One summer evening I watched my children playing with the garden hose, and I learned something about peak performance that no book had taught me.
They were being gloriously naughty. One of them would sneak over and close the tap, so that when the other pointed the hose at the flowers, nothing came out. Confusion. Shaking of the hose. Then the tap would be opened again, full blast, and just as the water began to flow, a foot would land quietly on the hose, and the water would stop once more.
I stood there laughing, and at the same time something in me went very still, because I realised I was watching a perfect picture of the way most people try to do their best work.
How do you stop putting pressure on yourself?
You stop putting pressure on yourself by seeing that pressure isn't fuel. It's a foot on the hose. Most self-pressure is an old survival rule, often about avoiding criticism or failure, still being enforced. When you find that rule and remove the charge behind it, the pressure lifts, and your natural ability flows through without being squeezed.
That's the whole lesson of the garden. Let me show you both halves of it.
What does the garden hose have to do with performing well?
Everything, if you look at it the right way.
The tap is the source. It's the creative energy behind anything good you've ever done, the part of you that knows how to write, lead, heal, build, play. When the tap is open, the water's there. You didn't make the water. You just let it through.
The hose is you, the channel it travels along.
And there are two ways to stop the water. You can close the tap, which is what happens when you lose touch with that source entirely, when you're so tired or so disconnected that nothing flows at all. Or you can leave the tap wide open and stand on the hose. That second one is pressure. The source is there, the ability is there, and you're blocking it with your own weight.
Most of the people I work with haven't closed the tap. They're standing on the hose, and pushing down harder every time the water slows, because they think the problem is that they're not pushing hard enough.
Why do I believe pressure makes me better?
Because at some point it seemed to work.
Maybe you crammed the night before an exam and passed. Maybe you pushed through a deadline on adrenaline and got praised for it. Maybe you grew up in a home where the one who tried hardest got the warmth, and easing off felt dangerous. Somewhere, a conclusion formed: if I let up, something bad will happen. And pressure became your way of keeping that bad thing at bay.
Some people will even tell you they perform best under stress. Watch them over a year rather than a week. It isn't sustainable, and it's always short-lived. What looks like performance is often survival, borrowed against your health and your joy, with interest.
And pressure leaks. It doesn't stay at the desk where you meant to use it. It comes home with you. It's in the short answer you give your partner, the evening you can't switch off, the holiday you spend checking your phone. People who live under self-pressure often think they're only hard on themselves. Ask the people who live with them. The foot on the hose presses on everyone downstream.
This is the same logic behind a lot of perfectionism and imposter syndrome. The pressure isn't really about the task. It's about staying safe from a verdict you've feared for a very long time.
Where does my best work actually come from?
From getting out of my own way.
I've noticed this over and over in my own life. My best work never happens when I'm straining. It happens when I stop trying to be impressive and simply show up for the person in front of me. When I do that, the rest seems to happen through me, almost effortlessly. People who've performed at their peak, in any field, describe something similar: a sense of watching themselves do it, as if the performance was flowing and they were just the channel.
That isn't mysticism. It's what the hose looks like with nobody standing on it. The tap was open all along. The water just needed a clear path.
The strange thing is that most people have tasted this. The presentation that went beautifully because you'd run out of time to over-prepare. The conversation that flowed because you forgot to be nervous. The game you played brilliantly the day you stopped caring about the score. Those weren't accidents. They were glimpses of what happens when the foot comes off.
What does pressure feel like in my body?
Try this before the next thing you're anxious to do well. It takes about a minute.
Before you start the task, pause and notice your body. Where's the pressure sitting? Many people find it in the shoulders, the jaw, the breath, or a band across the chest. Just locate it.
Then ask it one question, gently: what are you afraid will happen if you let go?
Wait for the answer rather than making one up. Often it's short and old. I'll fall behind. They'll see I'm not good enough. It'll all fall apart. Notice how much bigger that answer is than the task in front of you. You're about to send an email, and your body's bracing against a verdict.
Now, just for a moment, imagine taking your foot off the hose. Let the shoulders drop a centimetre. Let the next breath go all the way out. Then start the task from there, and notice whether the work is harder or easier. Most people are surprised.
Why does the pressure come back even when I know better?
Because knowing better lives in your thinking, and the pressure doesn't.
You can understand everything on this page and still feel your foot pressing down tomorrow morning. The pressure is held in place by an emotional charge, fused to that old conclusion about what happens if you let up. That's why understanding a pattern doesn't end it. The charge fires before the understanding gets a say.
What changes it is removing the charge itself. When that's done, the old rule has nothing to enforce it. People describe it as though someone quietly lifted a weight they'd forgotten they were carrying. They still care. They still work hard. They just stop standing on the hose while they do it. The freedom is in the removal.
What happens when the pressure lifts?
The work gets better, and so does the person doing it.
On our stories page, Erin Kurt wrote: "My business literally tripled within 6 months." I'm not quoting that as a promise about anyone's numbers. I'm quoting it because it's the kind of thing that can happen when a capable person finally stops blocking their own flow. The capability was already there. So was the source. What changed was the foot.
If you'd like to start with the one underneath the pressure, I made a free masterclass for exactly that, called Who Am I? It doesn't hand you a new technique for performing. It takes you back to the source the performance was always meant to flow from.
So, in closing, the garden's lesson in one line: keep the tap open, and step off the hose.
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.