SWENSDAY STUFF

John Wooden’s Secret
Swen Nater

John Wooden coached at UCLA for 27 years. In that time, he won 10 NCAA championships. That’s better than a one out of three average. During the Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) years, his teams won 47 games in succession, finally being defeated by Elvin Hayes and the University of Houston. During the next years, they won 88 games in a row and 38 straight playoff wins. Volumes have been written to explain how he did it. Is there a secret? I say that there is.

Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. His patent was on a bulb containing a filament that lasted for 40 hours. Sometime after that, while fishing with his bamboo pole, he pulled off a splinter, took it home, carbonized it, and used it as a filament. It lasted for 1,200 hours. Edison was never satisfied with anything he did. He believed everything could be improved. He said,

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.

Albert Einstein
Edison is not alone. Albert Einstein was relentless in his pursuit of answers. He said,

I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.

Grace Hopper
And Einstein is not alone. Grace Hopper, Rear Admiral in the Navy and also a mathematician, helped develop the early computer. She invented the compiler, which designed the programming language, COBOL, making higher-level computer language possible. She said,

The most dangerous phrase in the language is, “We’ve always done it this way.”

John Wooden
The secret to the accomplishments of Edison, Einstein, and Hopper is that they never stopped improving things. This was John Wooden’s secret too. He said,

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

Improve a little every day.

His definition of success implies success is continuous improvement, for as long as you live.

Success is the peace of mind, which is a direct result of the self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.

Every off-season until his last year of coaching, Coach tackled one teaching-related subject and tried to master it. During the season, he constantly questioned whether a drill could be improved. He was also on a quest to live the perfect day saying,

Make each day your masterpiece.

You haven’t lived the perfect day until you have done something for someone without even one thought of receiving anything in return.

In relation to marriage, he said,

You have to work at it, every day.

John Wooden’s success as a basketball coach is astounding but the main reason for it is not really a mystery. He had a distaste and contempt for the status quo. He almost loathed mediocrity. No, he detested “good.” Till the day he died, Coach Wooden was addicted to improvement. This type of disposition creates 10 championships, seven in a row.

Someone might say, “His secret is more than the urge to improve. He used a Cobra-Like full-court press. He had a balanced and attacking offense. He taught the fundamentals like nobody else.” I say: Anyone who religiously practices continuous improvement, day by day, will find the best defense, will find the best offense, and will find the way to teach fundamentals. The person that never stops improving will eventually find everything needed to be great. That’s a promise.

Conclusion
The question then is, how does one become that obsessed with improvement, to the point where he or she itches for “better” every day? I’m not sure that there’s a formula and, if there were, I don’t think it’s very easy. Perhaps that’s why there are few great ones.

To my knowledge Coach Wooden didn’t invent anything, but he was a fantastic improver. Edison is lucky he didn’t ask Coach to check out his light bulb. Coach would have made that filament last for 1,201 hours.

Coach is with the Lord now but I can’t help but wonder if he’s not driving God crazy. He’s probably already installed automatic door openers in the Pearly Gates and upgraded the harp.

I have not failed. I just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
Thomas Edison