That quote in my title is from Krishamurti, who was a philospher from last century. I never heard of him, but it is just a perfect quote. I was planning on a different title for this but it fits so perfect for what I want to talk about. This is a longer post but I promise more basketball stuff down the road.
I think I have made a mistake in my learning of trying to collect everything I can. It’s fun and feels good to collect as much as you can. Finding that extra set play, or a random quote. It makes you feel good about things. That is the collectors fallacy. Collecting information does not make you a better coach. Having information that you cannot find easiliy means it cannot help you.
I have spent the quarantine thinking about this and decided that I needed to change things. I have had Fastdraw since 2009 and its amazing in a lot of ways. I can’t even imagine how many hours I have spent looking at that software. However it got to a point that had more than 3500 plays and drills in it. Not organized very well at all. I had scouts from 2009 in there, I had the same play written up multiple times, and I had hundreds of “teams” and “series” to choose from. It was so bad. After about a week of working on it I go the plays down to 50% of the initial number and cut down the other areas by over 75% to make it much more manageable and organized.
Evernote was the same thing. When I spent an entire summer going through and downloading every clinic I could find. I had almost 5000 pages in my evernote. Things I have never looked at, and really served me no purpose. The worst part for me was realizing it would make more sense to just delete all of it and start fresh (I didn’t do that but I was close).
I was honestly just trying to flex and say I have more clinic notes/plays than anyone in the world. I hoarded it and thought that it served a purpose but it really didnt. Since I started coaching I have been on this quest to learn it all. I wanted all the information out there. It hasn’t all been bad because I know I have improved as a coach through that time. However, I want to change how I learn because I want to be a better coach in 17 years. I don’t want to stop learning, I just want to be more intentional. And more importantly, be a better learner.
“In our age of information abundance, access to knowledge is rarely a competitive advantage.” David Perrell
Here is my issue, I love that we have unlimited access to information. Twitter is the worlds best coaches clinic. We have access to content from coaches all over the worlds sharing the best things they have seen. It has never been easier to get better.The amount of information we have is never-ending. However, I have gotten overwhelmed with it all.
I feel like constant general learning has become like a treadmill sometimes. You are doing something, but you are not really going anywhere. You are just trying to keep up, so you don’t go flying off the back of the treadmill. Fomo is real. I constantly check twitter because I don’t want to miss content. I am listening to a podcast literally from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed. It never stops. When I go to bed at night, the coaches I follow overseas are on twitter posting really good plays. I struggle to sleep because I know I could be learning something and my brain doesn’t want to shut off. It has caused me anxiety because I feel like I cant miss information.
“Learning is the ultimate form of procrastination” David Perell
I have basically been all inputs and no outputs. I am consuming information, but a lot of it doesn’t end up doing anything. Learning is an active thing and can’t be a passive thing. I have a good memory but I know there are things that I miss at times because I am not organized or intentional in my learning. I feel this blog can be a place for my inputs to go. Not only will it help my learning of material, but it will also help me critically think about the things I am passionate about. Hopefully, it will also help others too.
So here are a couple of things that I am doing
- Intentional Learning- I am trying to really dive into certain things that are important to me and my team. Sportscode has been the big one recently and I have really enjoyed immersing myself into that software. From a basketball standpoint I have put a ton of effort into ballscreens and “Dominos” concepts.
- Organization and efficiency- I have created a knowledge hub in Notion that will be my “Second Brain” to have the things that I really want to study and dive in. I want to be able to find things by coaches and by topics. The knowledge hub will allow me to do that. All my x’s & o’s stuff will be on fastdraw and videos will be in drop box. Its not about collecting everything, but its about being able to understand and digest things.
- More conversations and less formal clinics- I think the thing that has been the best about the quarantine is all the zoom meetings I have been a part of. This is such a better way of learning because its more interactive.
- Progressive Summarization- I am going throgh old notes and taking the best of what I find in those. This process will help me really get to the important parts of things I consume.
So here is the first real post. Hopefully it didn’t bore you. Like I said earlier, there will be more basketball posts down the road but this was something that I have been thinking about a lot lately.