Getting Psyched
strategy+business|Fall 2017

Psyched Up : How The Science Of Mental Preparation Can Help You Succeed by Daniel McGinn, Portfolio, 2017

Daniel Gross
Getting Psyched

Mindfulness is all the rage in the corporate world today. If we can just gain more self-awareness and get in touch with what makes us tick, the thinking goes, we can all be more successful. In his engaging and original book, Psyched Up: How the Science of Mental Preparation Can Help You Succeed, Daniel McGinn takes us far beyond the clichés of yoga poses, centering exercises, and nap rooms. McGinn, an editor at the Harvard Business Review with a “lifelong fascination with how people get psyched up before important events,” as he describes it, has traveled around the country to visit operating rooms, performance halls, baseball fields, sales floors, and other high-pressure work environments to learn how people with a range of skills and backgrounds prepare themselves mentally for the rigors of their daily work.

The results are very satisfying. McGinn is a good-humored, self-effacing, and highly articulate guide to fascinating terrain. Psyched Up is much more of an anthropological exploration than a selfhelp book. It is grounded in the deep analysis of lived experience rather than hard data.

This story is from the Fall 2017 edition of strategy+business.

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This story is from the Fall 2017 edition of strategy+business.

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