Performance psychologist Dr. Noa Kageyama discusses the importance of mentally disengaging from work and practice:
A group of German and US researchers conducted a study of 109 individuals. The setup was pretty simple, consisting of two surveys, spaced 4 weeks apart to see how participants’ mental and emotional states might change over time.
The researchers were primarily interested in the relationship between psychological detachment (our ability to disengage from work during our “off” hours — a key factor in greater well-being and performance), exhaustion (feeling fatigued, emotionally drained/overwhelmed, and unable to meet the demands of our work), time pressure, and pleasurable leisure activities (the degree to which we engage in activities that recharge our batteries and balance out our work demands).
There were a couple interesting findings that came out of the resulting data.
Exhaustion begets exhaustion
You would think that emotionally exhausted folks would be more detached and disengaged from work in their off-work hours. Paradoxically, the opposite seems to be true.
The data suggest that individuals who were exhausted had an increasingly difficult time disconnecting from work concerns as the weeks went by. The idea being, when we’re exhausted, we tend not to do our best work, which makes us feel less capable of meeting the demands of the situation, which makes us worry more and expend even more energy, effort, and time trying to make up for our sub-par work, which only keeps the cycle of worry/practice/exhaustion going.
To use a music example, when we have a big audition coming up, there’s a tendency to worry more about our level of preparation, which leads us to practice more, worry more, and obsess more, which in turn makes it harder to disengage, take a break, and recoup our energy outside of the practice room, so we can dive back in refreshed, recharged, and ready to do our most productive and focused work.
Indeed, someone recently suggested to me that while our instinct when behind in our work is to put in a few extra hours at the office after work to catch up, what ends up happening is that we get home late, feel even more tired and drained, get less rest and relaxation, and return to work tired yet again to repeat the cycle. Instead, she suggested that it’s more productive to go home early, get quality R&R, and go to work early the next morning, fresher, more productive, and more motivated to get things done.
Time pressure makes things worse
The other finding was that time pressure seems to make detaching from work more difficult if you’re already feeling exhausted. As in, exhausted folks find it increasingly difficult to mentally detach from work and get the mental/physical break they need when they feel like they’re on a time crunch.
This makes sense too, as the less time we have to prepare, and the closer we get to the day of a big audition, the more likely we are to worry, stress, and obsess about it, even when we’re not practicing.
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As Olympic marathoner Keith Brantly once said, “Any idiot can train himself into the ground; the trick is working in training to get gradually stronger.”
There’s a trick for removing all of the stress of auditions.
You only deserve to win the audition if your average performance is good enough. Imagine the converse: your peak performance was in the audition, and your actual performance in the position never lives up to the expectations of the position. So, don’t do your best. Do your normal, which doesn’t require any particular or special preparation.
There’s a second trick. As long as you continue to improve, you will succeed at each successive audition. It’s only a matter of time until even a substantially below-average performance exceeds the threshold.
There’s a third trick. You don’t really need the audition. It’s fine if you fail. You got this far without it, you can probably go at least as far again without it.
Because your average performance should be good enough, it should not be particularly surprising to succeed, which means it shouldn’t be particularly exciting. If the idea of winning the audition is exciting, then you’re probably not good enough yet. (It might instead be a bug in your reasoning.)