The Downside of Visualization

One of the more common held beliefs that has become widely held in the past few decades is the power of visualization.  There is much to be said for this.  Professional athletes spend princely sums on sports psychologists who help them prepare for peak performance through visualization.  One of the things that separates us from the animals is our ability to imagine an outcome.  Creation is a two part act:  all great creative results are preceded by imagination and the visualization of the outcome.

But like so many things in life, the best path forward lies in moderation.  There was a time when the concept of visualization would have been met with derision.  I doubt any of the captains of industry who played roles in Charles Dickens’ novels would have been the sorts to engage in visualization (“Bah!  Humbug”).

On the other hand, visualization without execution is simply daydreaming – something all of us are guilty of from time to time.  But I recently read something that struck a nerve on this topic, and I wanted to share it with you.  It talks about how too much visualization can sap our focus by tricking us into thinking we’ve accomplished something.

I recently finished the outstanding book Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday.  Ryan is a young man who has traveled to higher heights and sunk to some lower lows than many of us ever will experience. Like the brilliant The Road to Character by David Brooks, a book I’ve written about earlier, Holiday’s book is about us confronting our insufferable weaknesses and learning how to recognize the pernicious effects our ego can play in our lapses and failures.

Here is the relevant passage as it relates to the downside of over-visualization (bold font is my emphasis):

“Talk depletes us.  Talking and doing fight for the same resources. Research shows that while goal visualization is important, after a certain point our mind begins to confuse it with actual progress.  The same goes for verbalization. Even talking about to ourselves while we work through difficult problems has been shown to significantly decrease insight and breakthroughs.  After spending so much time thinking, explaining, and talking about a task, we start to feel we’ve gotten closer to achieving it.  Or worse, when things get tough, we feel we can toss the whole project aside because we’ve given it our best try, although of course we haven’t.

This is an interesting take, and somewhat counter-intuitive to the accepted wisdom of the day, that being that we should visualize carefully and publicly declare our intent as a means of creating accountability outside of ourselves.  And I think there is something to that.

But our egos are more interested in constructing narratives than they are in preparing us for barriers and stumbles.  The only barriers our egos like are the ones that we tell ourselves we overcame to arrive at the current, magnificent version of ourselves.

I often have had the inclination to, if not be secretive, to at least be circumspect in talking about a project I might be thinking about with others, and I believe this issue Ryan hits on above has been in the back of my mind all along – the idea that talk is cheap, and if the project is worth pursuing I know that its possible for me to dissipate my energy by graciously accepting any compliments and bowing to applause that I receive simply by talking about it.

I highly recommend this book.  I expect I will add it to my routine reading list of books that I return to from time to time.  Ego is an enemy for all of us.  Getting it under some basic control is hard work.

Good luck!