Five TIPS to Get the Most Out of Your Performance

TLDR: After a performance, take a moment to provide yourself with honest feedback, recognize what went well, plan your next practice, and give yourself time to rest.

Just because you’ve finished a game, speech, performance, or set doesn’t mean the work is done.

What you do after a performance can be just as important as what you do before it.

Here are five steps to help you learn from your performance and set yourself up to do even better next time.

1. Take a mindful moment

It can be tempting to immediately move on after an event. You finish the game, walk off the field, and start thinking about what’s next.

Instead, take a moment to be present.

Notice your thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations after the performance. Are you excited? Disappointed? Relieved? Exhausted? Proud?

Giving yourself a moment to process what just happened can help you reset before moving on to your next activity.

Speaking of processing…

2. Provide an honest evaluation

Ideally, you just performed your best and there are absolutely no notes.

Unfortunately, that never happens. So if you told yourself that everything was perfect…you just lied to yourself.

Be honest about what went well and what you could improve. Avoid the temptation to overcorrect, though. Identifying areas for improvement is important, but so is recognizing your strengths.

An honest evaluation gives you something much more useful than criticism: direction.

3. Write down what you did well

One of the biggest mistakes performers make is focusing exclusively on what went wrong.

Yes, you want to practice the things that need work. But you also want to remember the things you did well.

Your brain is more likely to return to information that you intentionally focus on. Writing down a few things you did well immediately after a performance gives you a concrete reminder of what you want to repeat next time.

Improvement isn't just fixing mistakes. It's repeating success.

4. Create a plan to practice

If your next practice is already scheduled, great!

Sometimes, though, it’s easy to say, “Good job,” pack everything up, and forget about it until the next performance.

Don’t.

The sooner you have a plan for your next practice, the sooner you can start working toward your next goal.

Yes, we’re talking about practice, Mr. Iverson.

5. Rest

You want to review your performance. You want to make a plan. You want to get back to work.

But rest is part of the work, too.

Especially after athletic performances, jumping back into training too quickly can leave you physically and mentally exhausted, potentially limiting your next performance.

The key is balance. Evaluate, learn, practice, and recover.

Getting the most out of a performance can be difficult to do on your own. At TIPS, we can help you develop the mental skills to perform at your best while also learning how to recover, reset, and grow from each experience.

Schedule your free 15-minute consultation today and start getting the most out of every performance.