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Tolerating Boredom
A high-performance mindset requires being eager in the face of the mundane and the vexing because that is what you are going to face if you want to do something remarkable. I think part of the challenge of understanding this is simply that we see the products of that mundanity of handling those things that are vexing and confusing. And so you might see an NBA player at the peak of their career doing something amazing, but you don’t see the precursors to that.
Training in basketball for me was so boring. I remember doing entire sessions when I first started playing because I was behind the curve, and I needed to catch up. Catching a ball, doing a pivot, pivoting back, passing the ball, for half an hour. But that’s what you need to be able to tolerate if you want to achieve great success because it comes through handling stuff that frustrates and confuses you, and it comes through repetition, ad nauseam, of things that seem small and unimportant until they’re combined.
Paying the FEE
A model to help you embrace mundanity as you seek your goal is the FEE model, focus, effort, execution.
Focus. Focus is the idea that you can curate your whole attention into this moment, regardless of how dull and uninteresting it might feel, regardless of how consequential or important for your future it might be in your mind. Can you lever your whole mental faculties to that point in time and pay attention in a really proactive way?
Effort is the first E. It seems obvious. The idea that if you’re going to achieve something, frankly, whether it be remarkable or ordinary, you have to put in some effort. It seems obvious, but most people don’t think that. And, indeed, most people spend most of their life, whether it be at work or in sport, seeing just how many percentage points off one hundred percent they can offer. Can I offer ninety-seven percent? It’s almost like a game people play at work. How little effort can I get away with? Rather than thinking, how about for the time that I’m doing this, which will not be forever and should not be forever, but for the focused amount of time I’m doing this, my effort will be a hundred percent.
Execution, practicing in a way that is very conscious of the right ways of doing things, of the structures that must be in place, of the movement of your body, of the activity of your brain, a really conscious execution-minded effort. Somebody did a great disservice to the idea of practice by misunderstanding the research on practice. They just said practice makes perfect, and it’s like, no, it doesn’t. No. No. No. No. Well-executed practice makes perfect.