3 Lessons Creatives Can Learn From Formula 1.
With Formula 1 around the corner, Miami is gearing up to bring a little more speed into their lives. And while speed may not be everything, winning sure is. We’ve been looking to the experts to answer the question: what does it take to achieve peak performance?
Here are three lessons we can take from the track to the table:
It Takes the Right Team.
Winning happens days, months, even years before the race. We may only see the driver on the day-of, but preparations for the race have been ongoing possibly their whole life. There’s a whole team in the background making sure every single detail has been thought upon and perfected. Your business is no different. People need other people to bounce ideas around. Ideas need incubators to form in and iterations to go through before they’re polished and ready to present. It takes each player doing their part to accomplish something bigger than any one could on their own. A winning pitch may only take two minutes, but the sweat, love, and dedication that went into those two minutes of success took time in the making. Your star player is only as good as the team behind them. No one wins alone.
It Takes the Right Tools.
Imagine being at the helm of some of the most powerfully engineered machines on the planet. A six-point safety harness wraps over your shoulders and between your legs, a head and neck brace clams down over your chest, all custom fitted to curve and hug every inch of your body just right. Custom built to be the most comfortable and ergonomic design for your body. Every inch, perfected and engineered to be just right for your comfort and control.
When a racecar driver enters the cockpit of his car, he knows every bit of it. His team has done everything they can think of to minimize the friction between man and machine. So that mind and matter can meld into one, transcendental moment of man and machine against nothing but open road.
This level of thoughtful engineering is important in reaching flow. Minimizing the distractions and actions that separate us from our work so that we can be the most efficient version of ourselves. So that we can fully focus.
For creatives, maybe that’s the right computer set up. The right adaptable sitting/standing desk. The right chair. The right custom mappable mouse. While it may be easier or cheaper to not think about optimal performance in the beginning, you may see that there’s a significant return on investment from long term outputs to optimally designed workspaces and systems.
Takes the Right Mindset.
We touched upon having the right physical tools for achieving transcendence and peak performance, but some of the most important tools are mental. On the day of the race, you must be able to lean into your discomfort. To go beyond the screaming fans, the excitement, the anxiety and leave behind the symphony of sport to become one with the machine. Focused on one singular goal. At that moment, you must have full faith in the work of your team, the strength of your product, and the precision of your ability to get the job done.
Whether it comes to winning the race or landing that pitch:
When you push yourself to new limits, you may be surprised how far you reach.
