Constraints, Experiments, and Edits
String Music: A Newsletter from Dr. Hunter Taylor
Constraints
My father is obsessive about his job.
If you know him, you’re chuckling to yourself, and maybe even muttering, “Ya think???”
He’s been this way for more than fifty years.
I still see him dissecting schemes from teams on television, pausing and rewinding to isolate a single concept. I see him driving multiple hours just to sit across from another coach who is the architect of some small element of the game he’s wondering might fit his team.
With the exception of a few years, most of his career has been spent coaching high school football. More than forty of those years were in Texas.
I’ve seen him coach teams loaded with talent.
I’ve also seen him coach rosters without a hint of athleticism.
But he never ran from either situation.
In fact, he loved the constraints.
What his team could do.
What it couldn’t do.
What had to be protected.
What had to be avoided.
Those constraints didn’t limit him - they focused him.
They forced creativity. And that creativity sometimes produced a severe advantage. Other times, it simply produced hope for the coming Friday night.
Both mattered.
Experiments
He’s also never been interested in running the same thing every year.
It’s boring.
And worse, it’s dishonest to the roster.
When you’ve spent decades doing something, you develop an eye for patterns. He can casually watch a game and pick up a wrinkle most people miss. Not because he’s trying to copy it wholesale, but because he’s asking a better question:
Could this work for us?
Sometimes the answer was yes.
Sometimes it was no.
And sometimes it was not yet.
So he experimented.
Adjusted splits.
Moved personnel.
Tweaked tempo.
Changed emphasis.
Never for novelty’s sake. Always in service of the players he had.
The experiment wasn’t the point.
Learning was.
Edits
What separated him, though, wasn’t just curiosity.
It was editing.
He was ruthless about it.
And not just on the front end.
Most people are willing to edit in the offseason or preseason before the games count. He did it in Week 8. Week 9. Even Week 10.
When the stakes were higher.
When habits were harder to break.
When most people were protecting their systems instead of questioning them.
If something didn’t work, it didn’t survive sentimentality.
If it worked once but stopped fitting, it was removed.
If it consistently gave his players confidence or clarity, it stayed and got reinforced.
He edited plays.
He edited drills.
He edited roles.
And over time, his system got simpler, and his players always got better.
More honest.
More durable.
More theirs.
The Leadership Lesson
Watching him has shaped how I’m trying to work now.
Name the constraints instead of resenting them.
Run experiments instead of sitting in routines.
Edit ruthlessly. Cut what drains, and double down on what works.
That rhythm doesn’t just apply to football.
It applies to leadership.
To writing.
To building things meant to last.
Most breakthroughs don’t come from freedom.
They come from someone willing to stay inside the lines long enough to make something beautiful.
Your Challenge
Take an honest look at where you are right now, not where you started.
Name one constraint you’ve been resisting.
Run one small experiment within it.
Then make one late-season edit.
Cut something that no longer fits.
Change something that’s lost its edge.
Double down on something that’s quietly working.
Do it this week.
Not in the offseason.
That’s where real leadership shows up.
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