How to Stop Overthinking and Finally Take Action
Imagine how far and how much progress you and I would have made, if and only if we didn’t keep asking ourselves “what if”, instead of asking “what’s the next step?”
Overthinking feels productive, but it’s not. Your brain is trying to protect you from mistakes, embarrassment, and uncertainty.
Overthinking is indecision pretending to be logic or smart. It’s self doubt pretending to “be careful”: fear of making the wrong decision.
Effect of overthinking
Overthinking keeps you waiting for the perfect time, keeps you waiting for clarity, makes you replay scenarios that never even happened and thereby keeps you stuck.
I remember when I started writing on medium in 2022. I started and was doing great. But soon started feeling discouraged because I didn’t have much engagement. So I played and replayed scenarios where I had a better phone and laptop, and thought it would make my writing and engagement better. I kept telling myself that there is no need to keep writing, I’m not even so good at it. And then I stopped.
Coming back to my medium page 3 years after, I realised that my highest engagement was 780, but I already lost it. Now, I have to start all over again.
How to overcome analysis paralysis
Overthinking delays action, keeps you in the waiting season for too long. It delays progress, it makes you think that progress comes with a great plan, or right action. And clarity will come while thinking not while doing, whereas most clarity comes from action, and that’s where most progress lies.
First off, thinking drains energy, that’s why I became a very shallow thinker (not that much of a great idea tho). While thinking drains energy, it makes action harder than it already is, it makes simple tasks very overwhelming, because you can see every reason not to do it.
It increases fear, the more you think the more risk you can imagine, the more failure you can imagine, the more doubt grows.
Taking imperfect action
Let’s go back to my learning phase, when I started my digital marketing course. I was so discouraged from learning because I thought “how can I make use of the course, I don’t have any experience, still knew nothing about it”
But then I said screw it, I’m not the first to take the course and won’t be the last. Then I took up side project, opened a website and started writing, started managing social media accounts for people around me. Used AI to understand algorithms and practiced and practiced.
Now it’s a new fear unlocked, I’m no longer afraid of starting, I’m more afraid of the workload from side projects. Those things that use to make me scared to take the first step, are not even scary any more.*
Stop overthinking and start doing
Quit exaggerating problems and their outcome. Logically 1+1 =2, therefore if you take that action, it’s going to give you the exact result suitable for your action, not another. So quit exaggerating “what if, what if it doesn’t go this way”. IT WILL.
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