pointless things became harder and the essential things became easier?
What are the tasks that you HATE as a coach/leader? How can you either delegate them, automate them, or get rid of them altogether?
The first step toward making things more effortless is to clear the clutter in our heads and our hearts.
If you don’t have an absolute, crystal clear vision for the type of program/team you want to run, its purpose, and how you want to run your program…you’ll get distracted.
Be intentional in EVERYTHING that you do and make sure it aligns to your culture and team identity.
Producing a great result is good; producing a great result with ease is better. Producing a great result with ease again and again is best.
Also about systems. What works best for your players, your school, your team? If you can turn it into a repeatable and productive system, good things will happen.
This might be running practice the same way every day, having an offense that your program masters, creating a youth feeder system that easily flows into your high school team - whatever. Create systems to serve your team and program.
If you keep it simple, less can go wrong.
I love changing defenses and keeping teams off balance, but there’s a ton of truth here.
If you run one offense and/or one defense, everyone knows what is expected of them, it’s been explained to them explicitly, and they understand what’s expected of them.
If you rep it out enough, there’s only so much that can go wrong.
When you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. When you focus on what you have, you get what you lack.
This is a key for life as well. Focusing on the things you don’t have will make you take for granted what you do have.
No matter how much you strategize, wish, pray, hope, or sacrifice to the gods - who you have is who you have.
The same goes with your program, the culture of the school you coach at, and your community.
There’s only so much you can do - FOCUS ON WHAT YOU HAVE and maximize it.
Past a certain point, more effort doesn’t produce better performance. It sabotages our performance. (THE LAW OF DIMINISHING RETURNS)
It’s very tempting to think, “we just need more gym time”. And maybe you do.
But in reality, it’s how you use that gym time that’s important. Beyond a certain point of effort, you aren’t getting anything extra.
The trick is finding that optimal sweet spot.
Unnecessary steps are just that - unnecessary. Eliminating them allows you to channel all your energy toward getting the important project done.
Take a look at ALL your processes - from how you load the bus to how practice is run to your playbook.
Eliminate any steps that are unnecessary, waste time, or don’t fit into the long term vision of your program.
Being good at what nobody is doing is better than being great at what everyone is doing. But being an expert in something nobody is doing is exponentially more valuable.
Being a curveball in a fastball league can give you an advantage if you don’t have the talent.
Everybody plays man? Throw in some zone. Nobody presses? Add some full court pressure.
Make yourself different and it gives you a little bit of an edge.
Make the most essential things the easiest ones to teach and the easiest ones to learn.
Whatever you value the most in your program - whether it’s keeping the ball out of the middle, offensive rebounding, or taking great shots - make it as EASY as possible to explain and teach to your players.
Keep it simple, emphasize it, and make it easily measurable.
For example, if as a program you value offensive rebounding…
Make the teaching points as simple as possible (don’t run to a back, spin off first obstacle, try to get a hand on every rebound, etc.)
Make the measurables as easy as possible (you either went for the rebound or you didn’t)
You can repeat this for the most important things in your program.
Every team, school, and program is unique.
Some of us coach at large schools where kids specialize in a sport. Some of us coach at smaller schools that feature two and three-sport athletes.
Every situation is different.
Your job as the coach and leader of your team/program is to put the players you DO have into the best spots, systems, and procedures to be successful in the long term.
Hopefully you can steal something from this post that can help your team.
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
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