Improving Running Performance and Efficiency through Narrowed Attention and Visual Focus

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Olympic athletes have a unique way of focusing their vision during races, which we can teach others to do as well. By narrowing their attention to a specific target and ignoring distractions, people can improve their performance and experience. When we taught people this technique, they moved 23% faster and felt 17% less pain during the exercise. It's a simple but effective way to increase efficiency and achieve better results.

Social psychologist Emily Balcetis has devoted her career to understanding how people’s perceptions of the world fuel their motivations and life goals. In this episode she goes in-depth on that wealth of research, what she’s learned from studying some of the world’s most successful people and how they set goals, and how you can get better results in life if you change the way you see the world and where you place your focus. Balcetis is an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University (NYU), focused on how the motivations, emotions, needs, and goals people hold impact the basic ways people perceive, interpret, and ultimately react to information around them. She is also the author of the book Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World, which was released in 2020. --

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