"The ones who appear stuck could be the reasonably clever ones" I used to be terrible at interviews because I couldn't help over-thinking every question to min

"The ones who appear stuck could be the reasonably clever ones" I used to be terrible at interviews because I couldn't help over-thinking every question to minutia levels even if I was aware that I shouldn't be doing that in an interview context. I just couldn't turn my brain off from thinking about all the what-ifs and corner cases which in some cases I'm absolutely sure made me come off as someone who was "lost" on the question but was really actually thinking multiple levels beyond what the interviewer was expecting and still branching down. And this, when combined with the stereotypical programmer trait of not wanting to say something wrong in public makes it really difficult for some people (eg. younger me) to 'think through the problem verbally' with a stranger. It may be self-serving to think this, but IMO this sort of thinking is actually really useful to have as a programmer but it really fucks you on traditional interviews. I eventually learned to compartmentalize it and just short circuit myself when interviewing, but it took a really long time to do this, even after I was well aware it was a problem.