207: Getting Psyched Up For High Performance with Daniel McGinn

Pete Mockaitis
Dan, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Daniel McGinn
Hi, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into some of this fun, and I learned about you that you did a stint at Harvard Bartending School, but you say your relationship these days with mixology isn’t the greatest.

Daniel McGinn
Yeah. Well, HBS, or Harvard Bartending School, is the slightly less prestigious branch of Harvard. It’s not Harvard Business School, it’s Harvard Bartending. I went in college, I got a certificate and, like a lot of degrees, I never really used it and I’m happy to pour you a beer but that’s as much about as I can do in mixology these days.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s fair enough. You know what’s so funny, when I first read Harvard Bartending School, I was like, “Is that a joke like HBS, Harvard Business School, like they drink so much it’s called Harvard Bartending School? Or that’s a real thing?” But, no, that is a real thing.

Daniel McGinn
And it’s a real thing over in Harvard Square, or at least it was when I was college. I’m not sure if the institution survives or not, but it was a reputable school in mixology back in the ‘90s.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, I found them in Yelp and it seems like they’re still doing their thing. So, yeah, now I know and so that’s fun. Well, now I’d love to hear about you’ve got a book here, it’s new, it’s fresh, it’s called Psyched Up, and that’s an awesome title. Can you give us a little bit of the backstory in terms of what it’s all about and why does it matter?

Daniel McGinn
Sure. So, like a lot of people, when I’m not at my job, I’ll sometimes turn on the television and watch some sports, especially here in Boston where we’re lucky to have some very good sports teams. So if you watch Tom Brady before a football game or if you watch an Olympic athlete before they compete, they’re often doing a certain set of things.

They’re going through kind of a structured routine of superstitious rituals and habits, and if you’re able to look inside their brain, they’re thinking certain thoughts. In many cases, they’ve been taught what to do before they perform by a sports psychologist because there’s a lot of research that shows if you have the sort of right set of activities before you take the stage or take the field you’ll simply perform better.

The book argues that, even if you’re not Tom Brady, even if you are an accountant or a lawyer or a consultant, you should have the same kind of routine before those important moments in your careers, before you make the big presentation or the big sales call, or if you’re a lawyer before you go into court. So the idea is that you should have the same kind of psych up process that a top athlete has because it’ll help you do better in your career.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Well, so I’m intrigued now. Can you maybe give us a tale of a before and after in terms of professionals who have been applying some of these psyched up principles and seeing good things from it?

Daniel McGinn
Sure. A lot of the people who do this stuff naturally are themselves former athletes who learned to do it as athletes and then carried it over to their adult profession. So one of the examples, one of the people in the book is the neurosurgeon named Dr. Mark McLaughlin. He operates down in central New Jersey. He was a good high school wrestler but he wasn’t great at first until he worked with a sports psychologist and they figured out that he needed to be a little bit more confident and a little bit less anxious before he wrestled.

So they came up with a routine of things that he would do before he went into the wrestling match. He turned into a stage champion, he went on to college, he was a two-time collegiate champion, Hall of Fame for his college. Today, if he’s going to operate on your brain, he has the same kind of routine he would use before he wrestled. He goes through that when he’s scrubbing and when he’s in the locker room getting dressed for surgery. So he’s a guy who recognizes, “Hey, this made me a better wrestler. Surgery is a very challenging activity. I should use the same kind of process.” And I’ve met other people but he’s a good example.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, excellent. Thank you. Well, so I want to talk a little bit about some of these pre-performance rituals, but maybe before we get into the nitty-gritty of the actions, can you lay out some of the key principles that you discovered when looking through all the science? When it comes to being prepared what are kind of the fundamental things you want to have going?

Daniel McGinn
Sure. I first started thinking about this a really long time ago back when I was in high school. I played on the football and the basketball teams and I was never very good at either sport but I became fascinated by the things that the coaches and the players would do to try to get us all amped up before the game.

So back then I had a very simplistic view of what it meant to get psyched up. I thought it was like switching a light switch on or off. If you’re going to get psyched up it’s all about adrenalin and you just basically want to sort of energize yourself, psych yourself up. Once I actually started doing the research now as an adult I have a much more nuance view of it.

It’s not just about adrenalin, it’s not just about flipping a switch. I think about it more as a stereo knob with three knobs on it. You want to amp-up your level of confidence. Generally speaking, the more confident you are when you’re about to do something the better you’re going to do. You want to try to turn down your anxiety as much as you can. Anxiety is, in most cases, not going to help you very much. And then you need to adjust your energy level to be appropriate to what you’re doing.

If you’re making a sales pitch, that’s going to be different kind of energy level than if you’re competing in something athletic. Sometimes you need to be really up, sometimes you need to be a little bit moderate. So those are the three knobs that I think about tuning to try to psych yourself up for any kind of activity.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well, Dan, when you provide three things, it’s so bite-sized and easy to rip right into it, so I dig that. And it’s so funny, I was just thinking about knobs as I was adjusting the gain on my microphone situation mixer over here, and I like that. That visual alone already starts giving me a little bit of a sense of, I don’t know, control or power, or that I have a real sense of influence and agency over those things as though they were merely knobs I can turn at will.

Daniel McGinn
Exactly. And the trick to this is, you know, it’s easy to say, “Okay, turn up your confidence, turn down your anxiety.” Well, how do you do that? And in the book I list a whole bunch. Each chapter is a different technique so there’s, so some people use music. Lots of people will listen to a playlist or have certain songs they listen to to help them get motivated, get confident, get energized. Some people use anger. Some people rely on the coach to give them a pep talk that gets them up. Every person is different and kind of which tools are on that arsenal you put into your own. Individuals’ like routine are going to differ but there’s a broad range of things you can try to do to accomplish those three tunings.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I’m intrigued. If I have a variety of tools to use how might I know which tools to go for? Or should I try them all? Or, I guess, I’m wondering if I’m in the moment and I’m thinking, “I would like to turn up confidence right now,” what would you recommend to be some of the go-to moves right then and there?

Daniel McGinn
So, for confidence, I’ll tell you, one of the most interesting days of reporting I spent when I was reporting the book was at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. They have an entire department, it’ called the Center for Enhanced Performance. It works both with their varsity athletes and with their ordinary cadets to teach them techniques to help them be more confident when they go into a playing field or when they go into a military exercise.

So one of the things they did there is they made these custom soundtracks for their varsity athletes. So pretend it was you, for instance, pretend you were on the lacrosse team in army, the psychologist would have you come in and sit down in a special chair with these enclosed speakers so you were very immersed in this.

First, music would come on and then a narrator would say, “Pete, you’re the best lacrosse player in Eastern Division One Lacrosse. Remember the game in high school when you shot out Shrewsberry. Remember when you stopped 17 goals.” Very specific. Basically what it’s doing, in very detailed and dramatic fashion, it’s helping you recall your greatest hits.

And that’s something that, even if you’re not a lacrosse player, if you think about your podcast. You’ve done a hundred and whatever, at this point, of them. There must be a few that are extra special that turned up better than the average ones. So one of the things you could do before you do your next podcast is go back and listen to your best one ever. That’s one of the things I do before I have to do a performance like this.

As a writer, before I sit down to write an article for Harvard Business Review where I work, I’ll often take three or four minutes and go back and read part of the best article I ever wrote. It helps me remember a time when I was at my best. It helps me remember, “Gosh, you really crushed it that time, and now it’s time to sit down and do that again.” So that’s one technique you can use – think about your greatest hits.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I think I like that a lot, Dan. Well, now I have to ask, for the sake of the show notes and because we’re curious, what was the best article you’ve ever written, and let’s see if we can link to it?

Daniel McGinn
So if it’s an article on Harvard Business Review, the best article I ever edited was an article by the former chief talent officer of Netflix, it’s called How Netflix Reinvented HR, and if you link to it I’d be thrilled.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Yes. We’ll certainly do that. So, cool. So we’re talking there about in dialing up the confidence, recalling the greatest hits is one of approach. Any other favorite one to cover real quick?

Daniel McGinn
Well, some music is a technique that lots of people use in lots of different context. So choosing the right motivational music really comes down to two things. It’s the inherent musicality of the song, what it sounds like. If a song, the first time you’ve ever heard it, if it makes you quick in your step and your heartbeat gets a little stronger and you just feel a little bit better, you’re reacting to the intrinsic musicality of the song.

The second reason is a song will be motivational is if you have some sort of emotional or a contextual relationship with it. If it was a song that played at your senior prom, or if it was the song that your high school basketball used for warm-up, or if it’s from your wedding, or something like that. Songs can be motivational or meaningful for that reason as well.

So, for certain people, again, this is all very individual, for certain people, on the way to that meeting or on the way to that presentation, pop a playlist in your car stereo and that can be something that can help you feel a little bit better, a little bit more positive and upbeat and energized.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And I’m wondering, when you talked about the intrinsic musicality, have there been any studies done or things you’ve seen in terms of, “Oh, my gosh, these are just some go-to hits that, I guess, nailed the recipe for pumping up confidence”?

Daniel McGinn
So the classic example that people use, and it’s actually been used in a lot of research studies, is the music from The Rocky movies.

Pete Mockaitis
I was just listening to that today as I was unpacking boxes – Eye of the Tiger.

Daniel McGinn
So one of the more interesting conversations for this book, I flew out to Chicago and I spent a morning with a guy named Jim Peterik who played in the band Survivor and co-wrote that song.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Daniel McGinn
And we spent a lot of time thinking about, “What is it about that song that makes it so motivational?” It still shows up in people’s playlist at the gym. He’s heard of people using it in rehab clinics. He’s heard of CEOs who listen to it before board meetings. And the simple answer to that is, well, we all saw Rocky III and that song, there’s all this training montages, so when we hear that song, our mind goes back to the movie, we’re visualizing it and it just serves to pump us up.

He argues the opposite. He argues that that song has been downloaded six million times on iTunes, and he argues that a lot of the kids who are downloading it have never seen the movie so he thinks it’s more about the intrinsic musicality.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is an interesting perspective because I have seen it and it does fire me up. And especially, I think of Rocky IV, the moment Ivan Drago – that’s my favorite – just the, oh, the grit overcoming the technology of the Russian well-financed Drago, it’s exciting. Okay, so Eye of the Tiger or the Rocky movies in general. We could debate because whether it’s because we have Rocky associations or it was just masterfully crafted from the get-go to have those intrinsic qualities. Any other hits for pumping up the confidence?

Daniel McGinn
Well, I talked with people at Spotify about this, and they actually did a data analysis and searched through playlists that contain the phrase “psyched up,” and they found a lot of kind of ‘80s rock, almost some hair band kind of stuff which was not necessarily what I would choose. But I think the more important point in this specific song titles is that this stuff is really individual.

So I met a woman who was a successful professional in state government, and her psych up song before meetings was the Annie soundtrack. If she listened to The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow it would just make her positive.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s my jam, I’m fired up!

Daniel McGinn
It sounds really strange, I understand, but one of the things I learned in reporting this book is people are really different, and what works for you is not going to work for me, and we need to sort of figure out what works for each of us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And so, Spotify, that’s so cool when you got some nice sort of credentials and history of authorship behind you that Spotify will just run things for you. That’s got to be pretty fun to have that research power behind it. So intriguing. So I guess that’s one thought right there that didn’t even occur to me is you could just search Spotify playlists for words like that and then you’ll see other people’s impressions and just sort of see what resonates for you to get that going in a hurry.

Daniel McGinn
Yeah, absolutely. I think music choices, there’s other research, tends to be very pretty age-specific and generational. People tend to listen to a lot of music and be very impressionable in their teenage years. It’s a very emotional time in their life. So I suspect, if you were just to search random psych up lists, the kind of results you’ll find are going to skew a lot based on the age of the person. And if you find somebody who’s about your age, you’re more likely to find a mix that appeals to you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That makes sense. Thank you. Well, so now I’d love to get your take, we talked about the knob of confidence, and so let’s talk about anxiety when it comes to bringing that down. And maybe before we even talk about bringing it down, I want to get your take on when it comes to you make a point in your book about how you may be better off channeling the nervous energy rather than trying to tone down the jitters. How do you think about that?

Daniel McGinn
Yes, so that’s a technique called reappraisal, and some of the best research on it has been a Harvard Business School professor named Alison Wood Brooks. She’s fairly young. She’s in her 30s. She went to Princeton as an undergraduate and she was in an a cappella singing group a lot like the movie Pitch Perfect. And in that role she got to see hundreds of kids auditioned for this very competitive singing group.

And one of the things she noticed is that people who talked about being nervous tended to perform very poorly, and people who were optimistic and said things like, “Thanks for the opportunity. I’m excited to be here,” they tended to perform better. So, for her doctoral dissertation, when she got to the University of Pennsylvania, she actually did a whole bunch of studies trying to manipulate that. She held singing competitions and she would have half the group say, “I’m so excited,” and half the group say, “I’m so nervous.”

And, in general, she did it with math tests, she did it with public speaking. Thinking to yourself, “I’m excited,” is generally going to be more helpful to you than thinking about nerves or anxiety, channeling yourself into the positive arousal state as opposed to the negative one.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Dan, I love this and it absolutely resonates with me and how I’m living it. Like the sensation of, say, just before jumping off of a plane, skydiving, is quite similar to sensations of about to step onto stage speaking, for me. Maybe different intensities or uniqueness as I’ve done many more speeches than I’ve done dives out of planes, but I totally connect with that, and I’ve even done it. It’s just that easy for myself is I’ll say, “Oh, wow, I must be really excited about this,” and just sort of re-appropriation or re-interpreting the signals or the symptoms because, really, I think biochemically these are pretty darn similar in terms of heart rate or breathing or sweaty palms between fear and excitement.

Daniel McGinn
Yeah, I think you’re right about that. So two points on that. So, number one, I’ve talked to a lot of people who are sort of naturally good performers, like you are, who they’ve never read this research but intuitively some of them will say, “Oh, for many years I’ve been, before I give a speech, I’ll think to myself, ‘I’m so excited. I’m really lucky to be here.’” So even though there’s actual scientific research on this, this is something that people have intuitively come up with their own and found it quite effective, so I’ve heard that same sentiment from other people.

The thing about being sweaty and having your heart race, one of the other most interesting days I spent reporting the book was at the Juilliard School of Music, the music school in New York City, and they have an entire course there that helps their musicians get ready to deal with the anxiety that comes with auditions. Auditions are really an important part of being a professional musician.

And one of the things they do in class is they’ll have people do calisthenics and run around and get sort of out of breath and sweaty, and then stand in front of the class very quickly and have to play. And it’s all about getting used to being able to perform even if your body is just sort of biochemically dealing with the almost unavoidable parts of being nervous. So being sweaty, dry mouth, all these sorts of things. These are symptoms of anxiety, they’re symptoms that musicians have to deal with routinely, and so getting yourself accustomed to dealing with that is something that Juilliard finds quite valuable.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. So, when it comes to anxiety, we talked about reappraisal. And then are there some other approaches you encourage in terms of dialing down anxiety?

Daniel McGinn
So at Juilliard they teach a bunch of different things. The technique that they probably rely most heavily on is called centering, like being in the center of something, turning that into a verb. It’s sort of a practice of breathing and a series of sort of very specific thoughts. It’s one of these things that’s kind of a little bit like meditation which is that you can read about it but I think it’s kind of hard to learn just from reading about it.

There are some YouTube videos on it that are fairly effective at explaining and demonstrating it. It’s also the kind of thing that, for not a lot of money and not a lot of time, somebody who’s serious about it could call a sports psychologist and spend a couple of hours with them and learn how to do it. Some of the musicians I spoke with said, “Once you’re good at this you could do it in 15 seconds, and it just calms you down much more than you would expect it to be able to.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s intriguing and powerful. So it sounds like you’re saying we’re not going to get a crash course on that right now. But if we did investigate it, what would be some of the basic things we see? Has it something to do with key thoughts and breathing, focus, and what else is happening during the centering?

Daniel McGinn
Yeah, exactly. In the book, I list like, I think there are a seven-step process that they teach at Juilliard. There’s a couple of books on this. One of them is called Fight Fear and Win by Don Greene. So there’s certainly resources out there. I think it’s one of the, for me at least, once you get into things that involve kind of body and motion and breathing, it’s just hard for me to learn that kind of thing by reading.

But you’re right, you’re trying to get specific thoughts, you’re thinking about sort of flinging thoughts out of your head, it’s a pattern of breathing kinds of things. Somewhat yoga-like in a way. For me, personally, I think it would be hard for me to learn to do it very well on my own. I would need some sort of actual instruction as opposed to me just talking about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s a helpful set of resources to maybe chase after, and intriguing, and 15 seconds to reclaiming an anxious state to one that’s usable and functional sounds like a superpower that we can all benefit from having in our lives.

Daniel McGinn
The people who I spoke with who learned to do it well would almost describe it as a superpower, I think. So that’s not as much an exaggeration as you might think it is.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Well, no, I dig it, so thank you. And then, finally, you talked about adjusting the energy level in terms of those three knobs. What are some of your favorite approaches for making that shift?

Daniel McGinn
Yeah, I think that’s less about techniques than it just is about awareness. So imagine you’re going to be public-speaking. First question when it comes to – obviously you want to be confident, obviously you want to try to reduce your anxiety. When you think about the energy level, are you speaking to ten people, a hundred people, a thousand people? How big is the room? Are you going to be moving around or not? Will you be using slides or not?

So I think you and I are having this conversation a few days after the Connor McGregor and Mayweather fight out in Las Vegas. Think about how Connor McGregor goes into the ring. Now think about somebody who’s giving a TED Talk. Well, obviously those are two very different kinds of activities and each of those people need to think about getting the energy level at the right kind of amplitude that’s going to work for them. So it’s mostly a practice of not getting too up but not getting too down and sort of finding happy middle.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s so funny, as you talk about being too much or too little for a situation, I am thinking of the episode of The Office in which Dwight K. Schrute is speaking at a shareholder’s meeting and just, so, he’s pounding his fist and talking of the sort of Communist points about the wheels of history are greased with blood. And so I think that is just a perfect example for too much energy for the occasion because, in a way, I think we think, “Hey, in a presentation, of course, you want your speaker to be energetic. That’s just a good thing. Energy is good and no energy is kind of boring.” But you’re saying that it can certainly be overdone.

Daniel McGinn
Yeah, I think that’s true. When I was writing the book, almost every chapter could’ve included a parody example from The Office because they parodied just about every aspect of professional life. But you’re right, a lot of the fun that they had was, you know, the British version of The Office. I forget the office manager’s name there, but he gives a motivational speech to this very small group with really loud music, and it’s the same kind of thing. He’s clearly at the wrong energy level for the activity that he’s being asked to do.

So when you’re thinking about getting psyched up, think about whether you’re doing professional wrestling or you’re taking a math test. Those are both high-performance activities but they’re very different when it comes to energy.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so with all this talk about the rituals, I’m really curious to get your take on power posing. I’ve read some research, it looks pretty darn good, that power posing is for real, and I’ve read some folks who say, “Oh, no, actually some other studies didn’t quite replicate that.” Where do you come out on this one?

Daniel McGinn
Yeah, obviously there’s a big academic controversy. It’s kind of an intramural. It’s a big controversy among the social psychologists. Power posing is one of the ideas that led me to write this book because it was an example of academic research that looks at something that you can do in the final moments before you perform that seems to be able to change the way you perform in a positive way. So it seems like a very powerful tool.

I don’t have enough of a statistical background to go through the replication studies and say, “This one is right,” or, “This one is wrong.” I do think that, in a lot of the things I talk about in the book, the placebo effect is a very strong thing. And I think one of the things Amy Cuddy says is that a lot of people have tried power posing and tell her that it works for them.

And she wrote a book on it, the book is very well done and compelling. So like all the book techniques that I write about, it’s something you should try, and if it works for you, more power to you regardless of what some replication study says. I can’t know whether it’s changing the biochemistry in your saliva, the way the Cuddy paper said it does or not, but it makes you feel more confident and more powerful, why wouldn’t you do that?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. Well, Dan, I’d just love to get your personal take. I think, for me, it does. How about you when you give it a shot?

Daniel McGinn
Yeah, you know, the biggest criticism I would have of power posing is that if you do it where people could see you, you might look a little bit silly.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, right.

Daniel McGinn
And so the idea behind power posing is what they call priming, the idea that something you do for just a couple of moments can put you in a different frame of mind. So one of the people I spoke within the book, he’s done research that looks at written priming. So if power posing works for you – great. But if doesn’t or if you’re sitting in a waiting room with other job interview prospects and you don’t want to stand up and start standing like Superwoman, one of the things this study says is spend two minutes writing about a time you felt powerful.

And there’s actual research that people who do that before a job interview tend to come across as more confident and were more likely to get the job. So there are alternatives to try to harness the same power that power posing has but they’re a little bit quieter, a little bit less elaborate and visible, and so you might poke around at some of those.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I really like that notion of writing about a time you felt powerful. It’s kind of like a reprise, if you will, of one of the things you mentioned which is recalling your greatest hits. So I think of them as sort of two sides of the same coin there.

Daniel McGinn
Yeah, exactly. They’re a little bit different in the sense that the priming is a slightly… again, it’s more active, it’s not just thinking about it, it’s physically writing it down on a piece of paper, in a computer, so there’s differences. But, yeah, this science of priming, it’s something that I think we’re just beginning to tap into.

One of the studies I looked at, I looked at the power of visuals. So a guy, who’s a university professor, he would go into the fundraising offices at various colleges, and he would take half the group, and on the instructions for who they were going to call that day and what they were going to say to try to get these alumni to donate money to the university, half of the instructions at the top would have a picture of a person finishing a marathon, and the other instructions would just have blank space there.

And over and over again he found that putting an inspirational picture in front of people before they do a task made them work harder, made them work longer, made them more successful. And he actually didn’t want it to work. He sort of thought that the science of priming was bunk, and he was trying to disprove it, and he kept trying it over and over, and it kept working and working and working. He was really frustrated to talk to them about it.

But that’s the theory behind you see some of this motivational posters that companies will put up on their walls, or even if you go into a high school gym for a basketball game. One of the first things you’ll see is the trophy case and the banners that they have on the ceiling. I think all those are sort of a subtle form of priming in a way. They’re subconsciously up there. The team is reminded of the fact that this high school has a grand tradition. So things like that.

Companies can actually harness that. In the wall in my office I hang up some of my old articles that I like. It’s not like I stand there and stare at the wall and read them, but they’re just kind of there in the background reminding me that I was successful and, again, increases the odds I’m going to do it again.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Dan, I really like that. At the risk of just exposing myself to ridicule, I’m going to disclose that I keep my high school homecoming king crown in my home office, and I don’t put it on very often at all. You know, just to be silly with my wife, like, “Oh, I’m the king.” But, for the most part, I just like to have it there because that reminds me of a time in which I went from going to a pretty tiny Catholic grade school, pre-school through eighth grade, to like the bigger public school.

And I was in a situation where I really had a whole lot of new people I didn’t know and I managed to, over those years, really get to know them well, form some good connections and relationships and rapport such that I genuinely liked lots and lots of my classmates, and they genuinely liked me, and then there was a physical manifestation of that.

And so I like to look at that and remind me of how I can connect with people and have good rapport, whether I’m interviewing a guest or whether I am working with a client over Skype. And so, yeah, I have it and I am only slightly embarrassed about it.

Daniel McGinn
That’s an amazing story. And you’re right, you might risk some degree of ridicule. But a lot of these things, if it works for you, why wouldn’t you do that?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Daniel McGinn
And if you hadn’t just gone on a national podcast and announced it no one ever would’ve known, right?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m hoping that there’ll be someone commiserating, like, “Yeah, Pete, I do that too.” But maybe not. Maybe not. Well, Dan, this has been a whole lot of fun. Tell me, is there anything else you really want to make sure to put out there before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Daniel McGinn
No, I think the idea is that, again, there’s a whole bunch of different tools here, everybody is different. So one of the chapters in the book looks at the use of anger and rivalry and trash talk which, for a lot of people who are very competitive, can be a very effective strategy. For me it doesn’t really work at all. I wrote a whole chapter in the book on it knowing that I’m not someone that’s really going to be able to trash talk you.

Pete Mockaitis
“Your article sucks, Dan.” Bring it.

Daniel McGinn
Exactly. So just because one thing doesn’t work, another thing might work, whether it’s a superstitious object, whether it’s music, find the thing that works for you, and that’s really the message here.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Well, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Daniel McGinn
Yeah, I hear a lot of quotes and I see a lot of them on social media. The one that jumped out at me is one that Jimmie Johnson, the NASCAR champion told me when I interviewed him for the book. He said, “Luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation.” We were talking about whether he’s superstitious and what he does before races, and he says they have sort of a systematic approach to luck. It may feel like you just got lucky but, in fact, very quietly there’s just tons of tons of preparation that was there waiting for that moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hmm. And how about a favorite book?

Daniel McGinn
The best book I’ve read this summer is Gretchen Rubin’s new book The Four Tendencies that looks at sort of a four-part framework of what motivates people, what drives them, what helps them meet the commitments they make. I think people are going to be hearing a lot about it this fall, and I found it to be a very powerful set of ideas.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite tool?

Daniel McGinn
So one of the things I did when I was writing this book Psyched Up, I was reporting on how superstition and lucky objects can help people perform better. My favorite writer is Malcolm Gladwell. So I got in touch with Gladwell, I sent him a brand new computer keyboard. He typed on it for three months in all his writings, and he sent it back to me.

And so I now have a keyboard that was once used by Malcolm Gladwell as my tool for writing. I don’t use it, but every day I keep it on a shelf. But when I have sort of a high-stakes assignment, a high-pressure kind of situation, I pull that out, I attach it to my computer, and for that day I rely on my lucky Malcolm Gladwell keyboard.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Dan, that is one of the most fascinating and unique and applicable to the topic tools we’ve ever heard here, so thank you for sharing. And that was your request, like, “Malcolm, would you mind using this for a little while? Then send it right back.” And he did just that.

Daniel McGinn
Yeah, I sent him. There’s research that suggests that kind of thing works, so I sent him a paper because I know he’s interested in that kind of stuff, but he was totally happy to oblige.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s fun. Thank you. And how about a favorite habit?

Daniel McGinn
So like most people I try to get to the gym, and I don’t get there as much as I should. One of the things that’s changed my habits is my gym has an app, and for an extra $20 a month you can sign up for classes a little bit further in advance. And I found that the combination of paying the money, number one, and, number two, signing up in advance and knowing that I’ve paid for the right to sign up in advance, that’s made me at least a little bit more compliant with my exercise plan. It’s still not 100% compliant but it definitely increases the odds. So paying and signing up in advance.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite nugget, something that you share in your writings that seems to really connect and resonate with people in terms of Kindle book highlights, or if you share it verbally, they’re taking notes and nodding their heads? What’s a Dan original that seems to connect?

Daniel McGinn
So when I talk about this book I think the one thing that people react most positively to is the idea that, imagine you’re about to go into an event that’s going to have an impact on the trajectory of your career. You have two choices: you can either sit there being nervous and worrying about it, or you can have a plan, you can know exactly what you’re going to do for those last 10 minutes. And I think people who just have a plan, any plan is going to be better than sitting there and being nervous. So that’s the biggest nugget that people are seem to be taking away from the book.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Daniel McGinn
Sure. The book website is www.PsychedUpTheBook.com. I’m on Twitter @DanMcGinn and I’d love to interact with people.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Daniel McGinn
Practice isn’t enough. Whatever you’re trying to do, whether it’s play piano or give an important speech, practice is table stakes. You need to have gotten good at the activity, but it’s not enough. There are plenty of great singers who’ve botched an audition and plenty of people who have not performed as well as they should even if they practiced. So it’s really practice plus having a plan for these last few minutes that’s going to equal success. So I’d say spend at least a little bit of time figuring out what you’re going to do in this final few moments before you actually hit the stage.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, perfect. Well, Dan, thank you so much for taking this time. This has been a whole lot of fun. I wish you many more smashing successful books and articles and occasions to use the Malcolm Gladwell keyboard, and keep up the good stuff.

Daniel McGinn
Thank you. I really enjoyed this.