History Main / ParalysisByAnalysis

Choking occurs when, instead of getting in the zone and shutting off the thinking, the expert starts thinking about what he's doing. He starts trying to control ''everything'', trying to account for every last variable. He gets in his head and because there's just too much to think about, he can't do anything. He's got the yips or, as Wiki/TheOtherWiki calls it, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_dystonia focal dystonia.]]

--> '''Drake''': I don't know what moves that Lapras has.\\

* ''Film/BullDurham'': Crash's rule #1, "Don't think, it'll only hurt the ballclub."

* Frank Stockton's story "The Discourager of Hesitancy" (the sequel to "Literature/TheLadyOrTheTiger") features a prince who freezes when told to make a decision on very little information and with his life on the line. The looming nearness of the Discourager -- a large man with a larger sword -- finally breaks him out of it, and he makes the correct choice. But the men who hear that story (they had come to ask what happened with the 'tiger' incident) get caught up in overthinking it and thus never get the answer they wanted.
* ''Literature/CiaphasCain'': In one of the short stories, Vail points out that her savant Caractacus Mott is prone to this. He can get so caught up in calculating the optimum trajectory that he's unable to ''fire the frakking gun already''.

* ''Series/{{Numb3rs}}'': Charlie's dad can't understand why the Cal Sci Basketball team is so poor (although Charlie points out, not unreasonably, that it's not really a burning concern for a bunch of science geeks) and convinces Charlie to try to improve them using "Scientific Methods". This only results in increasing frustration for Charlie as his methods fail to achieve anything. Ultimately, they only win [[spoiler: thanks to his dad bringing in a couple of Ringers.]]
* ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'': Happens to [[TheCasanova Barney]] in "The Yips". He runs into Rhonda, the older woman he lost his virginity to. She previously told him he was the best she ever had, and when he found out she was lying, he lost his confidence and had a hard time flirting with women, since he kept overthinking. [[HesBack He got it back]] when he slept with her again, and this time she said that [[SincerityMode he really was]] the best she's ever had.

* In ''Series/ThirtyRock'', it happens to Jenna and Pete is able to help her because it happened to him in the Olympics.

* In ''Series/TheGoodPlace'', this seems to be at least one of Chidi's problems with making decisions. As a professor of moral philosophy, he tries to do all he can to live his life ethically, but there are many ways to see any dilemma. Should he use utilitarianism, or maybe virtue ethics? In which situation? Can he be sure another piece of information wouldn't change things? How can he ''ever'' be sure he's doing the most ethical thing? This means he has a hard time making decisions about even the smallest things. [[spoiler: This ironically turns out to be what doomed him to the Bad Place: he was so obsessed by waffling about what the 'right' decision was that he never really made ''any'' meaningful decision, hurting people through inaction and indecisiveness and blotting his moral copybook regardless.]]

* A RealLife version pops up with [[ComicBook/TheJoker John Doe]] in Season 2 of ''VideoGame/BatmanTheTelltaleSeries'', who's [[StrangerInAFamiliarLand struggling to adjust to life outside of Arkham]].
-->'''John''': It's- it's the ''freedom'' that gets to you. There's so damn much, you hardly know what to do with it. It's not like Arkham. Sometimes I miss those padded walls. You knew where the lines were drawn. Which ones not to cross.

* ''Webcomic/DorkTower'': Guest cartoonist Charlie Bates has Carson demonstrate the tabletop games version of the trope (see above) [[http://www.dorktower.com/2018/06/20/decisions-decisions-dork-tower-20-06-18/ here.]]

* ''WebVideo/{{Doormonster}}'''s [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin aptly titled]] "[[https://youtu.be/SW2cCKLNUf4 Analysis Paralysis]]" shows that Ricky suffers from this trope - [[spoiler: even in a game as simple as ''TabletopGames/{{Candyland}}'']]

* For a non-sport related example, this can occur to people with sensory processing issues. The brain usually filters out most of the stimulus it receives. However, this process can fail to work properly, or simply not be able to cope with the amount of input received, resulting in a sheer deluge of data [[SensoryOverload that's difficult to sift through efficientl]]d.

* Frank Stockton's story "The Discourager of Hesitancy" (the sequel to ''Literature/TheLadyOrTheTiger'') features a prince who freezes when told to make a decision on very little information and with his life on the line. The looming nearness of the Discourager -- a large man with a larger sword -- finally breaks him out of it, and he makes the correct choice. But the men who hear that story (they had come to ask what happened with the 'tiger' incident) get caught up in overthinking it and thus never get the answer they wanted.

* In ''Series/TheGoodPlace'', this seems to be at least one of Chidi's problems with making decisions. As a professor of moral philosophy, he tries to do all he can to live his life ethically, but there are many ways to see any dilemma. Should he use utilitarianism, or maybe virtue ethics? In which situation? Can he be sure another piece of information wouldn't change things? How can he ''ever'' be sure he's doing the most ethical thing? This means he has a hard time making decisions about even the smallest things.

->''"There are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the universe. No-one can possibly predict them all, not even you. Which means that the first move can be terrifying. It's the furthest point from the end of the game, there's a virtually infinite sea of possibilities between you and the other side... but it also means that if you make a mistake, there's a nearly infinite amount of ways to fix it. So you should simply relax, and play."''