the importance of routines

Being inflexible about routines…

“He builds his days around a series of inflexible routines: calls to his parents, a designated parking spot, morning shooting on Court 3. He expects every room to be neat and clean, at work and at home.”

from westbrook story (NYT Mag):

“In the swirling cloud of contradiction that surrounds Westbrook, one paradox stands out. He often looks, on the court, like a force of pure chaos: a wild, petulant, fire-breathing hothead. And yet he is also, especially in his personal life, relentlessly devoted to order and control. He builds his days around a series of inflexible routines: calls to his parents, a designated parking spot, morning shooting on Court 3. He expects every room to be neat and clean, at work and at home.

Before games, Westbrook always eats a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and it must be prepared just so: bread cut on a diagonal, fillings spread very thin. (In Oklahoma, the team chefs know exactly how to do it, but on the road Westbrook can’t trust anyone, so he makes it himself.) Three hours before tipoff, Westbrook warms up; at T-minus-60 minutes he goes to chapel. When the pregame countdown clock hits precisely 6:17 — never a second more or less — Westbrook leaps off the Thunder’s bench and screams, “Two lines,” initiating the team’s final layup drill. I asked Westbrook if there was some kind of numerology behind this — a June 17 birthday, a favorite Bible verse. “No particular reason,” he said. “I just do it. Nothing special.”

Westbrook is unbelievably attuned to the tiniest details of his shoes. He has his own personal rack at the practice facility. “Most guys, I can just bring a pair of shoes,” the Thunder’s equipment manager, Wilson Taylor, told me. “Russell wants a certain pair. He knows which are for games, which are for practice. He determines which shoes are coming on a road trip.” When Nike sent Westbrook its latest model, the Jordan 31, he wasn’t happy with the sole flexibility, so he asked the company to build him a special hybrid using the previous model’s sole. Even in that custom shoe, however, the insoles aren’t thick enough for Westbrook, so Taylor replaces each of them by hand.”