On a couple of occasions I’ve been accused of being a bit too lackadaisical with my approach to things. I like to marinate and let things come to me and take their natural course. It seems it could be the Buddhist in me. Or I could be a perfect fit for the Los Angeles Lakers. My philosophy has always been that I work best when I’m as relaxed as possible. I hate getting wound up and stressed out; I make mistakes and rush things. And, it seems, the Lakers agree.

Let’s take the game tomorrow night. A lot of people think it’s a big game. … The purpose is to give yourself an opportunity to get your best performance. It’s not about winning. There’s a difference. You want your best performance. You want your teammates’ best performance. And if you provide your best performance chances are you will win. But in order to have your best performance, you have to be relaxed.

ADHD is a very interesting subject that sits rather close to me. It’s something that isn’t understood too well and the link to depression and bipolar is very interesting.

Complicating the picture further, ADHD frequently goes hand in hand with depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder, and it can be difficult to untangle which came first. “It’s very common for someone to be treated for depression or anxiety for years, and have the therapist not notice the ADHD

One thing I do believe is that it’s over-diagnosed.

I can’t decide if I think Ben Crane’s mental approach to the game of golf is on a whole new level or if I want to tell him to “quit thinking and hit damn the ball”. I think it’s no coincidence that he is one of the PGA Tour’s slowest players.

“Now the left brain really should be retired, and then the right brain you should just relax and try to execute through there,’” Crane explained. “So then it should be very quiet through my brain, just going through my alignment checks, my waggle progression — hopefully that’s not too long — and then the imprint, which is just rehearsing as if I had done it perfectly.”

There is some research to show that being sad can be a good thing (kind of mirrors my being bored post).

Bad moods can actually be good for you, with an Australian study finding that being sad makes people less gullible, improves their ability to judge others and also boosts memory.

The study, authored by psychology professor Joseph Forgas at the University of New South Wales, showed that people in a negative mood were more critical of, and paid more attention to, their surroundings than happier people, who were more likely to believe anything they were told.

“Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation, and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking paying greater attention to the external world,” Forgas wrote.

Watching this Merlin Mann video last night, he referenced second-order ignorance (or incompetence) from Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt.

a novice at a particular skill is so unskilled that they don’t even realize how unskilled they really are. This leads beginners to greatly overestimate their own ability. In many cases, it can lead a beginner to be more confident in their own skill than an expert.

I think this happens a lot, especially to me. Merlin continues in the video talking about advanced-beginners and subtly touches on how wikipedia and the internet can make us all advanced-beginners rather quickly. It’s pretty fascinating stuff and tangentially relates to all the natural talent/deliberate practice/relaxed concentration talk.

The Joy of Boredom offers up some reasons to put down the iPod, Blackberry and laptop and enjoy the pleasures (consequences?) of being bored. I find that when I’m doing nothing is when I’m most creative and can find the most clarity in my thoughts.

We are most human when we feel dull. Lolling around in a state of restlessness is one of life’s greatest luxuries — one not available to creatures that spend all their time pursuing mere survival. To be bored is to stop reacting to the external world, and to explore the internal one. It is in these times of reflection that people often discover something new, whether it is an epiphany about a relationship or a new theory about the way the universe works.

ESPN mentioned the following in one of their Weekend Dime columns a while back:

Danny Ainge, meanwhile, is said to be a longtime Iverson fan, with AI apparently possessing the Michael Jordan brain type and with the Celts’ personnel boss known to be a big believer in brain-typing.”

Reading this, I didn’t quite know what was meant by brain-typing, so I did some sleuthing to learn more. Fascinating stuff. Here are a few links and blurbs that stuck out at me.

Larry Bird and Michael Jordan are BEIR brain types.

Their inborn design is described by one of Brain Typing’s 16 acronyms: BEIR. “B” represents a genetic predisposition for the Back of the brain where deep concentration and intensity reside as opposed to the front’s active and energetic state, which minimizes contemplation. “E” stands for Empirical—relying on sight and observation instead of concepts and theory. “I” signifies the Inanimate world which is more interested in logic, systems, and things than relating to people, pursuing harmony, or trusting feelings. Lastly, “R” equates to the Right brain, the hemisphere adept at peripheral vision and smooth, adaptable motor movements in contrast to the left hemisphere that specializes in tunnel vision and more mechanical, preplanned motor movements. Athletes born with the BEIR Brain Type can develop superior hand-eye coordination and athletic skills. This design is debatably the superior athlete in most sports.

Pretty interesting stuff. Jon Niednagel started this phenomenon and is famous for his prediction the Peyton Manning would be an NFL star and Ryan Leaf would perform poorly. For a bit more on Niednagel, here’s a transcript from a 2002 episode of ESPN’s Outside the Lines. It touches on Ainge’s belief in Niednagel’s craft.

DANNY AINGE, PHOENIX SUNS HEAD COACH – You can take Red Auerbach, Jerry West, Phil Jackson –I’d take Jon Niednagel.

Somewhat of a differing point of view about the limits people have with Jure Robic is the brain has a limited capacity for self-regulation, so exerting willpower in one area often leads to backsliding in others. Meaning, if you try really hard in one activity you will have less discipline in another activity. For example,

if you do not want to drink too much at a party, then on the way to the festivities, you should not deplete your willpower by window shopping for items you cannot afford. Taking an alternative route to avoid passing the store would be a better strategy.

Be wise with your willpower. There is hope that as you “exercise” your willpower, it will increase over time.

This whole concept of how people get to be great at something is really fascinating to me. There’s deliberate practice, natural talent, relaxed concentration, and now psycho-cybernetics (as I found out via this article on Allen Iverson).

Then there’s the practice thing. You might not like it, and you might not buy it. But you should at least understand Allen Iverson’s approach to the game. Larry Platt’s Only the Strong Survive, which every Denver Nugget fan should read immediately, makes clear that, petulant as it may sound, Iverson is an artist. Both in reality–he can do things with pen and paper that would amaze you–and in his approach to the game. It’s helpful to understand that. This segment deals with Dennis Kozlowski, who was both the football coach and the athletic director at Bethel High School:

Kozlowski was a staunch believer in psychocybernetics. He’d preach the value of visualization long before such mental gymnastics were in vogue. He had Allen read the book Psycho-Cybernetics, by Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon who maintained that, even after reconstructive nose surgery, many patients would still see their old nose when they looked in the mirror; such was the power of the brain’s imagery. Kozlowski would tell Iverson to tie his shoe while continuing to carry on a conversation with him. Iverson would be speaking to him, looking up at him, while kneeling and tying his shoe. “See that,” Kozlowski said. “See how you didn’t have to look at yourself tying your shoe? See how you didn’t even have to think about it? I want you to play like you just tied your shoelaces–automatically. The way you do that is by having an image in your mind of what you do before you do it.”

“Allen took psychocybernetics to a new level,” Kozlowski recalls. Today, Iverson doesn’t like to talk about how he does what he does on the basketball court. “I just do it,” he says. Partially, like any artist, he is wary of overanalyzing his gift. But it could also be that he’s known since high school that the real explanation defies easy answers, that the answer is, at heart, both beneath and above the level of language, and connected, on some level, to his psyche. In other words, missed in all the hand-wringing about his lackadaisical practice habits in the NBA is the possibility that so much of his work is cerebral. Unlike, say, Jordan, who was a craftsman, someone who would take hundreds of jumpshots a day, Iverson imagines the possibility and then acts it out.

Do some players actually perform better under pressure — make better shots under extreme, last-minute pressure than they would under merely high-pressure conditions?

The answer is no. Those reported to be clutch players are actually just great players who get more opportunities to make last minute shots, and score at the same percentages that they do in other parts of the game. Also, we tend to remember the great last-minute shots, and forget the last-minute misses.