• Choke

  • What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To
  • By: Sian Beilock
  • Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
  • Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
  • 3.7 out of 5 stars (248 ratings)

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Choke  By  cover art

Choke

By: Sian Beilock
Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
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Publisher's summary

It happens to all of us. You've prepared for days, weeks, even years for the big day when you will finally show your stuff in academics, in your career, in sports but when the big moment arrives, nothing seems to work. You hit the wrong note, drop the ball, get stumped by a simple question. In other words, you choke. It's not fun to think about, but now there's good news: This doesn't have to happen.

Dr. Sian Beilock, an expert on performance and brain science, reveals in Choke the astonishing new science of why we all too often blunder when the stakes are high. What happens in our brain and body when we experience the dreaded performance anxiety? And what are we doing differently when everything magically "clicks" into place and the perfect golf swing, tricky test problem, or high-pressure business pitch becomes easy? In an energetic tour of the latest brain science, with surprising insights on every page, Beilock explains the inescapable links between body and mind; reveals the surprising similarities among the ways performers, students, athletes, and business people choke; and shows how to succeed brilliantly when it matters most.

In lively prose and accessibly rendered science, Beilock examines how attention and working memory guide human performance, how experience and practice and brain development interact to create our abilities, and how stress affects all these factors. She sheds new light on counter-intuitive realities, like why the highest performing people are most susceptible to choking under pressure, why we may learn foreign languages best when were not paying attention, why early childhood athletic training can backfire, and how our emotions can make us both smarter and dumber. All these fascinating findings about academic, athletic, and creative intelligence come together in Beilock's new ideas about performance under pressure - and her secrets to never choking again.

©2010 Sian Beilock (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

What listeners say about Choke

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Buzz Word Festival

You know those public speakers who go around peddling easy answers at bored business men forced to come to a team-building seminar by their out-of-the-loop boss? Well this PHD is one of those. Yeah. This book is not empty, but check it out of the local library and skim it in about 2 hours. Find the cool facts and study results, save yourself a lot of time and grief. That's the brief. Want more, keep going.

Written for a "low-powered" audience with very little "working memory" this author uses every trick even 4th graders know to add length to that paper that just won't reach the required number of words. This is a "padded" book. She tells you what she is going to tell you (in the next chapter we will discuss... more on that later (wink)), then she tells you. Again and again. Then she tells you what she told you. (Remember how in Chapter 2...) Plus there are the sentence fatteners. "Think about that for a second..." "However", "obviously", and so forth as well. Plus she gives you a buzz word, defines it, then continues to define it every time for the rest of the book. Like "working memory" above. That, is your "cognitive horsepower". (Its mean to call people smart or dumb.) You can be "high-powered" (smart), or "low-powered" (dumb). Basically. Get used to those terms as they are in every paragraph. The narration must be classified as a hate crime. Silly and hammy like a bad actress on a cheap sitcom handed a lab coat and told she is a cooky doctor. The author also strains off topic a lot, spending more words on fake examples (Jared is a black student at Princeton) and a sermon for why prejudice is mean and bad. Lots of examples of when people choked, as if the very existence of choking were her topic. She's a used car salesman thumping the hood to impress you after you've already said "I'll take it." The worst part though is ending every section with "they choked...under the...pressure!" With long pauses like a time worn punch-line.

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24 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Anxiety and Performance

In "Choke" Sian Deilock, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, reveals what brain science is telling us about performance anxiety - choking. She opens the book reviewing the related literature on performance, neuroplasticity, pratice and other topics related to choking. She concludes with a series of practical things that individuals, students, and parents can do to help themselves and others overcome performance hazards. The last portion of the book focuses on choking in detail.

This is a book that is written to be available to anyone whose interest is in athletic, academic, or creative performance. Don't let this book pass you by whatever your reading interest. The writing sparkles and the reading of Suzanne Torren is excellent.

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15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Not a neuroscience book, not much new here.

This book is like a bad rehashing of Blink, Freakanomics, and The Body Has a Mind of Its Own.

And don't be deceived: this is a psychology book, not a brain science book. Although the author occasionally sprinkles in reference to the "pre-frontal cortex" or the "anterior cingulate cortex", she does not take the next step to enlighten us as to how the connectivity, organization, and activation patterns of these regions are relevant to the stated objectives of the book. Most of the key concepts, such as "working memory" and "spatial reasoning" are discussed within the context of cognitive psychology, and not cognitive neuroscience.

Many of the studies/examples discussed at length are just not that mindblowing, and whatever 'profound' implications might exist are poorly summarized (AKA forgetting to deliver the punchline). This coupled with the painfully slow and patronizing tone of the narrator will afford you several occasions to wonder: "Why am I spending my time listening to this?"

Worse, the author spends a great deal of time in the middle of the book tending to what seems to be a personal agenda non-relevant to the thesis that attempts to account for gender differences in mathematical ability and spatial reasoning (unconvincingly, in my view).

My recommendation would be "The Body has Mind of Its Own" by Sandra Blakeslee - if you are looking for a nice balance of 'lay' neuroscience and research/real-world examples. If you are looking for something more rigorous, try "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins, and if you want something very rigorous, try "Rhythms of the Brain" by Gyorgy Buzsaki (not on audiobook).

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Both good and bad

This book is very interesting and contains plenty of good advice for performing well in different types of stressful situations. The reader has a very patronizing tone, though. I listened all the way through, but at the beginning, I wasn't sure I'd be able to stomach listening to her. The book also could have used more editing. It's very repetitive.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Too many examples.

Was looking for more of a how too book as I am a competitive archer. I found a few helpful tips and way to many examples of famous chokes.

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Light on content, but what's here is good

The book starts off preachy, with the author coming off like she has all the answers and the world desperately needs her insights. A note to authors of these kinds of books: what you have are opinions, no doubt well supported and researched, but still opinions. Plus someone out there thought of it first, he or she just didn't write a book about it. Yet. So if you come off as preachy we will decide you are selling faith healing and move on.

Which I almost did. The first half of the book is mostly about sexual stereotypes, to the point it felt like a rant. What does this have to do with choking? I get that it is a factor in "stereotype threat" but jeez, leave it alone already.

Mixed in with that are many pages which can be summed up as "practice makes perfect". Did I need to spend an audio credit for this?

Fortunately the latter half of the book deals with research into choking, and has practical ideas on how to avoid it. I plan on re-reading the last third of the book and trying to put those ideas into practice.

The narration was good, clear and the tone suited the material.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Lecture Style Material- Title is Misleading

I found the material interesting, but I'm a psychologist who likes this kind of stuff. The low rating relates to the lack of coherence between the title and the content. There were a few nuggets of insight, but little in the way of practical findings beyond the most rudimentary review of known ways to combat performance anxiety. Some of the discussions veered so far from the main topic that it became a little ridiculous.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Moderate at best.

I finished the entire audio, hoping there would be a nugget of value at the end that didn’t happen. It’s not a book I would recommend. Glad I’m done with it.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

A dichotomy!

I read this book based on a coworker's recommendation but now I'm questioning their judgment. The dichotomy is the author is an excellent writer; very easy to read from a writing perspective. She uses a casual writing style to effectively deal with technical subject matter. That's the good news. In contrast, the book is short on applicable content and is highly repetitive. She cites research study after research study to establish the scientific explanations for why people choke. However, it wears thin once you realize this pattern will be sustained throughout the entire book. It felt like I was halfway into the book before I really began to get tips for preempting the choke. In total she imparts perhaps half a dozen tips for improving one's performance under stress. However the solutions aren't prolific enough to warrant an entire book on the subject. I would have been satisfied with a few case studies to establish context had she moved onto an abundance of solutions. But that wasn't the case.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Don't waste your time

Even at 3x, this book was too long. Shorter version: people choke for all the reasons you already suspect, and there's not much to do about it. Now say that over and over for 7 hours, and you have his recording.

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1 person found this helpful