Inchworms are simple little creatures. You may know them as the voracious leaf eaters that terrorize your gardens, ruining all your trees and plants.
However, how the inchworm moves is an excellent metaphor for the optimal way human beings can improve at anything they do.
The Inchworm Concept was actually coined by a mental coach named Jared Tendler who works specifically with high-performing athletes, finance people, golf professionals, and professional poker players.
I read this concept in a book years ago and like to apply it to anything I do that demands high performance.
The inchworm propels itself forward by anchoring its back end, extending its body, gripping with its front end, and then bending its body upward to draw the hind foot forward. With each movement, the inchworm ends up a little further ahead than where it began.
When we do anything that takes skill and is demanding, we have bad, average, and good performances. Our performance on any given day lies somewhere on this spectrum.
Think of this spectrum as the body of the inchworm. Whether or not we have a bad, average, or good performance can be influenced by so many factors such as your personal life, physical shape, mental shape, and just daily life.
The idea behind the inchworm process is that you move the back end of the range a little bit forward and the front end of the range a little bit forward, just like the inchworm moves.
As you practice this your bad performances become a little bit better, your average performances improve, and your good performances become excellent.
Eventually, your bad performances will become as good as what you would have previously called a good performance. Additionally, your good performances can become spectacular. The bad gets a little bit less bad and the good gets a little bit more good.
Taking this approach will help you improve in anything that is skill and performance-based. We will never be perfect every single day, but we can make our bad days become pretty damn good.
A real-life personal example of this would be writing. Previously on bad days, I would do nothing, on average days I would write pieces of articles, and on good days I would write and publish a whole article.
Now, even on my worst days I write for half an hour or brainstorm and get some things down on paper. On average I generally write at least one article a day.
On good days I write several outlines and multiple articles to publish throughout the week.
I just wanted to share this concept as I think it is a quite unique way of thinking about our performances in sports, work, life, or our hobbies.
It allows us to be less judgmental about singular performances and see the big picture.
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