The Ideal Performance State, Made Practical

How to identify and deliberately access your personal peak performance state

What is the ideal performance state and how do you deliberately access it?

The Ideal Performance State (IPS) is Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s term for the specific combination of physical, mental, and emotional activation at which a performer reliably produces peak output. The IPS is individual-specific — what energizes one performer paralyzes another — and is accessed through deliberate energy management rather than through hoping to "get in the zone."

Jim Loehr’s career in performance psychology, and his collaboration with Tony Schwartz on "The Power of Full Engagement," centers on a core insight: peak performance is not a matter of trying harder but of managing energy more precisely — physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. The Ideal Performance State is not a universal formula but a personal profile, and the work is to identify yours and build the practices that reliably produce it.