Steph Curry’s 500 Shots and Salesforce Practice Rituals

Steph Curry is an NBA player, widely regarded as one of the best 3-point shooters to ever play basketball.

I saw a clip on social media this week of Tony Robbins talking about Steph Curry's shooting skills.

Tony Robbins on Practicing

Tony describes how Steph practices.

Its simple: He makes 500 shots every day.

Tallied up that's 3500 shots per week. 168,000 per year. And 2.52 million shots over the 15 years Steph's been in the NBA.

That's a lot of time shooting a basketball. And the results show up in Steph's results. He's legendary.

Similar stories about other "greats" practicing in their field come out fairly often, like Stephen King writing for 4 hours every day.

It's easy to think, "Well if I had money like Steph Curry or Stephen King of course I'd shoot 500 shots a day or write for four hours."

I think that distorts cause and effect.

Does Steph have the chance to shoot 500 shots a day because he already won all those championships?

Or did Steph Curry win all those championships because he shoots 500 shots a day?

The real masters in their fields practice the fundamentals relentlessly.

And there is a lesson in there for us as Salesforce professionals.

We need to practice.

How can we practice the "fundamentals of Salesforce"?

I can think of a few ways:

1. Get Trailhead badges
2. Take Online Salesforce Courses
3. Skim through each season's release notes
4. Review Salesforce Documentation
5. Write 1 formula, or 1 piece of a code, or build 1 flow per day

There are likely many more.

And I have to admit, I'm writing this as a reminder for myself.

When I look back at my previous month, I know I must do better in this area.

The knowledge frontier is always moving forward. If we're not moving forward too, then we're being left behind.

Which leads to a second area of practice: your multi-disciplinary knowledge.

Beyond Salesforce knowledge, do you know the "big ideas" from different academic and professional disciplines?

Are you learning the big mental models from other professional territories?

We can build this knowledge through reading, watching videos, or listening to podcasts.

• Economics - Do you know what opportunity cost is?
• Engineering - Do you know what a margin of safety is?
• Math - Can you calculate expected value using the basic math of permutations and combinations?
• Psychology - Do you know some of the common psychological biases like incentive-caused bias, reciprocity tendency, and social proof tendency?

To paraphrase Charlie Munger, if "A" is narrow professional Salesforce doctrine, and "B" are the big extra useful mental models from other professional disciplines, the possessor of A + B will surely be better off than the possessor of A alone.

How could it be otherwise?

Steph Curry boils it down to 500 shots a day.

Maybe we should all set a similar goal for ourselves.

• Get 1 Trailhead badge a day
• 20 minutes of Salesforce reading or non-fiction reading a day
• 1 Udemy course a month
• 1 Certification per quarter
• Build 1 flow per day (even if your rebuilding a flow you know how to build already)

The key idea here is to practice your craft everyday in the way you think best for you.

So that we can, in the words of George Clason, "cultivate your own powers, to study and become wiser, to become more skillful, to so act as to respect yourself."

So, tell me, what did I miss?

What are the Salesforce fundamentals you practice that have given you good results?

Let me know!