We often tell people under pressure to focus harder.
It sounds sensible. If the stakes rise, surely the answer is more concentration, more control, more attention to every detail.
Sometimes that’s exactly right. And sometimes it’s the beginning of the problem.
The distinction I find most useful is this: pressure can pull attention away from the task, but it can also pull attention too far inside the execution of a skill. Those are different performance failures. They require different responses.
Expertise isn’t step-by-step
Early in learning, conscious attention is useful. A new clinician follows a sequence. A rookie officer works through a communication protocol. A developing athlete thinks about position, timing, and mechanics.
With enough quality repetition, portions of performance become more procedural. You still need judgment, situational awareness, and the ability to adjust. But you no longer have to manually narrate every movement or decision rule to execute it.
That’s a feature of skill, not a lack of discipline.
In a series of experiments with novice and expert golfers, researchers found that expert putting was supported by procedural knowledge rather than detailed memory for each individual putt. Under pressure, the skilled putters’ performance was vulnerable when attention shifted toward monitoring execution. The researchers also found that training under self-conscious conditions reduced that vulnerability in their putting task. The original study is worth reading, in part because it makes a practical point: access to a skill can change when the social and evaluative conditions change.
The mistake is assuming pressure has one effect
If you’re giving a briefing, managing a complicated scene, or making a time-sensitive diagnosis, pressure may consume working memory with consequence-focused thoughts. In that situation, the problem may be distraction. You need enough attention available for the actual decision.
But if you’re executing a refined physical or procedural skill, pressure may produce a different error: overcontrol. You start trying to supervise a process that normally runs with fluency. The putt becomes wrist angle. The presentation becomes an internal audit of every sentence. The practiced communication sequence becomes stiff because you’re monitoring yourself rather than reading the person in front of you.
Research on choking under pressure has not reduced this to one universal mechanism. Studies have found support for both distraction and self-focus accounts, and the performance cost appears to depend on the task and the demands it places on attention. One experimental study, for example, found results more consistent with self-focus than distraction in a skilled motor task. That does not mean distraction is irrelevant. It means “focus harder” is not a complete diagnosis of the performance problem.
Train the conditions of access
This is why preparation can’t stop at acquiring the skill. High performers also need opportunities to access it while being watched, evaluated, hurried, fatigued, or uncertain.
I’m not suggesting we manufacture chaos for its own sake. I’m suggesting we get specific. Is the performance issue a knowledge gap? A decision problem? Attention pulled off-task? Or is a capable person trying to consciously control something they already know how to do?
That question changes the training design. It also changes the conversation after an error.
More effort is not always more useful. Under real demand, the better goal is often this: give the right part of the system your attention, and let the trained part do its work.