3/26/19 - CTRL+ALT+DEL

If you’ve done much video editing, you’ll know your laptop works near maximum capacity running that one program. The onboard fans crank into overdrive, the keyboard gets hot, and the mouse cursor lags. Unless you have some seriously expensive gear, you’ll need to dedicate the majority of your computing power to get any work done.

We should think along the same lines about our minds while playing golf.

If your computer is running slowly, you can hit CTRL+ALT+DEL to see a list of active applications in the Task Manager. There you can see where your computer’s processing power is being allocated. Often, you’ll notice unwanted programs running in the background gumming up the works. These unwanted tasks can be manually ended, increasing the computer’s performance immediately.

Since we’re not robots, we can’t terminate unwanted thoughts out on the course, but we can notice where our consciousness is being allocated.

If my experience during a terrible round is any indication of the average golfer’s mental “Task Manager”, it would look something like this:

30% - Fear of bad things happening

20% - Doubt about the soundness of the process

20% - Awareness of score implications +/-

20% - Swing thoughts

10% - Formulate honest plan, wait for honest comfort

My “Task Manager” when playing my best golf looks like this:

90% - Formulate honest plan, wait for honest comfort

05% - Swing thoughts

02% - Awareness of score implications +/-

02% - Doubt about the soundness of the process

01% - Fear of bad things happening

Why is my mind adrift in a sea of fear, doubt, awareness, and swing thoughts when playing poorly?

The answer is clear when considering the other side of the coin.

When I play my best, the vast majority of my consciousness is dedicated to forming an honest plan and waiting for honest comfort. My mind is thoroughly occupied figuring out how to best play the game. There’s just not enough processing power left over to consider fear, doubt, swing thoughts, or misdirected awareness.

Moral of the story?

Have the discipline to tie up your mind with one task at a time…

Task 1:    Plan Creates Comfort:

Make an awesome plan for the upcoming shot

                (The process of creating a truly awesome plan alleviates doubt as you know you’ve done your best, fear becomes an inaudible whisper, and there’s just not enough awareness to spare to consider unnecessary swing thoughts or score implications +/-)

                As far as definitions go, a golfer with minimal doubt, fear, or distraction seems comfortable to me…

Task 2:    Comfort Creates Plan:  

The moment we feel we’ve achieved this bona-fide, honest, earned comfort, swing the club.

We don’t think about swinging the club, we swing the club.

We betray and sabotage the integrity of Task 1 when we think about swinging the club at this stage. Your body has all the instructions it needs to swing the club. Have the guts to trust what feels comfortable.

Forming the plan packs the powder/ball into the cannon, now our job is to light the fuse and see where the ball flies.

It is perfectly acceptable to hit a terrible shot from a place of honest comfort, but it is unacceptable to hit a bad shot because we didn’t have the discipline to wait for honest comfort before swinging.

Just a warning, we must constantly remind ourselves of the true source of our best golf. You’ll be tempted to be lazy, you'll step into shots without a plan, you’ll swing without an ounce of comfort.

I write this in hopes that the next time you notice a pop-up in your consciousness advertising an exciting new swing thought, you’ll just smile, hit CTRL+ALT+DEL, and get back to making one hell of a plan for your next shot.