Part 3: Immerse Yourself

What to Expect:

• The science of presence
• How mindfulness can enhance performnace
• Why presence is nothing without psychological commitment

It’s been a little bit since I shared my theory of performance excellence, so here’s a quick recap.

In Part 1, I shared my underlying assumptions. In Parts 2a and 2b, I covered what good preparation looks like, and why that’s the first step toward consistently good performances. So what comes next?

In my view, the answer is what I call “immersion.” It’s a combination of full psychological commitment to the goal and full presence in performance.

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Let’s quickly look at what immersion doesn’t look like.

Have you ever found yourself lost in thought during an important meeting or performance? This used to happen to me fairly regularly. 30 minutes of a meeting would go by, and I’d only have a vague recollection of what was discussed. Or, when I was early in my training, I’d be so focused on a mistake I made or something I wish I had done or said in a session that I’d miss what was happening right in front of me. I hadn’t set a clear goal for what I wanted to accomplish during that time, and as a result, my presence wasn’t anchored to anything. I was mindlessly drifting in and out of the here and now.

This mental absence is pretty common, even for elite performers. Our minds are wired to spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy on the past and future. In fact, some estimates suggest we naturally spend about 48% of our time there (mentally). The tendency to drift is as natural human instinct as eating or sleeping.

On the other hand, being fully present and in the moment can enhance our performance in a number of ways. Reducing that 48% to just 45% is a big performance advantage. The main tools I believe we have to enhance our ability to be present are mindfulness practice and goal commitment with implementation intentions.

That’s where my concept of immersion comes in. It’s a bit deeper than just presence - it also includes a full psychological commitment to a meaningful goal. You can be mentally present and half-assing it. In that case, you might seem aloof, dispassionate, or appearing to give love effort. In contrast, if you’re fully present and committed, you appear dialed in, fully connected, and embodying confidence and dedication.

We’ve seen some incredible examples of immersed performance in elite sport. Brett Favre’s play after his father passed away, Byron Leftwich playing on an injured leg, or Kawhi Leonard hitting a game-winner in Game 7. These performances often seem larger than life. The players seem unstoppable. That performance is the result of choosing to be in the moment and fully committed to the goal. These types of performances are accessible to all of us, with a bit of practice. Here’s what you can expect as benefits if you choose to fully immerse yourself in your performance.

Improved Focus and Concentration

When you are fully present, you are better able to focus your attention on the task at hand. This means staying focused on your game plan, what you can control, and what factors you can manipulate to win. You’re less likely to be distracted by external factors or internal thoughts or pulled into the past or future if you can immerse yourself in competition. This type of committed presence can lead to improved performance.

Layering a goal into this presence creates a mental frame for the task at hand. The goal acts as a sort of filter, making the information relevant to performance more salient and the unnecessary data fall by the wayside. Presence is enhanced by the goal, and in turn, reaching our goal is easier.

We know that mindfulness enhances presence. A study published in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology found that mindfulness-based interventions can improve athletes' ability to concentrate and stay focused during competition (Moore & Werthner, 2013). It can also lead to reduced cognitive load and enhanced concentration after half-time if used as an intervention during a break in the game (Zhu et al., 2022). Another study published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition showed that mindfulness meditation can enhance attentional control and cognitive flexibility (van den Berg et al., 2015). These findings suggest that practicing being present and fully immersed in performance not only enhances focus but also has broader cognitive benefits.

I’ll cover this in later editions of the newsletter, but the skill of flexibility (and other types of psychological flexibility) may be the most important skill we can build to facilitate peak performance via self-regulation.

Increased Creativity and Innovation

When you are not distracted by other thoughts or concerns, you are better able to tap into your imagination and come up with new ideas. To train for this aspect of immersion, the primary practice of presence - mindfulness - is again our tool of choice.

Research shows that being fully present can have a significant impact on creativity and innovation. Mindfulness meditation can enhance divergent thinking, which is a key component of creativity (Colzato et al., 2012), and entrepreneurs who practice mindfulness exhibit higher levels of innovativeness and create more novel products than those who do not (Jiang et al., 2018).

Being fully immersed in the present moment helps to quiet the mind's chatter and reduce mental clutter. This lets us mentally get greater access to fresh ideas and perspectives. When we are not distracted by other thoughts or concerns, our brain is better able to tap into its creative potential. This is one reason that walking or showering also tends to produce novel insights. Those activities bring us squarely into the present moment and then allow our minds to wander (peacefully) over some ideas we’ve been incubating. Here again a commitment to our goal brings even more benefits. When we’ve got something we’re clearly working toward that matters, our willingness to experiment with novel solutions goes up. Since there are often several ways to make meaningful progress toward a performance goal, the combination of the goal lens and psychological presence allows us to readily detect new information that can be used to generate creative solutions. Without the goal, much of this data seems like noise.

A Precursor to Being Clutch and Finding Flow

One common feature of flow and clutch states is focused attention. But to get into either state fully, you need a bit of applied, concentrated commitment and effort. Immersion is the first step toward either flow or clutch states.

If you want to find flow, the research suggests it starts with presence. It’s also very difficult to enter a flow state without committed and concentrated effort, since flow often (but not always) emerges at the intersection of our current skills and the next challenge we’re trying to conquer (which is often linked to a goal). When the task is just a bit beyond our current skill level, we have a chance to enter flow if we’re present, committed, and giving full effort. This means that if you want to find flow, which can help tasks feel more motivating and meaningful, it’s best to fully commit your resources and attention to execution and to leave anything extra for another time. The same is true of clutch states. Similar to flow, clutch states require full attention and effort. Different from flow, clutch states require an increased salience of the end goal and require a conscious choice to increase effort. In other words, clutch states require even deeper immersion.

If we don’t make the conscious decision to try harder and push ourselves a bit more in clutch conditions (a clear, time-bound outcome that matters), the odds of coming up clutch are slim. Being fully immersed - present and committed - to performance means that when the conditions required for clutch happen, we’re in a prime psychological state to step up.

Reduced Stress and Anxiety

Being fully present can also help to reduce stress and anxiety. When you are not preoccupied with other thoughts or concerns, you are better able to stay calm and focused. This can help you to perform better under pressure.

I also find in my work with elite performers that being willing to fully commit creates a kind of psychological freedom. Knowing that you’ve given your best doesn’t make failure easier, but it does make it more tolerable. For these performers, it’s almost worse to fail knowing they didn’t give their best then to fail and know they left it all on the field. This approach can reduce the stress and anxiety surrounding the post-performance “what ifs,” a typical experience when outcomes don’t go the way we want. Though it’s not always pleasant, it’s better to know you just got beat and have more work to do than it is to wonder if you could’ve been successful had you just committed a bit more.

Immersing Yourself

So, what can you do to improve at immersion?

Here are a few tips:

• Practice mindfulness meditation. Even 5 minutes a day is enough to facilitate our ability to stay present.
• Remind yourself often of your goals. It pays performance dividends to be clear on what you’re working on.
• Set Implementation Intentions. Decide in advance how you want to show up, and what you’ll do if you run into an obstacle.
• Consciously elevate effort. In Alex Hutchinson’s book Endure, he talks about our ability to choose how much effort we put forth. Start to pay attention to where your effort defaults, and what you can do to raise it.