How To Stop Overthinking

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A couple weeks ago we were sitting on the couch, my wife and I trying to pick something on Netflix, or Prime, or Disney…

But there’s just so much to choose from. It’s almost stressful because you can feel your watching time slipping away. 

With so many choices we add stress to a relaxing activity.

Instead of choosing one and getting started, we scroll, debate and then it feels like we sort of “give up” and decide. 

I love when real life stories like this connect to things I wanna talk about. 

I was drifting off in thought about the fact that here we are sitting here. 
Scrolling through streaming services looking for something to watch, it reminded me of the classic 
Parable Buridan’s Donkey named after the 1300’s philosopher John Buridan.

A donkey is standing between two equally enticing nourishments. 

A pile of hay, or a bowl of water.

But, they lack reason and are overwhelmed by the decision.

The donkey, unsure of which to go for, ends up dehydrated and starving to death because they couldn't make up their mind. 

The moral is that overthinking can lead to inaction, which is far worse than making either choice, even the “wrong one”. 

Paralyzed By Decision

This tale is a simple but powerful metaphor for how overthinking can paralyze us.

I try to remember it when it comes time to choose something. 

But it’s not as important as what we can do about it to make decisions more likely.

In our case with the movies let’s say sometimes there are very strong reasons to choose.

For example I really wanna see Jelly Roll’s documentary, when Lewis Capaldi dropped his my wife and I both wanted to check it out and I loved the first Joker movie so when the second one is released I will be naturally motivated to check it out asap.

But where I get caught up in this phenomenon that actually matters (way more than trying to pick a movie) is deciding what to work on.

Just yesterday, I was talking with a creator friend of mine, Amanda Northcutt, founder of Level Up Creators. And she was asking about some of my ideas, wondering why I haven’t acted on them yet. Honestly, I didn’t have a great answer. 

Trying to explain our thoughts out loud to others like this can help us realize how silly our excuses, or overthinking really is.

What was holding me back?

While driving home, I started questioning whether I was just making excuses, or if something was getting in the way.

And I realized I had allowed shiny objects to creep back into my workflow because I had way too many choices.

I was working on live video, writing a book, long form blog posts, tweet threads, visual illustrations for social media, short videos, solo podcast episodes and interviews. 

Damn, it’s crazy just writing it out like this. 

Wild thing is there were like three other business ideas in the works.

Everything felt “equal”.

And so when I would sit down to tackle some work I would waste a lot of time.

Hick’s Law

States that having plenty of choices affect the decision-making time of an individual. 

Too little choice and they feel restricted. 

But a lot of choice and they actually feel worse.

Until a certain point, offering options is good. It provides freedom to choose. But there comes a point at which the availability of too many options makes it harder for a person to make up their mind. They grow confused, stressed and don’t make a decision at all.

I see this all the time with peopl e I coach as well.
The goal of giving people freedom and joy because they get to choose can