Interview With Gene Jones, Developer of Triviation
LeBron James possesses breathtaking physical skills but
he did not win a championship until he mastered the mental game. This critical
element for success has always fascinated me and I have written many articles on the subject, including my
review
of Garret Kramer's book Stillpower: Your Inner Source of Excellence in Sports--and Life.
Gene Jones, developer of the
Triviation
method to "activate breakthrough thinking," believes that honing
one's mental/psychological game is important in many aspects of life, including
sports:
Hall of Fame baseball player and legendary wordsmith Yogi Berra famously
said "90% of this game is 50% mental." While the math of this
statement doesn't add up, it points to a vital aspect of sports and athletic
competition.
Although the games we play and watch are visibly physical, the key to
success in sports is based on mental preparation and approach. Whether
you are a sports hobbyist or a top professional athlete, the mental component
of sports is what differentiates those who are continually frustrated from
those who succeed. It almost always determines the outcome between two
opponents who are fundamentally "evenly matched."
This means that breakthrough thinking is an essential element in all
sports endeavors. How many times has it been said that an individual athlete or
team "just has to get over the hump" to win a championship, or that
one athlete or team has the "mental edge" over another?
I recently conducted a brief email interview with Mr. Jones. His unedited
answers to my questions are set apart in italics.
Q: In what ways are your ideas about
"flow"influenced by and/or complementary with the work done by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi?
Mihály was a pioneer in this field. When I read his work a number of years ago, I had already formulated many of my views on "flow" states. Reading his work was important confirmation of the conclusions I had arrived at.
Q: Which athletes have you worked with and/or observed who best exemplify the kind of "breakthrough thinking" that you recommend to achieve peak performance? What is a good, specific example of how one of those athletes employed such techniques effectively?
I hesitate to single out any athletes in this regard because I do not know what thought processes they have used.
Q: Are you familiar with Tim Grover's work? My interview with him can be found here:
Interview with Tim Grover, Author of Relentless. Do you see a downside to the kind of focus and
intensity that is necessary to achieve a high level of success in a given field, perhaps in terms of sacrifices one has to make in other areas of one's life?
There is a downside to any endeavor that is pursued with overwhelming intensity, as other aspects of life are often overlooked. The key word here is finding some balance while also being laser focused on a lofty goal.
To me, the truly successful person is one who reaches a high level of success while also maintaining a balanced and full existence. It is important not to let passion for any one aspect of life run wild and trample the rest of your life. This is true for any field of endeavor--not just sports.
Q: What is the biggest mistake that earnest competitors make when trying to maximize their potential?
There is no single biggest mistake. I like to evaluate each circumstance as an individual challenge.
Q: Do you believe in the concept of "choking" as the opposite of "flow"? If so, how would you define choking and how can one best prevent it?
This question opens up a whole world of its own. Saying that an athlete "choked" is one of the most nasty comments a person can make. Deciding as to whether a person choked or not can often be a subjective judgment. Simply put, choking is the opposite of being "clutch," but it is more than that. Someone who chokes is having an emotional crisis that prevents him/her from performing up to his/her capabilities. Simply missing a shot at the buzzer, or not getting a hit in a critical point of a baseball game, is not necessarily a "choke." Even a great athlete in a "flow" state can miss a shot or hit the ball directly at a fielder, etc. In my opinion, the only time that failure reaches the level of choking is when it is clear that the athlete is emotionally gnarled up and therefore not functioning properly. At that point, it becomes a "nervous condition"
that needs to be treated. I would also take a serious look at that athlete's preparation process to see if improving the preparation can relieve the insecurity.
Q: Is there a specific, important idea or concept that I have not mentioned that you would like to share with my readers?
You have asked some good questions. I like to be of assistance to others in any way I can by either answering questions and/or analyzing specific situations. There are always more important ideas and concepts to explore. In fact, I am writing a whole book to try and encompass some of them. But it is difficult to answer such a wide open question as this. To use a baseball metaphor, this question makes me feel like a batter who is trying to pitch to himself...I'm trying to be on the mound at the same time I am in the batter's box.Labels: flow, Garret Kramer, Gene Jones, LeBron James, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Tim Grover
posted by David Friedman @ 5:23 PM
"Flow," Basketball and Prince
Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has studied a phenomenon that he calls
"flow": "The metaphor of flow is one that many people have used to describe the sense of effortless action they feel in moments that stand out as the best in their lives. Athletes refer to it as 'being in the zone,' religious mystics as being in 'ecstasy,' artists and musicians as 'aesthetic rapture.'"
Kobe Bryant and LeBron James experience "flow" when they play basketball at a higher level than anyone else currently does--not that they are the only players who experience "flow" but they are quintessential examples of it, whether you want to cite Bryant's
81 point game or James'
48 point outburst in game five versus the Pistons in 2007. When you watch someone who is the best at his craft perform you feel like that person is doing something that he was born to do, though of course
it takes an enormous amount of "effortful study" to achieve what looks like effortless greatness. Tiger Woods stalking his prey on the back nine is another great example of "flow," as was
Bobby Fischer slaying top grandmasters as if they were children.
In the classic Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever," Edith Keeler, who does not know that Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are from the future but suspects that they are not who they say they are, says to Kirk and Spock that they seem to be "out of place" in her world. Spock asks her where she "would estimate we belong" and she replies, "You--at his side, as if you've always been there and always will." Keeler's words--"as if you've always been there and always will"--are an apt description of the "flow" experience, of someone doing exactly what he enjoys doing and was meant to do; Kirk and Spock made a perfect team, as Keeler noted when she observed that even when Spock did not address Kirk as "Captain" it was as if he had said it. Although Scottie Pippen proved to be a fine soloist in 1994--
finishing third in MVP voting--after Michael Jordan temporarily retired, when Pippen played alongside Jordan it seemed as if he had "always been there and always will" be there because their games and skill sets blended so perfectly.
Actually, that Star Trek episode is also an example of "flow" in the sense that it was based on a masterfully crafted, award winning screenplay by Harlan Ellison, a screenplay that Ellison proudly proclaimed was so well written that even though he disagreed with changes that the show's producers made to his story they still could not destroy it (a great writer's ego is no less magnificent than the ego of a great athlete). Ellison's story powerfully examined the themes of destiny, friendship, loyalty and the danger of being ahead of one's time; Keeler envisioned a world of peace and cooperation but her pacifist views--if enacted into government policy at the time of the rise of Hitler--could have led to a victory for the Nazis (in one version of history portrayed in that episode, she led a pacifist movement that delayed America's entry into World War II, providing the Nazis enough time to develop the atomic bomb and conquer the world). As Spock said to Kirk, "She was right, but at the wrong time."
I have always enjoyed following the careers of performers who are able to achieve a "flow" state, particularly when they overcome or circumvent traditional norms. For instance, George Lucas used the money and influence that he gained from making "American Graffiti" to get the backing to film "Star Wars" and then he earned enough from "Star Wars" to achieve complete freedom from the Hollywood studio system, whereupon he removed himself from the mainstream bureaucracy of the film world and created his movies on his terms. Needless to say, most people do not have the necessary vision, courage and persistence to pull that off.
Prince has accomplished a similar feat in the music industry. He went from being a wunderkind at Warner Brothers who wrote, produced, delivered vocals and performed on an astounding variety of musical instruments to being a completely independent artist who dictates his own terms to record labels and distributors. Along the way, he received scorn for scrawling the word "slave" on his face and changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol but there was a method to his seeming madness: Warner Brothers wanted to control when and how he would distribute his music, while the incredibly prolific Prince simply wanted to release everything to the public as soon as he created it, whether or not this supposedly oversaturated the market. Since Warner Brothers owned his name (in a performing sense), Prince felt like a "slave" because he could not put his music out as Prince--so he circumvented the system with his "name change" until his Warner Brothers contract expired, whereupon he reclaimed his name and took total control over his music. Now he releases his music whenever and however he wants to, including his Planet Earth CD that
he arranged to be given away with a newspaper in Great Britain in order to promote a series of concerts; in one fell swoop, Prince made a small fortune (he was paid in advance by the newspaper), sold out most of his appearances instantly and irritated Sony BMG, the corporate giant that was supposed to distribute the CD to retailers: for a nonconformist genius, it is hard to imagine a better day than that!
Prince's new three CD set titled
LOtUSFLOW3R dropped on Sunday exclusively at Target and he promoted it by performing for three straight nights last week on the "Tonight Show With Jay Leno." For his finale on Friday, Prince sang "Feel Good, Feel Better, Feel Wonderful." I know that Prince is a big hoops fan and I swear that one verse of that song is supposed to represent what Kobe Bryant was thinking a few years back when he played with Kwame Brown: "I just can't recall what the ---- I was thinking when I threw you the ball/It hit three bystanders after you touched it/Now they want to sue me." Of course, Prince did not utter the "----" part because he has transitioned into a no profanity stage of his career after becoming notorious for some of his raunchy lyrics; it is interesting to observe the evolution of his efforts to balance the spiritual and carnal aspects of his personality, particularly because so many artists have struggled greatly with that dichotomy.
Prince dictated the format of his "Tonight Show" appearance, mainly that he would not be interviewed but instead would go straight into his performance after a brief introduction by Leno. The coolest thing about Prince--other than the amazing width and breadth of his musical talent--is that he has forged a path that enables him to uncompromisingly create his art and to share it with the world on his terms. If he does not want to sit on a couch and banter with a talk show host about banal topics then he simply won't do it; Prince knows that he is talented enough to merit being on the "Tonight Show" doing what he does best and he will not compromise anything to get what he deserves. You can bet that Prince would not have lost any sleep if the show's producers had rejected his terms; he simply would have gone ahead with his other plans and it would have been their loss, not his.
A lyric from Prince's new song "Ol' Skool Company" not only sums up the sad state of the music business but also is an apt description of the sad state of the writing business as well: "The songs we sang used to mean something/Now every other one's just mean." Prince often laments the state of the world and the state of the music business but he is not just some cranky old guy talking about the good old days--he still possesses the full range of his talents and when he brags about producing real music by real musicians that is not false bravado.
Labels: flow, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Prince
posted by David Friedman @ 11:16 PM
Interview with MIT Associate Head Coach Dr. Oliver Eslinger
Dr. Oliver Eslinger is the associate head coach of MIT's basketball team. His duties range from coaching to scouting to working with alumni to recruiting. MIT aspires to be the Duke or Stanford of Division III basketball, a program combining high academic standards with athletic excellence.
Dr. Eslinger told me about some of the better players who have played for MIT recently:
"A few years ago (2005-06) we won 21 games and set a school record and we had the good fortune of coaching the first All-America in MIT history, Mike D’Auria. When he was a senior and we won 21 games we also had the Conference Rookie of the Year, Jimmy Bartolotta from Colorado. Now he is an All-American as well as an Academic All-American, so you can see that over the last few years there has been a shift in the culture of the basketball program. People see that and read about it and realize that MIT can be tops in schooling and basketball and that certainly helps recruiting as well."
He also mentioned a player
who helped to lead MIT to four wins during its first international basketball tour since 1983: "It helps to have at least one guy back there who can at least alter some shots. We have a guy named Hamidou Soumare who is probably one of the most athletic players in the conference and he can certainly block shots. We just call him ‘Dou.’"
I asked Dr. Eslinger which coaches have had the biggest influence on him and he gave an interesting, broad based response:
"Going back to when I was playing, when I started playing basketball in fourth grade in Oklahoma--where I grew up--my coach was named Jack Hale. I fell in love with basketball just because I love the sport but also because he is a great guy, someone who I felt comfortable with. He was nice and he was understanding, so that was my first image of a basketball coach. Since then, throughout my career as a player and as a coach myself, there was a teacher at Bethlehem Central High School in Albany, New York—that’s where I went to high school after I moved from Oklahoma—named Chuck Abba. He was a coaching legend there. I didn’t play for him but I ended up working with him for a year after I graduated from Clark and before I went to grad school. He taught me a lot about how to structure practices and really that when you are a coach you are a teacher and you are an educator. He demanded a lot from his players but he also understood them. His son actually won a national championship at Williams. In the pro ranks, Phil Jackson has been a big influence on me, especially when he was in Chicago and was able to manage players. In the NBA it is so important to manage personalities because everybody is good and so it is a matter of finding the right chemistry and getting the right characters to believe in your philosophy. I think that Phil Jackson has done that. I’ve read all of his books. He talks a lot about the Zen Buddhist philosophy and he got his players to buy into it, he got Jordan to buy into it. He was able to get those guys to buy in to what he was talking about, the five fingers on a hand coming together and that sort of thing. I think that in the college ranks, (I admire) the way that Coach K runs his program and that he’s been there so long and that he may not always have the best players in the country but he gets the guys who are the right fit for Duke and for the campus and for his program. That says a lot. Of course, John Wooden. I was looking at his website the other day and there was a little blurb there about how he believes that his time management and discipline were the most important factors in his success, plus getting to know players on an individual basis as people. That is a key ingredient in my philosophy and that is one reason that I got into psychology. I really enjoy getting to know our players at MIT. Larry Anderson at MIT has been a tremendous influence as well. He has taught me so much about the game and about building a program, especially as it relates to attention to detail, offensive and defensive strategy, and how to get the most out of players."
You can see more from my interview with Dr. Eslinger at SlamOnline:
Athletic IntelligenceLabels: Dr. Oliver Eslinger, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, MIT
posted by David Friedman @ 8:31 PM
