In general, knowing that your brain can recognise cognitive outsourcing is really useful. When a problem has me stumped, I refuse to write it down and sometimes even refuse to share the problem until I’ve had some downtime, such as sleep. I do this because I know that if I keep the idea in my head, I’ll keep churning on it, and dreaming/downtime has a non-zero chance of solving the problem for me.
But I wasn’t aware that ‘choking’ on a routine task is related to cognitive … micromanaging?
That’s the most surprising yet in hindsight obvious thing about the article to me. I had thought of the other hypothesis—that automatic cognitive operations are just better at doing things than conscious control—because I felt it (e.g., talking to girls. This may be one of the hardest things about PUA, and it’s related to getting into the optimal “state” as PUA’s call it). But cognitive resources are limited? First, duh! Why didn’t I think of that on my own? Second, it helps explain other types of choking that the first hypothesis seems less plausible for. I’m thinking about reading the book over christmas break.
In general, knowing that your brain can recognise cognitive outsourcing is really useful. When a problem has me stumped, I refuse to write it down and sometimes even refuse to share the problem until I’ve had some downtime, such as sleep. I do this because I know that if I keep the idea in my head, I’ll keep churning on it, and dreaming/downtime has a non-zero chance of solving the problem for me.
But I wasn’t aware that ‘choking’ on a routine task is related to cognitive … micromanaging?
That’s the most surprising yet in hindsight obvious thing about the article to me. I had thought of the other hypothesis—that automatic cognitive operations are just better at doing things than conscious control—because I felt it (e.g., talking to girls. This may be one of the hardest things about PUA, and it’s related to getting into the optimal “state” as PUA’s call it). But cognitive resources are limited? First, duh! Why didn’t I think of that on my own? Second, it helps explain other types of choking that the first hypothesis seems less plausible for. I’m thinking about reading the book over christmas break.