Conquering Test and Performance Anxiety
Facing Fear & Building Confidence
"I'm just not a good test taker."
Liars (all around the world)
Why Anxiety?
Test and performance anxiety can be terrifying. Anxiety can make even the best of us feel terrible, but we can beat it. First, let's understand why we get anxious.
Our brains are always looking for danger. When our brains see something that might be a threat, now or in the future, they try to solve it. This makes our minds constantly prepare for the worst.
This is stressful and can lead to anxiety if we do it too much. When our brains don’t know what to prepare for, they try to prepare for everything.
Like literally everything.
Our minds will want to prepare us for a panther attack, the next economic crash, embarrassing moments, food shortages, and life beyond school. You get the idea.
We are anxious because we’re trying to solve every possible problem simultaneously, which is impossible. Our minds work hard to find solutions; when they can’t, they work even harder. At this point, our bodies use their stress responses, which affect us physically. Our bloodstreams get flooded with cortisol and adrenaline, which is helpful in the short term but terrible in the long term. This is why chronic anxiety can be so hard on the body.
These stress responses aren’t entirely terrible. They are great for spotting potential threats, which we can use to our advantage. In education, this means we can use our anxiety to see if we are prepared. The difference between unnecessary anxiety and helpful anxiety lies in our habits.
How much have we prepared for the problems in front of us?
How many hours have we put in to earn the calm?
Coping with Anxiety
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
In school and test-taking, anxiety can come from not knowing what to prepare for. A big part of beating anxiety is understanding why we get it and then taking steps to solve the problems in front of us.
When anxious, many people freeze. It can feel like it’s impossible to move when anxiety takes over. Freezing is the first step of the stress response. Part of overcoming this is defining what we are anxious about.
Our minds are constantly working to solve problems; if the problem is not apparent, our mind spins out, and anxiety takes over.
Conquering anxiety equals defining anxiety.
We have to take time to find out what we are anxious about. I recommend writing it down and using Tim Ferriss’s Fear Setting Exercise. Once we know the worst case, we can work on making that situation better, or if we can’t, we can work to cap the downside—make sure the losses aren’t too bad.
“We suffer more in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD)
Defining what needs to get done and what needs to be understood is incredibly powerful. Whenever I’m anxious or overwhelmed, it’s because the tasks I need to complete aren’t straightforward. The anxiety melts away when my goals are clearly stated as actions I need to take.
For this reason, I love checklists. They help take big ideas and break them down into small, actionable steps. I recommend reading The Checklist Manifesto by Dr. Atul Gawande. He beautifully explains the power of checklists, how to make good ones, and how to get everything done right.
Get things written down in small and simple tasks.
Another way to cope with anxiety is to shorten our timelines. When stress is high, focus on small amounts of time. The higher the stress, the smaller the time. Don’t worry about what’s going to happen in a year, or a month, or a week, or a day, or an hour.
We can focus on what’s right in front of us, even if that means just getting through the next few seconds.
When I’m highly stressed, it helps to focus on the next three seconds. I get through rough patches three seconds at a time. When I’m less stressed, I can plan over weeks or months.
Time will pass either way. Adjusting our timeframes is a powerful way to maintain control, especially when we’re dealing with anxiety.
Yerkes-Dodson Law
The Yerkes-Dodson Law describes the relationship between stress and performance.
American psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson found that stress can help with performance, but only up to a certain point. Too much stress can hurt performance, but we actually need some stress to do our best. If we’re not stressed enough, our performance can suffer, too.
The Hebbian Yerkes-Dodson Curve shows that different tasks may need different stress levels, but the curve is a good average. Understanding this curve helps us manage stress and anxiety to maintain our performance.
Stress Management
“Stress is a result of a lack of structure.”
Touré Roberts (1972 – )
When managing stress, we want to keep good stress (eustress) and let go of bad stress (distress). Here are some methods to help manage stress:
Entering Sleep-like Brain States: Meditation, long drives, running, breathing, showering, and cleaning help get our minds into a sleep-like state. Taking time to unplug and step back from work helps decrease nervous system arousal.
Define the Stressor: Like anxiety, half the battle is understanding what is stressing us out. I try to express this in my journaling or other writing. Sometimes, I’ll write what’s stressing me out in my notes app just to get it out of my head. Once something is clearly defined, we can take steps to solve the problem.
Eating Healthy and Regularly: Studies show that eating breakfast helps stabilize mood. It’s also hard to perform when our blood glucose levels are low. Doing difficult and stressful tasks requires more mental energy, so we need good nutrition. It’s easier to get stressed when we’re hungry. We can eliminate extra stress by keeping our bodies happy and healthy.
Avoiding Stimulants: Caffeine and other uppers increase activity in the central nervous system and chemically increase arousal. Our emotional states, like stress, are related to biochemical ratios in our bodies. Everyone’s body is different, so we need to be tuned to how we eat and drink make us feel. We can control a surprising amount of our emotions by controlling what we take in. I try to avoid stimulating chemicals when I’m highly stressed. However, I use caffeine if I don’t have the energy to perform my best. I recommend generally avoiding stimulants but using them if arousal levels are lower than the sweet spot.
Six Deep Breaths Trigger a Parasympathetic Response: If we can manage to get six deep breaths in, with the exhale longer than the inhale, then our bodies take that as a signal to relax and start to turn on our parasympathetic nervous system, the part of our brain that relaxes us.
We need some stress to perform at our best, so don’t just try to eliminate all stress. It’s all about finding balance.
Confidence and Anxiety
Confidence has a significant relationship with anxiety. If we don’t believe we can overcome a challenge, it’s easy to shut down. If we don’t prepare for danger, our minds will make us more uneasy as the threat gets closer. Confidence gives us a fighting chance to beat anxiety.
Without confidence, anxiety will win every time.
How to Increase Confidence
The tricky part about confidence is that we need to prove to ourselves that we have it before we can start having it.
Instead of trying to talk ourselves into being confident, we must show ourselves that we are capable and get some wins. One way to do this is to learn something new. Anything. Find an exciting skill, learn, practice, and invest in it. Confidence is a side-effect of watching ourselves kick butt at something.
People who are good at things are confident. People who seem optimistic but aren’t competent are just arrogant.
If we take shortcuts, we’ll know, and we won’t be genuinely confident. Building a relationship with ourselves and understanding ourselves as authentically confident people takes time, but it’s totally worth it.
Focus on building an identity and creating solid habits.
These are perfect ways of developing confidence within ourselves because we’re already making constant little wins.
Last Thoughts on Anxiety
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)
“There is nothing so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness it is in your expecting evil before it arrives!”
Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD)
Two men from vastly different times are saying the same thing: It’s not worth worrying.
Any suffering we are to bear will be experienced when we experience it. If the practices in this post don’t help, try to find ways to not participate in the madness of anticipating pain. Sometimes I drive myself crazy worrying about the future, but other times I can catch myself and remember that I’m only hurting myself by thinking that way.
Not all of our thoughts are true. Not all of our thoughts are useful.
I also recommend reading Stoic philosophy to learn how to operate in times of high stress and anxiety. Letters from a Stoic and On the Shortness of Life by Seneca are fantastic works and are both on my Must-Read Book List.
“Life is suffering.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Suffering, pain, death, and misfortune are all part of life. Rejecting these parts makes life more challenging. If we learn to embrace hardships and love our fate, amor fati, we may be relieved of some pain.
In life, we perform. We are always performing. If people depend on us, we need to perform. Learning how to thrive when it is our time to shine is a skill that translates beautifully in any field. I consider performing to be a powerful meta-skill worth taking on.
During my freshman year of college, my friend and I performed at open mics twice a week, which really helped with my performance anxiety. The first time I went up on stage, my voice was shaky, and I played all of our songs super fast because I subconsciously wanted to get off the stage as fast as possible. But by the end of the first semester, the stage felt like my natural habitat and was a place for me to thrive and shine.
We get better at anything with deliberate practice and time. Performance and test-taking are just other skills to develop. Focus on growing and giving our best effort. Know precisely what we must conquer and be mindful of our stress levels and management techniques.
Everyone can be a great test-taker; it just takes a little work.
Anxiety, especially around tests, can feel overwhelming, but understanding it is the first step to overcoming it. Our brains try to solve every possible problem, leading to stress and anxiety. By defining our anxieties, using checklists, and shortening timelines, we can manage our stress better. Remember, stress is necessary to perform well, but balance is critical. Building confidence by learning new skills and focusing on small wins helps combat anxiety. Not all our worries are real or useful, so focus on the present and practice self-care. Everyone can become a great test-taker with a little effort and the right techniques.