Hello World!

This blog is an inquiry into performance - most especially, how the human mind can be used or trained or manipulated to one's advantage or disadvantage.  It is founded by a former athlete and hobbyist photographer who was maddeningly inconsistent, and, more frustratingly for him, acutely aware of his inconsistency.  We hope to draw from  the world of sports, of brain science, of art, of literature, of psychology and of all sorts of human endeavor to explore what makes humans perform well, and perhaps more importantly, take satisfaction in their life's work.  We are skeptical of cliches, tips, new age-y, stuff, but not above it.  We hope this blog will be of relevance to athletes, coaches, teachers, managers, artists, creators, researchers and to the curious.  We acknowledge the tension between the intellectual dissection and classification of performance and its attendant anxieties, and the 'flow' of actually just 'doing it', so, we'll search for sustainable practices and processes rather than just observations.  This tension is the thrust behind the moniker of the blog, 'The Smart Play Dumb'.  Please do let us know what you think.