Narrator: Imagine being a high-level partner at a major accounting firm. You receive a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission. You are about to testify in a case involving corporate giants like Apple and Pixar. Five minutes before you take the stand, your world begins to collapse. Your head feels like it's exploding. You think, "If I say the wrong thing, my reputation will be ruined, my credentials taken away... I might end up living in a van down by the river." This was the real experience of Bob Andreatta, a partner at KPMG, who felt the crushing weight of a single moment where everything was on the line. This feeling—this intense, performance-crushing anxiety—is a universal human experience.

In their book, Performance Under Pressure, authors Hendrie Weisinger and J.P. Pawliw-Fry dissect this phenomenon, arguing that pressure is the single greatest enemy of success. Drawing on a massive study of over twelve thousand individuals, they provide a scientific framework for understanding why we falter when it matters most and offer a clear playbook for doing our best in those critical moments.

Narrator: A common belief, reinforced by sports and movies, is that some people are "clutch" performers who rise to the occasion and deliver their best work under pressure. The authors dismantle this idea as a complete myth. Through extensive statistical analysis, they reveal a starkly different reality: nobody performs better under pressure.

Consider the world of sports. Researchers who analyzed decades of Major League Baseball statistics found no evidence of a "clutch hitter"—a player who consistently hits better in high-pressure situations than their normal average. While memorable high-stakes hits exist, they are statistical outliers, not a repeatable skill. Similarly, a study of NBA free throws showed that players, even legends, perform statistically worse when the game is on the line.

The key differentiator for top performers isn't that they possess a magical ability to elevate their game. Instead, the top 10% of performers are simply less affected by pressure than everyone else. They don't rise to the occasion; they just don't sink as far. They have developed the skills to mitigate pressure's negative effects, allowing their training and talent to function closer to their normal capacity. Believing in the "clutch" myth is a losing strategy because it encourages people to try for a superhuman effort, which only adds more pressure and makes choking more likely.

Narrator: Pressure is not a vague feeling of stress; it is a specific psychological state triggered by a combination of three distinct ingredients. Understanding these components is the first step toward managing them.

The first ingredient is Importance. A situation becomes a pressure moment when the outcome is highly important to you. The more you care, the more pressure you feel. The second is Uncertainty. If the outcome were guaranteed, there would be no pressure. It is the uncertainty of success or failure that floods the brain with stress hormones like cortisol. Research on London residents during World War II found that those living in the suburbs, where bombing raids were sporadic and unpredictable, had a higher incidence of stress-related stomach ulcers than those in central London, who faced relentless but predictable nightly bombings. The uncertainty was more damaging than the danger itself.

The final ingredient is the feeling of Responsibility and Judgment. Pressure intensifies when you feel personally responsible for the outcome and believe you are being judged on your performance. This was the core of the crisis faced by Julie Howard, CEO of Navigant Consulting. When a newspaper was about to report that her firm was implicated in a state investigation, she faced a situation of immense importance to her company's survival, extreme uncertainty about the legal and financial fallout, and the intense judgment of her board, employees, and the public. Her ability to manage these three factors, by slowing down and focusing on a clear plan, allowed her to navigate the crisis successfully.

Narrator: Choking is not just failing; it's performing significantly worse than your established capability precisely because of pressure. The authors explain that this happens when pressure disrupts one of two critical memory systems in the brain: working memory or procedural memory.

Working memory is our mental scratchpad—it's what we use for tasks that require conscious thought, problem-solving, and decision-making. When we feel pressure, our minds fill with worries and anxieties about the outcome. These worries consume valuable space in our working memory, leaving less capacity for the task at hand. This is why a student who has perfectly rehearsed a speech can suddenly go blank in front of the class. Their working memory is so overloaded with fears of judgment that there's no room left to recall the information.

Procedural memory, on the other hand, governs our automatic, well-rehearsed skills, like playing a musical instrument, shooting a basketball, or even parallel parking. These actions are best performed without conscious thought. Pressure causes us to choke on these tasks when we start overthinking them. We try to consciously control every step of a process that should be automatic, which disrupts the fluid, ingrained sequence. This is what happened to NBA player Nick Anderson in the 1995 Finals. An 80% free-throw shooter, he stepped to the line in a critical moment and missed four consecutive free throws, costing his team the game. He started thinking too much about the mechanics of a shot he had practiced millions of times, and his procedural memory broke down.

Narrator: Sometimes, underperformance isn't a simple case of choking. The authors highlight two hidden saboteurs: cognitive distortions and "third variables."

Cognitive distortions are ways our minds warp reality under pressure, creating more anxiety than is necessary. One of the most common is "chance-of-a-lifetime" thinking, where we frame a single opportunity as our only shot at success. Entrepreneur Kathryn Minshew felt this acutely when her first startup, Pretty Young Professionals, imploded. She felt she had blown her one chance. However, by reframing the failure as a learning experience, not a final verdict, she was able to found The Muse, a wildly successful career platform. She escaped the distortion by realizing there is almost never only one chance.

An even more insidious saboteur is the "third variable"—a hidden factor that causes underperformance but is mistaken for choking. The story of gymnast Jordyn Wieber at the 2012 Olympics is a tragic example. As the reigning world champion, she was a favorite for all-around gold but performed poorly in the qualifying rounds and failed to make the final. The world labeled her a "choker." The truth only emerged later: she had been competing on a painful stress fracture in her leg. The injury, not a psychological failure, was the third variable that derailed her performance. This highlights the danger of rushing to judgment and the importance of looking for underlying causes before labeling someone a choker.

Narrator: While the book offers many in-the-moment solutions for pressure, its ultimate strategy is a long-term one: building what the authors call a "COTE of Armor." COTE is an acronym for four key psychological attributes: Confidence, Optimism, Tenacity, and Enthusiasm. The authors argue that these traits are not fixed but can be developed over time to create a durable defense against pressure.

They use the metaphor of the legendary "Four Horsemen" of the 1924 Notre Dame football team, who were described as an unstoppable force. In this context, the four horsemen are not famine and destruction, but the four pillars of resilience. Confidence is the belief in your ability to succeed. Optimism is the expectation of positive outcomes and the ability to see setbacks as temporary. Tenacity is the grit to persist through adversity, fueled by meaningful goals. And Enthusiasm is the positive energy that fuels creativity and inspires others.

By systematically working to build these four attributes—through practices like celebrating small wins to build confidence, reframing negative thoughts to foster optimism, setting meaningful goals to cultivate tenacity, and connecting to a larger purpose to generate enthusiasm—individuals can create a psychological suit of armor that doesn't just protect them in a single pressure moment but makes them consistently resilient over a lifetime.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Performance Under Pressure is that our response to pressure is not a fixed trait but a trainable skill. We are not simply "good" or "bad" under pressure. By understanding the science of how pressure affects our minds and bodies, we can move from being victims of our anxiety to architects of our own composure. The goal is not to eliminate pressure—an impossible task in modern life—but to fundamentally change our relationship with it, allowing our true abilities to shine through when it matters most.

The book's most challenging idea is that many of the tools we commonly use to motivate ourselves and others—such as offering incentives, giving praise, or creating competition—are often "pressure traps" that backfire and make performance worse. This forces a critical self-reflection, prompting us to ask a difficult question: Are my best attempts to inspire success in myself and others actually undermining it?