How does thinking affect doing? It is widely held that thinking about what you are doing, as you are doing it, hinders performance. But is this true? Barbara Gail Montero explores real-life examples and draws on psychology, neuroscience, and literature to develop a theory of expertise that emphasizes the role of the conscious mind in expert action.

• Introduction: What Can a Philosopher Tell you about Expertise?


• 1: 'Don't think, dear; just do' and Other Manifestations of the Just-do-it Principle


• 2: Just-Do-It versus Cognition-in-Action


• 3: What is an Expert?


• 4: Does Thinking Interfere with Doing?


• 5: Thinking Fast


• 6: Continuous Improvement


• 7: You Can't Try Too Hard


• 8: Effortlessness with Effort


• 9: The Pleasure of Movement and the Awareness of the Self


• 10: The Aesthetic Experience of Expert Movement


• 11: Intuition, Rationality, and Chess Expertise


• 12: Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, and the Meaning of Life


• Bibliography

Barbara Gail Montero (B.A. University of California at Berkeley, Ph.D. University of Chicago) is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York. She has been awarded research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her work focuses on one or the other of two different notions of body: body as the physical or material basis of everything, and body as the moving, breathing, flesh and blood instrument that we use when we run, walk, or dance. Before entering academia, she was a professional ballet dancer.