Breakthrough

CHAPTER 1Warm Up: The Breakthrough Formula

Between playing professional basketball, winning two Guinness World Records, training a few hundred NBA clients, and coaching so many basketball camps across the globe that I've literally lost count, I've earned a reputation as one of the best shooters and shooting coaches in the world. Trust me—I can tell the difference between a good player and a breakthrough performer before we even step on the court. If you want to do differently, you have to prepare differently.

That's something we've all internalized already, right? You stretch your hamstrings before you hit the pavement for a grueling run. You rinse your scuba mask and clear your lungs before you dive into the chilly depths. You lift lighter before you work your way up to your one‐rep max. Before you jump into anything strenuous, you warm up.

Yet when you're hunting intangible, elusive, innovation‐critical breakthroughs, you throw every warm‐up out the window and think they're just going to appear. You jump right into the game and start throwing desperate half‐court Hail Mary heave‐shots before you even lace up your shoes. It's purely accidental if you hit any of them. More often than not, you just end up depleting yourself and your team of all the energy you need to pump into bringing your breakthroughs to life. It's no mystery why the topic of recovery is just as hot in the corporate world as it is in athletics—we're all burning ourselves out.

You don't want to just have breakthroughs; ...