Script The Start and End
I’m a huge believer in scripting the beginning and end of anything. Those are the two hardest bits, by far, and leaving them to chance is silly. The beginning and end of a working session, of a customer interview, of a customer's interaction with your website, of your meetings, of your product.
I learned this from my college basketball coach. He’d script our practices down to the second, complete with sporadic one minute and 55 second water breaks (”two minutes is overkill”). The meat of the practice changed every day, but the first seven minutes and the last seven minutes never did.
We’d all arrive at the practice facility an hour or so before practice started so that we could change, get medical treatment, stretch, and get up on the court to shoot around a bit. The scoreboard clock would count down the hour leading up to practice. With one minute left, we’d gather at center court.
Our coach would tell us the practice plan, then repeat the same Tina Turner quote. Every practice. No one knew why Tina Turner or when this started but every practice began with the same eight words:
“Simply the best, better than all the rest.” Next, he’d say “two minutes on the clock, get yourselves ready.”
Then, for two minutes, there was dead silence. On the first day of practice each year he taught us all how to set intentions and center ourselves in a two-minute breathing exercise. We did it to start every practice.
After those two minutes were up, five minutes were put up on the clock for five basic drills we did in pairs. One player did the simple dribbling or shooting drill while the other ran sprints for 30 seconds, then you flipped. Five drills. Five minutes. Everyone drenched by the end. Exact same every day.
Then, practice started.
The last seven minutes were the reverse of the first seven. Sprints and drills with your partner, then two minutes on the clock to reflect on the practice and, in my coach’s words, “put it behind you, good or bad.” Practice ended with that reflection.
Then, we’d gather at center court.
“Simply the best, better than all the rest.”
I asked my coach about this years later. His response — “the meat of practice is really hard, physically and emotionally. Players who’d spent their whole lives playing to get to this point might be told mid-practice that they weren’t on the first team any more because a freshman was better, effectively ending their careers. If I thought conditioning was bad the team might be running sprints for 90 minutes straight until everyone puked. When something is really hard, you need to have a clear beginning and end to it. It’s untenable to have hard things that aren’t boxed in - that’s how people get overwhelmed and shut down. If people know there's a clear end, they can do anything. A routine to prep your body and mind to do something hard, then a routine to tell your body and mind it’s over, is critical.”
I highly recommend scripting the beginning and end of difficult sessions, and potentially all your sessions (especially if you’re working on this thing a few hours a week).
Script the beginning: Maybe it’s two minutes of intention setting, two minutes recognizing that this is all uncomfortable, proactive work, but that’s ok - it’ll be over in an hour or two (or however long you’ve set yourself to work for). Then, play the same song. I listen to this album during every “hard” session and have since ~2014. I listen to it, on average, seven times a week. I hear the first notes and my mind knows what time it is.
Script the end: First, know when you’re going to end, especially if you’re doing something uncomfortable and proactive. Your body and mind won’t work well if you are doing something hard for an unspecified amount of time. Imagine getting on a treadmill and sprinting for “maybe twenty minutes or maybe a couple of hours.” Second, have a shut down sequence. Close the book. Reflect on what you did, don’t judge yourself, and get ready to go after it again. Startups are a marathon made up of little sprints, and most of those sprints won't be world changing. They just need to happen consistently.
You get to choose this script - however you want to start and end will work, as long as it's consistent. It'll be like breaking in a new pair of shoes for a while, but eventually it'll work well. The more you do it, the better worn it’ll be, the easier it’ll be to follow.
What's your script? What'll get you in the mindset to do hard things? How can you set triggers so you're ready to block out the world and do something most people can't for an hour or two?