One of the key messages of my book, HOW TO ASK THE SMART QUESTIONS FOR WINNING THE GAMES OF BUSINESS & LIFE is to "Think things through . . . ahead of time (especially in Part three: Whats's my best move at this point?)
Thinking it out -- or mental practicing, or visualizing -- goes way back with me . .. . at least as far as law school, when I learned to sit quietly the night before and try to anticipate the professors' many questions. I know I did not know about mental rehearsals earlier, back when I was playing high school football: I was the biggest guy on the team, and the fastest . . . but, alas, the dumbest, as once the ball was snapped I never could remember where I was supposed to run, or who I was to block.
Visualization for sports got a boost by a book that came along in the mid-1970's: INNER TENNIS: PLAYING THE GAME, by W. Timothy Gallwey. That, in turn, prompted a variety of articles on how other pro athletes were using visualization, or other kinds of mental rehearsals before games. I don't have the file in front of me, alas, so can't cite them.
(I also use visualization in a different context in another of my books: JOINING MIRACLES: Navigating the Sea of Synchronicity. There visualization is used -- I suggest -- to trigger synchronicities. More on that another time.)
What brought these thoughts out of my memory-bank is an article I stumbled on (by way of Zite, the great little app/online magazine), which led me to an article "Mental Practice Makes Perfect" in Psyblog. (Here's the link to the article, and to PsyBlog, on Spring.org.uk)
I won't steal the article's thunder, will leave it to you to read as a whole, because it's worth it. (Though I can't resist sharing the image it brings of British Formula 1 driver Jenson Button sitting on a big rubber ball with a steering wheel in hand, visualizing a lap through the race course. It doesn't say whether Mr. Button makes bzzz! rrroar! screeech! sounds to accompany the visualization!)