Aug 11, 2026 · 13 min · 7 segments
The purpose of anxiety is to prepare us to do something. Too little or too much causes problems. How do we turn this arousal into something that we can use and makes us better.
We want to start with sort of a confession, something that we think a lot of well-intentioned advice about anxiety gets quietly wrong.
Much of what gets said about anxiety in the context of learning and performance carries an implicit assumption.
And that assumption is that the goal is less anxiety.
That, if we could just dial it down, reduce it, manage it into something smaller and quieter, we'd perform better, we'd learn more effectively, we'd feel more capable.
And it's understandable that the message has landed that way because anxiety is uncomfortable and reducing discomfort feels like progress.
But it isn't the whole truth.
For many high-performing people, learners, leaders, and people who are genuinely reaching for something difficult, it's actually a misleading map.
Because here's what the science has been showing us for over 100 years in a principle that is foundational to performance psychology and is still somehow not widely known outside specialist circles.
In 1908, two psychologists named Robert Yerkes and John Dodson conducted a series of experiments with mice and motivations.
They were studying the relationship between arousal, the body's state of activation, and task performance.
What they found was not a straight line.
It was a curve, and that curve has been replicated across species, context, and a century of subsequent research.
Here's the shape of it.
At very low levels of arousal, when you're under-stimulated, bored, disengaged, performance is poor.
Makes sense.
The brain isn't mobilized.
The work feels effortless in the wrong way, which is to say we're not really doing it.
As arousal increases, performance improves.
Focus sharpens.
Energy is available.
The work has weight and the weight is useful.
You're in the zone that most people would describe as being on.
Then as arousal continues to increase past a certain point, performance begins to fall again.
Activation that was sharpening you starts overwhelming you.
Attention fragments, thinking becomes rigid, and the very cognitive system you need, flexible reasoning, working memory, creative connection making, starts to degrade.
We want to start with sort of a confession, something that we think a lot of well-intentioned advice about anxiety gets quietly wrong.
Much of what gets said about anxiety in the context of learning and performance carries an implicit assumption.
And that assumption is that the goal is less anxiety.
That, if we could just dial it down, reduce it, manage it into something smaller and quieter, we'd perform better, we'd learn more effectively, we'd feel more capable.
And it's understandable that the message has landed that way because anxiety is uncomfortable and reducing discomfort feels like progress.
But it isn't the whole truth.
For many high-performing people, learners, leaders, and people who are genuinely reaching for something difficult, it's actually a misleading map.
Because here's what the science has been showing us for over 100 years in a principle that is foundational to performance psychology and is still somehow not widely known outside specialist circles.
In 1908, two psychologists named Robert Yerkes and John Dodson conducted a series of experiments with mice and motivations.
They were studying the relationship between arousal, the body's state of activation, and task performance.
What they found was not a straight line.
It was a curve, and that curve has been replicated across species, context, and a century of subsequent research.
Here's the shape of it.
At very low levels of arousal, when you're under-stimulated, bored, disengaged, performance is poor.
Makes sense.
The brain isn't mobilized.
The work feels effortless in the wrong way, which is to say we're not really doing it.
As arousal increases, performance improves.
Focus sharpens.
Energy is available.
The work has weight and the weight is useful.
You're in the zone that most people would describe as being on.
Then as arousal continues to increase past a certain point, performance begins to fall again.
Activation that was sharpening you starts overwhelming you.
Attention fragments, thinking becomes rigid, and the very cognitive system you need, flexible reasoning, working memory, creative connection making, starts to degrade.
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