I recently finished reading an excellent book by Jean Francois Menard entitled “Train Your Brain Like an Olympian – Gold Medal Techniques to Unleash Your Potential at Work”
Honestly, when I ordered the book off of Amazon, I did not even notice the sub-title indicating the focus was on applying mental skills to work. As it turns out, I found that it really didn’t matter! Many of the anecdotes included in the book were sport related but as the author points out, mental skills apply just as well to work scenarios as they do to sport application. I found his comments related to how to apply the techniques in the work environment to be like “bonus material” over and above explaining the various tools.
The book was published in 2021. I found it contained a very fresh look at both the classical mental skills like goal setting, visualization, self-talk, etc. based on cognitive behavioral theory (CBT) as well the more mindfulness-based techniques. I also found his hand drawn stick figures to be really useful in grasping some of the techniques he described (as well as making the techniques more memorable). The book is written in a very easy-to-read fashion with very short sections organized in logical chapters. As I have mentioned before, I like this type of format as you can easily pick the book up and read a short section or two each day to refresh the topics in your mind. This one joins a few others I have mentioner before, qualifying for a permanent place on my desk so I can refer to it often (one of my other favorites for this purpose is “Mind Gym” by Gary Mack).
One of my favorite chapters was chapter 5 – “Be There When it Counts” – a chapter centered around focus. One of the sections dealt with how to control your environment. In it, he describes the 1981 sterile cockpit rules installed by the FAA which dictated which activities could take place in the plane’s cockpit during critical operations such as take-off and landing (basically nothing, no chatter, etc. was allowed that was not directly related to the plane’s operations at those critical moments).
It immediately occurred to me how this applied to shooting clays (and how many times I had violated the sterile cockpit rules myself). Most of us shooters are pretty good at developing a shot plan prior to getting into the shooting stand – and then running a pre-shot routine once we are in the box. But, are we good at keeping things “all business” once we are in the box? I know I personally have caught myself stopping between pairs to comment on something to one of my squad mates violating the “sterile cockpit” rule. Not surprisingly, it often does not end well as I willingly had allowed my concentration to be broken at a key point in the process!
How about you? Would thinking about the sterile cockpit rule help you to stay more focused in the box?
If you are interested in a copy of Jean Francois Menard’s book, here is the amazon link: