An anonymous writer to the New York Times recently encountered a problem. They work at a non-profit in a unit of about ten people. The head of the group wanted the team to gather at a one-day retreat to set a strategy for the next fiscal year. But the office was undergoing renovations so the team needed a new venue. They settled on a common meeting room at the condo residence of a subordinate.
The writer was appalled at the decision to bring work to an employee’s home environment. “I think this crosses a professional boundary,” they complained and wondered how to address the issue.
Finally though, after asking for advice, they admitted doubts about whether there was a problem here at all. “Am I overthinking this as being unethical?”
There was a serious problem in the letter but it wasn’t what Roxane Gay, the Times’s business agony aunt, called a “strange and maybe even a little tacky… temporary, low-cost (no cost?) solution to a temporary problem.” It was the overthinking of an issue that really didn’t matter.
The head of the unit had found a place to meet and while it might not have been the first choice of one or any of the team members, whether the meeting took place in a condo or in a hotel conference room really wasn’t important. There was no point in obsessing about it.
And yet people do overthink small issues and the consequences can be more serious than an anguished (and slightly embarrassing) letter to an advice column.
A 2003 study by University of Michigan psychology professor Susan Nolen-Hoeksema found that overthinking contributes to severe depression and anxiety, especially for women. Men who overthink are significantly more likely to binge-drink and have alcohol-related problems. As overthinkers focus on negative memories, pessimistic explanations, and hopelessness about the future, they tend to generate poor solutions to their problems and feel unable to implement any solutions at all.
They get stuck, their mental health suffers, and they stay stuck.
Too Much Thought, Too Little Action
Overthinking then isn’t the same as over-analysis or even an attempt to create accurate analysis. Nick Trenton, author of Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress, Stop Negative Spirals, Declutter Your Mind, and Focus on the Present argues that it occurs when we fixate on what has happened in the past and fear what might happen in the future.
When we overthink, we make decisions based not on the circumstances in front of us but according to experiences we should have put behind us. And instead of considering the gains we might win, overthinking makes us concentrate on our potential losses.
“These [events] don’t necessarily have anything to do with the present moment or circumstances,” he says. “Bad experiences from the past have a huge effect on us and are difficult to forget, which of course makes me assume that these things will happen again.”
So what begins as a search for causes of worry soon becomes a fixation on those causes and an obsession with every reason for pessimism you can find. Constant thought turns into constant concern and together they block the possibility of action. Ideas aren’t implemented, progress isn’t made, and change doesn’t happen. The worst fears might not be realized but neither are any improvements.
Over time, Trenton warns, overthinkers find that their comfort zones grow smaller, and their choices limited.
“It creates decisions out of fear,” says Trenton. “Overthinking obscures important information because you are focused on one thing only, alleviating your fear. Obviously this isn’t very compatible with the way we might want to live our life.”
The result is paralysis and stagnation. Some studies have even found that the stress that overthinking causes can increase fatigue and reduce creativity. Overthinking takes us out of the present and will lead to anxiety if not properly tamed, warns Trenton.
An entrepreneur with a business idea might hold back on implementation because overthinking makes them more worried about the cost of failure than excited by the prospect of success. An employee with a new teammate might enjoy the chance to learn and widen their professional circle… until thoughts of increased competition for promotion dominate their thoughts and spoil the office atmosphere. Instead of regarding a meeting in a condo as a change from the usual routine, a subordinate considers it a breach of the gap between work and home—even when they themselves don’t live in the condo.
We can’t think of a new solution when we’re too busy worrying about the solutions we’ve got.
Surprisingly, it’s also a problem that appears to largely affect the young. Nolen-Hoeksema’s study found that 73 per cent of adults between the ages of 25 and 35 overthink but only 52 per cent of people aged between 45 and 55, and just 20 percent of 65-75 year-olds. Getting old does seem to have some advantages. Older workers tend not to sweat the small stuff.
That might be because while failures, even small ones, leave scars—and leave us looking for any sign at all of the trauma returning—experience has shown that the worst fears don’t always come true.
Stay in the Present, Forget the Future
So what can you do if you find yourself obsessing over the worst aspects of a situation and worrying incessantly about what might go wrong?
Trenton notes that the degree to which fear affects us is variable. “It can completely derail our days if something turns out dissimilar to what we planned, or we can roll with the punches and not give it a second thought.”
We can’t determine the future entirely. We can’t know for sure that customers will buy a product until the product has been made and put on the market. We can’t tell if our new colleague will be the only one left in the office after the next wave of cuts. And we can’t be certain that a “retreat” in a condo meeting room is a one-off or the start of a complete breakdown between work and home. But we can decide how we reach to each worst-case scenario.
“I like the heuristic of ignoring that which you cannot control,” says Trenton. “The only thing you can control is your behavior, thoughts, and reactions to the external world. In a way, that is freeing because it allows you to focus only on those things, and not everything that you cannot control.”
The key to stopping overthinking then is to wrest back control and choose to roll with the results of an event. Instead of letting fear of being overwhelmed by a negative result cause paralysis, accept that sometimes things go wrong but those events are rarely fatal. We can recover from them and even benefit from them.
Speaker Tony Robbins has a list of actions that people can take to stop overthinking. They begin with identifying destructive thought patterns, include choosing to live in the moment, and end with… a sales pitch for his products. But he also recommends managing your story and controlling your emotions, both of which are advice not to allow events to direct your life but to take charge of those events yourself.
Both Trenton and Tony Robbins also recommend meditation as one way to improve mindfulness. A short period of silence and forced relaxation can return us to a present that we know and over which we have some control. When your biggest problems are in the future but your present is a place full of ideas and possibilities, you can avoid the troubles of that future by staying in the now with a ten-minute practice and a stick of incense.
But meditation isn’t for everyone and in the end, overthinking is a process that takes place in our own heads so it can only be stopped in our heads. It ends when we stop fearing everything that might go wrong and take the active choice to focus on what could go right. We stop overthinking when we stop over-caring about all the possible problems that an event could cause.
Roxane Gay’s first response to the anonymous letter-writer concerned about a work meeting in a residential condo was to ask a question of her own.
“Why do you care about this?” she demanded. “Why do you think this is something you need to address?… Free yourself from overthinking something so inconsequential.”
That might well be the best way to put an end to overthinking. Care less, think less and pay more attention to the things that really matter.
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