Improving performance state

Often our mental state influences how we perform tasks and procedures. We often do well when we are in a good state of mind. Similarly we often don’t perform well when we are in poor state. Many people believe they have little influence over the state they are in at any particular time. This is not true.

By overtly changing your state, you can change how you think and perform. For example, when you are happy you typically smile. When you are feeling down though, if you force yourself to smile it usually triggers happier thoughts. Forcing yourself to smile also affects your physical and mental state, often for the better.

There are two common methods for managing the state you are in during task performance. These are anchoring and modeling. Anchoring allows you to change your mental and physiological state for a short time. Modeling not only helps manage state, it also helps you manage overall task performance. Let’s look at these two in more detail.

Anchor previous states

Our state during performance of a skill, task or activity often varies. The word state itself can represent functioning of many parts of our body and mind. Physically, your posture, muscle tension, hormones, your heart and breathing rate are all part of your overall state at a given time. Mentally, your self-talk, mental images and other mental activities also form part of your overall state.

Think of how you feel when you are performing a task you know well. Typically you relax more, your shoulders are back, and you think about just the task (or can think of other topics at the same time). Now think about a task you have difficulty with (such as perhaps public speaking). Your whole state is different. You are likely to be breathing fast (or holding your breath), with hunched shoulders, and all these negative thoughts running through your mind. Your state often reflects how you feel about the task.

Our state can change quickly. You might be performing a task well in a good state, however one small mistake (or even just a negative thought) can change your state, if you allow it. That can then result in more mistakes.

Anchoring is a way to help you change your state into one that is suitable for the task. It helps you instantly recall a more resourceful state, simply by squeezing part of your hand or tapping your skin somewhere.

States that you may wish to anchor could be:

·  Confidence. Think of times when you have felt confident. It could be after passing a hard exam, or while playing a sport, or while doing some activity at work.

·  Peak performance. Think of times when you have felt like you are performing at your peak. Everything is “clicking.” You are performing well, breathing well, alert, and relaxed. It could again be while playing sport, during some activity at work, or perhaps during a recreational activity.

·  Strength. Think about times when you have felt strong and powerful. Have you ever done some gym work? What about a time when you were fit?

·  Happiness. When have you felt happy? It could be after receiving some good news, or when life has been going well for you.

The anchoring technique is good for changing your state for short periods of time. It doesn’t change long-term beliefs or issues. For example, if you are deeply upset about some part of your life, triggering a positive mood anchor every ten minutes is not going to address the underlying issue. Triggering confidence may help you start working on resolving that issue though.

There are number of steps involved in creating an anchor. Follow these steps to create state anchors:

1.  Design the anchor. Think of a previous state you have been in that you would like to recall at will. Or, think of what such a state would be like. Also decide what to use as your anchor. It could be squeezing a particular finger or earlobe, or tapping your finger against your skin somewhere. Anchors should be specific and unique. It could be squeezing your index finger between your first and second knuckle, tapping your glasses, bouncing the ball a certain way, or even just squeezing your earlobe.

2.  Relax. Do a short relaxation exercise. Put everything else out of your mind.

3.  Get in the state you wish to anchor. Close your eyes and try to recall as much as possible about the state you wish to anchor to. Pick a particular time when this state was at a maximum, and put yourself “in the moment.” Recall the sights, sounds and smells at the time. Think of your body posture and your state of mind at the time.

4.  Set the anchor. At the height of the experience, for that short period of time you are “in the moment,” perform the anchor stimulus several times. It needs to be the exact sequence or pressure each time.

5.  Repeat and reinforce. Relax, breath deeply and then redo steps 3 and 4 several times. Do some repetitions over a few days. Put yourself in another state (for example think about work for a few moments), and then trigger the anchor. Deliberately feel yourself going into the new state. Repeat this a few times as well.

6.  Test. Now that you have created your anchor, try it out during performance. Trigger the anchor and test that it automatically brings back the state you designed. It should instantly trigger the same physiology and thought patterns you experienced during the anchoring process.

You can use anchoring for a wide variety of purposes. Some common ones include public speaking, exchanges with the opposite sex, and overcoming issues from poor past performances. Here are some more specific examples:

·  Before and during exams. Use a confidence anchor to help keep your state positive and confident. Repeat it during the exam if you run into some difficulties. This doesn’t help overcome issues if you have not prepared for the questions. It however does help keep a confident state if you do run into some issues that might otherwise lower your confidence.

·  During performance. You can use a peak performance anchor before performing complex or difficult procedures. You might use the anchor when you start to feel stressed. Again, it may not solve underlying problems (such as being behind), however it should put you in a better state to catch up.

·  Pre-performance patterns. A pre-performance pattern is a specific ritual or series of steps that athletes perform before a particular task. Examples are tennis players bouncing the ball a certain way before serving, or golf players visualizing their play, or archers and shooters “zoning out” before a shot. You can use anchors during these pre-performance activities to improve your state.

Model good state

Modeling involves mirroring an expert’s performance in a particular area you wish you excel in. You model as many parts of their performance as you can. Such parts include:

·  Physical: Breathing (including rate, volume and pauses), heart rate, posture, muscular tension, eye movements, voice, body language, general movement, and more.

·  Mental: Level and focus of attention, relaxation, awareness, reaction time, mental steps and procedures they follow, and more.

While some of these are easy to see, other times you may need to elicit (extract) them from the expert. This usually involves asking them how they think or feel at various times during the performance. This is not always easy. Often the response from experts is “it just happens.” In this case you may need to ask more direct questions. Where are they looking? Do they feel relaxed or tense? How to they react to some event happening?

Modeling is especially good for transferring general behaviors and attitudes. For example, let’s look at the differences between the state of a student pilot and an expert (the instructor) while landing the aircraft:

Modeling in this case would involve looking at how the instructor is performing during this phase, and then modeling that as closely as possible.

It’s more difficult to model cognitive, perception and motor-skill parts of performance. Using the example above, we can easily model some parts of the instructor’s performance, however it would be difficult to model the specific behaviors needed to land the aircraft. For example, modeling doesn’t transfer judgment of when one is too high or low, or when to cut the aircraft engine just before landing. These usually come from direct observation and experience.

See modeling as a fast way to gain good overall state for performing more specialized activities.

Follow these basic steps to create and use performance models:

1.  Find or create the expert. You can gain models for expert performance in many ways. Perhaps the easiest is to work directly with someone who is already an expert. For flight training, this is usually the instructor. In other areas you may need to seek out an expert.

You may not have direct access to an expert though. In this case you may use experts you can read about, or even create your own. You can often find out about the way experts think or work by reading their biographies. You may wish to create your own expert who is a composite of many people you know or have researched.

2.  Elicit their strategy. Spend time with the expert, or do research, and find out about as many parts of their performance as possible. Ask questions about each of the parts of performance listed above. Watch them while they perform the skill (or visualize them). Write down specific points and observations.

3.  Model the performance yourself. Once you have the various elements, put yourself in that state. Act as if you were that expert.

4.  Anchor it. Once you have a good feeling for that performance, use the process in the section on anchoring above to lock as many parts as possible into a specific trigger.

5.  Integrate and Test it. Try the performance again, trying to keep up as many parts of the performance model as possible. If you are doing this with your instructor, perhaps do some part task training. Have your instructor take over some of the tasks so you can focus on running your performance model. If you were doing the landing example above, you might have the instructor fly the approach and landing while you have your hand resting near the yoke. Act like you were doing the landing, but focus on your breathing, relaxation, small smooth movements, and moving your attention around. Repeat the exercise while taking on more parts of the task, while still upholding your performance model.

6.  Use it. Use the anchor until you can perform the task while upholding your performance model automatically. You might also choose to use the anchor as a pre-performance activity, in much the same way that expert tennis players use anchoring at the world championship level.