I've been thinking about the concepts in the NY Times article
A Meditation on the Art of Not Trying as a writer, particularly the sense that in crafting something as mind-boggling complex as a 400 page thriller with multiple perspectives, set convincingly in foreign locales, with correct stylistic/grammatical choices, and innovative plot--the best way to do this seems to be to free my mind, immerse myself in the moment and forget that I am doing "work" that took a lifetime of training to achieve. (Even during the revision stages, I wipe my mind clean a thousand times and look at the pages anew, with the eyes of the first-time reader)
"The advice is as maddening as it is inescapable. It’s the default prescription for any tense situation: a blind date, a speech, a job interview, the first dinner with the potential in-laws. Relax. Act natural. Just be yourself.
But when you’re nervous, how can you be yourself? How you can force yourself to relax? How can you try not to try?"
Interestingly, "wu wei" is a quality that some of the top live poker players that I have observed seem to have. Ivey, Danzer, Haxton , Jacobson. (Others like Smith, Kitai, Esfandiari, and Selbst seem to have a neurotic, compulsive strategy going, I'll have to think about this more). Negreanu is fairly unique, not sure how to characterize his style--annoy your opponent into revealing stuff?
I do know that in the 49 hour-continuous
Ironman I was so tired I somehow "transcended" the tournament, started seeing things as they really were at the table, free of fear or self-consciousness. This was a particularly effective strategy in that particular tournament because it was so deep structured, the blinds never really came into play. In 99 percent of normal tournaments there is way more variance related to increasing blind levels, and one's mental strategy plays a correspondingly smaller role.
“Our culture is very good at pushing people to work hard or acquire particular technical skills,” Dr. Slingerland says. “But in many domains actual success requires the ability to transcend our training and relax completely into what we are doing, or simply forget ourselves as agents.”
Another aspect of this article that interests me is the part about wining and dining--that is of getting someone drunk, as an essential part of any business decision. This is super prevalent in Japan, where I taught English for five years, and very few major decisions are made without a long night at the izakaya. Corporate meetings can often be described as mere formality, or an in-depth sounding out (like the beginning stages of a deep stacked tournament) rather than as the venue for decisions to be finalized.
"Before signing a big deal, businesspeople often insist on getting to know potential partners at a boozy meal because alcohol makes it difficult to fake feelings. Neuroscientists have achieved the same effect in brain scanners by applying magnetic fields that suppress cognitive-control ability and in this way make it harder for people to tell convincing lies.
“Getting drunk is essentially an act of mental disarmament,” Dr. Slingerland writes. “In the same way that shaking right hands with someone assures them that you’re not holding a weapon, downing a few tequila shots is like checking your prefrontal cortex at the door. ‘See? No cognitive control. You can trust me.’ ”
This is also relates to something recently observed. A full month before I signed with my literary agent, I met with her (and an intern) for lunch and we polished off a bottle of wine and went through edits on the entire manuscript over four hours-- incidentally sounding each other out. I realize now that there is a definite method to this seeming madness. Although no money is exchanged until the agent sells the manuscript, the decision to take on a new client is not taken lightly. If something emerges in the preliminary interactions that indicates a poor fit, the offer will simply not be made and the contract never offered. You can argue that it should be the actual words on the page that sell themselves, but in today's personality driven age this is no longer the case.
So the conundrum comes down to the idea that success at the highest levels often involves forgetting your training, losing fear, immersing yourself in the totality of what is going on rather than preconceptions. Interviewing Brian Rast last month I asked him how he could steel his nerves in Big Game situations, with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line and his reply was something surprisingly similar. Reminds me, I'll have to go back and make a podcast of that.
