TynedaleNLP

At the beginning of the last third of the 2009 Formula 1 championship season, Jenson Button was still in the lead by 16 points, but had not scored any points for a number of races and was quite clearly struggling.

It’s easy to imagine the psychological difficulties he may have been experiencing in seeing his season going backwards, and the almost inevitable grasping of defeat from the jaws of victory: As other teams catch-up he appears to tread water. One of the things it is reported he employed was a simple yet really effective psychological shift to make his challenge appear more manageable and achievable...and it’s something we can all learn something from...

...When my son brought home a page full of adding and subtraction, all jumbled up to complete and shade when he had completed, it looked insurmountable. He sat and looked at it and despaired...I sat and looked at it and despaired...his Mum looked at it and despaired...his little brother laughed!

He did finish it, and what we did is similar to what Button has done: We shifted the focus.

Instead of seeing a full page of sums, I encouraged him to see it as a series of small tasks. He went away and did five sums at a time. Whenever he had finished doing something else – playing football, riding his bike, eating lunch – he would go off and do another five sums. Almost imperceptibly the worksheet was completed and he actually enjoyed the fact that he could do bits here and there rather than doggedly grinding from one sum to the next in an ever decreasing circle of motivation...

...Jenson Button’s shift of focus was to convince himself that he was now involved in a five race championship, with a 16 point head-start; remove the pressure of past performances and, more importantly past failures, and re-engage with each race as a separate entity not as a leviathan rolling to an inevitable conclusion.

...And, this appeared to work. He had an excellent race, finished second and added 8 points to his tally.

When we are presented with ‘monumental tasks’ there is a tendency to be over-whelmed by the weight they present. Try to see each goal as a series of small steps, little challenges to be met and easily achieved. The over-arching theme will always be there but in the completion of each small target this can become an incidental reward for all your hard work.