I find I do most things with more focus if I can talk through the process.
It externalizes my inner monologue which is multithreaded and makes it more or less single-threaded so I'm able to stay focused. It also serves as a check on my brain.
I suspect this is why Pointing-and-Calling reduces errors in Japanese workers [1].
Unfortunately it's not socially acceptable to talk to yourself. If only there was an invention like headphones, but for speech, a sort of a "cone of silence", I suspect it would improve my effectiveness by 10-20%.