Most performers have some kind of pre-performance habit — a coffee, a playlist, a few minutes of quiet. Whether they would call it a routine is another matter. There is a significant difference between habitual behaviour before a performance and a deliberately constructed routine designed to produce a specific psychological state. The research on pre-performance routines is clear on what that difference produces in terms of consistency, composure, and performance under pressure.
What the Research Says
Lidor and Mayan (2005) found that structured pre-performance routines reduced the negative effects of performance anxiety, improved concentration, and produced more consistent outcomes across competitive conditions. The mechanism is twofold: routines direct attention away from outcome concerns and towards process execution, and they activate established psychological and physiological states associated with previous good performances. Put simply — the routine becomes a trigger for the state you want to be in.
Cotterill (2010) reviewed the research on pre-performance routines across sport and found consistent evidence that they function as attentional control devices. Performers who use them are better able to narrow focus to task-relevant cues and exclude distractors — including the most common distractor of all, which is thinking about what is at stake rather than what needs to be done.
What the Research Consistently Finds
What a Pre-Performance Routine Is Not
A pre-performance routine is not superstition, though the two can look similar from the outside. The difference is functional: a superstition is believed to directly influence the outcome (“if I wear these socks, I will perform well”). A routine works by producing a specific internal state — a degree of activation, a narrowing of attention, a sense of readiness — that improves the quality of execution. One is magical thinking. The other is psychological priming.
A routine is also not a fixed script that must be followed identically every time or the performance is compromised. Routines should be adaptable. A professional who has forty minutes before a client presentation and one who has ten minutes need different versions of the same routine. The elements — physical reset, attentional cue, identity activation — can be compressed or expanded without losing their function.
“The purpose of a pre-performance routine is not to feel ready. It is to create the conditions in which you are most likely to perform as you have prepared to. That is a different target — and a more reliable one.”
Performance Thoughts
The Three Elements Every Routine Needs
Across the research on pre-performance routines, three functional elements appear consistently in effective examples. They do not need to take the same form in every context — but each element serves a distinct purpose that the others do not.
Building Your Routine: A Practical Framework
The most effective routines are personal — they are built around what actually produces the right state for you, not what works for someone else. The starting point is observation: what do you notice about how you feel and perform when you have prepared well versus when you have rushed or been distracted in the lead-up? The differences point towards what your routine needs to address.
After the Performance: The Review That Makes the Routine Better
Pre-performance routines improve through deliberate review. After each significant performance, note whether the routine was used, whether it was effective, and what specifically did or did not work. Over time, this produces a routine that is genuinely calibrated to you — not a generic template borrowed from someone else’s practice.
The Performance Toolkit includes a pre-performance routine builder and a post-performance review framework designed specifically for this iteration process. The Performance Mindset Toolkit covers the psychological foundations — composure, attentional control, identity under pressure — that the routine is designed to activate. Read more about how pre-performance routines connect to performing under pressure — the two pieces of research are closely linked.
Tim Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis covers the psychological foundations of pre-performance preparation better than anything written since. Eugen Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery approaches the same problem from a completely different angle. Both are on the Performance Thoughts reading list.
A routine addresses the moment before performance — the psychological qualities that sustain performance through it are covered in Building Confidence That Holds Under Pressure.
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Put It Into Practice
Design a five-minute routine for the performance situation you face most regularly — a meeting, training session, competition, or presentation. It needs three things: one physical action that settles your arousal level, one attentional cue that directs your focus onto what matters, and a clear end point — the moment preparation stops and performance begins. Use it in lower-stakes situations at least three times before you rely on it when it matters. A routine that has not been rehearsed is an intention, not a routine.
References
Cotterill, S. T. (2010). Pre-performance routines in sport: Current understanding and future directions. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 3(2), 132–153.
Lidor, R., & Mayan, Z. (2005). Can beginning learners benefit from preperformance routines when serving in volleyball? The Sport Psychologist, 19(4), 343–363.