6/24/2023 0 Comments Cogito ergo blogoWe really can be too clever for our own good.īy allowing ourselves to listen to our (better) instincts, we can tap into a kind of compressed wisdom. When Yale undergraduates play the game, they try to figure out some underlying pattern, and end up doing worse than the rat or the child. If a rat is faced with a puzzle in which food is placed on its left 60% of the time and on the right 40% of the time, it will quickly deduce that the left side is more rewarding, and head there every time, thus achieving a 60% success rate. When offered details of ingredients, they got befuddled by their options and ended up choosing a jam they didn’t like. A study of shopping behaviour found that the less information people were given about a brand of jam, the better the choice they made. When we follow our own thoughts too closely, we can lose our bearings, as our inner chatter drowns out common sense. A fundamental paradox of human psychology is that thinking can be bad for us. In less dramatic ways the same principle applies to all of us. It hasn’t stopped the song being voted the best of all time. Bob Dylan, wistfully recalling his youthful ability to write songs without even trying, described the making of “Like a Rolling Stone” as a “piece of vomit, 20 pages long”. Thinking too much can kill not just physical performance but mental inspiration. Its power is not confined to sport: actors and musicians know about it too, and are apt to say that their best work happens in a kind of trance. Unthinking is the ability to apply years of learning at the crucial moment by removing your thinking self from the equation. Perhaps Federer was so upset because, deep down, he recognised that his opponent had tapped into a resource that he, an all-time great, is finding harder to reach: unthinking. By thinking too hard, they lose the fluid physical grace required to succeed. When a footballer misses a penalty or a golfer fluffs a putt, it is because they have become self-conscious. This, say the experts, is caused by thinking too much. In the jargon of sport, he has been “choking”. It kinda works.”įederer’s inability to win Grand Slams in the last two years hasn’t been due to physical decline so much as a new mental frailty that emerges at crucial moments. “Yeah, I tend to do that on match points. Some players do that, he continued: “Down 5-2 in the third, they just start slapping shots …How can you play a shot like that on match point?”Īsked the same question, Djokovic smiled. It was tough, he said, to lose because of a “lucky shot”. At his press conference, Federer was a study in quiet fury. John McEnroe called it “one of the all-time great shots”.ĭjokovic won the game, set, match and tournament. The nonchalance of Djokovic's stroke thrilled the crowd. Djokovic had returned his serve with a loose-limbed forehand of such lethal precision that Federer couldn’t get near it. Seconds later he found himself stranded, uncomprehending, in mid-court. At the other end, Djokovic nodded, as if in acceptance of his fate.įederer served fast and deep to Djokovic’s right. As Federer prepared to serve, the crowd roared in anticipation. After four hours of epic tennis, Roger Federer needed one more point to see off his young challenger, Novak Djokovic. IT WAS THE fifth set of a semi-final at last year’s US Open. Ian Leslie draws on Dylan, Djokovic and academic research to put the case for unthinking.
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