It’s admittedly hypocritical of me to use the word ‘perfect’ in the title of this post when I’ve written in the past about perfection being overrated.  But the word perfect does actually have a place in personal growth so long as you don’t take it too literally.

True perfection isn’t really the point though.  The big idea is that practicing your craft has to be done with a level of respect for how you’ll perform in reality at all times.  No ifs, ands, or buts.

The only way to achieve your maximum performance potential is to train your body and mind to do so over and over… and over.

Let’s assume for a moment that talent is overrated (just like perfection).  Sure, there are people who are naturally better at certain things than others – they have talent, that’s indisputable – but no one can achieve great heights without lots and lots of practice.  As Malcolm Gladwell said in Outliers, you need 10,000 hours of practice to be great.  Or, really, to even have a chance at being great.

Peter Norvig recognized this pattern as well in “Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years”:

Researchers (Bloom (1985), Bryan & Harter (1899), Hayes (1989), Simmon & Chase (1973)) have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, telegraph operation, painting, piano playing, swimming, tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. The key is deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes. Then repeat. And repeat again.

What does this mean?  Simple.  It means just because you were born with a golden arm doesn’t make you Roger Clemens.  Bad example, I know… but despite his pretty obvious use of performance enhancing drugs, the guy was also a workhorse on the baseball field.  His workouts would mimic the intensity of the game and when on the mound, his movements were like a machine.  He put in his 10,000 hours and then some.

Kobe Bryant is probably somewhere right now shooting free throws.  Derek Jeter is taking batting practice on his off-day.  Steve Ballmer is rehearsing his next keynote.  Tiger Woods… well let’s not go there.  We’ll assume he’s practicing his golf swing or something.  Chefs are cooking, athletes are training, executives are rehearsing, gymnasts are bouncing, and dancers are dancing the world over. 

That’s what they need to do to be the best.

Chances are, they’re not dragging their feet either – they’re really doing it.  Pretending it’s the real thing all the way.  They’re practicing “perfectly”.  That doesn’t mean without flaw, it just means they’re not letting themselves off the hook mentally “just because it’s practice”.

Which brings me back to the core message. Practice may not actually make perfect, but if you aren’t practicing perfectly, you have no shot.  The more you practice the right way, the more you’re creating routine – or “muscle memory” as the coaches call it.  Your brain understands sequence and your nervous system reacts more quickly as the pathways are grooved.  The more this happens, the better you become at the task at hand and the more natural it all becomes to you.

So what happens if your practice becomes lazy?  If you start training yourself to be sloppy, what do you think is going to happen when the time comes to perform under real pressure?  Sloppiness.  Failure.  Failure you could have prevented just by putting forth more effort during practice.  Your brain and body are just reacting how they’ve been trained to.  They way you’ve trained them.

I learned this stuff firsthand during intense martial arts training with some of the best instructors in the world a few years back. If you drop your hands or turn your back during drills, you’ll drop your hands or turn your back during sparring.  We were very deliberate during all of our training to make sure our practice was as realistic as we could make it.  So now, even if I’m just hitting the heavy bag at the local gym, I never drop my hands anymore.

We also ran all sorts of stress drills (lights off, eyes closed, unpredictable situations) to make our training feel real.  If you didn’t get scared, we weren’t doing it right.  This way the "real thing” was just another practice session.

I’ve since applied this “perfect practice” approach to just about everything in my life that requires rehearsal.  If I’m giving a talk, I rehearse it like it’s the real thing.  Start to finish.  I try and get on the actual stage ahead of time and run through it 10 times, forcing myself to continue if I flub something so I can get used to rebounding from it.  It’s going to happen, I might as well be ready for it.

When rehearsing a presentation you can’t just:

• Start over just because you messed something up
• Skip sections because you think you know them
• Rehearse alone if a partner will actually be speaking with you
• Use acronyms or lingo you wouldn’t use for real
• Rehearse things out of order

Make it real! Imagine if when you learned how to drive you first learned to steer, then a week later you practiced the brake, and the following week you practiced the accelerator.  Ridiculous, right?  That’s how a lot of people practice stuff.  Section by section.

Here are some specific tactics as they apply to ‘perfect’ practice, whether it’s for athletics, public speaking, or basket weaving:

• Simulate real events.  Get the environment as close to the real thing as possible, down to the smallest detail if you need to.  Even if you’re just doing a dry run of a talk while driving your car, try and simulate your cadence and rhythm.
• Make your training harder than the real thing.  Know deep down inside that you’re ready with all the confidence in the world.  You’ve been there already.
• Never practice tired.  One of the worst habits people have: practicing tired because they think it’s helping.  It’s not.  When you’re tired, you’re training your brain and body to be sloppy.  Just stop.  Always practice fresh and form good habits.
• Get over your fear.  Stop projecting the worst that could happen all the time.  Prepare for the worst and you’ll know you’re ready. 
• Always think “what would I do if…?”  Back when I played baseball, I used to have a word written on the outside of my glove in black marker: THINK.  When I’d be standing around in the outfield between pitches, I’d find myself looking down at the glove, remembering to think, and then constructing the next play in my head.  When the ball was hit my way, I was ready.

Off to practice sleeping now (it’s late as I’m writing this – and we have a 2-week old baby boy!)  Enjoy your practice and keep the realism coming!

Related posts:

1. Make Your Training Harder Than The Real Thing
2. 11 Reasons Why Perfection is Overrated!

I’ve recently started reading Rapt by Winifred Gallagher (book number fifteen on my annual goal list of eighteen relevant books).  While the book has a set of good and bad reviews on Amazon, I found the description and the Kindle Sample interesting enough to buy and read it.  It’s no secret I’m interested in learning as much as I can about attention and focus, so anything that could help improve my understanding of the area even a little bit is worth the $10 investment.

So far, I’ve been quite pleased.  The introduction section of this book has one of the most accurate descriptions of focus and attention I’ve read to-date – and given Refocuser’s subject matter, I thought it would be fun to relay what I found to be the key takeaway from Rapt’s introduction: the grand unified theory of positive psychology.

In physics, the notion of a “grand unification theory” or “grand unified theory” is the holy grail of research, and has been for many years.  The idea is to merge all disparate theories into a single theory that describes everything in the universe – gravity, quantum mechanics, relativity, and so on.  It’s clean and simple, and scientists like structure and order.  When it comes to positive psychology, you could say that a similar unifying theory would help crystallize things into something more approachable for everyday people.  There are thousands of interesting studies to draw upon, and thousands more sources to pull from, but because of this explosion of information, it’s hard to grasp onto it.  People speak often of the many of things you can do to increase the quality of your life, but maybe there is actually a single statement or line of thinking that wraps everything up with a bow; something that everything else hangs off of.  This proposal from Rapt is as close as I’ve found:

Your life—who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.

It is pretty simple, isn’t it?  But it has broad implications.  It suggests that your internal experience is entirely forged by your external experience, specifically the things which you choose to apply your attention to.  And that you have control over it.  You can create your experience by learning how to focus your attention on the things that matter the most to you.  Maybe it’s not easy or natural right away, but it’s possible.  I love that thought.

Attention has gotten you this far.  It’s created the self you know yourself to be.  The time you’ve spent directing your attention throughout your life – from the first moment you were aware of your actions to this very moment spent reading this post – has created a very unique filter for your experiences.  You see things a certain way, based on what you’ve focused on in the past, and that will help determine what you do and who you are in the future.  Everyone internalizes experiences differently based on their own specific filter.

It’s a physiological fact that the things you decide to focus on – whether it’s another person in conversation or building an IKEA desk – are registered by your brain as unique “targets”.  It isn’t pseudo-science.  Subsequently, the things you implicitly choose to ignore (like the cat sleeping behind the desk) by applying your focus elsewhere literally don’t exist to you.  Your brain doesn’t know the difference between non-existence and just-not-focused-on.  This implies that simply by choosing to direct your focus on the right things, and choosing to ignore the wrong things, you’re able to change your perspective to positive effect.

In short: your life is the sum of what you focus on and you can self-direct your focus.  If you’re able to apply your focus like a laser beam, your life would “stop feeling like a reaction to stuff that happens to you and become something that you create: not a series of accidents but a work of art.”

The key to this is learning and then practicing how to do this.  The introduction to Rapt is chock full of down-to-earth explanation for how focus changes who we are, along with some great quotes.  The rest of the book, presumably, will give more specific guidance on what we can do.  Things I’ve talked about here like learning to avoid perfectionism, minimizing overthinking, finding the flow state regularly, and picking your top areas to focus on ahead of time will help significantly. 

But is there more?  Stay tuned…

Related posts:

1. Pick Your Top 3 Focus Areas… and Drop Everything Else
2. Take Micro-vacations to Boost Focus
3. How the Psychology of Time Can Help Channel Focus

This post is part of the Introduction to the Flow State series.  Read the first part.

"In the groove", "in the zone", "in the bubble", and "on auto-pilot" are all ways to describe what the Japanese call "muga", and what Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced CHICK-sent-me-high-ee) dubbed "flow" in the 1980s. 

Flow can be defined as a period in time in which one becomes so completely involved in an activity that all other thoughts and emotions – what some consider the "self" – are excluded from consciousness. 

Raise the stakes and improve your skills

Whatever the immediate activity we’re participating in, we need to continually find a way to 1) set clear goals, 2) find ways to measure progress and 3) raise the stakes when we become bored. In order to consistently achieve the flow state, we must continue to increase our skill set as well as the challenge, in order to avoid becoming disinterested, overwhelmed, or apathetic. This means striking a unique balance in which Dr. Csikszentmihalyi and Dr. Susan Jackson label the “C/S Balance” (challenge/skills) in their book “Flow in Sports”. The activity needs to be challenging, but not so challenging that it’s perceived as an impossibility. As your skill level increases, you’ll need to continually increase the level of personal challenge in the activity.

Along with the built-in challenges your activity provides, you may need to create your own challenges in order to captivate your interests. For instance, if you’re a kickboxer sparring with a beginner, you may need to create more demanding contests than simply “winning” or “scoring”. Instead maybe you focus on another metric such as “number of thigh kicks landed per round”. If you can make it more challenging, chances are you will not only have more fun, your skill level will continue to grow and you’ll find yourself in flow more and more often.

Maintain a positive outlook

As human beings, we constantly focus on “what could be” instead of “what is”, always looking to our expectations instead of our present action. Becoming focused on an outcome, whether it’s positive or negative, takes us out of the present and further away from flow. Instead, we need to be focused on the process at hand by concentrating on our strategy, on our tactics, or on our approach. Bruce Lee said it best when he said, “The great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of the engagement; you ought not to be thinking of whether it ends in victory or defeat. Let nature take its course and your tools will strike at the right moment.” (Tao of Jeet Kune Do, p12)

Unfortunately, to make matters worse, we’re usually inclined to focus not only on a possible outcome, but a resoundingly negative one.  Fear is motivated by our expectations, and when these expectations are encouraging, flow is feasible. Tony Blauer, a pioneer in performance enhancement research as it relates to martial arts, teaches the word ‘fear’ as an acronym – “False Expectations Appearing Real” or “Failure Expected, Action Required”. In essence, what this means is that we’re usually not scared of anything when we’re certain of the outcome, but when the outcome is unknown, we automatically project onto the situation the worst possible thing that could happen to us. This creates instant anxiety and disallows us from acting without reserve due to expectation of impending failure. Instead, we need to focus on the possibility of a positive outcome, which will then leave us feeling challenged instead of concerned.

Practice, practice, practice

The old maxim “nothing breeds success like success” is a critical belief for optimal performance. In order to have confidence that you’ll be successful, you need to have experienced it. You need to fine-tune your skills until you forget you have them, and then let yourself go with the performance. Preparation inherently builds self-confidence and initiates a positive spiral whereby self-confidence can ultimately lead to the flow state time and time again.

One may also practice with “emptying the mind”. Try the following exercise: Sit down, and close your eyes in a quiet, dark room. Focus solely on your breathing, and try to clear your mind of all conscious thought. The length of time in which you are able to clear your mind during inactivity will directly relate to your ability to empty your mind under pressure. Consider this: If you cannot absolve your thoughts while sitting alone in silence, how will you possibly be able to function on auto-pilot, without negative self-talk, during a rigorous activity? Improving your skill with meditation or quiet thought is crucial to achieving the flow state. While it’s possible to achieve it without meditating regularly, it becomes increasingly easier once you have enhanced control over your interfering thoughts.

Conclusion

Although the flow state may seem attainable at first, you must make sure to avoid a struggle to achieve it, as you’ll be creating yet another diversion that will have the opposite effect on your mental state. You will move further and further away from clear concentration due to your intent to “find the flow”. Remember that those who have achieved the flow state repeatedly describe it as an almost effortless condition where things just seem to “click”. Therefore in order to reproduce this state, we need to replicate that feeling of effortlessness by not taking our actions too seriously – literally learning to go with the flow.

The flow state will help us be our best, both as “artists of life” and as everyday people. It’s believed that those who experience flow regularly are generally more confident, more self-assured, and happier than those that do not.  When we can consistently view our actions as though they “just happen”, instead of something we need to deliberately initiate, we have successfully achieved the state of flow.

Thoughts on achieving flow?  Comment below!

Related posts:

1. Introduction to the Flow State (part 1 of 2)
2. 12 Goals: One Goal, Each Month, All Year (Introduction)
3. 26 Things I’ve Learned Through Intense Exercise

"In the groove", "in the zone", "in the bubble", and "on auto-pilot" are all ways to describe what the Japanese call "muga", and what Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced CHICK-sent-me-high-ee) dubbed "flow" in the 1980s. 

Flow can be defined as a period in time in which one becomes so completely involved in an activity that all other thoughts and emotions – what some consider the "self" – are excluded from consciousness. 

It’s during this episode that an athlete or artist is in the much desired yet elusive mental state required to push his or her limits in the quest for peak performance. While most people view flow strictly as an afterthought, there are some who deem it as the sole purpose of any type of activity or training due to the fact that it enhances their awareness, improves their mood, and most importantly, enables them to perform at a level of proficiency they wouldn’t otherwise be capable of.

Bruce Lee was an ardent believer in the flow state (he referred to it as wu-hsin, flow’s Cantonese counterpart) and stated, "The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the proper execution of all physical action" (Tao of Jeet Kune Do, p7).  He believed that "physical stoppage", or the opposite of wu-hsin, could create many problems for a martial artist, as it would almost always result in hesitation and self-doubt.  It’s also said that he planned to use wu-hsin as his alibi should he ever have to legally defend a violent act, by simply stating that he did not do it, "it did it all by itself".

The flow state has often been associated with a feeling of complete control, peacefulness, freedom from physical restriction, and a sensation of weightlessness. While experiencing flow, it’s not uncommon for people to lose track of time, and even an awareness of their own actions. Martial arts, sports, music, writing, and computer programming are just a few of the avenues that can be custodians to this intangible mental state, but they’re some of the most effective. This is primarily due to the fact that practitioners regularly set “stretch” goals and are determined to reach them in a labor of love, two prerequisites to attaining flow. It’s theorized that an athlete or an artist (in the general sense) will have a very difficult time surpassing a baseline of mediocrity without adequate enough knowledge to routinely induce this flow state.

While some feel that it’s impossible to “will” the flow state to happen, I believe that flow is attainable with the understanding and subsequent application of a few basic concepts. Armed with these tools, you can continually improve your performance and overall sense of well-being.

Learn to focus your attention

In order to truly “let go of yourself”, you must be able to direct your attention to the task at hand like a laser-beam hitting a dot on the wall. Flow can only be achieved when the data entering awareness is congruent with pre-defined goals. Any other focus, such as personal or business matters, or how you may appear to others watching you, is superfluous and detrimental to your performance. If your focus wanders, it’s because your concentration isn’t suitably directed. Attention is vast – think of all of the input your brain receives while driving a car, yet you have no problem absorbing what’s useful – but it isn’t limitless, and therefore any information not related to the task, especially if it causes any form of anxiety, can divert it rather easily.

When in danger of losing this concentration try focusing on your heartbeat, the rhythm of your feet, your breathing patterns, or the way your muscles are feeling. Recognize that your concentration is slipping and immediately choose an appropriate focal point and regain your focus. You will find that if you don’t recoup control over your concentration, you’ll hinder your ability to act by missing critical signals. You need to distract the distraction!

Embrace your inner coach

We all have an inner coach, a voice in our head that helps us make every decision. Our inner coach, or our self-talk, needs to keep us in line and focused throughout an activity. It needs to be positive, energetic, and strong, and it needs to guide our actions in the right direction. Internal feedback during an activity is just as, if not more important, than the feedback we receive from others (instructors, coaches, friends). Think about it: Who knows us best? Who knows how to push our buttons? Who knows how to motivate us to do something we don’t want to do? It’s ourselves – our own collective self-consciousness. While many people feel that this self-consciousness is lost during flow, this is actually a faulty assumption. It’s the concept of “self” that escapes us during flow, keeping us from having to watch ourselves as if a third party while concurrently performing the activity. Our self-consciousness, however, is omnipresent and is essential to maintaining the flow state, as long as it’s acting positively.

Additionally, our self-talk needs to be task-focused and not outcome-focused. It needs to be positive, and we need to have the ability to discontinue all negative self-talk. In order to impede negative self-talk, remember these three steps: 1) always pay attention to your inner coach and be aware of its affect on your performance in order to swiftly determine when self-talk becomes negative, 2) once you’ve determined that your self-talk is negative, firmly think “No more!” or “Stop!” forcefully to yourself, and 3) quickly replace the negative stream of thoughts with a positive one, making sure it’s focused solely on the task at hand.

Develop “mental blueprints“

The flow state is much easier to return to once it’s experienced, but it isn’t always the easiest thing to achieve. One proven strategy is the use of mental blueprinting, or visualization. While traveling, if you don’t have a map from point A to point B, you’ll find yourself deciding your path en route (and probably getting lost). This is the same as the concept of mental blueprinting; if you don’t know precisely what you need to do, you’ll waste precious attention reserves focusing on your plan during the engagement. Instead, you always need to plan out your strategy ahead of time, whether for a workout or for a creative activity like writing. Blueprinting can free up your cerebral energy for the duration of the activity in order to focus on “doing” instead of on “what to do”. A classic example of this type of blueprinting is a baseball player out in the field. Before each pitch, it’s essential that he know exactly what to do should the ball be hit in his direction. If he finds himself with a baseball in his glove and no plan, he’s going to waste precious seconds deciding his strategy. Instead with a plan, he acts without hesitation.

Continue to Part Two

Related posts:

1. Introduction to the Flow State (part 2 of 2)
2. 12 Goals: One Goal, Each Month, All Year (Introduction)