The Inner Game of Tennis

What Hacker News says

1. dominotwOct 2026
   > One of Kahneman’s best known contributions to AIthought is the System 1 System 2 metaphor he brought tobear on human cognition in his book Thinking Fast andSlow.

   I read this book published in 1974 called 'inner game of tennis' that has the same metaphor. Its one of the book i read every once in a while even though i dont play tennis anymore.

   thread
2. abmmgbMar 2026
   Open by Andre Agassi. Intriguing to read on the struggles of a tennis legend which were concealed at the time. He provides great detail and insights. It is a great follow up from 'The inner game of tennis', speaking of how athletes, and anyone else really, can find punching themselves down through negative mindset which if overcome can unlock your true potential.
   thread
3. TheCapeGreekDec 2025
   As alluded to in another comment, this post kind of makes a lot more sense if you've read The Inner Game of Tennis.

   It kind of glosses over competence of practice, but the TL;DR is once you've built up some competence with a skill, staying in a constant state of effortful tension won't give you better results. Entering flow state requires getting into "unconscious competence" effectively.

   ...which is effectively a reframe of how The Inner Game of Tennis says it: to practice your still with non-judgement while you do it.

   Show morethread
4. blueyesNov 2024
   "Reading and writing more" are just aspirations. Those don't translate well to new behaviors. BJ Fogg (Stanford prof, behavioral scientist) lays out how to build new behaviors in Tiny Habits. You need to make them easy and attach the easy thing to something you already do regularly. (When I sit down to lunch, I read one page...) https://tinyhabits.com/

   Secondly, your mind is interfering with its own work. Tim Gallwey talks about this in the Inner Game of Tennis (which is not really about tennis! ;). Your critic is not allowing you to "run hot" and put down some words that are less than perfect. It would be helpful to find something to focus your mind on, a simple count, like key strokes or word count. Alternatively, there's the practice of Morning Pages from the Artist's Way. Just let yourself write anything for a while. It's not for publication. You need to open the gates and you can do that by lowering the stakes involved with putting a word on the page.

   Inner Game

   https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance...

   Artists Way

   https://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-25th-Anniversary/dp/01431...

   I wrote about some other stuff here that helps.

   https://vonnik.substack.com/p/a-few-ideas-that-made-my-life-...

   Show morethread
5. kukkeliskuuOct 2024
   This is a complex question. I have found the book "Inner game of tennis" very interesting in this regard. The book is by a coach for world-class athletes. If you try it for yourself, you will learn that your analytical mind cannot micromanage your body to even lift a spoon from the table.
   thread
6. surprisetalkNov 2023
   I see the same pithy stuff in woodworking and software too!

   I'm a huge fan of a book called The Inner Game of Tennis. Something I picked up from that book: I think a lot of advice works not because it's correct, but because it causes craftsmen to observe a thing they weren't observing before. "Am I overusing commas?" is a useful but unanswerable question :)

   EDIT: The book also makes a strong case against judgmental language, so "overusing" commas is probably not the best word. So instead, maybe, "What do commas make sentences feel like?"

   Show morethread