During practices, when Bowman ordered Phelps to swim at race speed, he would shout, “Put in the videotape!” and Phelps would push himself, as hard as he could. It almost felt anticlimactic as he cut through the water. He had done this so many times in his head that, by now, it felt rote. But it worked. He got faster and faster. Eventually, all Bowman had to do before a race was whisper, “Get the videotape ready,” and Phelps would settle down and crush the competition.
This practice of visualization is really powerful in almost any context. Numerous studies have shown that visualizing something with precision - imagining how you hope a meeting will play out, for instance, or visualizing a specific conversation, or pushing yourself to daydream about a task you hope to accomplish - increases the odds that things will turn out pretty well. This is, in part, because telling ourselves stories about ourselves is how we build mental models, which help focus our attention on what matters, and helps us ignore details we can safely put aside. (I cover mental models and visualization in my book Smarter Faster Better.)
The science behind visualization, however, has been largely overlooked by mainstream media, in part, I think, because it smacks of the kind of nonsense that you can find in new age books that say if you visualize something, it will find its way to you. That’s not right. Simply imagining winning the lottery doesn’t make it more likely I’ll win the lottery. But that also doesn’t mean that visualization is bad. It’s really useful - if you know what to use it for.
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Otis Chandler
