Get Your Shots Up.

Accountability, Consistency and Repetition when it comes to your clothes.

10,000 hours. That is the time determined to master a skill. 416 days. 24,960 minutes. 1,497,600 seconds. Would you commit yourself to that timeline?

When I played college basketball, the emphasis was always “getting shots up”. Any free second in my class blocks, I was going to the gym. Working on free throws when legs can give no more. Making, not just shooting, 100 dribble pull ups. 25 left handed lay-ups in a row, at full throttle. If I had a sliver of time, I had an opportunity to get better. To a regular person, this sounds like insanity. To a master, this sounds like the bare minimum.

What did we lose in the age of impatience disguised as efficiency?

Our current state of the world is in one autonomous bubble. If there was a machine to wash our ass for us, we would sign up. Speed is the new indicator of success but it is also the first indicator of rapid decline. No foundations are built, no preparations have been made. With multitudes of access and information at the swipe of the thumb, we warped our perspective on process.

Clothing and style are not much different from sport. They both have the same guiding principles of creativity, fundamentals, and a willingness to show up every single rep. The beautiful sculpture of success of an individual trumps the unseen hours of constant hacking away at the marble. What is done for 1,000 hours receives praise for 1 minute.

Reps allow you to reap the reward.

One of my favorite dressers is an Italian man named Alessandro Squarzi. If there was a picture in the dictionary next to the word “consistent”, he’s a first ballot candidate. One look at his instagram and it almost feels as though he’s copying and pasting the same fit over and over again just with a different background. And essentially, he is. There is a formula to his outfits that feel effortless, slightly nuanced enough and his own. The pieces look simple but on him, he makes it a standout.

Clearly, the man knows his bread and butter.

Newness can be a slow building addiction. Career, clothes, relationships, home, you name it. The looming idea of switching things up can always leave us feeling in a constant state of being undeveloped. As if the cake is half baked. Or the hairstyle is not exactly like our Pinterest inspo, so cut it all off. Or the girl we’ve been on 3 dates with gave us the ick that one time, so she can’t be the one. The ease of moving on can plague us.

With ur wardrobes, you need to get your reps up. Wear the jeans 3, 4 times in a row. Have one winter coat that you rely on constantly. Those shoes you’ve spent your savings on, wear them until they can pay you back. Clothes develop with us. The more reps, the more adaptive they become in our wardrobe. The more you begin to see your style go from costume to signature.

For me, my style has felt the pay off of consistent reps. The countless misses in practice have allowed me to show up on game day feeling cool, calm and collected. I’m not caught off guard. I’m not unconfident. I know I’ve put in the hours.

Have you?