If there has been anything in my life I am guilty of, it is overthinking. I’m not really a perfectionist, but I do like to get things right. I like to do the job right the first time out. Charging in, taking action, and doing it without considering the best way to accomplish the goal from multiple angles has never been my strong suit. It could be the intellectual in me who never wants to do something stupid. Or it could be the fear of failure in me which never wants to be wrong or be seen as wrong.
What we learn when we think about this process of overthinking is it can be paralyzing. Sometimes making a decision can be far worse than the choice you end up making. There isn’t anything wrong with a metered smart decision even if it turns out there was a better choice you could have chosen. The problem occurs when the decision to move forward is held captive to an over analysis of thought. Sometimes the way is clear & easy to follow. However, most of the time it isn’t, & the outcome of the choice looms bigger because we are making an educated guess & we don’t want to choose poorly.
I find, if we weigh all the possibilities & outcomes & we are still not close to an answer, it can help to think about smaller decisions for direction. Sometimes we don’t know where we want to go to dinner, or what we want to eat, but we do eventually choose something because going hungry is a far worse outcome than eating something we aren’t in the mood for at the moment.
When thinking over overthinking, consider the cost over analysis charges you in the big picture of the goal or goals you are trying to accomplish. Attention to detail is so very important, however when it becomes a productivity killer, we need to choose a path & see where it leads us.