What Coaches/Mentors Can Learn from Die with Zero
Coach Rios always saved his most direct, hardest feedback for the end of the season, worried saying it too early would discourage a player before a fair chance to figure things out. One year, a promising athlete quietly quit mid-season, and only afterward did Rios learn the player had been waiting the entire time for someone to tell him honestly what needed to change. By the time Rios delivered his usual talk, the player was gone. Rios had been protecting his own comfort by holding feedback in reserve, telling himself it was patience, when really it was a delay that cost the person who needed it most. What else was he saving for a "right moment" that might never come?
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
The feedback that has an expiration date
Perkins's time-bucket idea translates directly into coaching: a piece of feedback, encouragement, or hard correction is most valuable at the exact moment someone can still act on it, not whenever you finally feel ready to deliver it. Waiting for a "better" moment, more solid evidence, less risk of discouraging someone before they are ready, often means waiting past the exact window where the person still had time and motivation left to change course. The uncomfortable truth worth sitting with here is that saved-up feedback, however well-intentioned, sometimes just arrives far too late to be genuinely useful to anyone at all.
Some feedback needs a calmer moment before it can be heard well.
Identify one piece of feedback you've been holding back, and deliver it this week.
Spending your attention instead of banking it
Coaches and mentors often ration their best attention, saving deep engagement for a chosen few or a "right time" further down the road, similar to how over-savers in Perkins's framework hoard resources instead of deploying them where they would actually matter most right now. The real cost of this caution isn't visible the way overspending is; it shows up quietly as people who never got your full attention when they most needed it from you, and by the time you finally feel ready to give it, they've already moved on to something else entirely or simply given up on you.
Coaches cannot give equal attention to everyone.
Choose one person you've been giving minimal attention to, and give them a real session.
Passing on what you know before the tribute dinner
Perkins's inheritance-timing argument has a very exact coaching parallel: mentors often save their hardest-earned wisdom, connections, and endorsements for a retirement tribute or a farewell letter years down the line, when it could have genuinely shaped someone's path years earlier instead. A young athlete or mentee benefits far more from a real introduction, a warm connection, or an honest assessment given while they still have real time left to use it and act on it than from being praised warmly and generously after the opportunity to actually do something with that praise has already passed them by completely and permanently.
Some wisdom only becomes credible once a mentee has enough experience to receive it.
Identify one piece of hard-earned knowledge to pass on now, not at a farewell.
Coaching for the long game, not just the moment
None of this means abandoning patience or long-term development plans for the sake of urgency alone. Growth genuinely takes time, and rushing every single lesson to "matter now" can actually overwhelm the person you're trying to help. The useful shift is distinguishing between patience that respects someone's real, individual pace and delay that simply protects you from a hard conversation.
Timing feedback for maximum impact can conflict directly with giving someone the patience and space real development genuinely requires, and coaches feel this daily. Deliver every hard truth immediately and you risk overwhelming someone who needed room to grow at their own pace; wait too long for the perfect moment and the window for change closes entirely. Holding both means checking in regularly on where a specific person actually is, rather than defaulting to either constant intervention or indefinite patience.
Name one thing, honestly
- What feedback am I holding back that someone needs while they can use it? - What am I saving for a "right moment" that may never arrive?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Identify one piece of hard-earned knowledge to pass on now, not at a farewell.