The threshold of misery is a concept that I was introduced to me by Mike Caro in reading about poker strategy, The idea is that when you sit down at a poker table there is a certain amount of money that you are psychologically comfortable losing, not that you want to lose that money but if you lose that much you won't also lose your mind. If you find that that your loses are stacking up and zooming past the amount you were prepared to lose you are in danger of crossing the threshold of misery.
Crossing the threshold of misery means that, having already lost as much as you are prepared to lose, you no longer emotionally feel the impact of additional losses. You become numb to the the experience. What you still have to play for and in front of you feels meaningless and the game feels like one big loss. As Caro notes, this is not the reality of the situation - additional losses will matter to us eventually - and it is important to continue to make good decisions even if you cannot feel the impact of them at the time.
I like applying this concept to disc golf as I have found it highly useful as a golfer in trying to keep rounds that are not going the way I want from spiraling out of control and becoming really terrible rounds. We all have ideas about the kinds of things that might happen on a given hole or course and what would be, if not acceptable, at least not that bad. You will hear people say, "I just don't want to take any fives" or "I just need to walk away from hole 6 with a par". Then they take a 5 on the first three holes or take a 7 on hole 6 and steam starts coming out of their ears. When too many of these negative things start to become reality and accumulate, you can see players cross the threshold of misery.
When they do this it can manifest in a number of ways. Body language changes, they snatch discs quickly from the bag and throw them, their normal routine breaks down, they hit trees with discs with a certain "I knew that would happen" fatalistic attitude. Dumb shots are thrown in an attempt to get back to even par. Impossible windows are attacked in attempts to get out of trouble. Suddenly the 890 rated round that you would have been, not thrilled but OK with, has turned into a 810 rated round.
Having had this experience I can say that when you are in the middle it the entire round and tournament feels like a waste of time. Those extra strokes no longer make the impression that the first few did and it feels like it doesn't matter. But when you are no longer on the midst of that experience and have had some time to divorce yourself from the emotion of it, you will often think back on those shots and want a few of them back. That if just a couple of those had been thrown better the round would have been been respectable or you realize that the difference between 20th and 12th was only 3 strokes and you gave at least that many away.
The point is that every shot matters even when it doesn't feel like it. It is still worth going through your routine and putting yourself in the best place to be able to execute the shot. It is still worth looking at the lines available and picking out the one you think is the highest percentage. It is just as important to make the most of your good play as it is to limit the damage from your bad play. Its all strokes on the scorecard. When you get to the end of the day or the tournament your future self will thank you for your efforts.
