Creating Routines for Self Improvement - Part 4 from Thinking in Bets

Extracts from Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke

In 2004 Phil Ivey destroyed a start studded table in a poker tournament. After his win, during dinner, Ivey deconstructed every potential playing error he thought he might have made on the way to victory, asking others’ for their opinion about each strategic decision. A more run of the mill player might have spent the time talking about how great they played, relishing the victory. Not Ivey. For him, the opportunity to learn from his mistakes was much more important than treating the dinner as a self-satisfying celebration.

Ivey, clearly has different habits than most players and most people in any endeavor in how he fields his results. Habits operate in a neurological loop consisting of three parts: the cue, the routine and the reward. In cricket the cue might be a won game, the routine taking credit for it and the reward is a boost to our ego. To change a habit you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward but insert a new routine.

What we do: When we have a good outcome, it cues the routine of crediting the result to our awesome decision-making, delivering the reward of a positive update to our self-narrative. A bad outcome cues the routine of off-loading responsibility for the result, delivering the reward of avoiding a negative self-narrative update. With the same cues, we flip the routine for the outcomes of our peers, but the reward is the same – feeling good about ourselves.

The good news is that we can work to change this habit of mind by substituting what makes us feel good. The golden rule of habit change says we don’t have to give up the reward of a positive update to our narrative, nor should we.

We can work to get the reward of feeling good about ourselves from being a good credit-giver, a good mistake-admitter, a good finder of mistakes in good outcomes, a good learner and a good decision maker. Instead of feeling bad when we have to admit a mistake, what if the bad feeling came from the thought that we might be missing a learning opportunity just to avoid blame? Or that we might be basking in the credit of a good result instead of recognizing, like Ivey, where we could have done better? If we put in the work to practice this routine, we can field more of our outcomes in an open minded, more objective way, motivated by accuracy and truth-seeking to drive learning. The habit of mind will change, and our decision making will better align with our long term goals.

When we look at the people performing at the highest level of their chosen field, we find they have developed habits around accurate self-critique.

Changing the routine is hard and takes work.

Mindfulness is all about self-help. It does nothing to change an unjust world

Why are we trying to think less when we need to think more? The neutered, apolitical approach of mindfulness ignores the structural difficulties we live with

• 
• • Suzanne Moore
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 6 August 2014 18.00 BST

Marina Abramović uses many techniques of mindfulness – but it’s an exercise guided by ego. Photograph: Mike McGregor for the Guardian

Most of what is wrong in the modern world can be cured by not thinking too much. From psoriasis to depression to giving yourself a "competitive advantage" in the workplace, the answer touted everywhere right now is mindfulness. Just let go for few minutes a day, breathe, observe your thoughts as ripples across a pond, feel every sensation around you. Stop your mind whirring and, lo, miraculously, everything will improve "at a cellular level".

Sorry, it's not working for me because I cannot rid myself of the thought: "Why this, why now?" There is nothing wrong with trying to relax: the problem lies in the "trying". And there is nothing new about meditation, so why has it suddenly gone mainstream?

What was once the province of people who had backpacked across India has been gentrified and repackaged as a great cure-all, legitimated by doctors and scientists. Now everyone from Rupert Murdoch to Lena Dunham and William Hague is giving it a go.

The City is awash with bankers trying to quiet their minds. Schoolchildren are given mindfulness training to help them with their anxieties. Yoga was once a bit countercultural, too, and now it vies with Zumba, rumba and Pilates classes.

We know the west takes hold of eastern mysticism, ignores its history and faith and turns it into a secular and accessible pastime. For mindfulness is Buddhism without the awkward Buddhist bits. A complex philosophy is rendered as self-help. What does freedom from attachment and desire mean in this self-centred world? What is radical acceptance? Why practise non-judgment? Those who have practised meditation all their lives may not say it's to get a promotion or be less stressed. There is a whole history of thought here.

But no, once Arianna Huffington is on the case, you know there is money to be made in commodifying blankness. Indeed, the whole of Silicon Valley has hugged mindfulness close, as have the US marines, who use it as part of "mind fitness" to help soldiers relax and learn "emotional intelligence".

These are basic meditation techniques being sold as a way to function better in an over-connected world. Thus, in the finance sector, companies where bankers are super-stressed – unlike poor people – arrange for their staff to have 10-minute daily meditations. It's all scienced-up with names such as Mind Lab to shake off the hippyish/religious/psychic-adventurer connotations. Keep fit for the brain.

It's even in art galleries. I wandered around Marina Abramović's 512 hours waiting for enlightenment. Or something. She is using many of the techniques of mindfulness, from counting grains of rice to staring at walls to get us to slow down. I like her work because she is a powerful presence, but when she took my hand and guided me to sit down, as ever, I wondered why I must do as I was told and why everyone else was so passive. But they were clearly having spiritual experiences. Or were asleep. This exercise in mindfulness then, was guided by ego – which is fitting, as the art world is the most ego-ridden, sensationalist and utterly mindless spectacle of all.

Much of the cult of mindfulness is a reaction to technology. It speaks the language of detox, of decluttering. There is too much information. We need to clear our minds. Be and not do. The new ascetic is someone who goes for a walk without their phone or takes a week off Twitter to cleanse themselves. This version of meditation requires no more than the faith that we can all be self-improving part-time gurus. It requires no commitment to a community, and it's cheap.

The corporate world sees that it can make its workers more self-reliant, balanced and focused. What could be better? Take your medicine, because the mindfulness movement is symptomatic of what late capitalism requires of us. A contemplative space opens up where religion used to be. We learn techniques to make us more efficient. This neutered, apolitical approach is to help us personally – it has nothing to say on the structural difficulties that we live with. It lets go of the idea that we can change the world; it merely helps us function better in it.

Living in the moment, non-judgmentally, being more self-aware, it's all good. But, actually, more and more people are switching themselves off. They cannot even watch the news because they feel so powerless to do anything about it.

The mindfulness coalition of life coaches, business people and healers cannot – and does not –promise peace, but why are we to think less when we need to think more?

Something here is, well, mindless. Maybe a mantra is all you need and maybe we should all devote more time to changing our minds. But for the time being I am just letting that thought drift right through me.

The case for flexibility in the Pietersen saga

Sambit Bal in Cricinfo

Watching Test cricket live always makes me happy, and Lord's, where affection for Test cricket wafts through like a gentle fragrance, is always a treat. But though the cricket has been thoroughly absorbing, it has been hard to shake off a sense of sadness. The value of cricket diminishes when the best players are not on stage, and though England can win without Kevin Pietersen, cricket is undoubtedly poorer without him.

Poignantly, Jonny Bairstow, the man who took Pietersen's place in the team, provided the most compelling individual story of the match, passing a searing examination that tested not only his skills but also his character. As he battled though, fighting nerves, and a hostile reception from two of the quickest bowlers in the world, and his innings grew, what was on some people's minds became almost audible: Good riddance, KP.

Of course, it is never as simple as that. Life without Pietersen might be easier, but can it be better? Or can it even be as good? The last week was an extraordinary one for English cricket, but that is the question the administrators and selectors must ponder as they contemplate the future beyond this series. Pietersen polarises opinion, but there are no blacks and whites in this case: the challenge is to find the right shade of grey.

Unity and stability are two words that have been used a lot in the last few days to justify Pietersen's removal for the deciding Test of the series. The truth is that all success stories create their own buzzwords, and all buzzwords are somewhat exaggerated. England became the No. 1 Test team mainly because they managed to put together a bowling attack that was perfect in their conditions, and because their batsmen prospered not only at home but also in Australia.

Unity and stability weren't of much use when their technique fell to pieces on turners in the subcontinent, and it was only a masterly innings from Pietersen that helped them draw level against Sri Lanka. Every team must aspire to having a healthy dressing room, for it can create an environment for achieving and savouring success in, but skills are much the greater pre-requisite. Success can be achieved without unity and stability but rarely without skills. Occasionally a team might punch above its weight with perseverance and spirit, as New Zealand have sometimes done, but rarely does a team achieve sustained excellence, let alone greatness, with those qualities alone.

I had the opportunity to have a long chat with Michael Holding, who rarely equivocates, last week, and without going into details it can be recorded that the dressing rooms of the great West Indian teams of the '70s and 80's were far from being oases of harmony. "We did," Holding said, "what was needed to win Test matches." Everyone knows those were teams that burst with greatness.

"Australianism" became the catchphrase for success when Australian teams built their aura of invincibility, but behind their very public mateyness was a team of strong individuals who didn't pretend to be friends once they stepped off the field. Shane Warne was quick to sympathise with Pietersen because he lived through his differences with his team-mates - and much more publicly, with his coach.

As long as Australia's reign lasted, the Australian method continued to be regarded as the template for breeding and sustaining excellence. The Australian system was hailed for creating tough, battle-ready cricketers, and the egalitarianism of Australian society was credited for instilling in them confidence and a reluctance to defer to those who ought to have been regarded as superior. And for years, as England's cricket team wallowed in misery, the English system was condemned as wretched and outdated.

But back-to-back Ashes defeats prompted the now-famous Argus review, which found that not all was well with the system. In fact, some of the recommendations mirrored those of the Schofield report, commissioned by the England board in 2007.

The point is that success creates its own stories, and over-analysing success can give birth to theories that somewhat obscure the simplest truths. Of course, individuals should never be greater than the team, but by the same measure it should never be forgotten that individuals make the team. It is true that a great player alone cannot make a great team, but the bigger truth is that there has never been a great team without great players.

The trouble with great players is that they often happen to be difficult characters. Some are narcissists, with an exaggerated sense of self-importance and entitlement. They can be highly strung and intense. Their single-minded drive towards excellence can make them insular and selfish. Because the game comes easy to many of them, they may be truant at practice. And because the money tends to chase them, they may be led to believe that they deserve even more of it than they get. They can present as much of a challenge to their own team off the field as they do to their opponents on it.

Good teams find ways to manage them. It starts with the recognition that special players often need special care, even if that means bending the rules, for at their best they can provide something so powerful and so breathtaking that it can transcend the team. A lot has been said about Pietersen's ego, but it is the need for that ego that powers him: it drives him to impose himself on a situation rather than submit to it; it allows him create his own reality-distortion field to bludgeon a hundred when lesser players would have fought for mere survival.

	Good teams recognise that special players often need special care, even if that means bending the rules, for at their best they can provide something so powerful and so breathtaking that it can transcend the team

In his last five Tests he has twice done what none of his team-mates would have had the daring, imagination and skill to even attempt. His hundred in Colombo came on the back of a spirit-destroying run of defeats and allowed England to return from Sri Lanka with their dignity salvaged. And without his hundred at Headingley, England would perhaps have come to Lord's with nothing to play for apart from pride.

Of course the Pietersen issue is complex. From the beginning, his relationship with the England national team has been based on mutual, but uneasy, convenience. The team has tolerated him, the fans have accepted him grudgingly, and the media has been ambivalent. Though he has turned more matches for England than Andrew Flintoff - whose folk-hero status was earned through only a handful of performances - did, Pietersen has remained the outsider, the genuineness of his display of hyper-loyalty to the English always in doubt, his faults always scrutinised with extra rigour.

A full season of the IPL over Tests for England? What was he thinking?

No one has emerged with credit from the happenings of the last ten days. Pietersen has been petulant, and his bosses have come across as petty. Pietersen has felt let down by his employers for betraying his confidence, and Andrew Strauss has felt let down by the apparently derogatory text messages sent by Pietersen.

The media, a section of it at least, has played a curious role. On Sunday more details emerged about Pietersen's alleged text messages to the South African players, with a specific Afrikaner word becoming the subject of delighted dissection in the media box. When do private messages become worthy of publication? Perhaps when they serve public or national interest. In this case, it's hard to imagine what interest is served beyond the prurient.

Strauss, by all accounts a decent man with a calm disposition, has every right to be aggrieved. But imagine how many friends each of us would have lost and how many of our colleagues would have turned against us if every unkind word we uttered about them in moments of pique had reached their ears.

So as those charged with safeguarding the interest of English cricket ponder Pietersen's future in the national team, here's their case against him: He is greedy, not much of a team-man off the field, not liked much by his team-mates, has been indiscreet with his comments in public, perhaps doesn't like his captain much and been privately disrespectful of him, and has been seen drinking with the opposition. But is that enough to hang him?

Now let's examine the defence: There has never been any evidence of Pietersen giving anything less than his best on the field. He was crucified for not being able to resist the pull that brought him down at The Oval, but he played no differently at Headingley, where his innings was hailed as being among the best seen at the ground. He is not known to lead his young team-mates astray or to have plotted a rebellion in the ranks; and he has publicly apologised for some of his mistakes.

The whole squalid drama has produced no winners. And no conceivable good can emerge by dragging it further. Big players are often hard work and players don't need to be mates to fight for the common cause. We don't quite know what Stuart Broad, England's T20 captain thinks of Pietersen the man. But should that matter?

If Pietersen were never to play international cricket again, the loss would be greatest for the fans, to whom the administrators owe the biggest responsibility.

England fail intelligence test

Angus Fraser:


Fast bowlers have the somewhat unfair reputation of being big, thick, dopey so and sos, incapable of thinking for themselves.


The stigma is historical, arising from the fact that previous generations of batsmen tended to be privately educated chaps that had picked up a degree at some flash university. The roots of a fast bowler tend to be far more working-class, as England's northern-based bowling attack highlights.

Australia's fast bowlers made a mockery of the generalisation yesterday morning as they intelligently adapted their game to capitalise on helpful bowling conditions to dismantle England's batting line-up for a paltry 102. With the stock of fast bowlers at a high England's bowlers then let the fraternity down with a thoughtless display during the afternoon. Only when Australia had passed England's total did Andrew Strauss's attack begin to follow the example set by their opponents.

The modern game is obsessed by pace, with many selectors and pundits believing that 85mph is the minimum speed a bowler needs to reach to be effective on the International stage. It is absolute tosh, as many of cricket's greatest bowlers have and continue to prove.

Yes, pace is important, but the one proviso is that the ball is pitched on the correct spot – a length that makes life for a batsman uncomfortable and difficult for him to complete the task he is paid to do – score runs. If the ball is released at speed but comes out like the spray from an aerosol can, it only disappears to the boundary quicker. Much of the blame for the obsession can be laid at the feet of the speed gun at grounds and the egos of He-man bowlers.

James Anderson, Stephen Harmison, Graeme Onions and Stuart Broad could not blame their shortcomings on the fact they needed time to acclimatise – Australia's bowlers had already shown them how to bowl at Headingley earlier in the day. With the ball swinging Australia's bowlers largely pitched the ball up, drawing England's top order in to apprehensive prods and pushes that fed the hands of an expectant slip cordon. On watching this England's bowlers then opted to test the middle of the pitch, a transgression that kept the crowd rather than the slips busy.

The early dismissal of Simon Katich, who gloved a lifter from Stephen Harmison to leg gully, may have encouraged England's attack to bang the ball in. But with Australia's score rattling along at six runs an over it should not have taken long to work out this was not the correct tactic. The three lbws that followed highlighted the error.

Peter Siddle will grab the headlines for his second five-wicket haul in Test cricket, but it was Stuart Clark who set the tone for Australia with three pre-lunch wickets in a beautiful seven-over spell of bowling that conceded only seven runs. Clark is a bowler from the old school, a seamer who takes great pride in bowling a consistent line and length.

Clark is not fast, bowling generally between 78 and 82mph, and like many traditional seamers he struggles to comprehend the trends and attitudes of modern bowlers. Half-volleys and long hops are not part of his game plan, not at any cost. In Clark's world batsmen have to work for their runs.

In Glenn McGrath, Clark had a great tutor, possibly the best line and length bowler the game has seen. Like Clark, McGrath cannot understand why so many young bowlers continually press the gamble button as they desperately search for wickets. In many ways their attitude mirrors that of the world outside. Instant gratification rather than patient reward is what they want.

"Work on the ego of the batsman," was one of McGrath's mottos. Basically he was saying that batsmen want to be in control and score freely when they bat, and when they are not they are likely to make mistakes attempting to gain it.

It therefore makes sense for bowlers to follow the logic of McGrath and the example set by Clark, especially at a venue like Headingley. Batsmen will make mistakes so be patient, wait for the errors to come along and grasp the chance when it arises. Bowlers may have the reputation of being a bit thick but it is batsmen who are really the dopey, impatient so and sos.

Spicy pitch makes life more fun

England may have been second best yesterday but the play highlighted how much more enjoyable Test cricket is when wickets are falling regularly.

A pitch used to be described as good if it was nice to bat on. If Test cricket is to remain attractive that must change, and groundsmen need to be encouraged to produce pitches that offer bowlers assistance.

Test cricket should not be played on minefields that offer inconsistent bounce and generous lateral movement, but scores of 450-plus should be a rarity not the norm.