Here are some thoughts after reading a book called “The Inner Game of Tennis” by Timothy Gallwey. I think it’s quite a famous book and maybe a lot of people know it well already. I consider it to be mainly about how to prevent your system 2/conscious mind/analytical mind from interfering with the performance of your system 1/subconscious mind/intuitive mind. This is explained in the context of tennis, but it seems applicable to many other contexts, as the author himself argues. If that sounds interesting, I recommend checking the book out, it’s short and quite readable.
My interest in the book comes mainly from thinking about the best way to go about doing research, at a day-to-day level. Although the arguments of the book seem most directly applicable to learning a physical skill/activity and (to some extent) to performing well at key moments, I still think there are lessons for mental activities performed routinely, i.e. for activities like research.
I think reading the book has generally pushed me a bit more in favour of “trusting my system 1/intuitive mind” while doing research, e.g. trusting that my brain is doing some important processing when I feel inclined to just stare into space and not make any apparent progress to whatever it is I’m trying to achieve at that moment. This feels pretty important.
I think Owen Cotton Barratt says some interesting things about trusting his intuition for prioritisation in this interview with Lynette Bye, which feels kind of related.
The book predates by many decades Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, which (I think) popularised the concept of system 1 mind and system 2 mind. The book instead refers to “self 1” and “self 2″ which seem to have roughly similar meanings, although unfortunately reversed: Gallwey’s self 1 and Kahneman’s system 2 refer to the conscious/analytical mind, while Gallwey’s self 2 and Kahneman’s system 1 refer to the subconscious/intuitive mind.
Here are some disorganised notes on bits that seemed worth highlighting (page numbers refer to 2015 edition published by Pan Books):
p13 mastering the mental side of tennis:
picture desired outcomes as clearly as possible
allow self 2 to perform and learn from successes and failures
learn to see non-judgementally: see what is happening rather than (just) seeing how well or badly it’s happening
all subsidiary to the master skill: relaxed concentration
p38 “Remember that you are not your tennis game. You are not your body. Trust the body to learn and to play, as you would trust another person to do a job, and in a short time it will perform beyond your expectations. Let the flower grow.”
p41 communicating with self 2
Gallwey exhorts the reader to trust their self 2 (system 1 / intuitive mind). But how can we be sure that self 2 will be optimising for the thing “we” (self 1) thinks is important? Gallwey gives 3 ways to convey to self 2 what the goal is, in the context of tennis:
Asking for results: visualise the exact path of the ball. Hold that image in your mind for several seconds
Asking for form: observe some particular aspect of your form (e.g. the flatness of your racket while it moves through the ball). Don’t make an effort to make the change. Just visualise the change you want
Asking for qualities: imagine you are playing the role of a top tennis player on the court for a film
There are particular benefits of playing the role of someone very different to you
I’m not sure how to turn this into policies for doing research well. Things that seem interesting to explore: visualising the output you want at the start of the day; reflecting each day on how what you did links to your ultimate goals; picturing yourself as playing the role of a researcher you admire.
p80 on the “ego satisfaction” from a self-1-controlled success
Gallwey talks a lot about the ego satisfaction from self-1-controlled success.
In the context of research, this doesn’t seem to ring true for me from my experience (maybe it’s obviously true for tennis or similar activities for people who have experience there, I don’t know).
p82 “Fighting the mind does not work. What works best is learning to focus it”
Gallwey talks about focussing on the seams of the ball and other techniques to focus the (self 1) mind on something kind of irrelevant while playing tennis so that the body and self 2 can perform without interference.
p87 on what focus is: “Focus is not achieved by staring hard at something. It is not trying to force focus, nor does it mean thinking hard about something. Natural focus occurs when the mind is interested. When this occurs, the mind is drawn irresistibly toward the object (or subject) of interest. It is effortless and relaxed, not tense and overly controlled.”
Re research, this seems like good advice for tackling a difficult problem or making progress on some task. One related thing is that I find it much easier to “effortlessly focus” on what I think is important if I’m free of distractions.
p127 On managing stress. Pressures come at us from all corners: demands from partners, bosses, coaches, society, etc. These external demands can end up being internalised by self 1 and feeling as if they’re things you really want, but this is an illusion.
(kind of reminds me of the message from another book I liked called Essentialism)
Here are some thoughts after reading a book called “The Inner Game of Tennis” by Timothy Gallwey. I think it’s quite a famous book and maybe a lot of people know it well already. I consider it to be mainly about how to prevent your system 2/conscious mind/analytical mind from interfering with the performance of your system 1/subconscious mind/intuitive mind. This is explained in the context of tennis, but it seems applicable to many other contexts, as the author himself argues. If that sounds interesting, I recommend checking the book out, it’s short and quite readable.
My interest in the book comes mainly from thinking about the best way to go about doing research, at a day-to-day level. Although the arguments of the book seem most directly applicable to learning a physical skill/activity and (to some extent) to performing well at key moments, I still think there are lessons for mental activities performed routinely, i.e. for activities like research.
I think reading the book has generally pushed me a bit more in favour of “trusting my system 1/intuitive mind” while doing research, e.g. trusting that my brain is doing some important processing when I feel inclined to just stare into space and not make any apparent progress to whatever it is I’m trying to achieve at that moment. This feels pretty important.
I think Owen Cotton Barratt says some interesting things about trusting his intuition for prioritisation in this interview with Lynette Bye, which feels kind of related.
The book predates by many decades Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, which (I think) popularised the concept of system 1 mind and system 2 mind. The book instead refers to “self 1” and “self 2″ which seem to have roughly similar meanings, although unfortunately reversed: Gallwey’s self 1 and Kahneman’s system 2 refer to the conscious/analytical mind, while Gallwey’s self 2 and Kahneman’s system 1 refer to the subconscious/intuitive mind.
Here are some disorganised notes on bits that seemed worth highlighting (page numbers refer to 2015 edition published by Pan Books):
p13 mastering the mental side of tennis:
picture desired outcomes as clearly as possible
allow self 2 to perform and learn from successes and failures
learn to see non-judgementally: see what is happening rather than (just) seeing how well or badly it’s happening
all subsidiary to the master skill: relaxed concentration
p38 “Remember that you are not your tennis game. You are not your body. Trust the body to learn and to play, as you would trust another person to do a job, and in a short time it will perform beyond your expectations. Let the flower grow.”
p41 communicating with self 2
Gallwey exhorts the reader to trust their self 2 (system 1 / intuitive mind). But how can we be sure that self 2 will be optimising for the thing “we” (self 1) thinks is important? Gallwey gives 3 ways to convey to self 2 what the goal is, in the context of tennis:
Asking for results: visualise the exact path of the ball. Hold that image in your mind for several seconds
Asking for form: observe some particular aspect of your form (e.g. the flatness of your racket while it moves through the ball). Don’t make an effort to make the change. Just visualise the change you want
Asking for qualities: imagine you are playing the role of a top tennis player on the court for a film
There are particular benefits of playing the role of someone very different to you
I’m not sure how to turn this into policies for doing research well. Things that seem interesting to explore: visualising the output you want at the start of the day; reflecting each day on how what you did links to your ultimate goals; picturing yourself as playing the role of a researcher you admire.
p80 on the “ego satisfaction” from a self-1-controlled success
Gallwey talks a lot about the ego satisfaction from self-1-controlled success.
In the context of research, this doesn’t seem to ring true for me from my experience (maybe it’s obviously true for tennis or similar activities for people who have experience there, I don’t know).
p82 “Fighting the mind does not work. What works best is learning to focus it”
Gallwey talks about focussing on the seams of the ball and other techniques to focus the (self 1) mind on something kind of irrelevant while playing tennis so that the body and self 2 can perform without interference.
p87 on what focus is: “Focus is not achieved by staring hard at something. It is not trying to force focus, nor does it mean thinking hard about something. Natural focus occurs when the mind is interested. When this occurs, the mind is drawn irresistibly toward the object (or subject) of interest. It is effortless and relaxed, not tense and overly controlled.”
Re research, this seems like good advice for tackling a difficult problem or making progress on some task. One related thing is that I find it much easier to “effortlessly focus” on what I think is important if I’m free of distractions.
p127 On managing stress. Pressures come at us from all corners: demands from partners, bosses, coaches, society, etc. These external demands can end up being internalised by self 1 and feeling as if they’re things you really want, but this is an illusion.
(kind of reminds me of the message from another book I liked called Essentialism)