When you’re completing your taxes, it pays to double-check your calculations to make sure you’ve done everything right, even if you’re an experienced accountant. But for well-worn, automatic behaviors that you’re trying to execute under pressure, like pitching, this very same tendency leads us to break down the complicated scripts that we’ve learned to execute without thinking. This is exactly what our inner voice’s tendency to immerse us in a problem does. It overfocuses our attention on the parts of a behavior that only functions as the sum of its parts. The result: paralysis by analysis.
