Here's what a basic mental skills program might look like if I were working with a coach:

1. Mindfulness
2. Goal-setting
3. Confidence-building
4. Energy management
5. Self-talk
6. Preparation
7. Resilience

Here's what that would look like in practice: 1. Mindfulness

This isn't some airy-fairy exercise all about "letting go."

This is attention training. And it only takes 12 minutes a day for maximum impact.

So, set aside 12 minutes.

Turn down the lights.

Focus on your breath.

Come back when distracted.

Repeat.

I burned out for the first time in 2010.

I had worked a ridiculous schedule for 100+ days in a row as a college football coach.

We had a good season. I felt more lost and disconnected than ever.

Here's what I've learned in 13 years trying to make sure I don't burn out again: 1. There's no substitute for recovery

No matter how good you are and how much work there is to get done, failing to recover is the fastest path to burn out.

I had to change my mindset about it.

Recovery isn't time away from work. It's time invested in future performance.

We've lost the essence of what it means to have a growth mindset, and instead turned it into a catch-all for "learning from failure."

We've left the science behind.

Here's what a growth mindset really is, and how to get more of it: The concept of a growth mindset grew out of a line of research about achievement motivation.

The scientists who first started studying this concept - Henry Murray, David McClelland, and John Atkinson - noted different ways of responding to achievement tasks back the 1930s.

Most creators are leaving an advantage on the table:

Their mindset.

A new study shows how creators can level up their performance by systematically finding flow.

Here are the 3 steps to take to use your psychology to get more engagement, creativity, and better performance: Flow is a psychological state we enter when we’re optimally challenged and absorbed in an activity.

It’s what athletes call “being in the zone”.

It’s a major performance enhancer, and research is beginning to show we have more access to this enhanced psychology than we think.

How setting goals can elevate your performance: The simple act of writing your goals down and getting clear on what you want to achieve can impact performance.

Setting goals is a critical part of the high-performance cycle.

So how do goals work, exactly?

It turns out there are 4 factors goals impact:

It takes a special psychology to reach Olympic gold.

What is that psychology, exactly?

A team of scientists combined their 125+ years of experience to model these characteristics.

Here's the psychological profile and how you can develop your own gold medal psychology: The Gold Medal Profile for Sport Psychology is an evidence-informed model that combines 3 levels of psychological skills to lead to peak performance.

The skills build on one another. It starts here 🔽

Level 1 (Gold Medal Skills):

• Motivation
• Confidence
• Resilience

Astronauts are the original telecommuters.

What can we learn from them about operating effective remote teams?

NASA wrote a paper to tell us.

Here are the key insights to high performance for NASA's virtual teams: Working to maintain the operations of the International Space Station is one of NASA's main challenges. This operation is rife with high-criticality situations: those that require coordination and cooperation across many teams, times, and distances.

How do they do it?

The simple 5-step formula anyone can use to improve their performance by optimizing the right psychological states: 1. Prepare

Good preparation is a necessity for peak performance.

It’s a recipe for:

• increased confidence
• feeling in control
• trusting your skills

Without preparation, you’re leaving more than needed up to chance.

How do two milkshakes with the same ingredients, made at the same time, and consumed by people matched for similarity, lead to people feeling so different after drinking them?

The answer:

Mindset🧵 This is one of the coolest studies I've seen from a leading researcher on the power of mindset, @AliaCrum.

Dr. Crum's work is all about how our thoughts, beliefs, and expectations influence the very real processes that play out in our bodies and the world around us.

The recent research on "High Reliability Organizations" is fascinating.

It seems to boil down to 6 things, all of which can be enhanced by training your mind: A high-reliability organization is an org that performs nearly error-free despite the chaos and complexity of their operating environment. What do they have in common?

What does it really mean to be authentic?

A multidimensional exploration of the concept of authenticity, and what it means for leaders: Let's first break down the 4 components of authenticity:
1. Awareness
2. Reducing bias
3. Acting right
4. Relational Authenticity

What aspiring leaders and executives can learn from embracing the role of the 6th man: The 6th man is a valuable role in basketball. Though this person isn't a starter, they have significant responsibilities:
- They have to raise the energy in the game
- They're expected to contribute in a big way
- They need to step up at a moment's notice

We've been brought up to think that the individual and environment are separate and that individuals simply exist within a larger set of conditions.

It turns out we actually construct our own micro-environment within the conditions we're in. What this means for performance: 1. The way we've been taught to think about evolution and "survival of the fittest" is pretty off-base from what evolutionary scientists know.

The idea that environments would exist without individuals is wrong. Environments need individuals.

The four competencies of elite leadership in sport that apply anywhere: Sport is the quintessential high-stakes, high-pressure (and sometimes, high-consequence) environment. In these conditions, effective leadership can quite literally make or break a team’s performance.

One of the reasons we think of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and Tiger Woods as all time greats: they all delivered under pressure.

They’re clutch.

How to become clutch in your own life: Clutch begins in a specific context. For us to even have the opportunity to be clutch, we've got to have 3 factors in play -the outcome is one the line, you're in the game (whatever the game may be), and your desired outcome is within reach.

Without these, clutch can't happen.

A case against self-affirmations:

Contrary to popular belief, having unrealistically positive self-perceptions can actually hurt your performance.

The best athletes actually underestimate their abilities relative to their peers. It turns out that underestimating our abilities tends to maximize our fitness from an evolutionary perspective, and viewing your abilities in this way actually predicts better performance than does an unrealistic positive belief in yourself.

3 myths about organizational culture that impact the ways we work: 1. Culture is defined/characterized only by what is shared

We often think that successful cultures are built on shared elements - beliefs, values, expectations - that are enacted the same way by all members of the team.

How does mindfulness actually work?

It’s more than just “relaxing” or being present.

The 4 mechanisms that are enacted by mindfulness that facilitate performance: 1. Attention Regulation
Paying attention to a single object strengthens executive control. The result is improvement in focusing, orienting, and alerting us to changes.

We can stay immersed in the experience longer, identify relevant details faster, and notice changes sooner.

My top 10 most recommended books this year for people looking to optimize their life and performance: 1. 7.5 Lessons about the Brain - @LFeldmanBarrett

If you want to get better at anything, it’s helpful to have an accurate understanding of how the brain works. This short, impactful read is the most important psychology book I’ve read in the last 10 years.

A short list of 5 evidence-based exercises to make your life better: 1. Focus on your strengths

Identify your personal strengths and how you can leverage them in your daily life. Connect your activities back to the strengths you have, and stay focused on how those strengths make your contributions unique and valuable.

7 research-backed ways to understand organizational culture, from the legendary culture scholar Edgar Schein: Answering these questions and unpacking them can help you better assess how an organization operates, what the expectations are, and what might be driving organizational behavior.