Next Play
Improve Team Performance, Productivity, and Fulfillment
By Alan Stein Jr.
Category: Productivity | Reading Duration: 19 min | Rating: 4.8/5 (32 ratings)
About the Book
Next Play (2025) introduces a simple mindset shift for personal and professional growth: what just happened matters less than what you’re doing right now. It presents practical strategies across seven key areas – from building self-awareness and developing an abundance mindset to mastering basics and strengthening relationships. Rather than chasing external achievements, it shows how fulfillment comes from making intentional daily choices.
Who Should Read This?
- People who know what to do but can’t break old patterns
- High achievers feeling empty despite their external success
- Anyone ready to stop overthinking and start taking action
What’s in it for me? Make your next play your best play yet.
As a basketball performance coach, Alan Stein has worked with some of the world’s top athletes. Along the way, he discovered a simple philosophy that changed everything: the Next Play mindset. In short, what you’ve just done isn’t nearly as important as what you’re doing right now. The most important moment is always the next one.
Stein first witnessed this in action at DeMatha Catholic High School. When star player Quinn Cook transferred unexpectedly, everyone expected disaster. Instead, coach Mike Jones focused on the next play – preparing another player to step up – and the team still had a great season. This philosophy applies to everything, from major career decisions to minor daily frustrations.
It frees you from dwelling on past mistakes and keeps you focused on the present moment, where real change happens. That’s where this Blink comes in. You’ll learn how to build self-awareness, develop an abundance mindset, create your vision, master the basics, take meaningful action, bounce back from setbacks, and strengthen your relationships. Each insight comes with practical steps you can apply immediately.
Chapter 1: You need to know yourself before you can change yourself
Ask yourself this question: Who am I really? Not who you think you should be, not who others expect you to be, but who you actually are right now. Understanding yourself is the first step to growth. After all, you can’t improve what you don’t know.
Start by examining how you handle your emotions. Tim Duncan, one of basketball’s greatest players, rarely showed emotion on the court. He understood something essential: emotions should inform you, not control you. When you feel anger or frustration, acknowledge it, dig deeper to find the root cause, then pause before responding. That 90-second window between feeling and reacting can change everything. When your emotions surge, try counting to three before you respond.
The way you talk to yourself shapes your entire experience. Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, calls negative self-talk the number-one barrier to success. When you catch yourself saying “I’m not good at this,” stop. That’s not the truth – it’s just a story you’ve told yourself so many times it feels real. Speak to yourself the way you’d speak to someone you love. Track your self-talk for one day and notice the patterns.
Don’t confuse your truth with the truth. Everyone sees situations through their unique lens, shaped by their experiences. This means two people can witness the same event and walk away with completely different interpretations. Neither is wrong – they’re just seeing it from different angles. Also, you can’t spot all your blind spots alone. You need others who care enough to tell you what you can’t see.
Surround yourself with people who’ll point out what you’re missing. Self-awareness means understanding that you’re always in the process of becoming – there’s no finish line where you finally “arrive. ” In other words, self-awareness isn’t a destination. It’s a practice you return to every day.
Chapter 2: Your mindset determines your reality
Alan Stein spent years chasing external validation – likes, achievements, applause. He needed that hit of dopamine to feel good, but each high faded quickly. Eventually, he realized no amount of external praise could fill what was broken inside. External circumstances can’t fix internal voids.
When you chase promotions, perfect relationships, or social media validation to feel worthy, you’re building on sand. Real change starts when you look inward instead of outward. You’re not rejecting recognition completely, but you stop needing it to feel complete. Consider your mindset. It operates on two frequencies: scarcity and abundance. Scarcity whispers that there’s never enough – not enough opportunities or success to go around.
It keeps you fearful and stuck. On the other hand, abundance recognizes there’s more than enough for everyone. When something doesn’t work out, don’t think of it as failure; see it as feedback pointing you in a better direction. A shift in mindset won’t happen overnight. Build it through small daily choices. Here’s a startling truth: you’re already enough.
Not after you achieve a goal, not when you finally earn that title, but right now. Society conditions us to believe we have to become someone through achievement, but comparison steals our peace. A newborn baby doesn’t accomplish anything, yet every parent sees their child as perfect and whole. What changed between then and now? Only your perception of yourself. Choose one area where you feel insufficient and brainstorm growth possibilities there.
Stein learned about gratitude when he considered the perspective of a blind woman he observed with a smile on her face. Gratitude resets your system by shifting focus from what’s missing to what’s present. Try taking 20 minutes now to list facts that contradict your limiting thoughts. Make it a habit to name three new things you’re grateful for each day.
Chapter 3: Vision guides every decision you make
Goals feel concrete – lose 20 pounds, earn six figures, make the team. But goals focus on destinations, and destinations are often disappointing. What happens after you reach the summit? You either set another goal or feel empty because the achievement didn’t fill you the way you expected.
Your North Star is different. It’s not what you want to achieve but who you want to become. Think of it like a GPS: you need to know where you are now and where you’re headed. That vision will shift as you grow – who you aspire to be at 30 differs from 50 – but it always guides your daily choices. Focus on the person you’re becoming, not just the accomplishments you’re collecting. Once you know who you want to become, establish the core values required to become that person.
These aren’t aspirational words on a wall; they’re decision-making filters for every choice you face. What you choose not to do determines what you’re able to accomplish. When Stein compromised his values early in his career, he learned a hard lesson: even when consequences aren’t immediate, they’ll eventually surface without fail. Values become real through standards – the measurable, daily actions you hold yourself to. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz stepped down in 2000, then returned in 2008 after the company’s standards had slipped. He knew that before you achieve anything extraordinary, you must first set extraordinary standards.
There’s no standing still. You’re either growing or declining, improving or deteriorating. Standards have to be maintained every single day, not just when you feel motivated. Your calendar, bookshelf, spending, and daily choices reveal your true priorities. If they don’t align with your vision, you’re fooling yourself. So write down your top three core values and post them where you’ll see them.
Review last week’s calendar to identify any activities that are misaligned with your vision. Create a list of habits that don’t serve your future self. And finally, imagine yourself ten years ahead living your ideal life – describe what you’re doing, who you’re with, and how you’re spending your days.
Chapter 4: Master the basics that everyone else skips
In 2007, Stein watched eight-time NBA All-Star Kobe Bryant practice. But Kobe wasn’t working on advanced techniques or secret moves. He was drilling basic footwork – the kind taught to middle school players. When asked why, Kobe smiled: “Because I never get bored with the basics.
” Stein had spent years searching for secrets on the mountaintop, convinced that success meant extraordinary things. But the truth is, greatness isn’t found in new techniques. It’s grounded in mastering the basics so completely, they become second nature. Would you want to live in a skyscraper with a shaky foundation? The basics create the foundation for everything you’ll ever do. Success works like your phone’s operating system.
Just as your phone needs regular updates to function at its best, you need to refine your approach to life. Those updates are often simple, strategic refinements that make specific functions work better. Think of your hardware (physical capabilities, skills, knowledge) and your software (mindset, habits, systems). People tend to complicate things because they hear “eat healthy and move your body every day” and think it can’t be that simple. But it is. What separates high performers from everyone else isn’t knowledge, it’s the implementation.
Society tells us success is advancement: promotions, degrees, accolades. You might be caught in the rat race, always chasing the next benchmark. But that chase is exhausting and leaves you feeling powerless. Real success means constant improvement in terms of becoming who you want to be.
Your happiness depends on circumstances; fulfillment comes from who you become. So choose one skill in your field, and schedule 15 minutes every day to practice it. And for an even bigger change, review one aspect of your life that doesn’t align with your vision – and remove it.
Chapter 5: Action separates dreamers from achievers
At 21, Hamdi Ulukaya had his entire life mapped out in Turkey. Then he was jailed for publishing a newspaper critical of the government. He left for the US with nothing. Years later, he started Chobani yogurt, now worth more than $10 billion.
When asked about his success, he pointed to one principle: he embraced change instead of fearing it. Most people want outcomes without process, destinations without the path that leads there. They say they want to change but keep doing exactly what they’ve always done. If you want your life to shift, you have to shift first. When you view change as small, incremental steps rather than massive leaps, it becomes manageable. Start with baby steps – pick one thing and get really good at it through repetition.
Habits are actions on autopilot. Some help you; some hold you back. The process for building habits is the same whether they serve you or sabotage you – it doesn’t discriminate. Stein excelled in health and fitness but struggled with money. Once he recognized that the same framework could strengthen his financial habits, everything changed. Today his financial habits are ten times stronger than five years ago.
Repetition is the oldest form of skill acquisition on the planet. NBA players don’t just shoot during games – they take hundreds of shots every single day. That same principle applies to any field. You need to go all in. Kobe Bryant showed up to the gym super early the morning after winning the NBA Championship. When asked why, he said discipline isn’t a sacrifice when you’re doing something you love.
Don’t force yourself to suffer through things you hate. If you don’t like running, try hiking or dancing. Finding sustainable ways to make consistent progress is real discipline. Here are a couple of things to try: Choose one thing you’ve been avoiding and set a timer for five minutes – just start. And end your day by identifying your first action for tomorrow.
Chapter 6: Setbacks reveal who you’re capable of becoming
Stop using the word “failure. ” What you call failures are actually setbacks – speed bumps that give you information on how to move forward differently. When you reframe failures as setbacks, something remarkable happens: the paralyzing fear dissolves. Say you set a big target for your business and fell short.
Your old mindset labels it failure, and you doubt yourself. But when you view it as a setback, you ask better questions. What strategies worked? Which ones didn’t? These aren’t failures; they’re feedback loops helping you adjust your approach for next time. Practice reframing one negative situation per day as a learning opportunity.
When faced with difficulty, human instinct is to escape discomfort. But consider the weather in Florida – it can shift from sunny to pouring rain in minutes. Life’s challenges are the same. That is, they’re not permanent. Stein’s breakthrough came when he stopped blaming circumstances and started asking: How was I complicit? What role did I play?
What can I learn? Blaming and complaining give your power away. You become a victim, a puppet to what’s going on around you. Every mistake you’ve made taught you something, so own it completely without deflecting.
Make amends where necessary. Extract the lesson – never let a mistake go to waste! Move forward with new wisdom. The path forward rarely feels clear when you’re facing difficulty, but understanding that you always have a choice in how you respond is one of the greatest gifts.
Chapter 7: Relationships shape the quality of your life
Research shows that isolation and loneliness can be as detrimental to your health as smoking. Even balanced nutrition and regular exercise can’t fully protect you without meaningful human connection. The quality of your relationships directly impacts your fulfillment and even your physical health. You can’t build meaningful relationships without being a good listener.
Listening is more than hearing words – it’s a conscious decision that forms the foundation of human connection. When you choose to listen with genuine presence, you transform every relationship. True listening requires setting aside your agenda and resisting the urge to plan your response while someone else is talking. Approach each conversation with genuine curiosity and an authentic desire to learn. Practice active listening in your next conversation by focusing solely on understanding rather than planning your response. At its core, people-pleasing is a mask for insecurity.
When you don’t believe you’re worthy, you develop compensatory behaviors. With people-pleasing, you think making everyone like you will finally make you feel worthy. But that’s an unattainable goal. You betray yourself trying to make everybody else happy, and external validation will never fill the internal void. People-pleasing is more likely to erode relationships than strengthen them because it’s built on pretending rather than authenticity. Your environment shapes you deeply.
Before you can meaningfully connect with others, you must first establish a strong foundation of self-love and self-awareness. As you grow with greater ambitions or different values, your inner circle may need to expand. You don’t need to abandon old friends, but they’re not stopping you from seeking additional relationships that better align with who you’re becoming. Surround yourself with people who’ve already accomplished what you aspire to achieve. Finally, remember that your next play starts now, not when conditions are perfect. Life will continue to unfold, play by play.
Some will be victories, others will be setbacks. But each one is a chance to learn, grow, and move closer to the person you want to become. Don’t get caught up trying to make the perfect play. Focus instead on making your next play your best play. Look for potential obstacles before they arrive and schedule self-care activities in advance, treating them as nonnegotiable.
Final summary
In this Blink to Next Play by Alan Stein Jr. , you’ve learned that what you’ve just done matters far less than what you’re doing right now. Success isn’t complicated – it’s built on mastering the basics, understanding yourself deeply, and focusing on who you’re becoming rather than what you’re achieving. Your emotions should inform you, not control you – and external validation won’t fill internal voids.
Remember that setbacks are feedback rather than failures, and that your mindset operates on either scarcity or abundance. The choice is yours. To achieve real growth, take small, consistent actions aligned with your core values. Fulfillment will result from who you’re becoming, not what you’ve accomplished.
Your next play starts now. Okay, this play’s complete! If you can, please take the time to leave us a rating – we always appreciate your feedback. See you soon.
About the Author
Alan Stein Jr. is a performance coach and keynote speaker who spent more than 15 years working with elite basketball players, including NBA stars Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and Kobe Bryant. He now delivers strategies from the sports world to major corporations like American Express, Pepsi, and Starbucks. His previous books include Raise Your Game and Sustain Your Game.