Write it down first

Every player who ever shared a locker room with me had more talent than I did. That's not humility; it's arithmetic. I was an undrafted fullback. The margin I played on was thin, and I knew it.

So I looked for an edge that had nothing to do with the forty-yard dash, and I found one in the least athletic place imaginable: a notebook.

What I wrote

Not feelings, mostly. Observations. How a veteran running back prepared on Thursdays. What our offensive coordinator said before a game that was different from what he said before practice. The exact words a coach used when he was happy with me, so I could do that again. And after every cut — I've written about this — a scouting report on myself.

Over seven seasons that notebook became the most complete record of greatness up close that I'll ever own. It's the reason I could write 4th & Goal fifteen years later with real detail instead of fog. And it's the raw material of every framework I now teach.

Why it matters more now, not less

I get asked about AI in almost every corporate room. Here is my honest answer: the machines are going to do more of our thinking, and that makes your own voice more valuable, not less.

A model can summarise. It can't tell you what you noticed on Thursday, what you were afraid of before the game, or what the coach's tone meant. That's yours — but only if you captured it. An uncaptured insight isn't an asset. It's a memory, and memories degrade.

Success leaves clues. Most of them are gone by Friday if you didn't write them down on Thursday.

The practice

People overcomplicate this. A page a day is a lot; a line a day is enough. If you want a structure, borrow mine:

• Noticed. One thing someone better than you did today.
• Learned. One thing that changed what you believe.
• Next. One thing you'll do differently because of it.

Three lines. Ninety seconds. The compounding is absurd — a year of this and you have a book about your own life that nobody else could have written.

Capture your story. Then build whatever you want on top of it.