Performance Assessment

Competition Assessment	Event:
Date :	Format:
Did you achieve your performance goal? Yes Partly No	What was your your performance goal?
Did you achieve your technical goal? Yes Partly No	What was your your technical goal?
Were you ? ........................... Or	Did you have?
Completely determined to achieve performance goal? Yes Partly No	No worries or fears? Yes Partly No
Completely determined to achieve technical goal? Yes Partly No	Complete commitment to fully extend yourself? Yes Partly No
Mentally calm? Yes Partly No	Complete confidence in mental preparation? Yes Partly No
Highly mentally activated? Yes Partly No	Complete confidence in physical preparation? Yes Partly No
Willing to take necessary risks? Yes Partly No	Complete task focus? Yes Partly No
In complete control? Yes Partly No	Complete confidence in abilities to achieve goal? Yes Partly No
If you have answered partly, notes which parts were NOT and why?
Rate the effectiveness	Of your preparation
Did you follow a game preparation routine? Yes Partly No	Relaxation Yes Partly No
Event specific physical preparation Yes Partly No	Did you follow a refocus routine Yes Partly No
Mental preparation Event review Yes Partly No	Did your attention stay focussed on your game plan? Yes Partly No
When you were going well, where was your focus?	When you were going less well, where was your focus?
Did anything unexpected impacted your performance ? (better or worse)?	Should anything be changed/adapted for the next competition?

Taking a detour along the side of luck

To talk about LUCK, the dreaded luck, the unfaithful mistress who seems to desert you when you wanted her most.

How many time have I barely stopped myself from saying.: “Mmmm, really did not have much luck this tournament! As if somehow, it would wash my sins away and redeem me as a good player who was just not lucky that day.

So, L-U-C-K - What is it?

Acronym for “Living Under Correct Knowledge

..

If you have the correct knowledge on how to do something, you will succeed. That’s what everyone call successful people lucky people. If you bake a cake without the right knowledge and burnt the cake, is it unlucky? If you take driving lessons before, apply your hard gained knowledge to drive your car and never knock it into a tree, are you lucky?

"Luck is where preparation and opportunity meet”

You have to be the right person at the right time in the right place and doing the right thing." You are doing something to make it possible for luck to be on your side. It is a matter of whom you are becoming.

"Luck is probability taken personally. It is the excitement of bad math.”Penn F. Jillette

Or according to the likes of Jean Paul Sartre or Sigmund Freud:

“Bad Luck is an escape from personal responsibility.”

...

"A belief in luck has more to do with a locus of control for events in one’s life and the subsequent escape from personal responsibility. According to this theory, one who ascribes their travails to "bad luck" will be found upon close examination to be living risky lifestyles."

Luck really is the life story of the postage stamp:

A stamp with an attitude that is. The postage stamp that sticks till it gets to the destination.

So no matter where we are, no matter how bad it is, no matter how frustrating it has been, we must stick to the end, although it can really very difficult to achieve, We don’t leave because things don't  look like they were going to be good. Because you must assume that the opportunity will arise. To stay is to practice the art of being lucky The advantage of staying put is that consistency will  pay off and if we have done the right amount and type of preparation, (a big if,  admitedly) success is inevitable. Albert Einstein said it correctly:; Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Even when you are doing the right thing, do it to till luck comes.

Zap the blocks

They say that practice makes perfect. So:

• Continuing to monitor and jot notes periodically about your focus, and lack of
focus, in your training games.
• After a session of bridge, take a brief, all-senses inventory during the experience of feeling completely focused. This can contribute to your “automaticity” of becoming more naturally and continuously focused, a kind of “muscle memory” of concentration.
• Create concentration intervals during your training matches. Define a specific period of time – 30 minutes, 1 hours, whatever stretches you – and maintain a competition-level focus during that time. Allow for recovery time then repeat the interval
• Experiment with the number and duration of these intervals. Log a few notes after your training
• Implement your refocus plan for your top distractors. At the end of a day, make a brief note of your results
• Away debrief yourself at then end of a competition, especially in regards to your top distractors. • Be merciless in your self-assessment.
• As your find that your top distractors get under control, go back to your list and work on the next top 3 distractors