Welcome to Snafu, a newsletter about resilience and behavior change.

Great athletes don’t just train for performance – they train for chaos.

Most of us wait until disaster has struck to figure out how we’ll react. As a result, we panic, freeze, and make bad decisions.

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How to train for chaos

Michael Phelp’s coach, Bob Bowman, understood that the greatest athletes don’t just train for performance – they train for chaos.

Once he recognized that Phelps had the potential to be an elite level swimmer, Bowman started building unpredictability into Phelps’ training.

When traveling for competitions, Bowman would misplace Phelps’ luggage or swimsuit. During practice, Bowman filled Phelps’ goggles with water so he would have to swim without being able to see. Phelps was forced to learn to count his strokes per lap so that even if he couldn’t see, he would know when to turn.

This particular training challenge paid off in the 2008 Beijing Olympic, when Phelps’ goggles actually did fill with water. He still won gold!

Habit: Red teaming

Red Teaming is the practice of deliberately stress-testing your plans, assumptions, and expectations by asking yourself: "What if everything goes wrong?"

Instead of hoping things go smoothly, know your contingency plans so when the unexpected happens, you know how to react.

Most of us wait until disaster has struck to figure out how we’ll react. As a result, we panic, freeze, and make bad decisions.

Red teaming is the opposite – it’s mental preparation for failure, so when things go wrong, you already know how to respond.

Before an important event – whether it’s a presentation, a workout, or even a difficult conversation – spend two minutes imagining everything that could go wrong.

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3 things I’ve loved this week

Article I’m revisiting:

​I’m 29 and I gave up everything to study ballet​

I wrote this article in the throes of a very intense year of studying classical ballet alongside high school students 40 hours a week. I joined pre-professional dancers at 3pm and took classes, including Men’s Class and Pas de Deux, until 9pm..

It was an intense year – emotionally even more than physically – learning to dance alongside high school kids and embrace beginner’s mind.

But I got to study an art form I love. And I’ll never wonder “what if?”

Series I’m binging:

​Étoile

I haven’t watched a movie or a show in months. But on a recent trip I binged the new Amazon show Étoile.

Ballet was the first dance form I fell in love with, and is also the heartbeat and core tradition of all western dance. Hundreds of millions of people – mostly women – in America have fond memories of taking ballet during their early years.

From the producers of The Marvelous Mrs. Mazel, Étoile is a comedic narrative about the intertwining cast of two world-renowned ballet companies in New York City and Paris. The show is hilarious, true to my experience of ballet, and shows a lot of excellent dancing.

Book I've loved:

​Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

I've been listening to Ezra Klein's podcast for the last couple of years, and I think it is among the best contemporary podcasts right not. But this is the first book of his I've read.

Abundance puts the challenges facing the political left in America into perspective, issuing a call to arms that we must build – more affordable housing, more public works, and more energy solutions – if we want to thrive

The book is a great read!

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Until next week,
Robin