One needs to anticipate and plan for problems before starting a large project. What is it called when one becomes so caught up with planning for possible problems that one never sets out?
"Negativity" or "defeatism" is very close, but imply a kind of depressed state of not even trying in the first place. I'm looking for a phrase or idiom about applying mental effort or planning to try to solve all possible problems, and then becoming overwhelmed by all the possibilities of failure such that one does not actually try to solve the problem. Something like "tripping over a rock that's far down the road".
The antithesis of this concept might be "a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step" or "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
A commonly-recognized American English phrase or idiom would be perfect, but I'll take something else that's reasonably intuitive.
Wow, so many great suggestions! If it helps, I'm visualizing Wally from Dilbert, "agreeing" to a project for the PHB, and then rattling out a thousand ways it could go wrong until the boss says "never mind" and leaves Wally to go back to surfing the web.
The idea is that someone is being obstructionist, specifically by citing all the infinite possible risks. It's a kind of passive-aggressive behavior seen in technical settings.
Best Answer
Practicing strategic incompetence
This often involves intentionally doing things poorly or incorrectly so as to have unwanted responsibility taken away, but a more subtle form is to plan for so long that failure comes as a natural outcome.
For example, if you really don't want to have the responsibility for planning office parties, you could start talking about your plans for decorating with orange and yellow teddy bears, serving anchovy pizza with no sauce (one large per person, right?), and entertaining with live organ or polka music. Plus everyone will have to dress as a person from history and also go by the name of an animal (Aardvark and Lemur, please come help me carry these 172 pizzas!).