Malcolm Gladwell: The Art Of Failure By Malcolm Gladwell

Choking vs Panicking

New Yorker author Malcolm Gladwell claims that there were two types of failure: choking and panicking. He explains all of this in his article, “The Art of Failure,” focusing on real-life examples and their experiences of choking and panicking. Gladwell uses many examples of the two and argues how similar yet different they were.
The article goes over Gladwell’s examples of conventional and paradoxical failure and the similarities. Gladwell also compares panicking to conventional failure because the person has little experience and has no idea what to do to get them out of the situation they’re stuck in. In Gladwell’s opinion, the person’s adrenaline takes over, and they do what their instinct tells them, disregarding the consequences. An example would be of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s death in his plane accident, with his lack of experience, he panicked last minute, frozen, and crashed his plane. In contrast, Gladwell compares choking to paradoxical failure because of the sudden choking that led to failure. According to Gladwell, people overthink their situation and lose their natural well-practiced ability. This means that the person has

Langewiesche took Gladwell on a few downward spirals, which gave Gladwell an understanding of what led to Kennedy’s panic. He explains it as, “This inability to sense, experientially, what your plane is doing is what makes night flying so stressful.” Kennedy had practiced in broad daylight, and when his landing location was clear and completely lit up, but because he had flown at night, he was unable to see anything and where he was to land. The crash report revealed Kennedy’s frantic state, trying to restore the lights, but failed and died. Had Kennedy choked, he would have still understood the instruments, but worked at a much slower pace instead of freezing up and unsure of what to