Unthinking

Ian Leslie, via The Dish:

Federer’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. In the jargon of sport, he has been “choking”. This, say the experts, is caused by thinking too much. When a footballer misses a penalty or a golfer fluffs a putt, it is because they have become self-conscious. By thinking too hard, they lose the fluid physical grace required to succeed. 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.
Unthinking is the ability to apply years of learning at the crucial moment by removing your thinking self from the equation. 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. Thinking too much can kill not just physical performance but mental inspiration. 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”. It hasn’t stopped the song being voted the best of all time.
In less dramatic ways the same principle applies to all of us. A fundamental paradox of human psychology is that thinking can be bad for us. When we follow our own thoughts too closely, we can lose our bearings, as our inner chatter drowns out common sense.

I was just thinking about "unthinking" yesterday.  I was considering where in the brain activity would occur when backing up a wagon or trailer, because if I consciously think about which way to turn the steering wheel, I am going to screw up.  Everybody who has ever tried backing a single axle trailer versus a two axle wagon knows that you have to steer opposite directions for the two.  But I have a hard time explaining to somebody which way to turn the wheel to steer either.  I can sit there and do it, but I can't describe what I am doing.  I would guess the brain function occurs in the area which deals with sensory reception, but it would be interesting to study.  Baseball and golf were the same way.  If I started thinking about it, I couldn't hit the ball.  My friends used to ask somebody, "do you inhale or exhale when you hit the ball?" right before the person hit his drive, and it caused them to hit a bad shot almost every time.  The ability to block thoughts from your head is a very important skill.