Time and again, people who have spent years mastering a talent watch it break down like a decrepit old Chevy when chatter hijacks their inner voice. This phenomenon isn’t restricted to athletes. It can happen to anyone who has become skilled at a learned task—from teachers who memorize their lesson plans, to start-up founders with rehearsed spiels they pitch to investors, to surgeons who perform complex operations that took them years to master. The explanation for why these skills fail ultimately relates to how the conversations we have with ourselves influence our attention.
