Time seems to be nearly everyone's nemesis. It's one thing that waits for no man. It doesn't matter who you are or how much money you have, we are all equal when it comes to time. We all get 24 hours or 86,400 seconds a day to make the most of. How is that going for you?

The fundamentals have been on my mind this week.

Fundamentals of what, Dean?

Anything. Everything. Doesn’t matter.

Let’s take your home for instance. Lately I’ve had a rush of design consults. People inviting me into their homes, hoping that in a couple hours time I can solve what often for years and years they’ve surrendered to as unsolvable issues. Some folks just need a nudge in the right direction, some need a little inspiration, but others are literally at the end of their rope. They’ve had contractors and decorators and architects and other designers on the case and still don’t have what feels like the right answers. So out of desperation they call the guy from the radio. Desperate times indeed.

So I show up, interview the suspects, start snooping around the crime scene like some iconoclastic detective from a good mystery novel and, knock on wood, have yet to refund anyone’s money for failing to crack the case.

But I have a confession to make. I have a secret advantage. I insist on starting with the fundamentals. Yes, there’s creativity and art and gifting—all that intangible stuff—but first there are the fundamentals. I sift every aspect of every home through the filter of the fundamentals of good design and wherever they fall short, that’s what I key in on to begin rebuilding solutions. Because when all else fails get back to the fundamentals.

I don’t know exactly how I got this way or why others don’t insist on the same starting point, but I do understand how easy it is in this life to get distracted and seduced away from the fundamentals.

John Wooden, arguably the greatest basketball coach of all time, pinned all of his success on mastery of the fundamentals. Maybe it’s because I attended his basketball camp when I was a kid. Maybe it’s because I was in the front row when this legend first walked into the gym, sat down on the court, removed his shoes and socks, and proceeded to teach us how to properly roll our socks on and lace our shoes. We were all whispering the same thing, “I thought we were here to learn basketball.” We were. And we did. He did the same thing with elite athletes like Kareem Abdul Jabbar at UCLA. His players wanted to get busy show dogging their skills on the court but John Wooden slowed them down, obsessed over the little things, the most basic things, because he knew that anything built to last will be built upon the fundamentals. And by the way, in his last 12 years at UCLA he won 10 NCAA championships, seven of them in a row.

When all else fails get back to the fundamentals. Whether it’s the basics of good architecture, or good building, or good business, or good basketball, or good marriages, or friendships, or parenting, or diet, or exercise, or kindness or goodness or honesty or decency, or just good ol’ fashioned happiness—when all else fails get back to the fundamentals.

So there’s the secret: It’s the fundamentals that are mostly missing from our homes, our families, and our time. It’s from practicing and mastering the fundamentals that you have your best chance, your best hope, for building yourself beautiful life.

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