One thing per season
For most of us, especially towards the beginning of our career, our skill set usually looks something like this. You are really good at one or two things, you do an adequate if not stellar job at a bunch of things, and you have a nice little group of skills that you are just plain lacking. The aspect you are best at is probably what you got hired for, and got your career going. Often this ends up being what you naturally gravitate to in terms of interest and talent, and it’s the difference between doing something as a hobby or as a profession.
But as the years go by, having that one thing usually isn’t good enough to keep growing professionally (unless you’re the best in the world, in which case, congratulations, I love your work!) This is where Michael Jordan comes in…
Michael Jordan is widely regarded by many as one the best NBA players to have played the game of basketball. But he didn’t start that way. This isn’t to say that Jordan (no one really calls him Michael, right) didn’t have a lot of talent when he entered the league as a scrawny kid. He had skills. MAD skills! But he was known for his ability to drive to the basket and dunk the ball, do some crazy in-air acrobatics, and usually make defenders seem like they just escaped from the retirement home. But he wasn’t thought of as a leader. He wasn’t thought of as a passer, or someone who involved his other teammates. He wasn’t known for his jump shot or his defense. He was known for his core talent, which was so good it got him playing in the NBA. How did he make the jump to becoming such a great all around player?
This is where something I read years ago comes in. Each season Jordan would take one aspect of his game and work on it. Let’s say it was defense. All season, that would be a focus. This doesn’t mean he would neglect his core talent. That wouldn’t happen because it was already an ingrained part of him. But by focusing on one aspect that he wasn’t known for throughout the course of a season, by the end of that period of time, that aspect had usually moved up a level. After a season of just working on defense, he had put so much time and effort in, it became a more natural part of his every day game. The next season, he would pick another aspect, and before long, you get, well, the Michael Jordan we all know.
For me, this was a huge help reading this many years back. While I didn’t work in the structure of an NBA season, I did work within the structure of films. For example, on A Bug’s Life, my goal was to master the computer. I’m not talking about learning code here. Having come from a traditional hand drawn animation background in school, I wanted to get to a place where the computer wasn’t a hindrance to what I wanted to do creatively. I didn’t want to compromise my creative decisions because I didn’t know how to use the tool. For Toy Story 2, my goal was to never let a shot go without it being the best I could make it, period. It may not be the best animated shot in the film, but I would know I poured everything I had into it. For Monsters, Inc, my goal switched to finding a better work/life balance without sacrificing anything (but that’s another post).
The thing is, once you’ve focused on a specific aspect for a set duration, it becomes part of your game. I didn’t forget how to use the computer, or suddenly let subpar shots go out the door just because that wasn’t something I was focusing on for that film. This process is additive. Those aspects were now part of my regular skill set. This is how amazing veterans build up their abilities to get, well, amazing!
None of us are born fully formed with the ability to do everything. There may be that rare case of someone with a natural talent that doesn’t need to be cultivated, but for the majority of the successful people out there, what it boils down to is hard work and a focus on getting better one piece at a time. Doing that year after year is what makes good players truly great.
