DAILY PRACTICES
As an Individual
・Aim for an optimal state of stress and arousal to keep you on your toes, staying involved and productive, without overworking yourself or entering a state of chronic stress.
・Remember that obstacles and tasks are subjective— your personal perception can be a major determinant in how you handle stress and how it affects your performance.
・Make complex tasks simpler by employing chunking techniques, breaking down your actions into smaller, discrete units.
As a Leader
・Find the sweet spot when it comes to your personal levels of stress and that of the group you’re leading.
・The environment that managers and bosses create and cultivate is crucial to employee performance—talk to your employees and colleagues about what works best for them and see how you can incorporate their preferences into the surrounding environment.
・Recognize that there will be Type A and Type B people on your staff, and you will have to motivate them accordingly—the Type A group will likely need help decreasing stress and anxiety while Type B will need some added pressure.
people who thrive on intrinsic motivation at work will be more productive, feel more fulfilled, become better leaders, and, in turn, motivate others. I have seen similar phenomena throughout the athletic teams I have worked with. Of course, earning money is important, but without intrinsic satisfaction, your success will be limited.
As concentration camp survivor and existential psychiatrist and professor Viktor Emil Frankl (1905– 1997) said, it is precisely the subjective meaning you give to things that may provide you with immeasurable powers to cope with extreme difficulties—such as a concentration camp—or more mundane troubles such as stress at work, divorce, or illness. That’s why Nietzsche was right in saying “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger!”
Concentrate on your intrinsic motivation and the rewards will follow.
on December 8, 2016, Chicago Bulls handed San Antonio Spurs its first road loss (95– 91) after a marvelous 13–0 away game start of the season. Spurs coach Gregg Popovich furiously criticized his players’ effort as follows:
I don’t remember playing tonight. No Knute Rockne speeches. It’s your job. If you’re a plumber and you don’t do your job, you don’t get any work. I don’t think a plumber needs a pep talk. A doctor botches operations, and he’s not a doctor anymore. If you’re a basketball player, you come ready. It’s called maturity. It’s your job. Coach Popovich seems to believe that mature, professional NBA players do not need motivational pep talks. But he is in a minority, I assume;
more frequently, this type of overmotivation is still a common mistake in sports, business, education, and at home.
Just as there is a tendency for people to believe that all stress hurts performance, many people think that you can never be too motivated. However, the truth is that supposedly motivational techniques can often have the opposite effect. Just as too much arousal can result in a negative effect on performance, too much motivation can produce the same problems.
It may be surprising, but Ariely and his colleagues found that those people who receive the largest bonuses actually demonstrate the lowest levels of performance.
(Participants who could earn a small bonus or a medium-level bonus, however, did not differ much from each other.) After measuring people’s performance on a wide range of tasks, they concluded that “paying people high bonuses can result in high performance when it comes to simple mechanical tasks, but the opposite can happen when you ask them to use their brains.”
in the case of work that requires cognitive ability, if the incentive levels are too high, a person may become distracted by the reward.
The motivating factor—the additional money—can command too much attention, creating stress and reducing performance. If the incentive is smaller, however, it may help increase the person’s performance.
one major solution to the problem is chunking; the more appropriate chunks you have, the more resistant you become to high levels of motivation. Thus, even when people “use their brain,” success in task-performance is very often just a matter of intensive training and deep practice.
Nonmonetary recognition has also become a popular motivator. It has been reported that public recognition of a job well done may prove more effective than a monetary reward. Not only does recognition increase someone’s status, but it also creates a more social environment, where people can recognize each other’s accomplishments—while those recognized feel that they are performing meaningful work.
in Jose Apesteguia’s and Ignacio Palacios-Huerta’s famous 2010 article “Psychological Pressure in Competitive Environments,” the two economists looked at soccer penalty shootouts where two teams, in alternating order, kicked directly from the 11-meter penalty mark to score a goal.
They collected data from 129 shootouts and found that the first team kicking won 60.5 percent of the cases (78 cases) and the second team only 39.5 percent—despite an assumed a priori winning probability of 50 percent for each team. Apesteguia and Palacios-Huerta argue that this “first mover advantage” results from psychological pressure put on the “second mover.” Simply stated, the second team tended to choke much more under the pressure.
In her 2010 book “Choke”, University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock examines the science behind why we choke under pressure—that is, why we mess up when it matters the most. According to Beilock, choking results from “overthinking,” “paralysis by analysis,” and worries, which inhibit the performance of well-practiced procedures by experts under pressure. In such a case performance is not only poor but rather worse than expected, given what the performer is capable of doing. This happens not only in sport (e.g., when a golfer botches a swing when she or he should have had it in the bag), but also in organizations, when employees compete for promotions (such as when a candidate tanks an interview), or at school, when students compete for grades (e.g., when the smartest students do poorly on a standardized exam). In all these situations, performers “choke under pressure,” says Beilock.
even with the type of positive intrinsic motivation discussed earlier in the chapter, such choking effects are possible—when you’re passionate about what you do, this high degree of personal importance may cause higher levels of pressure under certain circumstances, potentially leading to the dreaded choke. In that case, you are overmotivated! It is, again, the subjective element (i.e., perceived importance) that matters.
For example, consider a very important presentation you may have given in the past that you were sure you had down perfectly in practice, but you bombed on the opening line. Of course, don’t feel so bad—this is more common than you may think. Even if you know the material backward and forward, have your cue cards in hand, and a flawless PowerPoint prepared, it’s possible to flop. Many times such a failure comes from extreme stress, despite any apparent reason to harbor such an intense feeling (don’t forget: you know the material).
Issues arise, however, when you subjectively create a highly stressful situation by pressuring yourself. A major presentation may be important, but if you put too much emphasis on it you will reach a level of stress that is just too high. The question of “How will I look?” is a major motivator in this situation since you want to make a good impression on your colleagues and bosses. You may also hope to gain more social status at work through an extraordinary performance. However, such desires and thoughts are completely irrelevant for successful task performance per se. Moreover, they may distract your attention and concentration from task fulfillment, thereby placing unnecessary pressure on yourself. You need to reconsider the situation—you need to reframe.
An increase in motivation can result in increased performance, but it’s not such a simple equation (for example, it should not be too high). There are numerous types of motivation, both for individuals and groups, and understanding the best way to motivate yourself and your team can be difficult. It is necessary to take into account employees’ and athletes’ intrinsic motivation, which will make them more dedicated and industrious. As an individual, try to do something in your life for which you have intrinsic motivation— simply put, if you can, do something that you love, and you will find more success and happiness.
Overmotivation by coaches and bosses, in which they provide the wrong incentives by motivating the athletes too much, can lead to buckling under pressure and eventual burnout. When bosses misunderstand how to motivate their workforce, they may find their values are out of whack with those of their employees.
One’s psychological ability to reframe the perceived importance of a task or project, and the perceived chances of success, is crucial. Motivation will increase when the perceived significance of the competition increases, along with the uncertainty of the perceived chances of success; however, these two elements can be reframed to optimize motivation. Finding ways to properly motivate yourself and your team will help everyone involved overcome choking, not only responding better to motivation tactics, but also in reframing the situation to help you cope, providing a sense of meaning in your personal life and career.
Ask yourself if what you’re doing is intrinsically rewarding, not “just a paycheck.” If necessary, consider what changes you potentially could make to create a more satisfying career.
Don’t put extra pressure on yourself— when you do so, you subjectively create a highly stressful situation under which you are more likely to choke.
human performance isn’t always all about strength or ability— sometimes all that is necessary is the motivation to reach a clearly defined goal. People may be surprised to find that they can meet or rise above expectations (their own or others) through this process. Thinking about my experience in running the IDF drill more than forty-five years later, I believe I may have succeeded in this task because I actually followed advice offered by good old Aristotle, who said, “First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends. Third, adjust all your means to that end.”
On flows the river ceaselessly, nor does its water ever stay the same. The bubbles that float upon its pools now disappear, now form anew, but never endure long. And so it is with people in this world, and with their dwellings.
In our dazzling capital the houses of high and low crowd the streets, a jostling throng of roof and tile, and have done so down the generations – yet ask if this is truly so and you discover that almost no house has been there from of old. Some burned down last year and this year were rebuilt. Others were once grand mansions, gone to ruin, where now small houses stand.
And it is the same with those that live in them. The places remain, as full of people as ever, but of those one saw there once now only one or two in twenty or thirty still survive. Death in the morning, at evening another birth – this is the way of things, no different from the bubbles on the stream.
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror;
24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
26 If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless.
彼の言うことは正しいと思います。常にインスピレーションの源は内部にあります
sooner or later, one way or another - everything will work out for us
