thinking too much certainly does not help with sex
Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)
41–50 of 257 posts
Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)
#42> The only reliable cure for overthinking seems to be enjoyment However, enjoyment in a high-stake situation is too hard to achieve. For people like actors, athletes and musicians, confidence generated through enough practice seems to be the cure. Enjoyment is an aftereffect. For situations for which you have no way to practice, enjoyment just seems hard.
If you’re playing an instrument in front of an audience, performance anxiety will usually make things much worse than if you had practiced in private.
Yes, and repeated practice at performing _in front of an audience_ will gradually reduce that anxiety for most people. Getting to that state where you can be up in front of a lot of people and just enjoying yourself making music is a wonderful feeling, and for most of us it takes a lot of hard work over many years.
In my personal experience, both with musical performance and public speaking, the #1 thing that makes a difference in terms of how nervous I am during the performance is how well I know the material. The more I can "shut off my brain" and let rote memory handle the basics (correctness), the more room I have to take it further with nuance, dramatic arc, etc.
Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you’re playing an instrument in front of an audience, performance anxiety will usually make things much worse than if you had practiced in private.
YMMV; many musicians feed off an audience's energy and thus get more fully and deeply into the moment. Which is what all of this is about -- being 100% in the NOW and not in your conscious mind's memories (past) or anxieties (future).
also elite athletes who play "out of their minds" when everything's on the line, eg star basketball players whose 4th quarter shooting % in playoff games is higher than at any practice
Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the article was written Federer had lost to Djokovic after having 2 match points on two seperate occsasions (US Open 2010 and 2011) and since then this has happened again at Wimbledon 2019. In that last two matches Federer was serving as well. It's hard to make the argument that this isn't psychological.
To elaborate beyond what @soneca said, how do we know that Federer lost those points because he thought too much? What if, instead, Federer didn’t think enough, and Djokovic just outthought him? That’s why the conclusion is unfalsifiable.
Yes, I can agree with that. We don't really know enough about what's happening in their heads to make any conclusions.
Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you’re playing an instrument in front of an audience, performance anxiety will usually make things much worse than if you had practiced in private.
Yes, and repeated practice at performing _in front of an audience_ will gradually reduce that anxiety for most people. Getting to that state where you can be up in front of a lot of people and just enjoying yourself making music is a wonderful feeling, and for most of us it takes a lot of hard work over many years. In my personal experience, both with musical performance and public speaking, the #1 thing that makes a…
Y that was my exact thought. You need enough practice (private or public) to achieve the state where you can let your muscle memories to handle the basics.
Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)
#46Well, I stopped reading when it said that Federer ”has been choking” , losing due to a ”mental frailty” . It told me everything I need to know that there is nothing serious to be read and learned in this article.
When the article was written Federer had lost to Djokovic after having 2 match points on two seperate occsasions (US Open 2010 and 2011) and since then this has happened again at Wimbledon 2019. In that last two matches Federer was serving as well. It's hard to make the argument that this isn't psychological.
If we model tennis points as random (let's say, accounting only for service), would we not expect people to occasionally lose when they had a match point? We'd expect this to happen more often when playing an opponent of comparable skill.
It's not obvious to me that it's psychological at all, and it seems to me that it's only reported as such because it makes a good news story.
Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
YMMV; many musicians feed off an audience's energy and thus get more fully and deeply into the moment. Which is what all of this is about -- being 100% in the NOW and not in your conscious mind's memories (past) or anxieties (future).
also elite athletes who play "out of their minds" when everything's on the line, eg star basketball players whose 4th quarter shooting % in playoff games is higher than at any practice
Wonder how much is this related to meditation and mindfulness. Both Michael Jordan and Kobe Byrant meditate a lot:
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/michael-jordan-kobe-bryants-me...
https://www.linkedin.com/business/learning/blog/productivity...
Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps OP meant that he had been dealing with a knee injury, and that doesn't have much to do with "mental frailty" at all: https://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/30821027/roger-federe... EDIT: Actually the article is from 2012, so I assume its because many of Federer's best years were still ahead of him.
The original article (from The Economist) is from 2012, so whatever the author was referring to was not the same as the injuries discussed in your 2021 article (from ESPN).
Hence the edit.
Re: Thinking too much can be bad for you (2012)
#49It is not really "not thinking", but not using your conscious mind, which can only focus on a single thing. You think with your subconscious mind too. But this can do multiple things at the same time, way faster than the logical mind. The harder you focus on a single thing, the more you ignore the entire system and the slower you perform. It is not just instinct as the article say, a tennis player does not play by in…
There is a word that is missing from the language or at least common usage, and that is differentiating something done with conscious effort of every little detail, and something you just do without thinking about it. (there are probably lots of words which somewhat fit the bill)
The hardest way to do something is complete conscious control of every step, the easiest way is something you can do perfectly on autopilot.
"Flow" is about being able to do something very well with almost minimal conscious control. (I would expand flow to being more than this, but it is at least a defining characteristic)