The Centipede's Dilemma: When Thinking About an Action Ruins It Completely

You have probably watched one or two of those videos on YouTube featuring super-efficient workers who complete their tasks at a terrifying speed without making mistakes. But there is a key behind that astonishing skill: they do not think about what they are doing.

A simple moment of extra reflection will cause the work to lose speed or become interrupted. This conflict arises from an old poem called "El dilema del ciempiés" (The Centipede's Dilemma), which tells us about a small centipede tripped up by its own thinking...

Don't Think, Just Do It!

Question: How good are you at typing? I am not talking about the virtual keyboard on a mobile device, but a real one in front of your computer. I admit that I never received formal training; the combination of speed and accuracy I have today is the product of typing thousands of words a day, pure brute force.

Some people who have watched me type have not hesitated to ask: "Do you remember the position of all the keys?" At that instant, a mental flash makes me visualize the entire keyboard... and I freeze solid. The truth is that I do not think when I type: I just do it. Thinking about the keys is an instant pause. And this goes far beyond keyboards.

A golfer who thinks too much about his swing ruins it. Someone who overanalyzes how to tie a tie ends up with a piece of cloth around his neck half-tied. Experts call this conflict hyperreflection, or "the law of Humphrey", named after the English psychologist George Humphrey who originally proposed it in 1951. But most prefer "El dilema del ciempiés".

The Centipede's Dilemma

No one knows its exact origin, but several arrows point to Katherine Craster's text called Pinafore Poems. The zoologist E. Ray Lankester proposed applying the cameras of Eadweard Muybridge to solve "the centipede problem", and in his original publication he shared a copy of the poem, which goes like this:

(Editor's note: As expected, the rhyme is lost in translation.)

Short and blunt. The toad, not without a hint of malice, asks the centipede about the order of movement in its legs... and the poor creature freezes. The aforementioned psychologist George Humphrey highlights in his book The Story of Man's Mind (1923) that "No skilled man in a trade needs to pay constant attention to routine work", and if he does, "the task will be spoiled".

He describes the poem as a psychological rhyme, a deep and essential truth that manifests day after day, and extends to well-developed habits, like walking or running. The philosopher Karl Popper expands on this by speaking of a level of conscious control.

If an action or skill falls below that level, the simple act of consciously following it causes interference until it stops completely. Has something similar happened to you recently? Leave a comment!