What the Dog Saw Part 2 of 4: JFK, Jr. and The Art of Failure
February 16, 2010 by dr. lam
Gladwell investigates the difference between choking and panicking. In the 1993 Wimbledon finals, Jana Novotna led Steffi Graff by 4-1 and serving 40-30, was poised to win the tournament. But then the tide turned, and Novotna after a double fault began to lose control ultimately to her own demise and Graff’s victory. Did she choke or did she panic?
Gladwell says that choking occurs when we resort to our “explicit learning” system, the time when we were younger and just starting out to learn something and when our conscious minds dominated our every thought. Remembering Maxwell Maltz’s four stages of mastery, we go from unconscious incompetence (we don’t know we are doing it wrong), conscious incompetence (we know we are doing it wrong but don’t know how to fix it), conscious competence (we are doing it right but with a lot of conscious effort), to unconscious competence (it is effortless).
In a stage of choking, we return to conscious competence or worse a lower stage. We tend to become extremely deliberate with every movement because we are trying very very hard not to screw up. The effortlessness that we have acquired with experience is thrown out the window and we become in short, a junior player, once again. That is the essence of choking.
Panicking is altogether different. An example is of a diving accident in Monterey Bay, California. At nineteen years of age just two weeks into dive training, a young man recounts that during an exercise he had to remove his regulator and replace it with his secondary one after clearing the line of water. When doing so, his mouth was engulfed with salt water. Panicking, he couldn’t think and reached out to grab the regulator from the mouth of his buddy. Doing so could have imperiled both of them. Instead of reaching for his primary regulator or for his partner’s secondary regulator, panic set in. Perceptual narrowing caused him to forget all logic and move to instinct, “I need air now” causing him to react in the manner he did. With added experience, an individual has less chance of panicking because he can draw from his accumulated experience.
As evident, panic is the opposite of choking. Choking involves a return to a logical, explicit system of behavior. Panicking involves a return to a base instinctual response. Why does this matter? It doesn’t so much if you lost a tennis match due to a choke or panic. However, it can bring about an understanding in certain cases of failure. Take for example the aerial death of JFK, Jr.
On a Friday evening in July of 1999, John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife and his sister-in-law took off for Martha’s Vineyard, a course that he was quite familiar with. However, that night the air was particularly hazy and visibility was poor. Kennedy accustomed to looking for Martha’s Vineyard’s lights at night looked out into a bleak oblivion, as there were no visual guides whatsoever. He started to frenetically bank his plane. However, a slight embankment can lead to a greater embankment, as the plane enters what is known as a “graveyard spiral”. The pilot may not even feel the G force since the spiral in a pressurized cabin feels like he is moving level with the absent horizon. The time between initial radio contact and the crash into the ocean was less than sixty seconds.
JFK, Jr. panicked. He was very used to using the lights of Martha’s Vineyard to guide him. Without them, he was lost. Rather than returning to his explicit learning of using his instruments, he continued to literally spiral into his instinctual flying habits but without a noticeable G force of the downward spiral and no lights to guide him, he most likely remained frozen and lost concentration. That loss of concentration for less than one minute cost 3 lives that night.
There are two important things to learn from this situation. First, experience counts for a lot. The more that we perform in our specialty, focus on it, and spend time with it, we can create alternative strategies in times of apparent failure. Second, we should possibly go back to our explicit learning system rather than our intuitive one when we reach a point when our intuition fails us. Profound.
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6 Responses to “What the Dog Saw Part 2 of 4: JFK, Jr. and The Art of Failure”
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Glad to see your notes here Sam — was going to pick up a copy yesterday
This is a logical extension to Outliers – in which he argues genius is a product of oppportunity, timing and hardwork – very Chinese in scope actually
Hope all’s well – angie
you will see the later ones i am covering will be even more a propos to Outliers. thanks for commenting!
Thanks for reviewing this , Sam. I am rereading Outliers with Virginia because it is valuable as a parent to be freed to see patterns of opportunity availing success and actualizing one’s potential in the world.
Must pick this book up.
cheers,
Michael
cool. michael, just come down to the office. i will lend you a copy.
sam
Wow!!! New blog buddies!! Yay!!!
Wow, Dr. Lam!! New concepts that I’ve never ever thought of! Thanks so much! I love your blogs!!!!
yes, welcome michael and angie!