Welcome to a new series on omacperformance.com, Porus, our monthly blog. Porus is the Greek God of Expediency and Wisdom, focusing on preparing for things using wisdom. This short blog aims to do the same for you, provide you with information to help inform some of your decisions around your performance, be that as an athlete, student, coach, teacher, team or group. Over the coming months, we will explore various topics from performance psychology and provide examples and guides of how to apply these in your sport and life. Feel free to suggest any topics you’d like covered.
The Rule of 3
What is it?
Known as a language tool, the rule of 3 is a style of presenting information in a certain way to get a response or feeling from the receiver. This method is a way to help the listener or reader remember key information by making it memorable but also concise. Human beings love patterns and pattern recognition greatly influencing our daily lives. It is seen as the “functional basis of most, if not all, unique features of the human brain including intelligence, language, imagination…” (Mattson, 2014).
Tapping into this need for pattern recognition is something that people have been doing for a long time, for example with the Olympic Games motto, ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ (Faster, Higher, Stronger). We see the use of the rule of 3 in advertising and political campaigns also. Examples from advertising include Nike’s ‘Just Do It’, McDonald’s’ ‘I’m Lovin It’, while also political campaigns such as US President Obama’s ‘Yes We Can’ campaign and the historic French Revolution motto ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity).
Looking through a sport specific lens, the rule of 3 features here too. The major sport leagues in the USA are all three words, NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL. At home in Ireland, we have the GAA, FAI and IFA.
How can I use it?
Ultimately, what we see or hear in threes is often what we remember most. Given this, coaches and athletes can create memorable bits of information to help themselves or their team perform at their highest level.
Sport psychologists have used the rule of 3 to create slogans or reminders for their teams to help keep their focus on specific information. Do you recognise any of these:
- W.I.N – What’s Important Now
- W.I.T – Whatever It Takes
- P.T.W – Play To Win
- C.T.C – Control the Controllables
If you have worked with me, you will be familiar with a few of these. That is because they are memorable and create an easy link to important information for athletes and teams to remember and use.
But this style isn’t solely confined to the work of a sport psychologist around mental skills training. There is a story of Sir Alex Ferguson, the hugely successful Manchester United manager at a course with coaches. At the course, Sir Alex got a participant to come forward. Sir Alex proceeded to throw a ball to him, which the participant caught. Sir Alex then threw 2 balls at the same time, again caught by the participant. This continued until 4 balls when the participant didn’t catch a single ball. His focus and attention were dragged to too many stimuli and thus he missed it all. Three was the most he could catch at the one time.
When presenting information, coaches should factor this example into how they speak to athletes and teams, either on the pitch during training or matches, or at meetings pre- or post-match and half time. The half time team talk is vital (more information on how to best do your halftime talks can be found at the brilliant Minute9, link below). Teams and athletes need to relax and refocus, while also having a clear message to start the second half. A way to get this message across is with the rule of 3. This can be broken down to one thought/plan for offense, one thought/plan for defence, and one thought/plan for the whole team. Straight away, players know what to do and can work towards that, without being confused with too much unnecessary information. Individual sport athletes may not have the same time to sit and relax between competing but can find time between sets or holes to do something like this to help reassess and gain clarity with how to approach the next part of their performance.
The rule of 3 is a major part of our lives that we often miss or don’t see. Its effectiveness, using pattern recognition bias in the brain, means it is a concept coaches and athletes can avail of to give themselves that edge and allow them to be #busygettingbetter.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post. If you did, please share it on your social media platforms and tag @omacperformance. If you would like support for yourself or your team, please reach out via the Contact page.
Thanks, thanks, thanks,
Oisin
References and Links
Mattson M. P. (2014). Superior pattern processing is the essence of the evolved human brain. Frontiers in neuroscience, 8, 265. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2014.00265
Check out Minute9 for more details on how to halftime effectively.