Daniel McGinn (@danmcginn) is a senior editor at Harvard Business Review, and the author of Psyched Up: How the Science of Mental Preparation Can Help You Succeed.
“Anxiety is like a tax that takes away from our performance, despite all the practice we have put into preparation in expectation of that performance.” -Daniel McGinn
The Cheat Sheet:
- How elite athletes and professionals deploy techniques to boost confidence, reduce anxiety, and optimize energy in preparation for high performance.
- Why superstition and rituals can actually improve your performance.
- How to combat pre-performance nerves with music and your own personal “highlight reel.”
- How we can learn to reframe and channel the jitters into the juice that makes us move forward that much faster.
- Getting psyched up doesn’t have to cause a scene; it can be a quiet, internal process.
- And so much more…
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We usually think of getting psyched up as something an athlete will do before stepping out into the stadium, arena, or field to physically exert themselves and perform at an optimal level in front of the masses.
But according to Daniel McGinn, author of Psyched Up: How the Science of Mental Preparation Can Help You Succeed, it also works for most endeavors — whether you’re pitching to a VC, arguing to a jury, making a sales call, going on a job interview, or even meeting for a first date. Listen, learn, and enjoy!
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Describing himself as “not a very good” athlete in high school, this was when Psyched Up: How the Science of Mental Preparation Can Help You Succeed author Daniel McGinn first became interested in ways to transform his performance into something more elite.
“I played on the basketball and the football team,” says Daniel, “and we would do all this stuff in the locker room. We had certain songs we would listen to. There were pep talks. There were rituals. It never seemed very scientific to me back then — it seemed like the coaches were just making it up and using amateur psychology. And it was only a few years ago, when I started working at Harvard Business Review, every so often I would see an academic study come across my desk that touched on some of these things — that touched on rituals or touched on how people could get in the right mindset by priming themselves before they performed.
“Once you take a deep dive into this, it turns out there is actually a fair bit of science — even if most of the practitioners don’t really know about it.”
Many of the ways we get psyched up in preparation for whatever it is we do — whether it’s shooting hoops in front of millions or pitching our startup idea to an icy roomful of toothy venture capitalists — are unique to us. Maybe cranking up Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger in the car beforehand works for you, but your friend might find a ritual of twenty brisk pushups more effective for him.
We can’t be expected to be “on” all the time. But being aware of what works to get us psyched up in preparation of life’s big events helps ensure we’re on when it really matters.
“These rituals and the psyching up — it doesn’t need to be super theatrical,” says Daniel. “It doesn’t need to be something where you’re jumping around [and] everyone in the office thinks you’re a crazy person. There are very quiet, very internal, private thought manipulations that you can do to, at the margin, increase your confidence, reduce your anxiety, and get your energy level up. Those are really the three things you’re trying to do when you get psyched up.”
So how can we arrive at a ritual to get psyched up that will work for us? Daniel suggests getting together some form of a personal highlight reel composed of examples detailing our successes. At West Point’s sports psychology center, Daniel observed the school’s lacrosse goalie sitting in an enclosed chamber where music of his choosing was pumped in. A voice came in over the speakers that reminded him of times he really came through for the team — a highlight reel narrated in audio.
He was instructed to listen to this soundtrack every night before going to sleep as well as every morning when he awakened — but especially before games. It put him in a mindset closely informed by times he had performed at his best, which increased his confidence and the chances he could do it again.
Daniel’s method of getting psyched up differs in delivery if not its basic, highlight reel premise.
“The two moments when I’m adding the most value, either for my employer or individually for my career are, number one, when I’m writing, and number two, when I’m speaking publicly about my writing. So before I write, especially if it’s a high-stakes assignment or something that I feel sort of really under the gun about, the thing I do is I pull out a couple of articles that I wrote years ago that I consider my best stuff. And I just take two or three minutes, and I read it and reflect on it for a couple of minutes.
“That really primes me and it makes me recall times when I was super successful at this, and it increases the odds that I’m going to be able to do it again that day.
“For something like this, today, for public speaking with you, I actually go back and listen. I’ve been on NPR, which really edits their programs to make you sound super smooth and super articulate. So before I get on with you today, I’ll listen to one of those and it just makes me think, ‘Wow, I really sounded good in that interview.’ And it puts me in a mindset where I’m going to be a little more focused, a little bit sharper, a little bit able to be better articulate with you.”
Listen to this episode of The Art of Charm in its entirety to learn more about the science behind why observing superstitions in preparation for performance can actually work, how these contiguous relationships form in the first place, why we want to ensure that the rituals we construct to psych us up remain simple, who used to own the keyboard Daniel uses to write, how we can get rid of bad rituals, when pep talks do and do not work, and lots more.
THANKS, DANIEL MCGINN!
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