You’ve probably heard it in a high-pressure sales bullpen or a sweat-soaked locker room. Someone yells that they’re going to shoot the lights out, and suddenly everyone is fired up. It’s one of those weird, aggressive idioms that seems to permeate the American psyche, especially when money or trophies are on the line. But where did it come from? Honestly, if you look at the literal imagery, it sounds kind of destructive. Like someone walking into a room with a slingshot or a pistol and plunging everyone into darkness.
In reality, it’s the exact opposite.
To shoot the lights out is to perform so well that you essentially break the game. You’re so accurate, so efficient, or so successful that the competition might as well pack up and go home. There’s no more room for improvement because you’ve reached the ceiling.
✨ Don't miss: Carano Family Net Worth: What Most People Get Wrong
The Surprising Origins of the Phrase
Most people assume this is a military term or maybe something out of an old Western movie. It isn't. While "lights out" has long been a military bugle call signifying the end of the day, the specific phrase "shoot the lights out" is deeply rooted in mid-century basketball culture.
Think about a player who is "on fire." In the 1960s and 70s, broadcasters started using the phrase to describe a shooter who couldn't miss. The idea was that the player was so hot, they could aim at the tiny bulbs in the scoreboard or the rafters and pick them off one by one. If you shoot the lights out of the arena, the game has to stop. You've won. You've literally ended the contest through pure skill.
Eventually, the phrase migrated. It leaked out of the gym and into the wood-paneled corner offices of Wall Street. By the 1980s, if a fund manager had a quarter where they returned 30% while the S&P 500 stayed flat, they were said to have shot the lights out. It became the ultimate corporate compliment.
Why Business Leaders Obsess Over This Metric
In a business context, shooting the lights out isn't just about doing a "good job." It’s about variance.
Most companies operate on a bell curve. You have your average performers, your low performers, and your high performers. But then you have the outliers. These are the people who don't just hit their KPIs; they triple them. They find a loophole in the market or a sequence of sales tactics that feels like a cheat code.
When a startup "shoots the lights out" during an IPO, it means the demand was so high that the price soared past all analyst projections. Take the Snowflake IPO in 2020, for example. It was the biggest software IPO ever at the time, doubling its value on the first day of trading. That is the definition of shooting the lights out in the financial world.
But there’s a downside to this kind of performance. It’s exhausting.
You can’t shoot the lights out every single day. If you try, you burn out the "bulbs" and the shooter. Real high performance requires recovery. You see this in sports all the time—a player has a 50-point game (shooting the lights out) and then follows it up with a 12-point dud because they’ve depleted their nervous system.
The Psychology of Peak Performance
What does it actually feel like to be in that zone?
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi famously called this "Flow." It’s that state where time seems to disappear. You aren't thinking about the mechanics of what you’re doing; you’re just doing it.
- Hyper-focus: The rest of the world falls away.
- Automaticity: Your brain stops second-guessing.
- Confidence: You feel like you literally cannot fail.
Honestly, it’s a bit of a drug. Once a salesperson or an athlete tastes what it’s like to shoot the lights out, they spend the rest of their career chasing that high. It’s why you see veteran traders still staring at six screens at 7:00 PM on a Friday. They’re looking for that perfect setup where they can dominate the market again.
Common Misconceptions and Where People Get It Wrong
A lot of folks confuse "shooting the lights out" with "working hard." They aren't the same thing.
You can work 100 hours a week and still just be average. Shooting the lights out is about results, not effort. In fact, sometimes the best performances look effortless. It’s about leverage. It’s about finding the one thing that moves the needle the most and hitting it with everything you’ve got.
Another mistake? Thinking it's a team effort. Usually, this phrase is reserved for individual brilliance. While a team can have a "shoot the lights out" season, it usually refers to a specific person carrying the load.
How to Actually Shoot the Lights Out in Your Own Career
If you want to reach this level, you have to stop playing by the standard "incremental improvement" playbook. You won't get there by getting 1% better every day. That’s for people who want to be "good." To shoot the lights out, you need to be willing to take risks that others won't.
- Identify the "Lights": What is the single most important metric in your industry? If you’re in SaaS, maybe it’s Net Revenue Retention. If you’re a creator, maybe it’s average view duration. Don't waste energy on the small stuff.
- Wait for Your Pitch: You can’t go all-out on every project. Expert performers wait for the right conditions. They wait for the market to dip or for a specific competitor to slip up.
- Eliminate the Safety Net: This is controversial. But most people who perform at an elite level have a "burn the boats" mentality. They perform because they have to.
- Master the Fundamentals: You can't break the rules until you know them. A basketball player who shoots the lights out has practiced that same jumper 100,000 times. In business, that means knowing your product, your customer, and your numbers backwards and forwards.
The Risk of the "All-In" Mentality
Is there a danger here? Of course.
When you aim to shoot the lights out, you’re often ignoring the "lights" that keep your life running—like sleep, family, and mental health. The term itself implies an ending. Once the lights are out, you're in the dark.
I’ve seen plenty of founders who had a massive exit—they shot the lights out and made tens of millions—only to realize they had no idea what to do with themselves once the "game" was over. They won, but they lost the context that made the win meaningful.
Actionable Steps for High-Stakes Performance
If you have a big presentation, a sales pitch, or a game coming up, here is how you prepare to perform at an outlier level:
- Pre-Performance Routine: Don't wing it. Have a specific set of actions (music, visualization, specific foods) that tell your brain it’s time to go.
- Information Diet: In the 24 hours leading up to a "shoot the lights out" moment, stop consuming new, distracting information. Focus only on the task at hand.
- Feedback Loops: Have someone you trust—a coach or a mentor—give you brutal, real-time feedback. You can't adjust your aim if you don't know where the ball is landing.
- Post-Game Analysis: Even if you succeed, look at what went wrong. Outliers are obsessed with the details that everyone else misses.
Performing at this level is rare. It’s supposed to be. If everyone was shooting the lights out, we’d all be sitting in the dark. But if you find that moment where your skills meet a massive opportunity, don't hold back. Aim for the bulbs.