How can I manage my career?
Key Learnings
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Setting a clear and precise objective helps you to concentrate your efforts and gets you heading in the right direction.
Divide your goals by time slots: (a) lifetime goals; (b) career goals; (c) season goals.
By making better use of your time, you can achieve your goals much more easily.
Prioritise tasks based on importance and urgency and remove non-essential activities.
Making good choices is crucial for success as much of your earning potential is related to your reputation on and off-the-court.
Only use the advice of others to inform your decision-making process – don’t rely on it as the sole basis for your final decision. You are ultimately responsible for the decisions you make.
Networking is the art of building alliances and can help you get a job, find a sponsor, make new friends, get new ideas, etc.
Preparing for your professional life after basketball is just as important as your current career on-the-court.
During your basketball career, you can invest in your development through part-time education.

Stop wasting your time

We all get the same 24 hours per day. Since time is a limited resource you cannot afford to waste it. The following framework will help you identify your timewasters:

  • Step 1Understand when you are wasting your time
    Analyse your days and find patterns when you are wasting your time. Th
    is can take different forms and it will depend on each player. These could be moments when you scroll through social media or when you watch YouTube videos or TV without paying attention. These might be important things for you to keep. The important part is to understand when you are doing them in a passive way without gaining anything in exchange.
  • Step 2Understand where you are wasting your time
    Analyse your days and find situations where you are wasting your time. It can be while travelling with your team (at the airport, train, or bus), in the doctor’s waiting room, etc.
  • Step 3Think about what things you could be doing instead of being wasting your time
    Analyse each situation and think of things that you could be doing that would be more productive. Sometimes this takes the form of short actions that would free you from doing them at a different moment. For example, you could use the time in the plane to study, to read the news, or to use your social media. This will free your time at home to do other things.
  • Step 4Set implementation intentions
    Implementation intentions is a very effective technique to stop wasting time. It links a specific situation with a goal-directed action. It takes the form of “If situation X happens, then I will perform behaviour Y.” When event X happens, it will trigger a mental alert that you can easily identify to apply changes.

Here are some examples:

  • If I find myself scrolling down Instagram, then I will stop and read a book.
  • If I am in a 2h flight, then I will study my degree.
  • If I am waiting for my appointment at the doctor, then I will call my mother.
     
  • Step 5Evaluate your progress
    Recording your patterns and analysing the evolution of your behaviour will be critical. Also consider the effectiveness of your implementation intentions. Update them if they are not specific enough or if they were not successful for any reason. Think about new situations where and when you are wasting time and create new implementation intentions.

It will be very important for you to schedule times to reflect. Reflection is concerned with consciously looking at and thinking about our experiences, actions, feelings, and responses, and then interpreting or analysing them in order to learn from them. We use this moment to consider deeply something that we might not otherwise have given much thought to.

There are many ways of reflection. It can be quietly before going to bed, or through a reflective journal where you would write and monitor your thoughts and actions. Try to find the way that fits you best and schedule reflection time into your week. Through reflection, you will not only identify your timewasters, you will also become more aware of your emotional responses (self-awareness). It can be seen as a waste of time at the beginning. However, the more you practice it, the more it will pay off and help you monitoring and evaluating your progress.