Practice

I used to imagine that once you had the golf expertise of Tiger Woods, or the musical ability of Bela Fleck, you could only get better. Yet it is amazing to me how quickly skills and muscles atrophy.

I always knew that, without practice, skills decreased over time but I figured that the horizon was decades, not weeks or months. After running a marathon in October I might be unable to run half that distance by the end of this year without continual training.

Deliberate practice is now a well-known concept: a repetitive and intentional rehearsal of the most difficult portions of the task at hand. Every single day, continuing to press against the ceiling of your ability is how growth, improvement, or even maintenance at an elite level is achieved.

If the best golfer in the world needs to take practice swings before every shot, hit the driving range on off days, watch his diet, and workout throughout the entire year, what should you be doing to stay sharp?

Being Purposeful In Your Career

One pattern I’ve seen a few times, that I never expected to see from A+ co-workers or friends, is people being passive and reactive in their careers. I don’t mean they don’t care what happens, or that they take things lightly. I mean instead of deciding the trajectory of their desired career and identifying companies and roles that might be a good fit to explore, people are taking random calls from recruiters (don’t get me started on recruiters) and going through the process with one company that happened to reach out to them.

We’ve grown incredibly open about this difficult topic at Next Big Sound, to the point that we sometimes ask folks if they are interviewing elsewhere and address it directly. It’s taken years to mature to the point where we can openly discuss with NBS workers that the challenges we have at NBS might not be a good fit for what they want to work on on a daily basis. We’ve actually facilitated many jobs for former employees. I’ve been very fortunate to work with extremely talented colleagues at Next Big Sound over the years. While most still remain on the team, several talented people have moved on from NBS over the last 7+ years. One of the things I’m most proud of is that we still keep in touch with almost all of our former employees. Prior to acquisition we even created a listserv for our alumni called exbigsound@nextbigsound.com.

So what is the alternative to being reactive to offers that come to you? Being purposeful. Being proactive.

If you aren’t using your strengths on a regular basis, if you feel drained in the mornings before you go into work, if you stop believing in your mission, if you don’t like spending time with your co-workers, if you feel like your learning has plateaued or you are no longer contributing, it might be a good time to look for a new job. Even this is style of waiting until you are unhappy is less proactive than I’d like to see. At Next Big Sound we do 10 year planning exercises: I bet you’d be surprised how many proactive steps you can take each year, even at your current job, to march steadily towards your imagined future.

The people that are marching steadily forward are the ones I want to follow, push, help, and work alongside.

The Perfect Morning

Good morning! Most of us have a strong sense of what we like; the things that put us in a good mood after we wake up, the things that stress us out, and the routines we like to begin our days. But how concretely do people know what comprises their perfect morning and how often does your day start off in an ideal way?

It wasn’t until I saw a Quora post on the topic that I realized that I could write down my perfect morning and try to live it as frequently as possible. We all calibrate our habits on a regular basis I just don’t know why it took me so long to do this explicitly.

My current morning routine for a weekday morning at 29:

Wake up around 6:30 as the sun streams into our bedroom in my NYC apartment on 28th and 2nd. I read the NYTimes on my iPad for half an hour in bed, I also check my personal email and read Delancy Place - a daily excerpt of an interesting, random non-fiction book. I aim to meditate for 5-10 minutes each morning using the Calm app on my phone. Push-ups (using Perfect Pushup h/t Jason Mendelson) and sit-ups if I’m not going to the gym in the afternoon then jump in the shower. Breakfast of yogurt and berries. Quick email check. Make a cortado for myself and write for 20-30 minutes. Walk into the office around 8:30 or 9am to begin my day.

I also have my ideal work day:

Internal meetings with my team in the morning and hopefully a 1-2 hour block of time before noon to really go on offense and accomplish something big on my list. Healthy lunch at my desk. Back to back 30-60 minute external calls or meetings from 1-5pm. An hour or so to catch up on emails, tasks, etc. Gym for an hour then drinks with other founders, music industry people, friends and dinner around 8:30 or 9pm at home or with whoever I was out with after work.

I’ve experimented with all sorts of workday routines and schedules and settled on one that works really well for me at this point in my life and career. I’ve probably been doing this the last four years on weekdays. My weekends are different and were already nicely written up and published (see Inside a CEO’s Weekend).

What is your ideal morning? How do you know if it’s your ideal morning if you never write it down? Why stop just at morning and write out your perfect day? From there the challenge becomes to revisit it periodically, tweak if necessary, and try to live it as much as possible.

If you’re looking for inspiration I highly recommend you check out the book Daily Rituals. I reached out to the author and met him for coffee one of my trips to LA, he has compiled an awesome book of the routines of luminaries throughout history. There is also http://mymorningroutine.com/ for more modern day inspiration.