Performing with an Open Mind

A mind with commitment to do something is said to be a closed mind, while that free from the commitment remains open on the subject. For example, let us consider writing an article by a person. If the author is determined to write the piece, his mind gets closed on the subject but if he/she keeps the subject open without a commitment, his/her mind feels freedom. Psychologists have found that persons with open mind perform better than those with closed minds even on the subject. This appears to be a contra-view because a commitment is considered to be a reason for better performance.      

A closed mind gets closed to things other than the subject under consideration, many times leading it to mono-tracking. A good performance always needs a flood of new ideas coming to mind which is possible with keeping the mind open. Secondly, the commitment burdens the mind with an expected feeling of guilt if the commitment is not fulfilled. With open mind, the person keeps on getting a positive inspiration for performing, making the performance better than that from a committed mind. 


There are two possibilities of a will of a person - willingness to do, and will to get the results. Willingness keeps the mind open as the person's mind is not tied except his/her performance and that improves the performance. When the mind gets committed to the result, the performance gets a secondary place and is marred.  



There are two dimensions of performance - commitment and will power. The commitment is performance oriented while the will power is heavily focused on the results. The commitment is indifferent to circumstantial compulsions while the results are always conditioned by circumstances. The circumstances being out of control of an individual, only the commitment can be ensured and not the results. So, for a better performance, it is the commitment that is needed and not the result-oriented will-power.