Have you ever practised something so many times that eventually you could do it almost effortlessly? A musician playing a familiar composition, a tennis player returning a fast serve or a driver navigating a familiar road often performs without consciously thinking through every movement.
Yet, when the stakes become high and we start thinking too much about what we are doing, our performance can deteriorate.
Why does trying harder sometimes make us perform worse?
When the brain gets in the way
The PBS NOVA documentary Your Brain: Who's in Control? explores this fascinating paradox through the work of neuroscientist Charles Limb, who studies creativity and musical improvisation.
In experiments involving highly trained jazz musicians, researchers examined what happened in their brains when they improvised rather than played memorised music.
They observed reduced activity in certain regions of the prefrontal cortex associated with conscious self-monitoring and evaluation, alongside changes in other brain regions involved in musical performance.
The finding suggested that when experienced musicians improvise, they may temporarily reduce the kind of conscious self-monitoring that could interfere with spontaneous creative expression.
The documentary also offers a sporting example. A basketball player who routinely makes free throws may suddenly perform poorly when offered an enormous financial reward for the next shot. The pressure introduces conscious monitoring into an action that has become well-practised and relatively automatic.
The science of letting go
This phenomenon is closely related to what psychologists call choking under pressure.
Research suggests that excessive attention to the mechanics of a well-learned skill can disrupt its smooth execution. A golfer who normally putts effortlessly may begin consciously monitoring every movement, disturbing the coordination developed through practice.
A review by Yu-Chin Chua and colleagues (2015), published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, describes how pressure can impair performance through excessive self-monitoring, distraction and heightened arousal.
More recent research on creative flow, including a 2024 study of jazz improvisation, has also found associations between highly experienced musicians' flow states and reduced activity in certain frontal brain regions. These findings suggest that extensive practice can allow skilled performance to unfold with less interference from conscious self-evaluation.
This does not mean that the prefrontal cortex simply switches off. Flow involves a complex interaction of attention, experience and brain networks. Conscious control remains important, particularly when learning unfamiliar skills or responding to changing circumstances.
Practice, awareness and the art of letting go
There is an interesting connection here with Indian wisdom traditions.
The Bhagavad Gita, in Chapter 6, Verse 35, speaks of mastering the restless mind through Abhyasa (sustained practice) and Vairagya (dispassion or non-attachment).
The connection is worth contemplating.
Practice builds competence. It develops familiarity and establishes patterns that no longer require constant conscious supervision. Non-attachment allows us to engage without becoming excessively preoccupied with the outcome.
This is not an argument against conscious effort. Rather, it is about knowing when conscious effort is needed and when it is time to let our cultivated abilities express themselves.
True mastery may lie not in consciously controlling every movement, but in preparing ourselves so thoroughly that we no longer need to.
A question to carry forward
If we cannot consciously control every process within our brain, and if excessive control can sometimes work against us, what can we actually control?
Is there a way to develop the awareness and discernment needed to govern our thoughts, emotions and actions without being governed by them?
In Part 8: What Can We Actually Control?
References and further reading
- NOVA/PBS, Your Brain: Who's in Control? — primary documentary inspiration.
- Limb, C. J. & Braun, A. R. (2008). Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation. PLOS ONE, 3(2), e1679. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001679
- Chua, Y. C. et al. (2015). Choking Under Pressure: The Neuropsychological Mechanisms of Incentive-Induced Performance Decrements. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 9, 19. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00019
- Creative Flow as Optimized Processing: Evidence from Brain Oscillations During Jazz Improvisations by Expert and Non-Expert Musicians (2024). Neuropsychologia, 196, 108824. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2024.108824
- Bhagavad Gita, 6.35.