Non cogito, ergo sum | 1843 31/08/2017, 21*19

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THINKING

Non cogito,
ergo sum
Sometimes thinking is a bad idea. Ian
Leslie draws on Dylan, Djokovic and
academic research to put the case for
unthinking

IAN LESLIE | MAY/JUNE 2012

IT WAS THE Dfth set of a semi-Dnal at last year’s US Open. After four hours of epic tennis, Roger
Federer needed one more point to see oJ his young challenger, Novak Djokovic. As Federer
prepared to serve, the crowd roared in anticipation. At the other end, Djokovic nodded, as if
in acceptance of his fate.

Federer served fast and deep to Djokovic’s right. Seconds later he found himself stranded,
uncomprehending, in mid-court. Djokovic had returned his serve with a loose-limbed
forehand of such lethal precision that Federer couldn’t get near it. The nonchalance

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Non cogito, ergo sum | 1843 31/08/2017, 21*19

of Djokovic's stroke thrilled the crowd. John McEnroe called it “one of the all-time great
shots”.

Djokovic won the game, set, match and tournament. At his press conference, Federer was a
study in quiet fury. It was tough, he said, to lose because of a “lucky shot”. 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?”

Asked the same question, Djokovic smiled. “Yeah, I tend to do that on match points. It kinda
works.”

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 \uJs a putt, it is because they have become self-
conscious. By thinking too hard, they lose the \uid 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 Dnding 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 conDned 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. 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 oJered details of ingredients, they got befuddled by
their options and ended up choosing a jam they didn’t like.

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. Young children adopt the same strategy.
When Yale undergraduates play the game, they try to Dgure out some underlying pattern,
and end up doing worse than the rat or the child. We really can be too clever for our own
good.

By allowing ourselves to listen to our (better) instincts, we can tap into a kind of compressed
wisdom. The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer argues that much of our behaviour is based on
deceptively sophisticated rules-of-thumb, or “heuristics”. A robot programmed to chase and
catch a ball would need to compute a series of complex diJerential equations to track the
ball’s trajectory. But baseball players do so by instinctively following simple rules: run in the
right general direction, and adjust your speed to keep a constant angle between eye and ball.

To make good decisions in a complex world, Gigerenzer says, you have to be skilled at
ignoring information. He found that a portfolio of stocks picked by people he interviewed in
the street did better than those chosen by experts. The pedestrians were using the
“recognition heuristic”: they picked companies they’d heard of, which was a better guide to
future success than any analysis of price-earning ratios.

Researchers from Columbia Business School, New York, conducted an experiment in which
people were asked to predict outcomes across a range of Delds, from politics to the weather
to the winner of “American Idol”. They found that those who placed high trust in their
feelings made better predictions than those who didn’t. The result only applied, however,

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Non cogito, ergo sum | 1843 31/08/2017, 21*19

when the participants had some prior knowledge.

This last point is vital. Unthinking is not the same as ignorance; you can’t unthink if you
haven’t already thought. Djokovic was able to pull oJ his wonder shot because he had played
a thousand variations on it in previous matches and practice; Dylan’s lyrical outpourings
drew on his immersion in folk songs, French poetry and American legends. The
unconscious minds of great artists and sportsmen are like dense rainforests, which send up
spores of inspiration.

The higher the stakes, the more overthinking is a problem. Ed Smith, a cricketer and author
of “Luck”, uses the analogy of walking along a kerbstone: easy enough, but what if there was
a hundred-foot drop to the street—every step would be a trial. In high-performance Delds it’s
the older and more successful performers who are most prone to choke, because expectation
is piled upon them. An opera singer launching into an aria at La Scala cannot aJord to think
how her technique might be improved. When Federer plays a match point these days, he
may feel as if he’s standing on the cliJ edge of his reputation.

Professor Claude Steele, of Stanford, studies the eJects of performance anxiety on academic
tests. He set a group of students consisting of African-Americans and Caucasians a test,
telling them it would measure intellectual ability. The African-Americans performed worse
than the Caucasians. Steele then gave a separate group the same test, telling them it was just
a preparatory drill. The gulf narrowed sharply. The “achievement gap” in US education has
complex causes, but one may be that bright African-American students are more likely to
feel they are representing their ethnic group, which leads them to overthink.

How do you learn to unthink? Dylan believes the creative impulse needs protecting from
self-analysis: “As you get older, you get smarter, and that can hinder you…You’ve got to
programme your brain not to think too much.” Flann O’Brien said we should be “calculatedly
stupid” in order to write. The only reliable cure for overthinking seems to be enjoyment,
something that both success and analysis can dull. Experienced athletes and artists often
complain that they have lost touch with what made them love what they do in the Drst place.
Thinking about it is a poor substitute.

We live in age of self-re\ection, analysing every aspect of our work, micro-commentating on

our own lives online, reading articles urging us to ponder what makes us happy. Much of
this may be worthwhile, but we also need to put thinking in its place. Djokovic’s return was
both the culmination of his life’s eJort and an expression of careless joy. It kinda worked.

Ian Leslie works in advertising. He has written two books, “Born Liars” and “Curious”

KEYWORDS: PHILOSOPHY, THINKING

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR

THE SCIENTISTS WHO MAKE APPS
ADDICTIVE
IAN LESLIE | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

Tech companies use the insights of behaviour

design to keep us returning to their products.
But some of the psychologists who developed
the science of persuasion are worried about
how it is being used

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THE DATA OR THE HUNCH

IAN LESLIE | JULY/AUGUST 2015

More and more decisions, from the music

business to the sports field, are being
delegated to data. But where does that leave
our intuition?

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3 READERS' COMMENTS
SIGN IN OR CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT TO JOIN THE DISCUSSION.

ZLEO99 - DECEMBER 30TH 2016

There is a diJerence between unthinking skillfulness and switching oJ and saying what the hell and
just hitting the ball/playing the shot haphazardly: THAT leads to disaster. So one needs to be.......
mindlessly mindful.

MEENU SARDA - FEBRUARY 11TH 2016

Valuable input. Nicely written. I believe as much as learning and thinking is important so is unlearning
and unthinking. But it's easier said than done. These traits require lot of practice to make them a habit or
pattern. Speaking of myself, inspite of having this knowledge, I Dnd myself doing otherwise sometimes.

MEENU SARDA - FEBRUARY 11TH 2016

Valuable input. Nicely written. I believe as much as learning and thinking is important so is unlearning
and unthinking. But it's easier said than done. These traits require lot of practice to make them a habit or
pattern. Speaking of myself, inspite of having this knowledge, I Dnd myself doing otherwise sometimes.

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