Analysis Paralysis: How to Stop Overthinking In Its Tracks

Throughout any given period, our minds cascade through a wide variety of thoughts and emotional states.

As such, one of the biggest decisions you will ever make in life is how to manage the wide amount of mental content that passes through your mind at any given moment. And as anyone knows, this is not an easy task.

Because of the rapidly churning and swirling nature of the mind, a state known as “analysis paralysis” or overthinking can easily result, especially when one is one not trained in how to manage the mind.

This post is going to be a brief overview of how to stop overthinking and how you can more properly organize your mind in order to live the life that you want to live.

Exciting stuff ahead…

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What is Analysis Paralysis? Where Does It Come From?

“On the other hand, the fact that some choice is good doesn’t necessarily mean that more choice is better.” – Barry Schwartz, Paradox of Choice

It’s worth understanding that everything in life can be interpreted to varying levels of subjectivity. Meaning, many things don’t have any inherent meaning, we just give them meaning based on their effect on us. For a majority of our decisions, this “meaning” is the intent to avoid pain and attain pleasure.

This simplicity worked well in the low-information environment that our ancestors came from. This does not work in today’s overstimulated culture.

Analysis paralysis is the act of completely “shutting down” in the face of too much information. Since you are overloaded with choices of various kinds, to prevent the pain of making the wrong decision, you do nothing. This is known as “choice overload” by Barry Schwartz in his book The Paradox of Choice.

The Negative Impacts of Analysis Paralysis and Overthinking

You Become Unnecessarily Anxious

At any given moment, there are an endless amount of things that you could be doing. You could be reading a book, going for a run, mediating, taking a shower, surfing the Internet, going on a date, walking, etc. However, you can only do one thing at a time.

You can’t read a book and shower at the same time (well, maybe). Therefore, by doing one thing – you close the door on all other things either permanently or temporarily. This is known as the “Law of the Excluded Alternative” and without truly understanding it, something like time management is impossible.

Since many people don’t know about this law, they try to compensate with overthinking believing that “turning things over in their mind” will lead to a better decision. This creates an unimaginable state of anxiety in a person especially when it comes to major decisions like the decision to move to a new place or to change careers because they are unconsciously looking for “better”.

Because in more resource-strapped times, “better” may have meant survival. So we have an incentive to look for “better”.

But what if “better” is an illusion?

You Exclusively Concentrate on “Better“

It is easy to believe that “better” is out there. And I’m not talking about optimization or self-improvement, I’m talking about “better” in the sense of acquiring.

You can always get a better girlfriend, a better job, a better whatever. In a world of billions of people, there are no shortage of resources for “better”.

You can spend your whole life chasing after “better” or “new”. At a certain point, “better” becomes a game of diminishing returns. And while you’re searching for “better”, you lose the most precious resource we have: time.

By overthinking, you think too deeply about cause and effect relationships instead of working with what you have right now, where you are right now.

You Leave Potential On the Table

Are there things that you or I could optimize in our lives right now? Absolutely.

Most people are doing things right now that if done correctly would increase their current level of happiness or status in life. By focusing on the 20% that is important in your life, you gain 80% more improvement.

With analysis paralysis, you aren’t focused on extracting the “nectar” from whatever it is. You are focused on finding something new. You dabble but don’t dig.

All of these effects sound terribly negative, don’t you think? Let’s find out a way to prevent these from happening.

Tips to Overcoming Analysis Paralysis and Overthinking

It’s hard to completely eliminate overthinking. The mind naturally wants to think and turn over choices.

You can still take action otherwise. Here are 7 ways to do that.

1. Clarify

Why are you doing something? Write it down. Force yourself to write it down on paper so you can solidify your thoughts.

If you can’t provide a clear reason for action (so clear as a 5 year old would understand it), then you shouldn’t be doing it. This alone will save you a lot of wasted time on overthinking and analysis paralysis.

Action Step: Write down 10 things you spend the most time on in a day. Ask yourself why you do them. Make sure you are doing them for the right reasons, whatever they may be to you.

2. Set Goals

You can’t hit a target you can’t see and goals help you see that target. Going along with the last point, many people do things and they don’t know why they’re doing them. With goals, you know why.

Goals prevent overthinking and analysis paralysis because goals are purely objective. Likewise, every goal has a system needed to achieve it. You either follow the system or you don’t. There’s no room for interpretation.

Action Step: Write down 10 goals you want to achieve in the next year. Figure out what needs to be done to accomplish them and find ways to accomplish them.

To get started, check out How to Start Self-Improvement (and Why You Need to Do It) As a Young Man.

3. Create Systems

If you want to achieve reliable results in life, then the only way to do it is through a system. Through a system, you off load willpower and conscious decision-making and put it on autopilot.

If you have a morning routine and wake up at a consistent time, that’s an example of a system that will create a foundation for results in your life.

Action Step: Find one area of your life that you can automate. For example, if you want to start a physical fitness routine, make an intention to go to the gym at the same time on specific days of the week. You may go every other day or 4-5 days in a row. Either way, make it something that requires little thought to execute. You just do it.

4. Focus on “Doing”

With overthinking and analysis paralysis, is it easy to escape into the realm of “theory” and mental abstraction. Problem is, results are in the real world – not in fantasy. Many people overemphasis the “thinking” part. It’s easy to read a book, it’s harder to implement it. It’s easy to go to school, it’s harder to be one of the best in a certain field.

“Doing” is hard because when you do something, all of your senses are involved. There is no room to hide when you do. During a big basketball game, the person who hasn’t put in the practice and the work will be exposed because there’s nowhere to hide.

Action Step: Once you write a plan, take steps to execute it. You don’t have to be great on the first try, you just need to optimize towards a desirable end state. Focus on improvement over perfection.

5. Can You Do Something?

Many people also ruminate on things that happened in the past or will supposedly happen in the future. This creates depression or anxiety. But in many cases, the things that people think about cannot be acted on right now. Either the event they are overthinking has already happened or has yet to happen. And when that future event does happen, that person will be too stuck in their head to take effective action.

Action Step: Take a piece of paper or write in your journal actions that you can take right now, in the present to affect a certain outcome. Can you realistically do something now or lead up to something that can affect that outcome? If yes, go back to step 1 and follow it all the way to step 5. If not, then just drop whatever you’re thinking about. It does absolutely no good and it wastes time and energy. In many cases, there is something you can do, you just need to clarify what it is.

6. Mental Diet

One of the best ways to psyche yourself out of doing something is to consume negative information about it. We become what we think about all day long and if all you think about is how something can’t be done, you won’t do it.

We are absolutely surrounded on all sides by media that tells us how inadequate we are, how the sky is falling, how helpless we are, etc. However, this media doesn’t tell us the full picture.

In a world of 7.8 billion people, good and bad things are always happening. The world is so vast that if you go and search for something, you’ll find “it” no matter what it is. It’s always raining somewhere.

Action Step: The most successful people are selective about what they watch and hear. This isn’t an excuse for ignorance, however. Keep a general pulse of what’s going on but don’t get bogged down in the weeds. It just won’t help you.

7. Dopamine Detox

A dopamine detox (or dopamine fast) is a period of time where you limit or completely eliminate things that give you a “rush” of motivation with little or no positive impact on your life.

What this does overtime is reset your baseline for “acceptable” in addition to massively simplifying your life. After a proper 90 day protocol, you may not want to return to these things ever again.

Action Step: We all know what these things are. We all know that there are things that are the lifestyle equivalent of candy. Your job is to systematically reduce or eliminate these.

I wrote a guide to the dopamine detox that outlines this very process.

Conclusion + Wrapping Up

Analysis paralysis or overthinking is a plague that can affect and overshadow the best of intentions. The best way to overcome overthinking in your life is to set up a life where doing things that create desirable results in your life are easier than not doing them in addition to measuring your progress over time.

Do you struggle with analysis paralysis or overthinking? What are you doing to combat it? Sound off in the comments.