19 March 1995. Michael Jordan returned from his first retirement, after he went to baseball for 17 months. His first game back, he took 28 shots. 7 went in. ---- **The Comeback** He came back and he'd lacked the conditioning, because his body was now conditioned to baseball. His team had changed. Horace Grant had left. There were new people on the team: Toni Kukoč, Luc Longley, Steve Kerr. His performance had dropped. But that didn't stop him from taking roughly a similar amount of shots. (Basketball Reference) He kept working on the game that he knew how he could play, but his conditioning wasn't there, and that wasn't going to change by taking any less shots. He still needed to keep up his repetitions. He wasn't scared of failing. He had this deep desire to win. And in order to win, you've got to go through the repetitions of failure to improve. ---- **The Work** Then they got knocked out by the Orlando Magic. He told Tim Grover he'd see him tomorrow, and starts working out whilst he's filming Space Jam. Warner Brothers set up the Jordan Dome, and so he's got a weight room, a full gym, a basketball court, and pickup games going on and on, and he's just working. They came back and they won another three in a row. ---- **What's the point?** "Why would I think about missing a shot I haven't taken yet?" (Jordan, as Mark Vancil recalls it in The Last Dance) People complain about the algorithm. People complain about not getting leads. People complain about how social is changing. People complain about AI slop. But if you think about it, the world that Michael Jordan came back into had changed. When you complain about the environment and you're not putting in the work, and you're worried about the shots that you're going to miss, you're missing opportunities regardless. This graphic idea, ironically, has been sitting in my Notion board for almost 2 years. At the time I was worried whether this would be well received or not. I've come and gone about content creation, but the funny thing is content for me is the tool and the proxy to understand the algorithm and how to use AI. I don't even know if tool is the right word. This image was created using ChatGPT. Worrying about the missed shot before you've even taken it just seems stupid. You're better off posting something and getting one impression or zero than not posting, because you're 100% going to get zero from not posting. If you never even got on the content bandwagon when it all started to happen, around late 2022, what have you missed? You have missed this whole opportunity to learn how to use generative AI. Social is no longer just posting and ghosting. It's actually a channel to connect with people. And if you've missed that because you're sitting on the sidelines commenting on how sh!t things are, pull your head out and get in the game.