Why Quirky Rituals Help Us Perform Better

Many of the world's successful athletes and other prominent personalities have quirky rituals that they swear by:

John Terry, the former Chelsea football team captain, religiously listened to music on his way to the game. He would even tape his socks three times before playing an away match.

Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, visualised his races many times the night before.

Thom Yorke, the lead singer of the English rock band Radiohead, used to stand on his head for a few minutes before stepping onto the stage.

Although not quite a pre-performance ritual, Megan Fox, the movie star, conquered her fear of flying by listening to Britney Spears to calm her nerves.

Call them superstition or thoughtful rituals; they work.

But why?

In this blog post, I'll discuss why odd rituals like these are often beneficial and how we can create some to help us deal with our day-to-day performance jitters.

Let's start by understanding:

Why rituals are effective

From a distance, these rituals — especially ones like Thom Yorke's and John Terry's — seem more like a superstition than a prudent use of five minutes before stepping out to play a big game or perform live.

But rituals like these, however unrelated and strange, work because they divert our attention from our inner chatter to the world around us.

Let's take Thom Yorke's headstand ritual as an example:

Before he's about to step onto a stage to perform before a crowd of hundreds or thousands, it's natural for anxiety and self-doubt to creep in, regardless of how many hours he had worked to prepare for this moment.

Questions like these cloud the mind:

Am I cut out for this? I will mess up and make a fool of myself in front of thousands, won't I?

The heaviness of the crowd's expectations chokes built-up confidence and paves the way for the dark cloud of negativity to enter our mind space.

Rituals help here because they act the same way as meditation.

By focusing our attention from the inner chatter to the world around us and our senses, we divert mental energy away from the negativity and let it die off in silence.

Our rituals might make us more aware of our breath and how our body feels, make us mindful of our surroundings — the smell, the touch, the sounds — or direct our attention to a constructive thought such as visualisation.

In any case, the ritual takes up so much of our working memory that we have nothing left for those negative thoughts to feed on and grow.

Moreover, high-pressure situations, such as a game, live performance, presentations, public speaking, etc., are concoctions of uncertainty and randomness, and humans are naturally averse to uncertainty.

A technical malfunction can disrupt the flow and mindset of a musician, leading to a failed performance. A split-second where the speaker's mind goes blank, and they struggle to remember what to say next can derail an otherwise suave speech.

There are thousands of things you don't control when you get on stage to sing or to deliver a public speech.

This is where rituals return some of the familiarity, comfort and order into our uncertain minds.

Thom's handstands helped him deviate his attention from the pressures of his upcoming performance to this physical exercise that was predictable, under his control and was his safe space.

The same applies to the other examples we've talked about earlier.

John Terry directing his focus to music or his shoes was his way of redirecting attention from the anxious thoughts in his mind to this physical activity. By the time he was done with this activity, it's likely any pressures or performance anxiety had died, starving of attention.

While I haven't stepped into high-pressure situations as these athletes and musicians, I have:

A slice of personal experience

At my last company, we used to showcase new features we had developed in the app to a team of around 40–60 members.

Everyone hopped on a Zoom call and two or three people who had successfully shipped a feature that week took around 15 minutes each to showcase these new additions to the team and keep everyone informed of ongoing changes.

A few weeks after I joined the team, it was my turn to showcase a new feature I had worked on in the app.

Although the team was friendly and supportive, I felt anxious before presenting my changes to 50+ people.

I had prepared the slides, rehearsed what I would say, and understood the feature well enough to answer any question, but I could still feel self-doubt creeping in as my time to present approached.

Thoughts started racing in my mind:

What if I stumble or go blank? Was my work even that important? Everyone's going to think I'm stupid or don't belong here.

I didn't know about pre-game rituals then, but now that I recall, I did something similar to one.

Before the presentation, I cleaned my digital workspace to ensure no unwanted apps were open. I had only Google Slides and an app demo video in my workspace. I checked my microphone level to ensure people could hear me. I visualised the points I was going to present.

This 10-minute exercise surprisingly helped.

I felt much more confident and calm and had things under control.

The presentation was by no means a captivating TED talk, but I managed to deliver it well enough.

Performing this tiny ritual helped me redirect my attention from my destructive thoughts to the task at hand — delivering the presentation.

Now, while you might not engage in public speaking or any high-pressure performance, you might occasionally do something that makes you anxious, such as stepping into an intense meeting or interview or doing a live demo of your product in front of stakeholders.

For such occasions, you can:

Develop a pre-performance ritual

As with every other advice, you might not see results by emulating what has worked for me or others, but with adjustments, there's a chance this practice might work for you, too.

Your ritual doesn't have to be fancy, formal, or connected to your high-stakes activity; it can be ridiculous and entirely personal.

What matters is that the ritual should demand enough attention from you to starve your inner critic. An effective ritual will make you forget about the jitters you felt earlier by the time you're done.

For example, you can visualise your performance a few times to develop a sense of order amidst chaos and instil confidence.

You can also take your mind off the inner critic by indulging in an activity such as singing, relishing some food or resetting the time on your wristwatch for no reason.

It can be as cool or stupid as you want.

If you can't think of anything yet, the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise can be a pre-packaged start that might work. It requires enough mental energy to zap you back from your inner chatter to the world around you.

Take the rituals mentioned here as inspiration, and experiment to find ones that work for you.

Good luck.