S36 E2: "The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us About Work and Life" by Sally Jenkins
Oct 10, 2023
auto_awesome
Sportswriter Sally Jenkins shares insights on the importance of candidness and self-awareness in champions. Discover the five crucial ways observing exceptional athletes and coaches can enhance performance. Learn about conditioning, effective practice, embracing failure, and more. Explore the significance of failure in achieving success and shared principles of confident decision making.
Conditioning improves decision-making under pressure and enhances brain functions.
Practicing involves addressing weaknesses and improving non-dominant skills for transformational success.
Deep dives
Principle 1: The Importance of Conditioning
Conditioning is a crucial aspect that can significantly impact decision-making under pressure. Physical training not only builds muscle but also enhances brain functions such as memory, attention, focus, and executive function. It is necessary to understand how tiredness affects decision-making and be able to perform at a high level even when exhausted.
Principle 2: The Power of Practice
Practicing is not just repetitive, but it involves diagnosing weaknesses and actively working on them. Great athletes focus on addressing their blind spots and improving even their non-dominant skills. Practice should involve real resistance and the pursuit of unconscious incompetence. Martina Navratilova's transformation after working on her weaknesses led to her winning a record ninth Wimbledon title.
Sportswriter Sally Jenkins has spent 30 years observing, interviewing, and analyzing elite coaches and playmakers, such as Bill Belichick, Peyton Manning, Michael Phelps, and more. In this episode, she shares the principles that lead superstars to success — and how you can apply those principles to your life.