Possibly the two most important inputs for success over a long period of time. This excerpt from a recent ESPN article on Saban with old coaches talking about working him was really good.

“He’s the epitome of an elite CEO, and one of the greatest things you learn from him is that he has a relentless attack on human nature because his belief in upholding the standards of an organization is as prioritized as it can be,” Cristobal said. “He made it very clear to us that once you don’t hold people to that elite standard, an entire organization could fall to pieces. He made sure he kept us on edge, and he challenged us all the time.”

Saban never deviated from his core beliefs, but he was continuously self-scouting, tinkering and trying to gain an edge.

“I appreciated the level of detail, the competitive spirit, the constant search for improvement and the ability to be flexible and to always be evaluating things and trying to get better and staying ahead of the curve and thinking outside the box,” Napier said. “You don’t do what he’s done unless you’re just a little bit different.”

Dantonio, elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in January, coached defensive backs under Saban at Michigan State.

“He always talked about two things: consistency and performance,” Dantonio said. “He’s been consistent throughout, and he’s built something that lasts. That’s his legacy, and I think that’s what everybody wants to do. I can still hear Nick saying something that stayed with me throughout my coaching career: ‘If you’re not coaching it, you’re letting it happen.’ There’s nothing he didn’t coach.”

ESPN

This is so unbelievably good. I hope our kids internalize it. I hope we live it out. I would add to “live slowly enough,” “live clutter-free enough …”

J.I. Packer: "Live slowly enough to be able to think deeply about God."

— Dustin Messer (@dustinwmesser) January 26, 2024

This is really good.

MKBHD on how running your own business almost necessarily means moving away from time spent doing the thing you fell in love with originally, which is what led to the business getting created.

This recent short, throwaway post on the Rams caught my eye. I think we sometimes view sport as binary. Championships are a 1, everything else is a 0. But that doesn’t leave room for the experience of competing and what that can do to a person, how it can change you and your entire worldview.

The communal nature of overcoming our own obstacles gets lost in the overwhelming “second is the first loser” attitude that America has perpetuated. But man, overcoming our own obstacles — especially among a group — is certainly worthy of celebration.

After a 3-6 start to the 2023 season and injuries to quarterback Matthew Stafford and running back Kyren Williams, it looked like the Rams were headed down the same path. Instead, Los Angeles won seven of its last eight games of the season to clinch the No. 6 seed in the NFC.

“I’m so proud of this football team,” McVay said. “And the finality of it is still kind of … it doesn’t totally resonate. But man did I learn a lot and really appreciate this group. They helped me find my way again and how much I love this and love the people that I’m around.”

ESPN

I read this post by James Clear recently about motion vs. action, and I was compelled by this part. I felt myself physically react to it.

If motion doesn’t lead to results, why do we do it? Sometimes we do it because we actually need to plan or learn more. But more often than not, we do it because motion allows us to feel like we’re making progress without running the risk of failure. Most of us are experts at avoiding criticism. It doesn’t feel good to fail or to be judged publicly, so we tend to avoid situations where that might happen. And that’s the biggest reason why you slip into motion rather than taking action: you want to delay failure.

-James Clear

I have noticed this about myself recently. That I am so much more present when I am blissfully unaware of what’s happening online or somewhere else in the world. On the surface, it seems as if you’re only spending 2 minutes on Twitter, but if there’s something big that happened, the reality is that you’re probably thinking about it for the next 2 hours. I’d rather just not know and let my attention be present where it is.

Guard your attention as a precious resource.

Prioritize tasks, set boundaries, and allocate specific times for work and leisure.

Protecting your attention ensures that the time you have remains valuable.

— Fedon | Self-Coaching (@myselfcoaching1) January 17, 2024

This quote by Oliver Burkeman (via Blake Burge) is quite a dagger.

The more firmly you believe it ought to be possible to find time for everything, the less pressure you’ll feel to ask whether any given activity is the best use for a portion of your time.

This is quite true and also one of the reasons we get our lives twisted into total knots when it comes to pace and rhythm. It is, I believe, a worthy thing to push back against.

My takeaway from this great post on momentum was not the importance of momentum to your business but rather the importance of sustainability to momentum. Without sustainability, you can’t create momentum, and without momentum, you’re running straight uphill.

The way to get momentum is not to start out with massive action, or the exact direction you should go, but rather the smallest consistent action that’s sustainable for you to do every single day, and in the general direction that you want to go. This is how and why some people burn out: they take too much action, and they do it in a direction that they’re not sure is going to work. Pick a direction that’s large enough for you to play in, but not so large that you don’t know where you’re going.

–Jordan O’Connor

I have done a bad job of collecting recently. Quotes, thoughts, ideas, sentences, words. Hunting and gathering words both helps me learn and fuels my joy. This message board comment (!) I stumbled upon after Michigan’s title game win over Washington is the type of thing I love collecting. Even if it’s just to read it back to myself at some point in the future.

The older that I get, the more I realize it is harder to ‘feel’. Life sucks our passions right out of us. We learn that the joy of committing to something isn’t worth the pain of losing it. At 46, most of my passions seem to have melted into nothingness.

But Michigan football remains. I have to say it’s largely because of MGoBlog. Here it feels okay to care about something, even while we acknowledge that we are rooting for a team, a group of kids that change from year to year, something we have little control of. We acknowledge that we have passions and that it is indeed okay to care, to be human. 

MGoBlog