Performing Under Pressure

Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most

Authors: Hendrie Weisinger and J.P. Pawliw-Fry Year: 2015 Reading time of this summary: about 45 minutes

A surgeon, a free throw, and a head about to explode

Bob Andreatta is a partner at KPMG, in his late forties, with thick black hair and dark frames. In 2013 he sat in a corridor outside a Securities and Exchange Commission hearing room, five minutes from giving testimony on charges of backdating stock options at Apple and Pixar. His career, his license, his ability to ever again work in a public company, every piece of his professional identity, sat on the next two hours. He told the authors of this book what those five minutes felt like. "My head was exploding, the pressure was so extreme. If I was indicted or found culpable in any way, my reputation would be ruined, my credentials taken away, my ability to work in a public company gone. I felt like I might end up living in a van down by the river. I was afraid to say the wrong thing. I felt this was it, I was on the line."

That is the territory this book maps. Not background stress. Not the sense that you have too much to do. The specific, sharp, stomach-tightening feeling that the next event matters and you might not deliver. Surgeons making the first cut on a quadruple bypass. NBA players standing at the free throw line in the last minute of a one-point game. Founders walking into a Series A pitch. Parents in a heated conversation that could shape a child's next ten years. The authors spent two decades collecting data on these moments, and the punchline is simple. Pressure is the enemy of performance, almost everyone is bad at managing it, and the people who handle it well are not superheroes. They have a small set of habits and a long-term mindset, and you can install both.