the same time he’s worried about the potential fallout for his pitch. He feels anxious and tense, his thoughts are racing and he can’t concentrate. Despite a late night rehearsing, his mind is suddenly foggy about his presentation and he feels himself starting to freeze. That alarming realisation only reinforces his negative self-judgment, and the negative content loop is set up.
Initially Tony had a positive picture in his head about how the situation would ideally work out. But the threat within the situation – his lateness and the negative attitude it will spark – has changed his perception. What he wanted and what he is likely to get are now at odds with each other. His fantasy and the reality clash, creating an internal conflict.
It’s almost as if he has one mind trying to do its best to prepare for his performance, and another mind that’s much more concerned about how he’ll be judged. He’s caught in two minds.
Instead of focusing on his presentation, he finds his attention stuck on exactly the outcomes he didn’t want. Sure, some of his attention still seems to be carrying him along, so that it’s not as if he’s completely stopped functioning. But a good chunk of his attention is now caught up in the negative spiral. He’s drowning in a flood of pessimistic thoughts and uncomfortable feelings, and is fast losing focus and effectiveness.
And it all seems to feed into the loop and strengthen it, so Tony finds it more and more difficult to get back on task. The loop becomes a downward spiral: the deeper he goes, the harder it is to climb out.
The reason why a negative content loop is so damaging for our focus is that it takes us out of the current moment. It diverts our attention from the present into the past (a mistake or missed opportunity) or the future (negative outcomes and the criticism and judgment that will result). Our mental horsepower is cut in half right when we need it most.
This looping into the past or future also gets our mind and body out of sync. Our body can only exist in the here and now, but when we are trapped in a negative content loop our thoughts are fixated on the past or future and drag us there mentally. This mind–body split takes its toll on how we think, feel and act.
One classic negative loop is the ‘poor me’ loop. Something goes wrong in our environment. We start to feel sorry for ourselves, seeing ourselves as the victim of circumstance. Life is unfair; we don’t deserve this. This swirl of feelings and thoughts makes us uptight, frustrated, angry. We get stuck on the injustice, feeling more and more self-righteous. And the situation just keeps compounding itself.
In a nutshell, we’re sulking. This kind of behaviour is meant to be restricted to children, but adults can turn it into an art form. Sulking involves both passive and aggressive elements: we withdraw and go silent, but make sure that everyone knows we are far from happy! We’re moody and resentful, and our sullen, brief replies, when we give them, are intended to annoy others.
Many of us demonstrate this behaviour. A lot.
From the performance point of view, sulking is a very unhelpful mental state to adopt. It leads to a lack of action and movement. Not only that, but the sulker also deliberately affects those around them. Because they feel like they are being punished, they punish others back.
Some people really know how to hold grudges. They are so adept at sulking that they can remain in that state not just for minutes or hours, but days, weeks, months, even years on end.
Next time you’re watching a sporting event, follow the competitors’ eyes. When an unfortunate incident occurs, they often look downwards, which can show they’re stuck in a ‘poor me’ loop, turning their attention inward. Or they may look upwards, questioning whatever higher power they deem responsible for the injustice. The origins of this type of ‘poor me’ behaviour lie in the attachment behaviour we looked at earlier. When the parent is well attuned to their child’s distress, they can provide comfort through non-judgmental facial contact and a soothing voice, but when the relationship is unpredictable or unresponsive, the child will come to associate their discomfort with a lack of eye contact. Later in life, when the same individual faces disappointment and discomfort the same pattern will emerge. The ‘poor me’ loop, and other negative content loops, are a deadly attention trap for performance. This kind of mental state doesn’t matter that much if we’re just going about our everyday tasks. But when we’re in a more demanding situation, it can become our sworn enemy. It sucks away treasured attention that we could be using to extract maximum information from our environment, solve problems or overcome obstacles.
Think about our golfer from earlier, feeling anxious as he takes the final shot in his first big championship. He might be focusing on where he wants the ball to go, but because his RED mind has taken over, part of his attention is also diverted to the water trap and where he doesn’t want the ball to land. He starts to worry about the water trap and a negative content loop is triggered. Out of nowhere, some self-defeating self-talk – ‘I’m going to miss the shot … I’m going to lose the championship!’ – and negative feelings – shame, frustration – seem to burst onto the scene.
His mind now contains images of two ‘targets’: the one he wants to hit and the one he doesn’t. And because he’s trying to perform while he’s split in two by doubt, his shot inevitably falls somewhere in the middle.
Cast your mind back to a recent performance moment when you lost mental focus. What diverted your attention in that moment? Did you get trapped in a negative content loop and partially fixated on what you didn’t want to happen? It was as if part of you was doing everything it could to defeat you in that moment.
You were caught in two minds.
Dual focus
For a head chef in a reputable restaurant, which is more important: having a laser-like focus on the food, or keeping an eye on her team, the supply chain, the wait staff, the table service and a long list of other factors? Narrow focus on food, or broad focus on the general restaurant situation?
The answer is that both are necessary. The head chef cannot afford to take her eye off the overall situation, and she most definitely cannot let substandard food pass. Both the overview and the specific detail are required. One without the other would be a recipe for disaster.
Our actions should always take place within the big picture of what we are trying to achieve, which requires attention to context. At the same time, we need a narrow focus on the specific task we’re engaged in, which requires attention to detail.
While the RED mind can process many things unconsciously at the same time, the BLUE mind is linear, allowing us to concentrate on only one thing at a time. The head chef is intuitively aware of both the wider situation and specific tasks through her RED mind, but still consciously focuses on each in turn. It seems simple, but it works.
A dual focus requires a tight, constant feedback loop between the overview and the specific task, with each informing the other. At any one time, our dominant focus will be on either one. The key is to move back and forth between the two, rather than splitting attention between them.
Here’s a puzzle: dual focus and split attention both imply that our attention has to be in two places at once. So why does dual focus feed performance, while split attention starves it?
Let’s use an example to paint a picture of the differences.
Leo has just dropped a simple catch and gifted the opposition the upper hand in the closing stages of an important match. In the minute or so that follows, his mind goes back and replays the memory of his fumble and the moans of the watching crowd over and over. At the same time, he’s constantly looking at the clock and seeing the final seconds of the game tick by, and his mind keeps flashing forward to the devastation of his teammates in the dressing room after the game finishes. His attention is split between the present, past and future. His RED mind becomes hyperactive and he loses the capacity to think clearly. Mentally pulled in different directions, he becomes stuck – a deer in the headlights, frozen to the spot.
Now,