Reddit reviews Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To

> Smart people solve things right away when they get lucky. And the more nervous they are, the less likely this is.

And there is some evidence to suggest that the smarter you are, the more you can be tripped up in a situation like an interview. Smart people in a nervous state can spin up thought loops very quickly. "Oh, no, am I going to be able to answer this or am I going to look stupid?!" - looping continually at high speed. Check out: Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To http://www.amazon.com/Choke-Secrets-Brain-Reveal-Getting/dp/1416596186

The core of what you're getting at here is the difference between procedural memory and the forms of memory we call declarative or explicit memory.

These forms of memory even have distinct physiological substrates. Famously, a patient that was unable to form new explicit memories (Henry Molaison, long-known as H.M.) was able to, with practice, improve at motor skills despite having no recollection of the practice itself. What this should tell you is that a) skill learning doesn't necessarily rely upon knowledge that we can explicitly state and b)

One way of thinking about this is that motor learning needed to throw a football occurs in a different language than mathematics. That is, one doesn't need declarative knowledge regarding abstract concepts such as number systems or gravity functions. Rather, your brain and body are constantly working together to make and refine sequences of movements that yield a desired result - and it turns out we are really good at this!

On a related note, these two systems can actually interfere with one another. In a really cool study involving golfers, researchers found that, in expert golfers, putting performance was hurt if you asked them to describe the motions involved in making a putt while they attempted to make the putt. The same effect was not noted in amateur golfers. The researchers' theory is that expert golfers, but not amateur golfers, have immense procedural memory with respect to putting and that forcing them to engage semantic memory detracts from their ability to utilize their skill and may contribute to the general phenomenon of "choking under pressure." One of the authors of the aforementioned study certainly believes so, and has written a book on the matter.

This is my issue with Gladwell and Lehrer:

>In works of less than 500 pages, Gladwell and Lehrer attempt to enlighten the reader on How the World Works, What People are Really Like, and How Greatness Happens without getting into any of the technical details that would absolutely overwhelm the majority of the readers traipsing through airport book shop before grabbing their flight home.

They set out to achieve something that's nearly impossible and people are willing to suspend disbelief just because they don't want to expend the energy required to become truly informed on a given subject.

Also this:
>More than actionable insights, this kind of popular analysis gives the reader something far more immediately valuable – the feeling that they have a sophisticated view of the world.

I'm still reading the article, but I fell in love with the following sentence:
>America splits its valuable time between blowing an enormously obvious housing bubble, demanding Master’s degrees for entry-level positions, and badly managing the bloodbaths of Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is an excellent article. If I may suggest a couple of anti-dotes to the Gladwell/Lehrer pop-science oversimplification, two books with excellent science and research on how we think, decide and react to stress are Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow and Choke, by Sian Beilock.

Probably psychological. This book might help you understand and deal with performance anxiety

Oh. In that case, you want to practice in scenarios that are as close to the real thing as possible. Practicing your shot with no one guarding you isn't as good as practicing your shot with a hand in your face. Maybe you could stick a bunch of cardboard cut outs, that are taller than you are, all over the court and practice taking shots right in front of them.

Also, might I refer you to this book called Choke

Oh ... I also wanted to mention that more practice of your shot will help your muscles remember your shot better so you don't have to think about it. Practice a looot. Practice 'er day.