You’re a mental athlete. Why don’t you warm up?
Here's Bob Bowman, the coach of the most decorated Olympian of all time. From The Power of Habit:
There’s a series of things we do before every race that are designed to give Michael [Phelps] a sense of building victory.
When the race arrives, he’s more than halfway through his plan and he’s been victorious at every step. All the stretches went like he planned. The warm-up laps were just like he visualized. His headphones are playing exactly what he expected. The actual race is just another step in a pattern that started earlier that day and has been nothing but victories. Winning is a natural extension.
Basketball players warm up with lay-up drills. Jazz musicians warm up with scales. Chess players warm up with tactical exercises. Knowledge workers warm up with… what?
Usually nothing. They just kind of start working in a state of continuous partial attention. Not the biggest problem in the world for those working 9-to-5s without ladder-climbing aspirations. But for entrepreneurs with more skin in the game, it's probably worth rethinking. The superficial reason athletes warm up is to ready their muscles for physical exertion. But the deeper benefit comes from readying their muscle memory — from shutting off the mind-wandering parts of the brain, which are active by default, and switching on the task-specific parts of the brain that enable a flow state. So if you care about how you spend your time, energy, and attention, you should care about warming up.
For years now I've "started working" about four times daily, which for me means four daily warm-ups. That's nearly 1,500 per year! I tweak the routine regularly, so the particulars don't matter. But here's the current gist if you're curious: 1) I put on headphones, 2) play music for focusing, 3) tidy up my physical workspace, 4) type out what I plan to accomplish in the work session, 5) briefly visualize myself accomplishing it, and 6) set a website-blocking app called Freedom to kill my internet for five minutes at the end of my 90-minute work session. I tick actual boxes on an actual checklist for this warm-up, and then I'm off to the races. To borrow an old Samurai saying, first I win, then I attack.
The Adjacent Possible is where I share my most useful insights in bite-sized posts. One email per week. Many insights per email:
Go here for more posts in the series.
I have been thinking about this a lot myself lately. I can always do a better job planning my tasks for the next day/week/month which helps, but here are also plenty of days where I sit down and it feels a bit overwhelming to jump into something.
I've come to just accept that it takes a little while to ease into my work, even if that means I flip between tabs for a while or take too long on a simple task. Eventually, I get into a good rhythm, but I'm sure there would be a huge advantage to being intentional with that process.
There are things you can control, like willing yourself to do the work, and things you can't control, like feeling overwhelmed, feeling focused, feeling excited to be sitting at your desk, etc. Interestingly, I've found that being intentional about my routines — which I can directly control — has an indirectly positive effect on my mental/emotional state — which I can't.
I always "prime" my brain by doing the easiest tasks first.
And maybe watch a couple of YouTube videos, read a couple of tweets.
100%. I like doing one or two really easy tasks first and then going for a home-run swing on the hardest task. It doesn't always go well…
This is a great idea, thanks for sharing.
Putting on headphones always gets me into a working mode, but I need to be more intentional about adding other steps to it.
Everyone's different, so that might be all you need. The key is just to experiment with different approaches and examine the results.
You're totally right, thanks for posting this and getting the creative juices flowing!
Completely agree. I like to start off my 2 hour work sessions by planning out the tasks I want to achieve, skimming over relevant materials, and then jumping in. Helps approach the work more intentionally.
This is a great topic. When I have to warm up for a bit of serious thinking, I like to get some calm / alone time before hand. After I've processed information necessary for the mental activity, I will try to take a mental break, either meditate or have a short power nap to let my subconscious brain start working the problem/solution/information. I'd love to learn what other people do.
I have thought about this many times and ended up stretching my neck and shoulders before and after almost every task for the day.
Actually a really good idea. All that stretching will compound over time — just as sitting rigidly in place all day compounds for most software engineers.
"Knowledge workers warm up with… what?
Usually nothing...."
This could not be further from the truth. Most people in the tech industries start their working days with "standups." 10 to 15 minutes long meetings where every person verbalizes problems and issues from the previous days and plans for today. This perfectly fits into your definition of a mental warm-up. Also, most programmers perform various coding tasks, challenges, puzzles, katas, etc., daily.
I don't agree. Meetings are infamous among programmers for disrupting flow.
In my years as a corporate developer I did hundreds of stand-ups, and I usually spent the next half hour at my desk chatting aimlessly on Slack or browsing the web before starting my engines and getting my work done.
Warming up in the sense I described involves a conscious individual decision to pair a routine with a session of work, whereas stand-ups are about accountability and team coordination.
Some do. But this post is specifically about warm-up routines, not about practicing in general.
That is well said, I will try this approach as it just makes sense that if world-class athletes warm up, then so should entrepreneurs who are trying to get in the flow state and build great things.
Another benefit I appreciate is that warm-up routines can help activate task-specific parts of the brain and reduce mind-wandering.
Doing a correct warm-up is essential for the proper functioning of the bone structure and the musculature.
For some reason, warming up isn't very popular as a good practice for most people before training.
Some people think that warming up is just stretching a few muscles for a total of 2 minutes.
Warming up requires starting with some mobility exercises to warm up, followed by stretching.
I hope that at some point you will realize the importance of heating as well as cooling.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.