Perform Well Under Pressure

The ability to perform under pressure is a key element in the difference between a nightmare and a dream come true. Knowing what underpins your best performance and what gets in its way is crucial.

What’s Getting in Your Way?

You start out each day with 100 per cent of your potential. If you could hold on to that, you would be able to handle most of the challenges that come your way. However, things always happen through the day to interfere with your performance, eating away at your percentage. Your actual performance can therefore be seen as your potential minus the interferences that occur through your day.

Reduce the Interferences

Make a list of all of the interferences that you could encounter during your day. This might include e-mails, phone calls, text messages, interruptions by colleagues, overrunning meetings, meetings starting late. Your own thinking can also get in the way. Take action to do something about each of the interferences to minimize the impact they have on you. You could, for example, decide to read your e-mails only once an hour, and to respond only to those that require a response. If you’re working on something that requires your concentration, switch your phone over to voicemail for 30 minutes. Simple things like this will make all the difference to your performance.

Tip

If the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the next best time is now. Close the gap between what is important to you and how you use your time.

Don’t Try to Do Too Much

If you accept that you can do only one thing effectively at a time, you’ll be able to complete tasks with greater focus and energy. Avoid doing several things, but none of them well.

Talking on the phone while simultaneously writing an e-mail will result in neither a great conversation nor a message that makes complete sense. Do one thing or the other.

Because you are distracted you are not giving your full attention to the conversation, and before you press the send button you are likely to discover a mass of mistakes on screen.

Even worse, you may send the e-mail, unaware of the errors and spelling mistakes until you get a reply. Multi-tasking in such circumstances is to the benefit of no one.

Delete Worry

If you spend a lot of your time focused on and worrying about things that might happen or could happen, yet hardly ever do, you need to come up with an alternative approach. Otherwise you will follow this fruitless pattern of behaviour for the rest of your life.

Re-Frame Your Thinking

Imagine that your car has broken down so you can’t drive to the supermarket as planned. Rather than worry that you won’t be able to cook dinner for the family, try re-framing your worry into critical thinking. See if you can come up with some other options.

• Ask a friend to drive you to the supermarket.

• Ask another member of the family to pick up something quick to cook on the way home from work.

• Borrow something from a neighbour.

• Order a delivery online.

• Find something in the freezer that you could thaw quickly.

Once you have done the critical thinking you can take action and stop worrying. This way of re-framing your thinking works with even vaguer worries. If you find yourself thinking about the consequences if something dreadful happened, simply apply the critical thinking strategy to come up with options for dealing with it. Then, with a plan in place, you can return to the present and focus on the things that are important now.

Focus on the bright side of life and you will save countless precious hours worrying about things that might never happen.

Obliterate Guilt

Another factor that takes you away from the “now” is guilt. You worry about not having done something, and that helps to pile on the guilt. This pattern of behaviour can make you feel so helpless that you fail to take any action at all. Banish guilt from your life.

Case Study: Looking on the Bright Side

Enrico bragged about his worrying strategy – he’d tell his friends that whenever he worried about a possible bad outcome, the bad outcome usually never happened! His way of looking at life was to expect the worst and hope for the best – that way he could never be disappointed. Also, early in his career he had a few setbacks that he chose to carry forward, and this became part of his thinking.

A friend pointed out that Enrico’s approach was ensuring that he would miss opportunities and fail to achieve his true potential. Enrico thought about what his friend said and decided that he would try in future to expect the best. He had always wanted to start his own business and six months after he changed his strategy he seized an opportunity to set up on his own.

• Enrico’s worrying strategy had prevented him from dreaming big and led to him missing out on life’s opportunities.

• His new positive attitude meant that he was willing to try things that carried some element of risk.

• His improved outlook on life had the bonus of improving his prospects and his quality of life.

• If you were to look on the bright side, what opportunities might you see and take as a result of your new perspective?