Innovation and the Performance Paradox

Today, my article on “The Performance Paradox: When Less is More” was published by the American Management Association.

You may recall that I introduced this concept in a blog entry last month.

What is the Performance Paradox?

The more fixated on your goal you become, the greater your chance of success, right? Yes, but only to a certain extent. It turns out that when people are too fixated on the future, their creativity and overall performance actually diminish.

Read the entire Performance Paradox article on the AMA website.

How to Perform at Optimal Levels

In the early 1900s, Robert Yerkes and J. D. Dodson developed the aptly named Yerkes-Dodson Law. The premise is that performance increases relative to motivation (they call it “arousal”) only to a point, after which performance drops. It is typically drawn as an inverted U-shaped curve.

You will notice that I superimposed three “goal” concepts on this graph to give you a sense of how they (roughly) relate.

If you are goal-less, you have no sense of direction and no motivation. Therefore, your performance is low. This is not surprising.

As your motivation increases, your performance increases. Being goal-free – having a sense of direction and purpose, without specific deadlines and limitations – can increase performance…to a point.

Then, as you become goal-driven, performance paradoxically decreases. Goals increase stress and focus you on the future rather than the present.

This phenomenon has been documented in numerous places throughout this blog. Race-car pit crews who increase performance when they are not worried about the stop watch. Students who perform better on exams when they are not as focused on grades. Sales people who sell more when they are not driven by sales targets.

Yerkes and Dodson suggest that different types of tasks require different levels of arousal (to use their word). To improve concentration, intellectually challenging tasks require lower levels of arousal for optimal performance while physically demanding tasks require higher levels. This may explains why professional athletes tend to be more goal-driven. However, even then, goals can limit performance. Listen to my interview with Dr. Doug Gardner, former sports psychology consultant to the Boston Red Sox.

Goal-Free Living is NOT about eliminating your goals. You can have goals and still perform at optimal levels. They key is to have the RIGHT goals (ones that “pull” you forward and don’t create stress) and be PRESENT to what you are doing (being detached from the desired outcomes).

Do you have examples of where you performed at optimal levels by freeing yourself from the stranglehold of rigid goals?

How To Always Be On Time

Right now I am sitting in the Las Vegas airport. With an hour to kill, I decided to write this blog entry with the harmonious sound of slot machines ringing in my ears.

I know so many road warriors who pride themselves in being able to get to the gate just as the doors are closing. Not me. I appreciate having extra time at the airport to relax and work before my flight. In fact, I tend to get to most places early. And there is a good reason.

My background is process design where there is a concept called “the theory of constraints.” The general idea is that “success” is limited by at least one constraining process (i.e., a bottleneck). In the business world, this means that if you want to make more money, the best way to do that is to increase the throughput at the bottleneck so that overall throughput is increased. You can think of this as strengthening the “weakest link in the chain.”

I use the theory of constraints in my personal life. With nearly 1 million miles of flying under my belt, I have never missed a flight. How is this possible? Because I allow plenty of time to get to the airport. I live a mere 15 minutes from Logan International in Boston, yet I typically leave for the airport two hours before a flight. Why?

We are all at the mercy of various bottlenecks: traffic on the way to the airport and long lines at the check in counter, baggage drop-off, and security. Any one of these could prevent me from getting to my plane on time…and I can’t predict when it will happen.

Therefore, instead of sitting in my office working until the last minute and then scrambling to get to the plane on time, I get to the airport early and work there. My philosophy is to put as many of the potential bottlenecks behind me before I settle down. When I get to the airport, I always check in first and drop off my luggage (I know I can print my boarding card from my computer before going to the airport, but I find this saves me very little time as I still need to check my luggage). Although I could then sit down at Dunkin’ Donuts and relax, I still have another bottleneck – security – ahead of me. Therefore, if possible, I go through security before getting my bagel and diet Coke. Besides, we can’t bring liquids through security anymore.

With technology these days, I can be as productive at the airport as I would be in my own office. I have a BlackBerry which delivers my email. I use my BlackBerry as a modem to connect my computer to the internet. The airport is an effective remote office. And doing it this way allows me to be totally stress free. I “put bottlenecks behind me” nearly every day.

If I am heading to a meeting, but haven’t eaten, I may drive through the known traffic spots before getting some food. I always leave plenty of extra time. The worst that happens is I arrive at my destination ahead of schedule. And since I assume that I will be early, I plan activities (work or pleasure) for me to do during this spare time. The good news is, I never have to have a contingency plan for if I am late.

It costs $2 to ride the T (Boston’s subway/train system), and you must have a ticket to go through the turnstile. When finishing one trip, I always purchase tickets for my next trips. This way I do not need to buy tickets when I am in a hurry to catch a train. There is nothing worse than shoving dollars into a ticket machine (and having the machine spit out your crumpled bills) when you hear the train pulling into the station. I know if I miss a train, I will have to wait at least another 15 minutes.

With potential bottlenecks behind you, you save yourself time and frustration. You will almost always be on time. And you can still be highly productive when you arrive at your destination early. OK, you won’t get that wonderful adrenaline rush this way. But in the long run, this approach keeps my blood pressure in check. Besides, numerous studies show that people who are not under severe time constraints operate at higher levels of performance. Goal-Free Living is stress-free living which is highly-effective living.

How to Move Through Negative Emotions

Sometimes you feel like crap. It may be a temporary bout of sadness – a feeling that the universe is conspiring against you. This could be caused by an undesirable event, such as the end of a relationship or the loss of a job. Other times the feeling is elusive and unexplainable, thus attributed to the alignment of the stars or a chemical imbalance. Regardless, when we are feeling down, all we want is to feel good again. As a result, what do we do? We consciously or subconsciously create a goal to feel better, creating even more stress and adding to our negative feelings.

Goal-Free Living is about living in the present, embracing the moment, and not worrying about how things turn out. Maybe you will not be embracing what you like, but you will make a good start at accepting what is even though it is less than what you desire at the time. The more you deal with the now, the better the future.

I remember back in college, there were moments when I would feel a little melancholy. For me, it was typically due to women problems. Women were more important than grades. Unfortunately, I did not do particularly well with either. For these occasions of sadness, I made this mix tape, aptly titled “The Depression Tape.” It had the sappiest, saddest music you could imagine, containing nearly every song performed by Bread, Joe Cocker’s “You Are So Beautiful to Me,” and Elton John’s sadder songs. You get the point.

When I felt “down in the dumps,” I would pop that tape in the stereo, open a bottle of wine, turn off the lights, and allow myself to feel my sadness…deeply. I would cry all night until my eyes were red. I was miserable. Woe is me. Eventually I would fall asleep. When I awoke the next morning, I felt like a new man. Energized and refreshed. The experience was very cathartic.

I have since learned to turn this approach into something a bit more, um, healthy. I have replaced the wine with journaling (better for my liver) and replaced the wallowing with a healthy dose of “embracing the yucky.”

When my wife and I split up many years ago, I was at a loss. The separation was her idea, and I found it difficult to accept. Instead of burying myself in work and creating distractions, I chose to embrace the pain. And man did it hurt. I locked myself in a hotel room, and decided to stay there until the heartache subsided. Although I allowed myself to be miserable, secretly, I was hoping that the pain would go away. It was at this moment that I realized I hadn’t fully embraced the yucky. So I immersed myself deeper in the agony. I took baths and wrote in a journal. It was an incredibly painful period and I fought the instinct to wish it would end.

And then something amazing happened. About two weeks into my complete immersion, my emotions, almost instantly, shifted. Somehow, in the grieving process, I had moved through my negative feeling so much, that all that was left was possibility. I felt like a weight had lifted off of my shoulders. Although the sadness did not disappear 100%, I felt SO much better. I recently re-read my journal and was shocked to see how one day I was at the bottom of the barrel and the next I was excited about what was now possible. I know this shift may be hard to believe, but it is true, it actually happens if you let it.

The next time you feel a negative emotion – misery, anger, sadness – embrace the feeling. In fact, amplify the feeling. Feeling sad? Give yourself permission, for the next 30 minutes, to feel as sad as you have ever felt. If someone is angry with you, acknowledge their anger. In fact, give them permission to be even angrier. Tell them, “Your anger is justified. And I want you to be as mad at me as you can for the next 10 minutes.” It sounds silly. But you may just find that they burst out laughing and are no longer angry.

Being present means being present to everything – the good, the bad, and the crappy. I am not a believer in the power of positive thinking. Sometimes your feelings are just not positive, and you have to be with those negative emotions. Although I am typically an optimistic person, optimism is never a goal. Instead be present to how you really feel. If you feel yucky, embrace the yucky. You might just find that the yuckiness passes quicker than you would ever imagine.

Success…Without the Stress

In Goal-Free Living I discuss a powerful technique for increasing your creativity: standing in someone else’s shoes. The idea being, that when you “make believe” you are someone else, you begin to see the world through their eyes. You become that other person. At a recent speech, one young woman in attendance – someone who recently graduated from high school — shared a personal story that illustrates the incredible power of this approach.

She told the story of a time when she needed to take an important math test. Math was never one of her strong subjects, so she was concerned. Overly concerned. In the time leading up to the test, she became increasingly stressed with the goal of doing well. This is not surprising. We put incredible pressure on students to perform well on these tests. The stress was overwhelming. Halfway through the exam, she walked out. She could not handle the pressure.

One week before I met her, she was given the opportunity to take the test again. This time, instead of being overly worried, she decided to turn the exam into a game — a very goal-free approach. She walked into the examination room making believe she was Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State — a very successful and highly educated woman. Standing in her shoes, she had incredible confidence. Dr. Rice wouldn’t worry, right? So she didn’t worry. The result of playing this game? She received a 90% — something beyond her wildest expectations.

When we get overly focused on the goal, we create stress. By turning everything we do into a game – something kids do naturally – we create success without the effort.

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