Make Every Day Your Masterpiece
The legendary, record-breaking college basketball coach, John Wooden was known for a famous phrase: “Make Every Day Your Masterpiece.”
Wooden was renowned for delivering extremely simple, short but inspirational messages to his team.
I only learned of this because of the Newcastle United manager, Eddie Howe. Apparently, it is the mantra he adopts and has plastered all over the training ground for the players to embody and live by.
Why is this important?
As a long-suffering Newcastle fan, watching them this season has been a delight but has blown my mind at the same time. They are well drilled, structured, disciplined, extremely fit, committed and as such are punching way above their weight. If it weren’t for some dodgy refereeing calls, they would even be a few places higher. I haven’t seen them play like this for almost 20 years, and even then, it didn’t seem as thought out as this.
When you look at the transformation that has taken place at the club in the space of ONE year (rock bottom of the table, with zero wins up until December 2021, to top 4 form, this season, and throughout 2022) there is a lot to learn from this simple, but profound statement.
Simplify to Succeed
One thing about human nature, is that for some reason, we LOVE the complex. We like to think of ourselves as intelligent species, and therefore are drawn towards the most sophisticated strategies and anything that can help us make marginal gains in any area.
Nothing gets us excited more than coming across a hidden little-known formula only the top 1% in their fields are using.
That’s why we usually overthink and overengineer things. Because huge transformation can’t be simple, right?
If we’re trying to lose weight, we’ll do keto AND CrossFit whilst fasting Mondays and Thursdays.
If we’re trying to set up a business, we’ll do everything under the sun (except actually make money).
When trying to become more spiritual, we’ll set ourselves unrealistic demands - and then feel guilty when we inevitably fail.
I say this from experience because I’ve lived through it myself.
The new mantra: Be dumb (metaphorically speaking, of course). Don’t overcomplicate. Keep it simple, stupid. Follow a proven system.
Build your foundations first. And then build up from there.
The Sahabah didn’t establish Madinah first. They had to endure the ongoing hostility and difficulty of Makkah, first.
Without doing this, we’re already setting ourselves up for a fall.
There’s a reason why pillars are called pillars. Because they hold up the entire structure.
What are the pillars of health? Sleep, nutrition, movement.
Are they all in the right place before adding further complexity? Don’t do Madinah-level activity when you haven’t mastered Makkah.
The 5 pillars of Islam make so much sense in this context. Get your fundamentals in place. Have a daily practice implementing them.
For example, the 5 prayers help you to manage your day and act as anchor-points within the day.
Systems will set you free
When we set goals for ourselves, we don’t tend to think in days. We tend to think in months, quarters, and perhaps even years.
But the problem when we do this is that we miss out on the mundane. The monotonous, tedious systems, the routines that will actually make the impossible, possible.
Whilst we should be vision and goal centric, so we have a central purpose to which to channel our activity towards, we must take it one day at a time.
When you study successful people and what they have in common, you realise the only thing that gets you success in the long term is rituals and routines in the short term.
The best football (or any sport) coaches say “I don't care if you lose as long as you stick to the system.” Because they know the system wins in the end.
Over time that will eventually play out to success.
Yes you might have a bad day, a bad week, and sometimes even a bad month.
But the drills, the practices, and the muscle memory that is formed by your rhythmic repetition will program your algorithm to the point where this is automated. Unconscious competency is eventually created. And that is the secret formula.
I can fall out of routine every now and then. Who doesn’t? But getting back to making the next day a masterpiece can reset you and bring you back to centre.
What does this look like in the real world?
Repeated daily habits. Which eventually become part of repeated daily rituals. Which eventually form default behaviours and beliefs in your principles. Which gives you the identity.
Bringing it back to Newcastle United, at the start of the season, there were a few dodgy results (such as a last-minute loss to Liverpool), and some undeserved draws vs the likes of lowly Bournemouth. No need to panic - the system takes time to implement, the data shows it’s going in the right direction and will eventually yield the results.
I remember Rafa Benitez was also famously strict about total compliance to his system - and would get rid of anyone, no matter how good, if they weren’t willing to comply. Out of the door went Michael Owen at Liverpool, and Alexsander Mitrovic/Ivan Toney at Newcastle.
Systems ultimately supersede skill.
And making each day a masterpiece - with the 5 prayers at the heart of it - is the key to a successful system to get you there.
John Wooden once won 88 consecutive games of basketball in a row - a record that has never been broken - and won the national championship 10 times in 12 years.
Not bad for a man renowned for being ‘simple’, eh?