How to stay calm under pressure - Noa Kageyama and Pen-Pen Chen

View full lesson: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-to-avoid-choking-under-pressure-noa-kageyama-and-pen-pen-chen

Your favorite athlete closes in for a win; the crowd holds its breath, and at the crucial moment ... she misses the shot. That competitor just experienced the phenomenon known as “choking,” where despite months, even years, of practice, a person fails right when it matters most. Why does this happen, and what can we do to avoid it? Noa Kageyama and Pen-Pen Chen explain why we choke under pressure.

Lesson by Noa Kageyama and Pen-Pen Chen, animation by Olesya Shchukina.

Your favorite athlete
closes in for a victorious win.

The crowd holds its breath,

and, at the crucial moment,
she misses the shot.

That competitor just experienced
the phenomenon known as "choking,"

where despite months,
even years, of practice,

a person fails right when it matters most.

Choking is common in sports,

where performance often occurs
under intense pressure

and depends on key moments.

And yet, performance anxiety
also haunts public speakers,

contestants in spelling bees,

and even world-famous musicians.

Most people intuitively
blame it on their nerves,

but why does being nervous
undermine expert performance?

There are two sets of theories,

which both say that primarily, choking
under pressure boils down to focus.

First, there are the distraction theories.

These suggest that performance suffers
when the mind is preoccupied

with worries, doubts, or fears,

instead of focusing its attention
on performing the task at hand.

When relevant and irrelevant thoughts
compete for the same attention,

something has to give.

The brain can only process
so much information at once.

Tasks that challenge working memory,

the mental “scratch pad” we use

to temporarily store phone numbers
and grocery lists,

are especially vulnerable to pressure.

In a 2004 study,
a group of university students

were asked to perform math problems,

some easy, others more complex
and memory-intensive.

Half the students completed both problem
types with nothing at stake,

while the others completed them
when calm and under pressure.

While everyone did well
on the easy problems,

those who were stressed
performed worse

on the more difficult,
memory-intensive tasks.

Explicit monitoring theories make up
the second group of explanations

for choking under pressure.

They’re concerned with how pressure

can cause people to overanalyze
the task at hand.

Here, the logic goes that
once a skill becomes automatic,

thinking about its precise mechanics
interferes with your ability to do it.

Tasks we do unconsciously seem to be
most vulnerable to this kind of choking.

A study on competitive golfers compared
their performance

when instructed to simply focus on
putting as accurately as possible,

versus when they were primed
to be acutely aware

of the mechanics of their putting stroke.

Golfers usually perform
this action subconsciously,

so those who suddenly tuned in
to the precise details of their own moves

also became worse
at making accurate shots.

Choking may not be inevitable
for everyone though.

Research suggests that some are
more susceptible than others,

especially those who are self-conscious,

anxious,

and afraid of being judged
negatively by others.

So, how can we avoid choking
when it really counts?

First, it helps to practice
under stressful conditions.

In a study on expert dart players,

researchers found that those
who hadn’t practiced under stress

performed worse when anxious,

compared to those who had
become accustomed to pressure.

Secondly, many performers extol the
virtues of a pre-performance routine,

whether it’s taking a few deep breaths,

repeating a cue word,

or doing a rhythmic sequence of movements.

Studies on golfing, bowling,
and water polo

find that short rituals can lead
to more consistent

and accurate performance under pressure.

And thirdly, researchers have shown

that having an external focus
on the ultimate goal

works better than an internal focus,

where someone is tuned into the mechanics
of what they’re doing.

A study of experienced golfers revealed
that those who hit chip shots

while focused on the flight of the ball

performed significantly better than those
who focused on the motion of their arms.

So, perhaps we can modify
that age-old saying:

practice,

under pressure,

with focus,

and with that glorious end goal in sight,

makes perfect.