The Breakout Principle
Herbert Benson, MD, and Willkam Proctor
Scribner, NY, NY 2004 (paperback)
Every profession and occupation suffers
from it: sport figures, writers, scientists, even religious clerics.
“It” is the problem that crops up in everyone's life, for some
more often than others, where no matter how hard you work, no matter
how much you study or practice or run scenarios, there's a situation
that you have to do something about which is very critical, and a
wrong decision could harm you in many ways, a situation that seems
utterly unsolvable, beyond the scope of your powers, and no matter
how much you think about it, has no good answer.
Whether it's a baseball player's slump,
writers block, a piece of computer software code that just won't
behave, or a family situation that's been keeping you up nights for
months: you've worked on it and worked on it, going around in
circles trying to find an answer, but nothing works. Then you make
some very rude remarks, and go golfing. But even then your mind is
still on the problem, and your golf game suffers. You go home and
try to attack the problem again, but no go. Finally and completely
giving up for the night, you decide to drown your sorrows in a very
long, hot shower. And all of a sudden, there you are, jumping out of
the shower to write down the answer that suddenly popped unbidden
into your head. This is what Benson and Proctor call the “Breakout
Principle.”
