Note: This is the second article in a series on PERFORMANCE.  For further reference, please see the first article.

Tests are everywhere.  Sports, art, and video games are all relevant places to develop and rehearse quality performance habits—habits that also apply to academic tests.  Student X loved basketball, so we started talking about what it felt like to play basketball well.  We talked in detail about recent games and discussed specific plays.  In X’s approach to playing basketball, he had naturally developed all the habits of an awesome test taker: he loved to compete, he loved to win, and he savored the challenge.  We needed to figure out how to tap into these instinctive advantages in the face of more academic obstacles.

Performance is a skill that can be developed through training, rehearsal and evaluation.  Just talking and thinking about how basketball applies to math tests creates a link in X’s brain between his gametime concentration and his patterns of thought during testing scenarios.  These casual connections increase X's chances of activating a positive pattern of thought when a test becomes confusing.  Making these connections allows us to develop an effective performance mindset through almost any activity (e.g. surfing, playing music, painting, cage fighting, anything you enjoy).  Whatever we perform, it is helpful to focus on the feeling of performing well.

X was a great shooter, so we used his jumpshot as a setting to discuss performance.  We outlined the technical elements of a good jumpshot and how they improve the chances of making the basket.  Because there are so many things coming together in a jumpshot, fixation on scoring points is actually distracting; such a focus obsesses on something that X can no longer control.  Once the ball has left his hands, it's out of his control.  Instead of following the ball through the air, it's more effective to move to the next, most important task (like rebounding).  It doesn’t help X to get pissed because he missed the shot or the ref blew a call or an opponent talked trash.  X excels only by focusing on what he can control: how/when he executes actions like shooting, passing, rebounding, setting picks, etc.

Through our discussions, X refined his instincts for test-taking scenarios.  He didn't become an A student overnight, but developing his performance habits restored the test as a indicator of what he knew.  Because he stopped psyching himself out, any questions he got wrong identified concepts to reinforce.  This made it easy to determine what content to go over during our sessions.  Freed from negative performance habits, X could concentrate on learning what he needed to improve.

Quality performance habits focus on stuff within our control.  When we perform well at anything, we focus on what actually creates the desired outcome.  We are not worrying about the things that we cannot change.  To be effective, we need to stay hyper-aware of what’s important and adjust our reactions to whatever we face.  In my next article, I'll discuss what types of things you can control during a test.  In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this question:

What can we control in a testing environment?