Try your best average, and everything will be fine. Counterintuitive, right? I’ve come across the idea while reading a book about theatre sports. The main point there is that trying “hard” gets you anxious and tense. Couldn’t agree more – my juggling performance drops massively when I try to do the best tricks I possibly can. I guess it shifts mental resources from the actual activity to the abstract ‘trying hard’ part.
Richard Wiseman (cool family name) made an experiment connected with “trying hard”. He gave a newspaper to two groups: people who felt that they were consistently lucky and people who thought their lives were series of unfortunate events. Both groups needed to count the number of photographs in the newspaper. On the second page Mr. Wiseman put a huge text telling how many photos were in that newspaper. Not surprisingly, the “unlucky” people tried hard to count the photos and missed the huge message. The focus on doing your best limits your opportunities for achieving spectacular results.
Pushing yourself to the limit, giving as much mental effort as possible will not work, partly because “the best” is more or less a random thing. For a given level of preparation, expected level of performance is average and “best” outcomes are pretty much random. The non-random part is preparation for a competition/performance/exam. Better preparation leads to better results ;). The best example is Usain Bolt, who broke world record in the distance that is not his speciality; he celebrated his victory long before the finish line, and crossed it with his shoelace undone.
Let’s do average!
