Tight Spot Mentality

 

                                    Tight Spot Mentality

Dr. Benjamin Hardy, a psychologist is the first person I heard using the phrase forcing functions which is the basis for what I would like to share here. He describes them as the pressures you apply to yourself intentionally to raise the level of your performance.

One of the quotes I love which aptly captures the philosophy behind the Tight Spot mentality says that ‘Work expands to fill the time allocated for it.’

As humans we are surprisingly adaptable to the situations we find ourselves in. Whenever your boss or someone else in authority over you gives you a task with a strict deadline, you find ways and means to make it happen. The truth is that you always have this capacity only that you have not been called to bring it out more often.

Embracing a tight spot mentality is critical to anyone who wants to set high standards of performance for themselves. What if a tight spot mentality is something you can turn on anytime you want rather than wait for it to be forced down your throat all the time? How much more would you accomplish if you learnt to apply pressure to yourself irrespective of who was watching over you and waiting for you to deliver?

The Swahili have a saying that goes ‘maji ukisha yavulia sharti uyaoge.’ This can be loosely translated to once you have stripped yourself of your clothes, you have no option but to take that shower. Sometimes the best way to learn how to swim is to throw yourself into the water. When your survival depends on your ability to swim, you learn what it takes very quickly as opposed to when there is no immediate danger. Human ingenuity will help you find ways and means of coming out of tight spots that you would never know you had until you found yourself there.

Think about what happened with many of us when the current pandemic first came our way. We had to adjust swiftly in order to survive and we did it. If you had told us that we would wear masks, sanitize and keep social distance in 2019, it would have sounded strange to us but when COVID 19 showed up, we have had no choice but to adapt. Your ability to adapt depends on what is at stake. The things you won’t do in your comfort zone become easy breezy when your life is at stake. How many creature comforts did we give up quickly to survive the pandemic? All of a sudden, our unnecessary social gatherings were a thing of the past, some of our culturally significant practices like spending much time planning for a funeral for example were thrown out the window. Give a man sufficient motivation and he will accomplish the seemingly impossible. For a moment a majority of the things which looked indispensable in our lives took a back seat. Who would have thought we would close down schools, entertainment joints, places of worship and so much more. I can guarantee that it was never going to happen under normal circumstances. These things were and are vital to our living but once it was apparent that cutting down on them was necessary for our survival, we did it without blinking an eye. Visits to the hospital were also significantly scaled down and a lot of us realized that we visit hospital for trivial matters just because we have a medical cover.

The million dollar question is, what are the other things you have elevated in your life to a degree of necessity that is not reflective of reality? How many things can you do without yet you have made them a critical part of who you are and your existence? What are these things you can cut out or scale down in your life without affecting you adversely?

The secret is to become at peace with creating tight spots for yourself in all areas of your life. You will accomplish so much more once you normalize a tight spot mentality. Cut down the time you use to complete a task by half to see what you can come up with. More often than not, you will realize that you have the capacity to do it once you put your mind to it.

Creating a tight spot mentality

It is important to ask yourself what positive pressure you can apply to yourself in order to get there faster. For some people making public commitments is a way of getting in the zone. This must be accompanied by a heart of integrity such that you can’t be at peace if you fail to fulfil your commitment. For others it is about taking the first step of a project after which it is fatal to drag your feet. With this you have no choice but to carry the project through. In some instances, you apply pressure to yourself by committing to certain consequences which are severe enough to make you do what you have set out to do. A good example is a client of mine who committed to pay a hefty fine for any deadline she misses. The thought of paying that fine is enough to drive her towards doing the right thing. You could think of buying the things you need for a task especially if they are expensive. The fact that you spend money to get those things will drive you to get up and do it whether you wanted to or not. Another tactic is to enter into an accountability partnership with someone who will keep you on toes with regard to keeping your commitments. You can design it in such a way that failure to do what you committed to means you lose out on money that you have already committed in a common pool to your partner.

Many goals are abandoned midstream because there isn’t sufficient motivation behind them. We all need meaningful safeguards around our goals if we will have a chance to actualize them. There is no tool as effective as developing a tight spot mentality. You must make the consequences of failure severe in your mind so that you have no option but to press on. Sometimes it requires that you burn bridges so that there is no chance of going back.  This is a tactic that has been used by many generals to ramp up the motivation of their troops on the war front.  Alexander the Great burned his ships upon arriving in Persia in 334 B.C and when he was asked by one of his commanders about how they will get home, he replied ‘we’ll use their ships.’ This despite the fact that his army was outnumbered probably ten to one. A chines general Xiang Yu ordered his troops across the river and burnt the bride behind them quietly leading them to be so motivated that they beat the mighty Qin in the battle of Julu in 207 BC. It is a risky business but it works magic in getting people motivated to bring out their best. 

What fire are you going to ignite in yourself and what means will you use to ignite it? From this article and any other thing you know about engineering conditions to drive performance, what are you willing to do to accomplish your goals in 2021? What public commitments are you willing to make to get yourself out there? I would like to hear your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.

Do you need help developing a personalized tight spot mentality around your goals and key stone results? Are you ready to throw it all on the line and reach your goals in 2021? Reach out to me via my email asenasam@gmail.com or +254774776413 and let’s get you going down the road of no return.