Choke: The Secret to Performing Under Pressure

Hoping for more on sport

Thoroughly interesting read. As an airline pilot, at the very least, I am subject to high pressure situations every six months when demonstrating my operational knowledge and handling skills in parallel with catastrophic and complex system failures in the simulator. Consistent or one off poor performances throughout two day even can result in, significant delays to securing command (captain), your colleagues loosing confidence in your ability or a glass ceiling to your career and remaining as a First Officer throughout your career regardless of experience. While I'm pleased to see a positive trend in performance I am aware this trend could reverse its self at any point whether that be flying the line or under scrutiny in the simulator.A colleague mentioned reading this book helped them to deal with high pressure situations and feeling it relevant to success in my profession I decided to give it a read.A thoroughly interesting read, sat in the aircraft leading up to a simulator assessment one will frequently run failure management drills and other hypotheticals, building ideas and guidance from from colleagues and manuals. The end result is a polished performance and a desire to demonstrate this when walking into the sim. Despite this my first time in the sim felt like I'm trying to clutch the next step, the next event, the next trigger through ever thickening fog building in my brain, (interesting, if you read this book, this feeling is experienced only in the very front of my mind).With increased exposure to the simulator, this fog has cleared. Reading this book and helped me understand why that has happened and armed with this information I can continue to develop my brain to ensure a free and focused thinking and reasoning space when presented with complex failures.Not only will this book help me progress my career, I believe it has the potential to help one communicate their thoughts and feelings with, managers, colleagues and team mates and also provide their children with confidence and tools to overcome daunting challenges we all have to face.This book isn't a quick fix book to chokeing and it never claims to be this. Instead it provides you with the tools to train your brain over time and expand its potential in order to perform your best and avoid chokeing when it matters to you.I am surprised to see such negative reviews however I throughly recommend sitting down with this book, a cup of coffee and a highlighter. You won't be disappointed.

A range of up to date Psychology applied to a relevant problem affecting many talented people from all walks of life and explained in an accessible way using varied examples. Helps to understand what is know about factors underlying performance choking which in itself takes pressure away from the individual by treating it objectively as an issue. While routes to possible solutions are suggested, research and this book are perhaps a long way from delivering this making the cover promise to reveal secrets of performing under pressure an unrealistic aspiration. Nevertheless insightful and helpful in framing the state of play of current knowledge and possible future directions.

The book should really be called "Why women and minorities are bad at maths exams" as she devotes about two thirds of the book to this, and to me at least this is not what I would call choking.Actually choking in sport she really devotes one chapter at the end, and it doesn't really rise to much above the level of a magazine article (although it does have references). There is also one chapter at the end on choking in interviews and presentations. This actual shows the upside down U arousal curve which has been pretty much discredited by now.So really a disappointing book

Really fascinating topic for me. Clear and understandable explanations

OK, so it has some good material, but after reading it, I had forgetten virtually everything after about a week. Forgettable!