I suspect a large part of the ability to deal with stressful situations relies on pre-established cognitive shortcuts that free up more of the brain for flexible analysis. One part of this I imagine involves what psychologists call “chunking”, the ability to fit large data sets into the mind by unifying disparate data points into unified chunks.
Chess grandmasters, for example, can memorise the complete positions of twenty or more chess boards and play them out blindfolded, as long as the board positions are sensical and distinct, and they do so by remembering the board as chunks of interrelated data. They do not remember the position of each piece individually, but rather they remember clusters of pieces that are interacting: “this knight threatened by that bishop, who is near those pawns, who are protecting the queen from the rook” is a cluster and is remembered as such.
I suspect that those who practice dealing with specific stressful situations use such mental constructions to model the situation using less of their brain’s processing time, freeing up more run-time for observation and prediction. So part one of dealing with stressful situations might be practising them until you can “chunk” them.
I also suspect that a large part of it is simple habituation to stressful stimuli and the human body’s stress responses.
In my own experience doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu, when I first started wrestling other people 90% of my mind was taken up with being distressed because someone was sitting on me trying to put me in an unpleasant submission hold, 9% was trying and failing to remember any of the moves I had been taught and 1% at most was analysing the situation dispassionately. Over the course of four years or so that changed to the point where almost none of my mind was taken up with distress, I had a ready move for most situations and in some cases a library to choose from, and my opponent’s exact position and intentions were “chunked” from relatively small amounts of data. This freed up most of my brain for strategic thinking, positional awareness of other wrestling pairs nearby on the mat and mentally rehearsing whatever new moves I was trying to functionalise.
So as far as shortcuts go all I can offer is an anti-shortcut. Spend years deliberately putting yourself in a specific stressful situation, and you will become good at handling that specific stressful situation. Possibly this habituation generalises to other stressful situations. I tend to avoid them so I have no data, and I don’t think that I handle high-stress situations better than anybody else as a result of wrestling but I don’t know for sure.
In a third and more nerd-specific vein, playing World of Warcraft in a group at a competent level largely boils down to simultaneously moving strategically to position yourself correctly in the game world while playing a rhythm game to activate your abilities in the optimum pattern. Doing these two tasks at once is non-trivial, and practise at the rhythm game element frees up more cognitive space for panning the camera around to maintain situational awareness, strategic thinking on the rare occasions when some kind of strategy is needed and deviating from the standard rhythm game pattern when it is optimal to activate some rarely-used button.
So practising relevant skills until “muscle memory” takes over also frees up more cognitive room for situational awareness and forward thinking.
Hypothesis: Practising isolated skills to build up “muscle memory” should help deal with stressful situations that use those skills to some extent. Habituating yourself to stress and distress should also help to some extent. Deliberate efforts to see the interrelationships between relevant stimuli to develop the ability to “chunk” data should also help to some extent. People who act effectively under stress are probably stress-habituated persons who have freed up a large part of their brain for situational awareness by automating or chunking the mental processes that take up most of the brain-space of neophytes in such situations.
For some reason, I’ve always imagined that “nerd-type” people would have less ability-to-react than the general population. Maybe it’s partly the stereotype of the awkward geek, or the fact that programmers, in particular, spend long periods of time alone without social interaction to impose thought-deadlines. But this population also (stereotypically) plays a lot of online multiplayer games. I wonder if playing games like World of Warcraft could lead to transferable skills, like better awareness/awakeness to immediate events.
I suspect a large part of the ability to deal with stressful situations relies on pre-established cognitive shortcuts that free up more of the brain for flexible analysis. One part of this I imagine involves what psychologists call “chunking”, the ability to fit large data sets into the mind by unifying disparate data points into unified chunks.
Chess grandmasters, for example, can memorise the complete positions of twenty or more chess boards and play them out blindfolded, as long as the board positions are sensical and distinct, and they do so by remembering the board as chunks of interrelated data. They do not remember the position of each piece individually, but rather they remember clusters of pieces that are interacting: “this knight threatened by that bishop, who is near those pawns, who are protecting the queen from the rook” is a cluster and is remembered as such.
I suspect that those who practice dealing with specific stressful situations use such mental constructions to model the situation using less of their brain’s processing time, freeing up more run-time for observation and prediction. So part one of dealing with stressful situations might be practising them until you can “chunk” them.
I also suspect that a large part of it is simple habituation to stressful stimuli and the human body’s stress responses.
In my own experience doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu, when I first started wrestling other people 90% of my mind was taken up with being distressed because someone was sitting on me trying to put me in an unpleasant submission hold, 9% was trying and failing to remember any of the moves I had been taught and 1% at most was analysing the situation dispassionately. Over the course of four years or so that changed to the point where almost none of my mind was taken up with distress, I had a ready move for most situations and in some cases a library to choose from, and my opponent’s exact position and intentions were “chunked” from relatively small amounts of data. This freed up most of my brain for strategic thinking, positional awareness of other wrestling pairs nearby on the mat and mentally rehearsing whatever new moves I was trying to functionalise.
So as far as shortcuts go all I can offer is an anti-shortcut. Spend years deliberately putting yourself in a specific stressful situation, and you will become good at handling that specific stressful situation. Possibly this habituation generalises to other stressful situations. I tend to avoid them so I have no data, and I don’t think that I handle high-stress situations better than anybody else as a result of wrestling but I don’t know for sure.
In a third and more nerd-specific vein, playing World of Warcraft in a group at a competent level largely boils down to simultaneously moving strategically to position yourself correctly in the game world while playing a rhythm game to activate your abilities in the optimum pattern. Doing these two tasks at once is non-trivial, and practise at the rhythm game element frees up more cognitive space for panning the camera around to maintain situational awareness, strategic thinking on the rare occasions when some kind of strategy is needed and deviating from the standard rhythm game pattern when it is optimal to activate some rarely-used button.
So practising relevant skills until “muscle memory” takes over also frees up more cognitive room for situational awareness and forward thinking.
Hypothesis: Practising isolated skills to build up “muscle memory” should help deal with stressful situations that use those skills to some extent. Habituating yourself to stress and distress should also help to some extent. Deliberate efforts to see the interrelationships between relevant stimuli to develop the ability to “chunk” data should also help to some extent. People who act effectively under stress are probably stress-habituated persons who have freed up a large part of their brain for situational awareness by automating or chunking the mental processes that take up most of the brain-space of neophytes in such situations.
For some reason, I’ve always imagined that “nerd-type” people would have less ability-to-react than the general population. Maybe it’s partly the stereotype of the awkward geek, or the fact that programmers, in particular, spend long periods of time alone without social interaction to impose thought-deadlines. But this population also (stereotypically) plays a lot of online multiplayer games. I wonder if playing games like World of Warcraft could lead to transferable skills, like better awareness/awakeness to immediate events.