Quotes About Performance

Stimulus: opera. Response: kill.

His puppets have a nihilistic spirit, if you'd understand what I meant by that. Sometimes his puppets won't perform at all. He just lets them sit there, watching us. Then he has them look at each other and then back at us until it feels as if they have information, some kind of dreadful information about each and every one of us, and you begin to wish they'd decide to keep their mouths shut forever.

And all the while there was the theater of my hands. It was theater, in that it was the performance of something that was true, and as such, I believed in it with all my heart but was also able to come to the end of it at a moment's notice.

Spoken in the context of the riots, the words did not kill but they enacted and performed, and what they performed was a murder: a ritual murder. Not the Jews but their Christian accusers performed the ritual murder.

Feeling challenged is an inherent performance steroid—your body releases more adrenaline than noradrenaline, which means the smooth muscle in your blood vessels dilate, as do your your lungs, and now you have more oxygenated blood going to the tissues that need it. Your body has more energy and your brain can think more clearly.

individuals who perceive a task or situation not as a threat but instead as a challenge, an opportunity, or fun are far more likely to perform up to the level of their ability, increasing their chances for success.

The goal: for Ax to become familiar with feeling pressure so that he could learn to ignore it and do his job, no matter how stressful it got.

The logic of this pressure solution is the opposite. Since high-pressure situations are inevitable, you might as well get used to the feelings of pressure, so that you are able to perform at a high level in spite of pressure.

SHRINK THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PRESSURE MOMENT

you've heard that some people at work do more creative work, are more productive, work better as a team, or add more value to a client under pressure. But it's not true. Moreover

teams facing significant performance pressure tend to default to high-status members at the expense of the most knowledgeable of the team members.

One is that they allow the individual to create a mental model of perfect performance that shows what ideal execution looks like. The individual can then use this covert model to guide performance. Another is that visualization reduces performance anxiety, allowing the individual to successfully deal with unexpected or troublesome situations.

loss aversion creates the behavior commonly known as "playing not to lose," instead of playing to win. How

you can lose a competition and not choke, just like you can give a great presentation and not get the job. Choking has more to do with the effects of pressure on performance than on the outcome.

when teams face significant performance pressure, they tend to defer to high-status members, at the expense of using expert team members.

Practice the basics. Run through your presentation again and again. Make sure you know it cold, so you can perform it on autopilot; that way you can turn some of your focus to reading the room instead of having to think about every word you are saying.

Take my wife, please.

There are wonderful things in real jazz, the talent for improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.

A man generally lives up to what is expected of him.

You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do.

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do

There is this difference where a man works for himself, or where, when working for an employer, he takes his wages in kind, his wages depend upon the result of his labor. Should that, from any misadventure, prove futile, he gets nothing. When he works for an employer, however, he gets his wages anyhow—they depend upon the performance of the labor, not upon the result of the labor.

I mean, I do wear a wedding ring and take it off when I shoot.

Still, China was not a missionary society in the Western sense of the term. It sought to induce respect, not conversion; that subtle line could never be crossed. Its mission was its performance, which foreign societies were expected to recognize and acknowledge. It was possible for another country to become a friend, even an old friend, but it could never be treated as China's peer.