Put your socks on
Hey Reader,
I heard this story and had to share.
John Wooden was the legendary UCLA basketball coach. The dude was so good that his teams won 10 NCAA championships in 12 years. They even had an insane 88-game winning streak.
You know what he showed the new guys how to do on the first practice before he ever let them touch the court?
How to put on their socks.
So basic it’s almost insulting, right?
But he did it because if they didn’t put their socks on correctly… they could get blisters. And if they got blisters… it’d mess up their playing and would hurt the team.
I’ve been thinking about the idea of ‘putting on your socks’ a lot lately Reader.
I’ve made over 1k videos, gotten nearly 2M subs, have 150M+ views, and have more than a decade doing this. You’d think by now I could just sit down and hit record.
I wish.
I still have to nail the thumbnail, write for two hours each morning, and dig for a personal angle to create a good video. Some videos take ten hours. Others are closer to twenty.
And while it gets easier, it never takes less work.
Sure, your relationship gets easier the longer you’re in it, but it still takes the same effort.
And I catch myself forgetting that.
This year alone I’ve rebuilt my studio four different times. Thinking THAT’S the thing that’ll make a difference.
Or I’ll go back and forth with Claude reading 500+ word responses that sound brilliant and do absolutely nothing for me. My eyes hurt so bad I have to put on blue light glasses (lol).
There’s this assumption that once you hit level 10, you’re done with levels 1 through 9. But I’ve learned the only way to get to 10 is to keep running 1 through 9, over and over.
Forever.
Which I think is where a lot of people are today.
You’re never so healthy that you don’t have to work out or eat right.
You’re never so experienced at your job that doing your best doesn’t matter.
You’re never so close with your kid that showing up stops counting.
And you’re never above putting on your socks.
I can’t tell you what yours are because they’re different for everyone. But I can tell you how I find mine.
There’s a handful of things I know that if I do them, I feel amazing and locked in. So anytime I feel off, I just run the list:
✅ check
✅ check
❌ (!)
For me it’s:
- 10k steps
- 7 hr of sleep
- Drumming 3 x week
- Journaling
See how unglamorous that list is?
The irony is we’ll do deep inner work and journal on our shadow (all genuinely good), and skip the seven hours of sleep that would’ve fixed half of what we were journaling about.
So here’s what I’d actually do, Reader.
Write down 3-5 things.
No more than five.
Go for something that keeps you healthy, moves your work, and something you do purely because you like it.
The only rule is they have to be realistic, easy, and ideally something you already like doing. Otherwise this just becomes another list you won’t run when it counts.
Then next time you feel off…
Just check which sock you forgot to put on.
My latest video
This one’s cranking.
Nearly 700k views in under a month (new record). Been having fun doing these whiteboard-style videos. A lot of you said you dig the more organic handwritten style.
Give me 15 minutes, and I’ll eliminate your self-sabotage
My Program
The exact system I use to coach myself, find clarity, and reinvent when life gets messy. If you’ve ever wanted to journal but didn’t know where to start, this is it.
(Also includes my black book of shadow work, plus five other sick bonuses)
Use code “NEWSLETTER30” for 30% off.
See you saturday,
Clark “put his socks on today” Kegley
