I hate the new year...

Honestly, I really don’t like the concept of new year goals.

I see a lot of athletes stress over trying to set the perfect goal:

• I'm gonna lose weight

• I’m going to eat the perfect diet

• I’m going to work out more

But the best time to start is right now. 

For me, my strategy doesn't change because it's the new year. The goal is always just to be the best Elijah Bryant that I can be. It’s why I try to take on the “The Next Play” mentality. This is a big concept in basketball. It helps you work on the right things now so it doesn’t compound into another mistake later. If you’re so focused on the shot you missed, you won’t be able to see the next opportunity, which can lead to another mistake.

Focus on the next play so compounding can work in your favor.

With that being said, I want to share 3 strategies that have helped me to focus on the next play so you can improve faster and not get in your own way of your goals (and you can start using these immediately).

Strategy #1: Remove the Friction

This is all about setting up the systems to maximize your efficiency on and off the court.

For example, if I know that I want to stretch every single morning, then I need to lay out everything the night before. This creates less friction to accomplish the goal of stretching. If I want to eat better, then I'm not gonna buy unhealthy foods, like ice cream or candy and bring it into my home.

That creates friction when it comes time to decide to eat something healthy.

Strategy #2: Reverse Engineering

I'm very big on reverse engineering my goals. Let’s say you want to be an NBA player and play like Jalen Brunson, how would you reverse engineer that?

• What does Jalen Brunson do really well?

• He has great footwork.

• How do you get great footwork?

• Well, you get great footwork by practicing footwork daily.

• What kind of drills do you do daily to get great footwork?

• Probably lots of speed and agility.

• Then practice after practice, you work on that specific movement. 

Everything is about reverse engineering the goal you want and creating the right system around it (I love this stuff).

Strategy #3: Begin with the end in mind

Similar to reversing engineering your goal, you have to know who you want to become. 

Once you understand that, then you can focus on the doing.

What movement patterns or things do you need to do daily to become that person? Set up a consistency chart to hold yourself accountable. Don't judge yourself on how good the move looks in practice now, focus on executing the system, because that is going to get the move to where it needs to be at the end.

In short, this is known as process-driven, not result-driven. It’s consistency over the long run.

And you’ll probably fail at it, and that’s ok!

I think that's the part that we don't teach enough to our young aspiring athletes in sports and in life. The fastest way to success is failure. You need to fail fast to learn but when you fail, you have to put your emotions aside and focus on your system. You have to look at the data, study it, learn from it and iterate.

And remember, don't beat yourself over what you did yesterday.