When a deal stalls, the instinct is to add — another slide, another discount, another follow-up call. But the 16th-century essayist Francis Bacon noticed something in his *Novum Organum* that cuts against this: the mind, under pressure, generates confirming evidence rather than disconfirming tests. He called them 'idols of the cave' — the systematic distortions produced by our own professional habits. A salesperson who has closed deals through persistence will keep adding pressure long after the deal has actually died for a different reason entirely. The psychologist Paul Meehl, in his clinical studies on prediction, found that experts in high-stakes fields consistently over-weighted their preferred explanation and underweighted silent signals — the absence of a returned call, the shift in who attends the meeting. The practical move on a stalled deal isn't to intensify your existing approach. It's to name, out loud, the three most plausible reasons it has actually gone quiet — and then test the one you least want to be true.

What is the explanation for your most stalled opportunity that you have been deliberately not putting into words?

Drawing from Philosophy of Science combined with Clinical Psychology — Francis Bacon (Novum Organum, 1620) & Paul Meehl (Clinical vs. Statistical Prediction, 1954)