Decisions - Part 1...It's the Motion of the Ocean

[Guest]

Elway drops back in to the shotgun. His eyes pan across the defense. He notices the linebackers edging a little too close to the line of scrimmage. Elway yells out the snap count, sends a man in motion, and then has the ball in his hands. He drops back and notices that only three defensive linemen are rushing him, the fourth is cutting off the short pass. He looks left, but his primary receiver is tightly covered. He looks right and sees Vance Johnson streaking across the middle of the field, trying to find unoccupied space between the linebackers and the cornerbacks. Elway waits for him to clear the defenders, then fires a bullet which puts Denver in field goal range. Chiefs fans have grown silent.

How does he know which receiver to hit? On the evaluation sheets of NFL scouts, decision making is listed in the category of "intangibles." It's one of the most important qualities in a quarterback, and yet nobody knows what it is.


Psychologists of old would have attributed it to logic and reason. The better decision-maker is the one who considers all the variables, who precisely weighs the pros and cons, the probability of each particular consequence. The better decision-maker is the one who makes the informed, logical decision based on the facts.

We now know this is basically false. The organ in our brain responsible for rational thought is, being able to handle only 7 pieces of information at a time, much too slow. Consider your ability to solve a math problem compared to that of say, a basic ten dollar calculator. That quarterback is sacked flat on his ass due do indecisiveness.


Here's how it really works.

An organ in the brain called the Orbitofrontal cortex (or OFC) integrates visceral emotive feelings into the decision-making process. In other words, it connects feelings generated by "primitive" limbic areas with the stream of conscious thought.

So when John Elway drops back and hits Vance Johnson to win the game, most likely he has trained himself to listen to his OFC. He doesn't actually think about anything in the pocket. The experience is most likely like this... he drops back and looks left, but seeing the cornerback on his receiver, he recognizes the situation and feels a tinge of fear which causes him to hold on to the ball. He looks at Johnson, and feels a tinge of urgent excitement as he sees the open space. Acting on the feeling, Elway unloads the ball. When asked about it later, he won't likely know WHY he threw the ball where he did, he was just "in the zone" as they say.



To look at it another way, consider a case-study of a man who in the 1980's had his OFC completely destroyed by a brain tumor. At first he appeared completely normal, but in time, the dysfunction made normal life nearly impossible. Routine tasks that should have taken minutes now took hours to complete, as Elliot endlessly deliberated over irrelevant details.

Having lost his ability to experience emotion, Elliot had become completely reliant on his rational and logical brain to make decisions. The classical psychologists were dumbfounded, because this should have, according to previously prevailing wisdom, made him an ideal decision-maker. Here is an excerpt from the doctor's notes regarding his case...

"I suggested two alternative dates, both in the coming month and just days apart from each other. The patient pulled out his appointment book and began consulting the calendar. For the better part of a half hour, the patient enumerated reasons for and against each of the two dates: previous engagements, proximity to other engagements, possible meteorological concerns, virtually anything that one could reasonably think about concerning a simple date...He was now walking us through a tiresome cost-benefit analysis, an endless outlining and fruitless comparison of options and possible consequences. It took enormous discipline to listen to all of this without pounding the table and telling him to stop."



So, to sum it up, every emotion we experience, thanks to the OFC, is a summary of data too vast for our rational systems to directly access.

What separates Elway from Elliot is the ability to listen to "gut feel" over rational, logical thought.


More to come.

[Guest]

I think that's what alot of guys are like when they talking to girls. The advice I most often give is "dude you are thinking about it too much!" Interested to see what you have to say about how to use more of a gut feeling.

[Guest]

(I assume) everyone feels it. Once you have your grasp on what's socially acceptable (read: once you know it's not okay to grab cooter as you're asking her name) then it's just going with what you feel/think first.

Smirks: "Man, my arm hurts. I literally just threw a football over them mountains."

Your Gut: Bullshit.

Your Pussy mindset: "Really? Wow, man...that's pretty bad ass."
You listening to your gut: "Bullshit."

Dumbed it down hardcore, but you get the picture. I rarely second guess my gut...at least until later when I choose to reflect.