Imagine playing a guitar part you know well. Halfway through, you start checking which finger should move next, whether your wrist is angled correctly, and what your other hand is doing. The music now has an internal commentary track. You are trying to be careful, but you have given yourself several extra jobs in the middle of the song.
An instruction that helped you learn a movement can become an interruption once you know it. A small experiment with soccer players makes the distinction unusually clear: experienced players, on average, benefited from detailed attention with one foot and were hindered by it with the other.
The same players had two different problems
In a 2002 experiment, Sian Beilock and colleagues asked 20 university students, half experienced soccer players and half novices, to dribble through cones. Everyone preferred their right foot. Each completed the course with either foot under two conditions.
In one, a sound prompted them to report which side of their foot had last touched the ball. In the other, they listened for a particular word in a recording. The researchers timed error-free runs.
Experienced players were faster with their right foot when listening for the word. With their less-practiced left foot, they were faster when attending to the foot movement. The novices generally did better with that detailed attention too.
This was a small test of immediate performance, not long-term learning. But the reversal is useful: being experienced didn’t make every movement equally familiar. The researchers’ explanation was that step-by-step monitoring can interfere with an already well-learned sequence, while helping one that still needs conscious control.
You still need something to pay attention to
That distinction makes “stop thinking” rather poor advice. You cannot decide whether it applies without knowing what you are doing and how well you have learned it. Nor should a performer stop noticing the result. A musician still needs to hear the music; a player still needs to see where the ball is going.
In his September 24 letter, Mark Manson argues for giving performance and critique different moments. He describes writing a first draft without judgment, then bringing the critic in for the second. That is his account of his own process, rather than experimental evidence about writing.
The useful question is when the instruction belongs. Before playing, “work on that awkward change” gives practice a purpose. During a familiar passage, a running inventory of finger positions may be an unnecessary interruption. Afterward, “the rhythm broke at that change” gives you something specific to examine.
You can care deeply about doing something well without narrating every movement as it happens. Paying attention to what you’re producing leaves room for judgment. It doesn’t require turning the attempt into a lesson at every instant.
A mistake can still need a lesson
Of course, “I’m overthinking it” can become a flattering explanation for being underprepared. Perhaps the guitar part only feels familiar because you’ve heard it often. Perhaps you can play it slowly but haven’t learned it at the speed you’re attempting. Confidence cannot supply that missing practice.
And self-monitoring is only one possible difficulty. In a 2021 study of 258 pianists, researchers found that distraction toward the audience featured in their accounts of performance anxiety, while excessive attention to the performance itself did not emerge as one of the retained factors. The study relied on remembered experiences and questionnaires, so it cannot establish what caused a particular mistake. It does warn against explaining every faltering performance the same way.
If your attention is on whether somebody looks bored, adding more distraction is hardly an obvious solution. If you haven’t learned the movement, removing useful instruction may leave you lost. Start with the actual difficulty, including the possibility that a teacher could see something you can’t.
Give the repair a place to happen
For an ordinary hobby, you can make a modest distinction before starting: are you working on a specific part, or seeing whether you can complete something familiar?
Suppose one chord change keeps breaking the rhythm. You might slow it down, inspect the fingering, and practice that transition separately. In that session, stopping is part of the work. You have chosen a detail that needs attention.
Later, you could play a familiar passage through and listen to the result, saving the detailed repair until the passage ends. This is a proposed experiment, not the procedure tested with those soccer players. Its value would be in discovering whether it helps your particular skill.
The review must still happen. Otherwise, “letting it flow” becomes a pleasant way to keep repeating the same error. Give yourself permission to finish an attempt and an obligation to examine what it produced. Those can coexist.
Try this with one familiar skill
Name the part you can already do. Choose a low-stakes movement or short passage you’ve performed successfully before. If you’re learning it from scratch or deliberately changing technique, keep the instruction you need.
Complete one bounded attempt. Decide where it ends before starting. Attend to the task and its result without adding a new checklist of body movements halfway through. Keep all normal safety checks; use a hobby where a miss is harmless.
Review the result, then choose a repair. Note where the attempt worked or broke down. Compare further attempts rather than trusting one lucky success. If removing the commentary makes things worse, restore a useful cue or seek instruction. Keep what helps the performance, even if it contradicts the advice.
The guitar is still in your hands when the passage ends. You can return to the difficult change and work on it carefully. You can also let the final chord finish ringing before you begin.
P.S. By the way, an AI wrote these sentences from the creators’ videos, newsletters, and posts Payton actually consumes week after week. He built the system that makes this letter, and he will keep putting it out once a week. He put his taste and judgment into what good looks like, and into how to avoid bad. He wants to be fully transparent about that.