Relentless by Tim S. Grover

How did I end up reading Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable, by Tim S. Grover? This is a question I'll doubtless ask myself in a few months. So here's the short version: Steve Kerr and Warriors mention on Pardon the Interruption podcast to ESPN article on Stephen Curry's injury to Bill Simmons website (not sure how that happened) to Book of Basketball ("how'd I miss that?) to Book of Basketball 2.0 podcast to Amazon search for Book of Basketball audiobook to seeing Unrelentless in the recommendations to finding Relentless on Hoopla app (which always elicits something like a "hoopla!" from me when I find it there first--and free).

Nearly every book I read or audiobook I consume has this kind of origin story, of course, but given the general tenor of this title, I am a little surprised to be here, having finished the book and wanting to at least note what I heard.

The short version: If you want to be Michael Jordan (Grover's first big client) or Kobe Bryant or Dwayne Wade, you have to be relentless. You have to sacrifice comfort, relationships and ego to have a singular focus on winning. Those players? "Cleaners," says the author. To be a cleaner, “you don’t half to love the hard work, you just have to crave the end result.”

Relentless was a strange read for me, as I do love basketball and enjoy business and self-help books that offer insights on living and working. I've read a lot of books in recent years about being a better teammate, being more positive and empathetic, etc. I long ago bought in to the idea that radical candor and a sincere interest in shared success is a better way to spend your days in the workplace. So, a book almost entirely about being selfish, self-isolating and singularly focused? Well, it was a little outside my usual wheelhouse. But hey, I go for that kind of thing on the regular. That's what had me recently reading most of Lena Dunham's memoir, tackling Jordan Peterson's controversial 12 Rules for Life and so on.

That's how I got here. So, with all that said, here's some of what I took away from Grover's book...

Highlights:
Grover says in the introduction that he got a lot of feedback and criticism after publishing the book, much of which centered around the fact that he "doesn’t tell you what to do.“ That is exactly right, he says. “Tell yourself what to do and stop waiting for others to lay it all out.” He summarizes: “Decide. Commit. Act. Succeed. Repeat.“

The authors career was built on an early failure and obstacle. He had multiple injuries while playing basketball at the university of Illinois Chicago. He finally realized that he would not be able to succeed on the court win another player told him “I remember when you were good.“ He rebuilt from that failure and when starting his career wrote letters to all of the Chicago Bulls players except Michael Jordan. He said that this tactic caught him an early lesson. “Don’t think. Do.” As it turned out, Jordan was the Bull who wanted his help and helped start his career.

“Most people are willing to settle for good enough but if you want to be unstoppable those words mean nothing to you. ...Being the best means engineering your life so that you can never stop until you get what you want.“

A cleaner, the alpha, is the person that says: I own this.

"When you’re a cleaner you keep pushing yourself harder when everyone else has had enough. ...To be successful you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable”

“Emotions make you weak.“ Grover writes that this doesn’t mean that anger is necessarily a bad emotion. In fact, he says that anger, if restrained is incredibly powerful. But it must be focused constructively.

For the players he works with, routine is everything. He says he wants them doing the same thing every day no matter the circumstances or pressure. That way, the most stressful of situations begin to feel routine.

Cleaners don’t think, they do. This is a distillation of the headspace he tries to get players into. They don’t analyze or need to amp themselves up. They simply understand what they have to do and do it. They control their emotions and focus on what has to be done. He notes that some of Dwayne Wade's teammates in the NBA Finals couldn’t sleep before a big game. “I don’t wanna hear that,“ writes Grover. Closers need to be the type of people who can control themselves enough to focus on the task at hand.

"Stop thinking. Stop waiting. You already know what to do.“ This is the part of the book where Grover is saying that people buy self-help books over and over again without acting. They need to act and take hold and do the work. He says that the satisfaction from knowing you put in the work will “blow your mind.“

On Michael Jordan: “Funny how the guy with more success and ability than anyone else worked harder than everyone else.” He tells the story that Jordan would get a question from him after every game: "5, 6 or 7?" That would be the time he wanted to work out the next morning, while other players slept.

Jordan made a point of being sharply dressed and always in a clean car when arriving for games; carefully selected his watch and made sure he knew where his sponsors and others were in the stadium that night so he could acknowledge them. The point is that he understood that he was putting on a show and then he could add value off the court as well as on it.

Quotable:

• “Being conventional is for those content to be ordinary. And ordinary is not going to take you to the top.“
• "We are all born relentless and taught to relent."
• “If they hired you to make things happen it’s on you to do it. ...When you’re a cleaner you make decisions, not suggestions.”
• “Your ability to show intelligence and class and self-control separates you from everyone else.“
• Being liked is “a million miles from respect, admiration, trust.”