I'm pretty good at thinking too hard about things. And when I say "pretty good," what I actually mean is an expert. Like, if somebody invented a video game with the object of over-analyzing, I would be the all time MVP. First I get vaguely curious about something, then outright intrigued, and then, if it remains mysterious, I'm hooked. I have to know. Why is it that way? What are the socio-economic influences? What's the history? Has it always been like this? Imagine you're cutting a pizza and everything is going fine until you realize that you haven't cut all the way through the bottom layer. Wouldn't that bug you? Wouldn't you try to do something about it?
Okay, I'm not really trying to get you to accept my over-analyzing (sympathize, maybe, but not condone). I am saying that pizza is delicious, and I'm pretty sure we can agree about that. When you're a serial over-thinker like I am, you realize that it's extremely possible to think yourself into a corner, so to speak. To go over the data so much that it becomes meaningless. The central lie that an over-thinker believes is this: more information will bring clarity. Clarity here meaning a definitive judgement or statement about the topic in question. Ultimately, however, information isn't the source of that closure. We experience closure when we make a decision.
Unfinished "To-Do" lists bother us because they're a graveyard of unmade decisions. We put off thinking about what we have to do because it means making a decision. And in our culture, making a decision is an ordeal. You have to do research. Gather data. Get a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. You've got to put it through controlled testing. You've got to be sure--why? Because someone is going to ask you why you made that decision, and you can't just say "because it felt right." That phrase is reserved for the crazy ones. The dreamers. The people who fly out of JFK when they're 18 and hitchhike through Europe for 10 years. That's attractive, right? It seems like those people don't have to obey the rules that the rest of us do.
To be fair, it would take more than just this one blog post to unpack these ideas (like how we feel about dreams, how to make better lists, and how we feel about our daily life--though I did previously write about that last one). So what's the point? That I (and Malcom Gladwell) think it can be powerful to do the opposite of this drawn out method. In other words, I think we should capitalize on our gut reactions.
How? Often when I'm mired in the swampy quagmire of overthinking I find myself circling around one thought: "this would be so much easier if I hadn't thought about it so much." But you can't take back thought, right? Well, no, but you can still get your gut check. One very simple way to do this is with a coin flip. For one side, "I will eat pizza for dinner," and on the other side, "I will not eat pizza for dinner." Then, after you flip the coin, you have your gut reaction, and here's the best part: if you're disappointed, then you know that you actually want to do the opposite thing.
This works crazy well. Of course, it also forces you to confront yourself. To like yourself. To trust yourself. To be okay with wanting things that don't follow the script that other people write for you. To be confident in the face of criticism and animosity. To let go. To try. And all of that is pretty tough. But, personally, I think it's worth the effort.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein
