For “Routine Excellence,” GQ asks creative, successful people about the practices, habits, and routines that get them through their day.

In 2012, the year Bob Myers became General Manager of the Golden State Warriors, the team won 47 games—24 more than the season before—and made the second round of the NBA playoffs, their best finish in 36 years. Then, under his leadership, came a run that has cemented the Warriors (and their trio of stars: Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green) as one of the greatest dynasties in the history of sports: championships in 2015, 2017, 2018, and then again this past 2021-22 season. “I’m thankful we were able to get it done, but I didn’t expect it,” the 47-year-old says. Much of Myers’ successes have been unexpected—walking on to the UCLA basketball team, being appointed GM after just 12 months as an assistant GM, winning another NBA championship after Kevin Durant left for the Brooklyn Nets. Which doesn’t mean his success hasn’t been the result of intentional effort and practice. Here, Myers talks about why having less meetings (and more micro-meetings) is the key to establishing a winning culture, what questions he asks himself when he’s making a big decision, and how to increase your chances of stumbling into good luck.

GQ: Does your day follow a specific pattern or schedule? Do you have activities or practices that are sort of non-negotiable that you must do every day?

Bob Myers: I like to move every day. The degree of movement has changed over the last five or six years as I've been battling hip issues. I used to play basketball quite a bit and that caught up to me. So now I love to walk, bike, and swim. Movement helps me think, helps me release some stress, and I like being outside. There’s no 6 a.m. meditation and 7 a.m. SoulCycle—that's not my thing. I've got such a random schedule with the job, and I really like being available to my three daughters in the morning because the evenings sometimes get consumed with games. But it's more themes than some rigid or arbitrary time. I've learned that being flexible with your schedule is probably healthier.

What are some of your other themes?

I love to have as many conversations as I can in person. I find great value in body language, eye contact, especially when the hard conversations come along. One of my strengths is communicating and building equity in relationships. When I go to work, a lot of it is very organic, with our coach Steve Kerr, with my owner Joe Lacob, or with [Executive Chairman] Peter Guber. Instead of meeting every week at 10 a.m. for a call, it's more that we talk when we don't have to talk. I think that's a good way to communicate: don't wait until a meeting is required. Keep the stream of communication constant, and that way you're meeting all the time. I love micro meetings. I don't know if that's a real term. People are microdosing so I'm micro-meeting.

Oftentimes, when you check in with people, even when we don't have to, you find out about an issue that’s beneath the surface. People ask me why I go to the locker room after we lose, and I don't do it a ton, but I will glance in there—or even after a win—because I try to see, what does someone look like after a win or loss? Most of the time it doesn’t mean anything. But it’s just like how you can find out a lot at Thanksgiving Dinner by just watching and looking at people and how they're navigating that specific dinner. It’s the same in a postgame locker room, good or bad. I find a lot of value in just being available in those moments, but not saying, “Hey, we need to meet at nine o'clock.”

So these micro meetings, are they scheduled, or it's just sort of like, if you need me I'm here?

It’s not that I never meet, but if I see our coach on the elliptical, I could text him and say, let's meet in my office at 1:00. But I go up to him like, can you talk right now? Then we'll talk. Or we’ll see each other in the hall—or I live right near him and he'll drive by on the way home, postgame—and it's like, “What did you think of last night? What's going on with this guy or that guy?” Make your work environment as much as you can like a family or friendship. You don't just reach out to a friend when you need something, you don't just talk to them when their birthdays come along. The more you can build equity organically, the more it matters when you do have to have those meetings.

Also, if you want to add another layer, I think for anybody in a leadership position, having some time to think is valuable. A lot of people do that through meditation. For me, it might be when I’m in my office with the door closed, or watching practice through my window with nothing scheduled. Creating time for nothing has a lot of value. But I think our society doesn't tend to value that very much. We certainly value results, but we're not advocates for creating space to think.

But basketball is so results-oriented, you win or you lose. Can you speak to the ways in which leaving that room for thinking translates into a win?

In basketball, you’ve got to be careful not to become a day trader. If you're a day trader and you have a net gain or net loss, you have to be careful not to overvalue that. Last year, we started out 18-2 and we were world beaters. Then we started slipping. Then we had a period at the end of the season where we were pretty bad and lost a lot of games in a row, and we were not considered any kind of contender, other than to maybe get out of the first round. Some website that had these power rankings from last April preceding the playoffs. We were ranked 8, 9 or 10 with about a week to go in the season. I looked at it as a reminder to be careful of reading too much into that moment in the season, good or bad. Having that space to think is about finding out how much you should weigh this last week, or month. If you get too caught up in that week, that two weeks, you make bad decisions.

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From Steph Curry to Steve Kerr, you’re around people who have really great mindsets. Is there anything you’ve picked up, a piece of wisdom maybe, that you find yourself coming back to?

Recently, I was thinking about, why has Steve won nine rings? Why have Draymond, Steph, Klay won championships? They're all very different guys. What is the common denominator for them? This is going to sound pretty mundane, but they all have winning first in their order of importance. If you take somebody that really wants to win, and is very competitive—and of course don’t overlook the talent component—you’ve got a pretty good shot at something special. In sports, we talk a lot about winning, competing. The truth is that to subscribe to those things and to chase them requires a lot of sacrifice, a lot of failure, a lot of work, a lot of unselfish acts. I can't make somebody care about winning more than they already do.

To take another angle at it, I'd say find people you can lose with. When we lost in 2016 in Game 7 of the NBA Finals at home, I met with Steve that night after the loss, and everybody else the next day. So we're 12 hours removed from a game seven loss at home—in Steve's case, 10 minutes removed. It was the perfect opportunity for people to blame other people, because it was just me in the room. But nobody did that. If you can lose with somebody, you can certainly win with them. You can win with pretty much anybody. It's hard to lose with people, because you really find out the worst side of them.

“Find someone you can lose with” seems like good relationship advice, too… Do you have any mantras you live by?

Discipline's a huge thing in my life. Being disciplined in how you approach things. I think we're a pretty undisciplined society, in how we kind of let each other or ourselves off the hook. I love accountability and discipline. I said I was going to be there, so I'm there. I said I was going to do this, and I'll do it. We try to tell our players to lift weights, to get up extra shots, but if you're not disciplined, there’s not much I, or a coach, can do. I also love owning mistakes. There's such growth and freedom in being like, “I screwed up. So what? Who hasn't?” Being a bit more vulnerable and a bit more open about “maybe I should have done something else,” with your kid, your wife, your coworkers, your players, your coach, our owner. That's where the growth is. Once you start doing it, it's not that hard. It's amazing how many people want to let you off the hook.

When you have to make a big decision, what questions do you ask yourself?

I ask myself, what's the worst thing that can happen out of this decision? I always look at the downside of the decision, because the upside is obvious. The upside is why you're thinking about doing it! If I invest in a startup, am I willing to lose all my money? Is that an acceptable outcome? I don't want to focus on, “Well, if it hits, I’ll make millions of dollars.” It's more, am I okay coming out with nothing? So if we trade a player, are we okay if that player becomes an All-Star? If we trade a draft pick, are we okay if that pick ends up being a top five pick? We have to understand those consequences before we do a deal. There are certain situations where you're so convinced of the groupthink or public narrative that the downside isn't possible, that we don't even explore it. So I spend more time saying, “What if X happens?” Well, that's not going to happen. “What if it did?” That's pretty low odds. “Let's talk about it. Are we okay with that?”

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Do you have a story or an example?

When we traded for Andre Iguodala [in 2013], we had to give up some salary, and we traded two unprotected first round draft picks. That's a big gamble. You don’t see that happen much anymore. But we decided as an ownership group that this player and this opportunity is one where we have to assume the risk. That was a hugely pivotal moment to get a good player like Iguodala. I often talk about that moment as transformational. Up until that point, we hadn't had any free agents want to come to our team. Andre was a pretty big free agent at the time. It was a statement that the Warriors are now at the table. It was worth the risk to do it.

A lot of people want your time and attention. How do you manage emails and texts and things like that? Do you have guardrails around that stuff?

Text messaging has broken down a ton of barriers. Before, if somebody wanted to ask for tickets, they’ve got to pick up the phone, so they’ve got to know me a little bit. It's easy to fire up a text like, "Oh, you got two tickets to the Finals?" I protect my time by the fact that I have three kids and a wife that I really want to spend time with. I value that to the highest degree. I don't golf. I don't have a huge social life. I work and I'm with my family. And I still don't get enough time with them. So I'm really careful with my relationships. Not because I don't like people. There's a ton of people I like. But if I don't have time to be around the people I really like, and I don't feel like I have enough time for my job, it's really hard for me to dedicate time to anything else. I'm not on Twitter. I'm not on Instagram. I'm not on social media. Not because I have a problem with those things. It just doesn't work for me, because that 10-20 minutes of scrolling through Twitter or Instagram could add up to an hour a day, and I'd rather be thinking about my job and my family during that time. So I don't do it because I don't want the temptation to do it. So I'm pretty protective of saying yes to things.

If you could go back 10 years, what’s something you’d spend more time on, and something you’d spend less time on?

I read a lot but I always wish I was reading more. That would be something I'd love to spend more time on. Less time? I have to get better at worrying about low odd outcomes. I worry about them too much. I wouldn't say I'm an anxious person, but I do overthink the 5% stuff as far as, what if this bad thing happened? I'm trying to think if there's anything else that I dedicate too much time to. I don't have a lot. I might swing the other way. I probably should do more stuff. I probably should have more hobbies. I mean, there's not a lot that I have done in the last 10 to 20 years where I go, "I shouldn't have done all that. That was a waste of time." Which is good. But also I'm not the life of the party.

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There's a great story about you running into UCLA coach Steve Lavin, and him telling you to try out for the basketball team. So you did, and you walked on. Some people would say that’s a “lucky” encounter. But luck is also a product of hard work. How do you think about the role of luck in what you do?

[Former UCLA basketball coach John] Wooden said, "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity." I was not recruited by anybody for basketball, and I shouldn't have been. So running into Lavin was lucky. But what wasn't lucky is me saying to him, “I'll try out for the team” and going through the process of getting in shape. Lavin wasn’t like, "Oh, you're on the team now." It was more like, “If you want to condition with us, you can try.” A lot of my buddies pledged fraternities and most people in my life were saying, "Why are you wasting your time? We're out partying, you're not going to make the team, you're not good enough." That’s not to say they were wrong—they were probably right! But I was like, you know what? I'm going to find out. I'm just gonna try as hard as I can. If I make it, great. If I don't, at least I won't regret the effort I put in. Is that lucky? I'm lucky that I'm 6'6 and was raised in the middle class and my parents were great parents. That's totally lucky. There's a ton of things we're all lucky about. But at some point there is part of it that we got to own, good or bad.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Clay Skipper is a Staff Writer at GQ.XInstagramRelated Stories for GQGolden State WarriorsMental HealthNBA