Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (SGA) is one of the most consistent high-performers on Earth. He has scored over 30 points for the NBA Western Conference’s top seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in 40 games this season and, to underscore how he’s a model of consistency, he has scored exactly 31 points 24 times! While we might not be able to lead a team to the top of the NBA standings, we can be consistent like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. After all, he shared some tips during a recent post-game interview:
Consistency is the quality of being stable and regular in one’s behavior, action, or thought. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander stands out because of his superior ball-handling, speed, and height edge as a point guard. His skill to hit important shots and high basketball IQ also enhance his game. His consistency is the main factor for forming good habits, improving skills, and excelling in his craft.
Here are three ways that we can be consistent like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in our worklife.
Automate routines
We only have a limited amount of willpower to spend every day. Willpower is the mental energy that we use to make decisions, resist temptations, and overcome procrastination. Every time we have to make a choice, we use up some of our willpower.
One way to conserve our willpower and use it for our most important, creative, and/or hardest tasks is to automate our routines. When we put less thought into things we do every day, such as what to wear, what to eat, where and when to sleep, or how to commute, we reduce the number of decisions we have to make, and free up our mental space for more meaningful activities.
Legendary Apple co-founder Steve Jobs allegedly wore the same black turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers every day to avoid wasting time and energy on choosing his outfit, and to focus on his work instead. SGA, however, expresses a lot of his willpower and creativity through fashion (his consistency is more about diet and an impeccable shooting regiment).
When we create and maintain a consistent and predictable schedule this helps us to stay organized, disciplined, and productive.
Be boring
Metronomes are kinda boring. The kind of boring that brings to life consistency. Boring is what allows you to build the habits and routines that unlocks potential.
It is a myth to think that high performance is easy, effortless, or natural when in fact high performance is often boring, tedious, and disciplined. SGA is so consistent with how he practices that he has to find new types of motivation – or new ways to find comfort and inspiration in the flow of his work – to love so much monotonous repetition.
One of my biggest opportunities for growth is to resist the urge to always try something new, different, or innovative (the creative in me would rather launch a new initiative than polish something that exists). A practice that has benefitted our team, though, is summarizing and presenting (on one slide per program or business area) the results and lessons learned from our work. We do this every two months and it is the same thing, over and over again; we will do this until we deeply understand each other’s work, find connections and opportunities for collaboration, and get really good at analyzing and presenting data in plain language. We are getting so good that it I’m feeling a bit bored by the process.
In a good way.
Sustain greatness
A lot of NBA players can score 30 (even 50) points in a single game. Several can hit that number a few times per season. SGA is great because this level of achievement is consistent. His greatness is not a one-time event, but a continuous process. We’ve all had projects go well and probably crushed a presentation or two. It is the consistency to maintain strong relationships, improve technical and human skills, and apply feedback and learning in our craft that enables high performance.
Any successful person, team, or organization that you admire did not become great overnight, or by accident. They became great by consistently doing the right things, over and over again, for a long period of time. Patagonia, for example, is an outdoor apparel brand that has a strong reputation for its environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and ethical business practices. Patagonia is one of the best examples of how a brand can leverage its core values for growth and customer loyalty by aligning its products, messaging, and actions with its brand values. Even Patagonia’s clothing is so consistent that it lasts forever.
High performance is not easy, effortless, or natural. It is challenging, demanding, or deliberate because to make it happen we have to aspire to be consistent like Shai Gilgeous Alexander.
—
Photo courtesy of Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports