Are Murray and Djokovic Robots?

Did you watch the tennis? I needed a rest so committed to watch all of it, although it was a tad stressful! I don’t play but I’m a big tennis fan, and so happy that with Andy Murray doing so well, all the grand slams and even other tournaments are appearing on our TV channels.

Of course it would have been great if Andy had won, but Novak Djokovic is such an amazing player and was just that much better. In a tennis final, it looks as if the person who doesn’t win, loses, but in fact this couldn’t be further from the truth. Beating Federer and putting up such a strong fight against Djokovic is success, as reflected by the size of the cheque presented to the runner up. Murray is an amazing player and the tennis was so exciting to watch. At times, mesmerising.

It feels like no coincidence that today I reached a passage about tennis in the book I am reading, Incognito by David Eagleman. Eagleman is a neuroscientist and the book explains, in accessible terms, how your brain works. Absolutely fascinating, although I am finding it necessary to read it in short bursts, in order to assimilate all this information. He says in the first chapter, “Almost the entirety of what happens in your mental life is not under your control…”, and in the passage I read today, talks about how brilliant tennis players seem to be responding like robots. In fact, when Ilie Nastase was beaten by Bjorn Borg in 1976, he described the victor as “a robot from outer space”.

Eagleman explains that, in fact, top tennis players are machines. The calculations they make, decisions they take and moves they plan are not controlled by their conscious minds, but their skills have become automised*. Think of learning to ride a bicycle. At first, everything you do is governed by your conscious mind and it’s hard, isn’t it? It feels like a huge effort and you wobble and fall off. (This isn’t my metaphor, by the way, it’s Eagleman’s.) Some time later, riding a bike starts to feel natural and you don’t have to think much at all. You can enjoy the scenery, think about other things and know that your reactions will be there should something unexpected happen. The best tennis players just take this same process further.

But, Eagleman points out, the training and coaching is run by consciousness. He calls this the “long-term planner, the CEO…”. Consciousness defines the vision, teaches the skills, sets the plans in place, makes amendments, and leaves the rest of the brain to carry out its goals. And then, this is where the magic happens, what looks like genius.

I was so glad to find this passage just an hour or so after the match ended; it really made me sit up and take notice. What was particularly interesting to me was this: when we embark on learning something new, or take on a project or venture, we tend to assume that we will have to achieve the whole thing using our conscious minds – don’t we? I know I’ve always assumed that anything new will be hard, and all the things I thought I could “never do” have been activities and skills that the experts seem to manage so easily. Because it becomes automised. I’ve seen this recently with driving. The Teenager is learning to drive and we have been watching the Hazard Perception DVD together. I had no idea I encountered so many hazards during a typical drive. I thought oncoming traffic, side roads and the fact that the bins are out on the pavement were just facts of life. Of course one aspect of this is terminology; once I knew what they meant by a hazard I understood what they were looking for. But it also showed me how much work my brain does whenever I pull out of my drive, without me having to make any effort or remember to do it. And seeing the DVD made me realise that, long long ago, I must have used my conscious mind to learn these skills.

It’s the same with typing. I taught myself to touch type when I was an undergraduate, on a manual typewriter, and I’ve been grateful ever since that I went through those interminable “id id id” and ek ek ek” exercises. Unfortunately I gave up before I learned punctuation, so I can type fast but have to look at the keyboard every time I punctuate, and it slows me down. I’ve been thinking about making the effort to add in the punctuation and now that I know this, I just might do it!

So what do I take from this interesting lesson? Well, it shows me that what Damsels in Success call “success with ease” could actually be closer to my grasp than I might think, and why. I’m reminded not to be put off trying something just because it looks as if I could never do it; the experts had to go through a learning process before the skill became automised. And I can remind myself not to worry (see what I did there?) that something will be difficult, but to have faith in the parts of my mind that aren’t accessible to me, that they will, in time, take care of the process and make it easier.

What have you put off because you think it would be too difficult? Does knowing that your brain will take care of the process in time make you think about trying again? And what are you doing today that was hard to learn, using consciousness, but is now a breeze because the other parts of your brain run the show? I’d love to know; please leave a comment!

*This isn’t my word; it’s Eagleman’s. It’s not in my dictionary, but I’ve taken the liberty of anglicising the spelling. I don’t think it has quite the same meaning as automate but I may be wrong. I just love our language; there’s always more to learn!