Psychological Fitness & Performance - Doing well and feeling good with work
How our psychology affects our performance, unlinking well-being from outcomes, and lots of Naval Ravikant quotes.
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“A calm mind, a fit body, and a house full of love. These things cannot be bought. They must be earned.” - Naval Ravikant
I think psychological fitness and work performance are intricately linked. The stronger your psychological fitness the better you perform in a work setting. Additionally, the stronger your psychological fitness the less your work output determines your well-being.
Why We're Talking About Performance?
“A happy person isn’t someone who’s happy all the time. It’s someone who effortlessly interprets events in such a way that they don’t lose their innate peace.” - Naval Ravikant
I usually don’t talk about performance because there’s so much out there on this topic and I think it can make people more anxious - i.e. what can I do to improve or be better in a work setting. It often can make people feel inadequate, reinforce imposter syndrome, and teach people to continuously look outside themselves to define whether they are worthy.
I’ve kind of realized that this is a silly generalization. We need to talk about work and performance because work makes up a huge component of our lives and if we can’t feel good while doing it, then we’re relegating a big chunk of our time to being anxious, stressed, and unhappy.
So what do we mean by performance?
I think of performance as our ability to translate our inputs into the outputs we want. For example:
We practice basketball to win basketball games (input: practicing rebounding, output, out-rebound opposing team)
We analyze data to make better business decisions (input: time spent analyzing data, output: good business outcomes)
We study to do well on tests (input: studying, output: test performance)
So performance in this context means our ability to realize our outputs and get the most out of our inputs.
How are performance and well-being related?
“The enemy of peace of mind is expectations drilled into you by society and other people” - Naval Ravikant
Bad Outputs = Bad Feelings - When the outputs we are aiming for either don't materialize, are not what we expect, or are worse than we wanted we can often feel bad and interpret that outcome as meaning/saying something about us - i.e. we're not good enough, we won't be able to do it, maybe I'm not cut out for this, etc.
Queue monkey mind going into overdrive and telling us why we suck.
Even If What You’re Thinking Is True, It Does Not Help - Even if your effort was poor, the thinking that happens after the outcome is usually unhelpful to both improving the outcome as well as feeling good.
There are a variety of feeling that I think make us psychologically out of shape
Interestingly, this psychology, which I think is pretty common, makes us perform worse. When we get wrapped up in how an outcome is a reflection of who we are and what we're capable of we get all kinds of bad feelings like:
Fear - weakens our immune system, negatively impacts our thinking/decision making, impairs memory formation and can lead to serious mental health problems (source).
Anxiety - Some anxiety is extremely useful for performance. However other forms of anxiety-like paying too much attention to your internal monologue and actively worrying about messing up, actually makes you more likely to mess up. (source)
Stress - Like anxiety, it is beneficial up to a point, but once you reach a certain threshold it negatively affects performance. Additionally, the level of stress that is beneficial depends on the task. We perform better with much lower levels of stress when performing complex or new tasks (source).
And there are a host of feelings that when taken further than is healthy can lead to worse performance and well-being like:
Self-doubt
Lack of presence/inattention
Negative internal monologue
- Ruminating on what others will think
- Trying to control/predict the future
- Making assumptions about other people’s actions/intentions/thoughts
- Endless thinking and lack of focus in the presence
Frustration/Anger
Tension
Worry
Laziness/being sedentary
Ungrounded from the body
Judgmental
Un-trusting
Being psychologically unfit leads to a bunch of situations that don’t benefit us or feel good
When we have too much of the above feelings, situationally it can show up in the following ways:
We avoid the reality of the situation because we don't want to accept it
We avoid sharing our vulnerabilities/weaknesses so we don't get the help we need (or worse, we lie to ourselves which gives us a false sense of confidence)
We are less creative and think less clearly because we're caught up in our worrying
We move less quickly because we're paralyzed by doubt or unable to see truth
We let a fictional story we create in our mind keep us or compel us to do certain things
We look outward for peace and happiness
We experience less of our lives
It's kind of a catch 22. When we don't perform well, we feel bad, and when we feel bad we often can feel worse. So I think there are two options here:
Never perform poorly - I don't think this is realistic
Untangle our feelings of self-worth from performance.
It’s not all about avoiding things that make you unfit. It’s also about cultivating things that are healthy.
Cultivating psychological fitness is also not just about steering away from certain emotions (or limiting the amount we feel). Psychological fitness and improved performance is also about promoting healthy thought patterns that strengthen us like:
Attention
Confidence
Mindfulness
Self-Awareness
Bias for truth
Relaxation
Faith
Compassion
Gratitude
There is plenty of evidence to show how cultivating these traits improve our health and increase our performance (gratitude, confidence, self-awareness, etc).
Examples of what I think a psychologically fit mind thinks like
“We think of ourselves as fixed and the world as malleable, but it’s really we who are malleable and the world is largely fixed.” - Naval Ravikant
I think these are some of the principles of a psychologically fit mind:
We understand outcomes are not a reflection of our self-worth, ability, or competence.
We understand we are imperfect, have weaknesses, and blind spots. We use that information to improve and seek help.
We understand failure is inevitable when doing new things or trying something hard. We understand it is also the best teacher and there is almost always opportunity in failure.
We're aware that our professional pursuits are games we've chosen to play and won't fundamentally make us more or less happy.
We seek out opportunities to have fun and blur the line between work and play.
We understand that work is just a bunch of people choosing to do stuff together. As a result, we try to do stuff with people we enjoy being around.
We look for truth as often as possible when judging outcomes. We understand that grounding ourselves in truth makes everything easier and more clear.
We share openly and often. We understand teams outperform individuals.
We're aware we're going to die and try not to take ourselves/what we do too seriously.
We do one thing at a time. We understand the only real moment is the present moment. We can only be effective right now and getting stuck in our thoughts never feels good.
We understand we have a mind. We understand there is an operating system in there as well (often referred to as the monkey mind) that generates thoughts at random. We understand they are separate. We try to acknowledge the latter, but recognize it is out of control and try to move past it.
We try to be specific. We avoid phrases like I'm "good" or I'm "bad". We understand generalizations are not helpful and labels are rarely true.
How I think a fit mind improves work outcomes?
“An emotion is our evolved biology predicting the future impact of a current event. In modern settings, it’s usually exaggerated or wrong.” - Naval Ravikant
I think when we're psychologically fit and we internalize the above principles, the following happens:
We connect more strongly with others because by being more present we can listen more closely and understand people better. By showing more compassion we can connect with others and try to feel what others are feeling. And by being more grateful we can treat our relationships more respectfully. The net effect of this is we are more effective together and enjoy each other more.
We deal better with setbacks and challenges when we have faith that we can do something to improve the situation. Self-awareness and a bias for truth can help us see the situation more clearly, which means we avoid pain later and can act better. Confidence can give us the courage to try and do something.
We are ourselves more of the time. Honesty and authenticity make it easier for us to connect and collaborate with others.
We share more easily and feel more comfortable with transparency. This improves the speed at which problems get solved and ideas are generated.
Our stamina and energy at work increase because we are not weighed down by negative feelings.
We handle setbacks, failures, and challenges far more gracefully, which makes it more likely we can solve them and reduces our team's burnout.
We learn more quickly because we're focused on reality, not what outcomes mean about us as individuals.
We try new things more often and more quickly because we're less worried about failure.
Psychological Fitness = Improved Wellbeing & Improved Performance - There are tons more examples, but the basic idea is when you are psychologically fit you feel better and you do better.
“A rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things outside of their control.” - Naval Ravikant
Psychological fitness is a skill. Well-being is a skill.
“Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit.” - Naval Ravikant
Psychological fitness and well-being are skills, which means they can be trained and we can improve at them over time. This is amazing because it means if you experience intense anxiety, impostor syndrome, or a variety of other feelings that really make your life experience less positive this can be worked on.
I've tried a lot of this stuff on myself and while I still have a long way to go with my psychological fitness. However, what I have tried has had a big impact on my anxiety, my feelings of self-worth/how often I feel impostor syndrome, and my overall well-being. I think this has also led to better performance (TBD on that one).
There is a lot to talk through on the topic of how to train psychological fitness but it essentially requires inner work and it starts with some kind of mindfulness practice:
Naval Ravikant on types of Meditation
Hiking - Walking meditation
Praying - Gratitude meditation
Showering - Accidental meditation
Journaling - Writing meditation
Meditation - Direct meditation
It Starts With Paying Attention To The Mind - Meditation is a direct channel into understanding your own mind. That's step one. When you start to understand the mechanics of how your mind works you can start to actively influence it and shape it so the thoughts it generates are more in line with how you want to feel.
It Takes Consistency - It's hard and it takes work. The same way you don't eat a salad one time and are healthy forever or you pick up one dumbbell and now you look like Arnold Schwarzenegger (btw Schwarzenegger is on spell check, which is awesome), you don't look at your thoughts once and now you're psychologically fit.
Like everything in life, the best returns come from consistency.
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