Does optimism improve your performance?
4 years ago, my Bachelor thesis supervisor called me an optimist.
That wasn’t a compliment.
I was delusional in my optimism. I brought a perspective of “it will be fine” to something that would not be fine if I continued working like this—or rather, if I continued “not working” like this.
That’s when I started to ask myself: “Is my optimism beneficial to my performance?”
4 years later, I decided to look into the psychology behind it. Here are the 3 main answers I found.
1. Optimists win, but not because of optimism?
Quite some research studies have found optimism to be positively related to performance. Even more research studies have found optimism to be positively related to well-being (which is inseparable from performance).
However, the question is: “Do you win because you’re optimistic or are you optimistic because you win?”
Research still doesn’t have an answer to that. Optimism also shows high correlations to self-efficacy (the belief in your capacity to act and reach specific goals), an important underlying factor for performance. That makes it even more difficult to measure whether optimism directly leads to better performance.
Optimism seems to be beneficial, but its magnitude is still unclear.
2. Setting more goals = getting more goals
I like psychology, but here’s some simple math.
An optimist sets 100 goals and has a 60% success rate. A pessimist sets 20 goals and has a 100% success rate. Who has made more progress?
Don’t let the success rate fool you, the optimist has succeeded thrice as much.
Pessimism holds back from setting goals, while optimism means daring to try. Being pessimistic or realistic is the safer option, as we aim to diminish our chance of failure. But what if the biggest growth is found when there’s a chance of failing?
Set the goal, get the goal.
And even if you don’t get the goal, you’ll still progress.
3. Optimism doesn’t have to be delusional.
Optimism is often seen as a gazelle running into an open field without fear of cheetahs.
Rather, optimism is the cheetah chasing the gazelle while knowing there is only a 30% success rate.
Bounded optimism mixes hopeful confidence with realism: it’s realizing there that not everything will work out, but still choosing to try.
Optimism is not blind to reality, it’s deliberately choosing to believe in a positive outcome.
The connection between optimism and performance needs a nuanced and extensive explanation.
So that’s why I gave a 30-minute plea for optimism in my latest podcast episode.
Go check it out for optimistic gains 🙂
