Tag: preparation

Getting Into Position

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I play a lot of racquet sports, more so in the last year thanks to COVID-19. Not just squash, which was off limits for about 6 months, but tennis, platform tennis and, most recently, pickleball (which is becoming hugely popular because it’s so easy to learn).

In my forever quest for improvement, I pay a lot of attention to my technique. I even got an inexpensive tripod recently and took some videos of my squash matches…and quickly had an existential crisis when I saw that my strokes don’t look like the pros’. So I fussed a bunch over my backswing, my follow-through, the position of my racquet.

Then I discovered that all those things I’d been worrying about pale in comparison to how I move around the court: when I consistently focus on  just one thing – getting to the right spot with enough time to hit the ball – I play my best squash.

It’s not surprising. After 25 years of playing, I know the strokes well enough. I just need to put myself in a position to consistently do what I know how to do.

In the rest of our lives, “in position” isn’t about footwork, but the same principle applies about setting ourselves up to do our best work.

We do this by being grounded, calm, and focused on the person in front of us.

By centering ourselves with an intention of connection and generosity.

By taking a moment before we start to remind ourselves what we’re passionate about.

By letting go of the voices in our heads shouting about our impending failure before we’ve even begun.

And by, each day, allowing ourselves to be well-rested and centered, by taking care of our physical and emotional well-being outside of work so we can be our best selves at work and at home.

Sure, our skills can improve.

But most of the time what will help the most is setting ourselves up, consistently, to do the great work we already know how to do.

At our best, we are truly phenomenal.

Terrified of success

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

It’s worth reflecting why we systematically under-prepare for things: big speeches, job interviews, presentations to the Board of Directors, asking for a raise.

We’ve heard all the talk about not losing spontaneity, about being in the moment.  Phooey.  All the best jazz musicians – professional improvisers – practice like crazy.

If there is foundational work that you (systematically) don’t do when the stakes are high, that is fear speaking.  Fear of spending time today looking the thing that scares you right in the eye.  Fear of putting in the time now, because when we put in that time we’re making an emotional commitment to a successful outcome.  Fear that if we try our hardest and then fail, we have no excuse – whereas if we wing it, we always have an out.

It’s surprising, ironic and a little sad: we under-invest in our own success not because we’re afraid of failing, but because we’re terrified that we might succeed.

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POSTSCRIPT to yesterday’s post: I was half right (or, if you prefer, half wrong), as Dean Karlan posted the results of his experiment on the Freakanomics blog.  The results are that prior donors who’d given less than $100 to Freedom from Hunger gave 0.9 percentage points LESS when presented with more facts/data; those who’d given  $100 or more gave 3.54 percentage points more.  So more facts made some donors give more, and some give less.  Dean shares an interesting observation in the post: “Freedom from Hunger is known amongst its supporters and those in the microfinance world as being more focused on using evidence and research to guide their programs.”  So these donors might be some of the most likely to be interested in evidence, and it still was a coin flip on whether more data resulted in more or fewer donations.