Ask what support the situation is giving you right now

Before judging your performance, name the people, tools, and cues the situation is supplying.

なぜ効果があるのか

On Fischer’s account, the level at which a person performs depends on the support the context provides. A strong performance may come from support you did not notice, such as a colleague who set the agenda, and a weak one may come from support that was absent. Listing the supports makes a performance readable, and shows what to bring into a similar situation when the support is missing.

やり方

1. After a good performance, list everything that helped: people, documents, timing, the room.
2. After a poor one, list what from that list was missing.
3. Choose one support you can bring yourself next time.
4. Test it in the next similar situation and compare the result.

エビデンス

The claim that performance depends on the support a context gives is from Lectica’s summary of Fischer’s theory. The title of Kitchener, Lynch, Fischer and Wood (1993) names contextual support as the variable studied, but I could not read its findings, so no effect is claimed here. (mechanistic)

Support can prop up a performance that is not really your own, and this practice does not by itself separate that from genuine skill.

出典

• Kitchener, K. S., Lynch, C. L., Fischer, K. W., & Wood, P. K. (1993). Developmental range of reflective judgment: The effect of contextual support and practice on developmental stage. Developmental Psychology, 29(5), 893–906.
• Lectica. Skill theory: Kurt Fischer [web page, a secondary summary of the theory]. Accessed 2026-10-14.

よくある間違い

Crediting your own ability for a good result that a supportive setup produced, or blaming yourself for a poor one a missing support caused, without checking which.