Why you aren't improving - A short basketball casestudy

I just came from shooting some hoops at my local basketball court and had an epiphany. I could suddenly score at least double the amount I usually would. More shots were going in that out. I thought I was just on a roll but it kept going. I was amazed. It hit me then that it was a simple shift in mindset, a change of the angle from which I looked at the problem (in my case scoring the basketball). What I now did was I focused solely on putting the ball in the net. I didn't think too much about form, technique, giving perfect spin to the ball, all topics on which I watched dozens of instructional videos. Instead I went in with a new task 'throw that ball into the net' the actual point of the game of basketball. Lo and behold I was scoring and I kept scoring. I EVEN scored several threes which I'd usually just airball.

I realised then that I was too focused on how to score in the easiest, best, most accurate fashion, rather than SCORING which is the whole point of the game. I was trying to be overly technical. I forgot why I watched all those videos, why I practised and tried the tips. I got lost in the details and ultimately it was a handbrake on my progress.

To put things into perspective, I've been playing once a week for about 2 years and have always had a very low scoring percentage. There was incremental improvement over the months but today I skyrocketed. Just by focusing on the actual goal instead of all the minute details that seemed to always make me hit the rim on easy shots. It was incomprehensible to me, I was trying to do all the things just like in the videos, but that was my problem, I was trying to hard to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it, instead of trying to score in the easiest way possible. Who cares if it isn't beautiful, if it goes in that's what counts.

Of Course practising the fundamentals initially played its part, I’m sure I wouldn't have been able to score like today on the first day I ever played, but had I come into every game or practice with the mindset I just realised I’m sure I would be a better shooter than I currently am. By taking away all the pro tips I’ve watched and read on the internet from my mind I was able to focus on putting the ball through the net and it goddamn worked.

The parallel to my shooting dilemma in personal self development is always trying to find the best ways and methods to do something, up to the point where you forget why you're even doing it. Finding better ways and always stalling the actual goal. This often happens when buying self improvement books with the intent to improve but only reading them. Then instead of practising what's in the book and improving, just buying and reading the next book. We give ourselves the impression we're improving but actually we're not getting closer to our goals. We are just finding different ways to get there, like buying 5 maps of a city you're visiting for the first time and then spending the whole day in the hotel analyzing them.

TL;DR -Get out there and do the thing you intended! Work on the goal, don’t keep trying to find more ways to solve it, chose one, preferably the simplest or most logical and stick to it!