{"id":61215,"date":"2022-03-10T01:41:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T05:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=61215"},"modified":"2022-03-14T13:40:38","modified_gmt":"2022-03-14T17:40:38","slug":"how-to-win-competitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/how-to-win-competitions\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Win Competitions When the Margins Are Slim"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Is there a trick to winning competitions? How do the world’s top athletes consistently stay on top of their game? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to American chess player Josh Waitzkin, the key to winning competitions, even when the margins are incredibly slim, is to operate on a deeper, more subtle level than your opponents. In practice, this means achieving enhanced perception through deep refinement of your skills and control of your mental arena. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s how to win competitions even when the margins are small.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Develop Enhanced Perception<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In his book The Art of Learning<\/em>, Joshua Waitzkin explains how to win competitions over and over again. The key, he says, is to develop enhanced perception<\/em> in high-performance states. This comes from refining your skills until they flow seamlessly, intuitively, and effortlessly. Once you\u2019ve reached technical mastery, the brain processes more information with less effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He explains that, subjectively, this feels like enhanced perception: You’ve grown so sensitive to the minutiae of the techniques that time seems to slow down. Punches seem to come in slow motion, because you\u2019re intimately aware of every subtle movement\u2014the shift of weight that telegraphs it, the opponent\u2019s breath in to prepare, the shifting forward of his shoulder, and so on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2 Ingredients for Enhanced Perception<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

How do you consistently “slow down time” and perform at such a high level? There are two ingredients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ingredient #1: Relaxed, Focused Presence<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The first ingredient<\/strong> is a relaxed, focused presence that allows the unconscious mind<\/a> to navigate your network of techniques and deploy them without conscious thought<\/strong>. Waitzkin argues that performing from instinct requires balancing conscious presence with unconscious, intuitive action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you\u2019re building your network of chunks (as we explained in Chapter 2), you\u2019ll eventually reach a point where the layers of principles and patterns become too complex to consciously navigate. For example, think of spoken language. There are simply too many things to consciously consider\u2014word choice, grammatical patterns, tone of voice, meaning and subtext\u2014and everything changes depending on the context (you\u2019ll speak differently to your grandma than to your friends, or to strangers). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, Waitzkin says, you have to rely on your unconscious<\/em> mind to make sense of the information, and to effectively act. With language again, we\u2019d struggle if we had to consciously consider every principle that governed every sentence we spoke. But we don\u2019t\u2014we all speak from deeply instilled linguistic intuition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To navigate by intuition in high-pressure situations, Waitzkin says you need to relax your conscious mind<\/strong> and allow the mental chatter to recede. This state allows your conscious and unconscious minds to work in tandem. He describes it as follows: <\/p>\n\n\n\n