Performance Science Digest #3

Plateaus vs. Asymptotes

How do you understand the real limits of human performance?

Is it a plateau - a spurious limit that could be surpassed but hasn’t yet, either because someone stopped trying or because they don’t believe they can?

Or is it an asymptote - a real, physical limit has been reached, and performance can’t go any further as a function of a mechanical issue?

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This article changed the way I thought about performance at the extremes and helped me adopt a new framework for some of the historic milestones in sport (Bannister’s sub-4 mile: plateau issue; high jump before the back flop: plateau; sub-8-second 100m: asymptote).

But perhaps most importantly, it gives us an arsenal of questions we can ask when someone gets stuck trying to reach a new PR.

• Is it worth the time required?
• Do you want to improve any more?
• Do you care?
• Do you understand how to do it?

It’s rare that human performance is limited by the asymptote.

Gray, W. D. (2017). Plateaus and asymptotes: spurious and real limits in human performance. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(1), 59-67.

The Value of Executive Coaching

The best athletes in the world have coaches. Every single one of them.

Rightfully so - coaching works. Coaching - the process of facilitating someone’s learning and development and greater psychological well-being - is a well-established tool for enhancing individual outcomes.

The data suggest that coaching interventions have a positive impact on a handful of psychological states, including increased coping (e.g., resilience) and greater well-being. Coaching also facilitates goal-attainment, self-efficacy, and objective work performance as rated by others.

Coaching also enhances learning. It improves meta-cognitive skills (the ability to process and organize information and to develop, plan, and monitor goal-oriented behavior) and self-awareness (internal self-regulation and cognition, understanding their own motivators, emotions, and assumptions).

What was especially interesting to me about this study was that the authors also explored the value of what they called “psychologically-informed approaches”. These approaches had significant impacts on goal-related outcomes, and led to greater psychological well-being for coachees.

If you want to enhance the performance of your achievers, there may be no better intervention than getting them a coach.

Wang, Q., Lai, Y. L., Xu, X., & McDowall, A. (2021). The effectiveness of workplace coaching: a meta-analysis of contemporary psychologically informed coaching approaches. Journal of Work-Applied Management, 14(1), 77-101.

Getting into Flow at Work

Research suggests flow can enhance performance at work (Demerouti, 2006) and that it’s also good at mitigating the risk of burnout (Lavigne et al. 2012). Since the inception of the positive psychology movement and since flow was first popularized by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, it’s been a consistent target for enhancing performance at work, home, and in sports.

Though flow is typically described as “effortless,” the data suggests it actually takes some work to get into a flow state.

This model provides us a framework for how we can get there more regularly.

The model begins by suggesting that we have to be mindful of what we’re working on by having a chance of getting in flow. This mechanism is supported by data (Schutte & Malouff, 2023) and works by allowing us to stay consistently attentive to the present moment, to adapt rapidly to incoming feedback, and to stay with a task long enough to “lose yourself” in the moment. It helps increase our concentration and reduces the risk of distractions popping us out of the zone.

Grit enhances the benefits of mindfulness - staying present is hard. Grit, or the persistence to stay with the task at hand, allows for us to work on something long enough to give ourselves a chance to find the zone. If we repeatedly task switch, or give up as soon as things feel challenging, we’re unlikely to cross the effort threshold we need to reach a new level of performance.

Finally, flow metacognition - allocating resources consciously to the pursuit of flow - allows performer to recognize when there’s an opportunity to push into flow and to use the energy they have to do so.

If you put these 3 together, the model suggests you’ve got a chance to get into flow and experience the benefits that come with it. Your risk of burnout goes down, and your performance and engagement go way up.

The benefit of this model is that it gives you clear targets to focus on at work - being present with the task at hand, persistent when things get challenging (you get bored, someone tries to interrupt you, you come up to the limit of your current skills), and reminding yourself to use your effort to work toward flow.

We can all get a little better with more flow at work.

Weintraub, J., Nolan, K. P., & Sachdev, A. R. (2023). The Cognitive Control Model of Work-related Flow. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1174152.