Conditions

​I played four years of college basketball and ended up top 10 all-time at my school in points, rebounds, assists, steals, minutes played, and wins. I’m telling you this partially because there’s an upstart freshmen who might knock me out of the top ten in scoring (I’m currently ninth) and I have to get this in print while I can, and partially to show you how anything difficult is a simple byproduct of conditions.

My life in college was painstakingly designed (by other people) to help me be as good as possible at basketball. On a regular day I’d have a team lift at 6:30am followed by a trip to the trainer for whatever nagging injury I had. Then, I’d have class until 3:00pm. Practice started at 4:30pm, but we all showed up an hour early to get dressed, go to the trainer again, and warm up. After practice, we’d usually watch film until 7:15pm or so, then head to a team dinner.

My jersey was washed and cleaned and put in my locker every day and a bus was scheduled to take me to away games where hotels were booked and hot meals were paid for and put in front of me. If an away game caused me to miss a test, I was given a separate window to take it. If I was struggling in a class, tutors were assigned to help.

Maybe most importantly, the penalty for not showing up was devastating. If I was late to practice my coach would have me sit in a folding chair at half court while my teammates ran sprints around me (having everyone but the person who screwed up run sprints is, by far, the most effective deterrent). If I was late more than a handful of times I’d be kicked off the team and my dream of playing college basketball would be over.

In a job interview after college I remember the interviewee saying something about how much “willpower and discipline” it must’ve taken for me to play college basketball. I went with it because I wanted the job, but I remember thinking it had taken basically none. I’d worked hard to be good enough to play college basketball in the first place, but once I got there I was dumped into a system that required no discipline or willpower whatsoever. Playing basketball was the easier of two choices – the far tougher decision, the one with more consequences, would’ve been to quit.

I barely need to write the rest of the post because you get the point.

If my life was “painstakingly designed and supported by other people to ensure I reached my basketball potential,” your life is painstakingly designed for you to not start a startup. If you don’t work on your idea, you have more time for family/friends/health/sleep. If you don’t work on your idea, not only is it not anyone's job to get you back on track, people close to you might be relieved. They might see your startup as a risk to the life you’re currently living, which they’re probably heavily invested in.

Anything hard is a result of carefully constructed conditions that make it easier to do the hard thing than to not, because, by nature, we’ll ALWAYS choose to not do the hard thing when given the choice.

Relying on willpower just to make time to sit down and work on your idea is unsustainable, zero fun, and saps the willpower you’ll need for the actual work.

Designing a system as complex as my college basketball system from scratch is unrealistic, so, how do you start? What’s something you can do, with my basketball career in mind, to make it easier to work on your idea than to not? What are accountability levers you can use? How can you take the decision of working on your idea out of your hands and make it mandatory?

These are the questions of the day. Get to 'em.