mattbell

A lot of things are ruined by trying too hard. Skills that rely heavily on intuition or nondeclarative memory (eg social skills, singing, snowboarding, negotiation etc) are especially vulnerable to this. People generally will try too hard, get frustrated, and then the frustration will completely ruin any chance of succeeding.

This may be the most embarrassing metaphor that I ever commit to writing, so I may regret this later, but it works quite well and is... er... quite memorable. Here goes:

A lot of these intuitive skills are akin to trying to urinate quickly when you don't really have to pee very much. The more you try squeeze it out, the more your other muscles tighten up, preventing any chance of letting it out. Instead you have to relax and let yourself pee. The act of relaxing your pursuit of the goal to succeed is interesting. It's basically the act of wanting without wanting. Buddhism talks about this a lot in the abstract -- desire brings suffering, but by letting go of what you want, you may achieve it,.

AFAIK the most successful strategy to get yourself to pee is to imagine yourself in the act of peeing. In the same way, if you are having trouble with an intuitive skill, imagining yourself doing it well may be the best preparation for doing it. If you can't imagine yourself doing it, imagine someone you know who does this skill well, and then imagine you are playing their role.

This act of channeling a competent person is recommended by NLP and other techniques.

Of course, this doesn't work for declarative skills. For example, pretending you're Obama may make you better at calmly handling a crisis, but pretending you're Einstein won't make you a better physicist.