Welcome to the course "Achieving Your Optimal Performance." During this course, you will take a journey where you will explore what it looks like when you are at your best and what environments will bring out your optimal performance. My name is Rich Mayhew. I'll be your instructor during this course. I've been an instructor with UCSD Extension for over 10 years. My background is in the banking industry, where I led people to achieve things they didn't think possible. I was a turnaround manager, which meant that I repaired departments that were not operating at their best and achieved results by bringing out the best in my staff. After that, I started my consulting company and I've worked with leaders around the globe to maximize their impact as leaders. I also instruct a course at UCSD that prepares PhDs and graduate students for life in the non-academic world. So you're in good hands. Defining and achieving your optimal performance is not easy, but it is achievable. Interestingly, achieving high performance does not have to occur by trial and error, though for some, that is how they achieved it. I'll give you a much shorter approach. Here's the punchline. Achieving optimal performance is 80 percent about knowing yourself. The good news is that you already have a sense about who you are in relation to how you work and what brings out the best in you. The challenge is - and I have fallen into this trap - we get presented in life with bright, shiny objects that are opportunities. They look appealing, even seductive. We go for them. It could be an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a venture that a colleague is involved in. It could be a position in an organization that has appealing pay and benefits. It could be an opportunity to work on a project or with a product that appeals to your values. In all these situations, knowing yourself and what brings out the best in you will provide you with the best wise counsel that you could ever ask for. This course will help you do that. So let's review what we'll cover over these five lessons. I'll start with the outcomes. During this course, you can expect to achieve the following. One, learn the optimal performance model. Two, apply the model to your unique profile. Three, test the model via practical case situations. And four, articulate your ability to use the model for career success. Here's the agenda for each of the lessons. In this lesson, Lesson 1, you'll explore the unique challenges that face us as we enter or progress in the workplace. And you'll see what activities may be necessary for you to design your optimal performance strategy. In Lesson 2, you'll learn what the optimal performance model is and then you'll dive into discovering what you know and don't know, as well as how you go about learning. In Lesson 3, you will apply the model through a powerful process of reflection, as well as a method to gain more information about yourself and your potential. In Lesson 4, you'll apply the optimal performance model to case situations. That will provide you with the opportunity to up-level your skills in identifying optimal performance. Finally, in Lesson 5, you'll finish completing your optimal performance profile and set robust goals for putting the plan into action and achieving results. Here's the process that you'll follow to achieve the course outcomes. We use an experiential learning model retrofitted for MOOC delivery. How that looks is - you will learn something. You will reflect on what it means and what it means to you. You will build a way of thinking about, in this case, optimal performance. And finally, you will identify how you will put into practice what you have learned. As you'll see as you go through this course, experiential learning is the most powerful and efficient way to learn something. We'll accomplish this by you watching videos, reading articles, completing self-assessments, journaling, solving case studies and interacting with your fellow classmates. My recommendation is that you become completely selfish, at least for this course. This is the time to focus on you, because it is only you that can help you reach optimal performance. Set a good pace that is reasonable for you to complete each activity and allow yourself time to think and ponder. A side benefit of this is that the process will relax you, reduce your stress and help you become inspirational about your future. To quote Henry Ford, the automobile mogul, "If it's to be, it's up to me." Enjoy the experience and let's get started.
