Does it take you too long to make a mundane decision, fearful of making a wrong choice? Let’s look at a few situations:

Do you spend ten minutes in the morning just deciding which clothes to wear?

Do you rehearse again and again what you are going to say to your friends about your weekend plans? 

Do you type a phone message, then delete, then retype, then delete, so and so forth? Do you delete your WhatsApp messages too often?

Do you spend more time in editing an email than writing it? Do you keep changing the font? 

Do you watch Television for three hours just zapping through the channels, without watching a single program?

Do you spend hours in deciding which restaurant to go? And when you get there, do you spend more than ten minutes just deciding what to order?

Do you regret a decision you made years ago, even if it is not relevant anymore?

Do you spend hours thinking about an argument that hasn’t happened yet?

If most of the above scenarios sound familiar to you, you are probably indulged in overthinking. And in case, you are spending too much time in answering yes or no to above questions, you might be a chronic “overthinker”. But don’t worry, you are not alone in this pandemic. Research shows that 73 percent of people aged between 25 and 35 years, while 52 percent of adults between 45 and 55 years age, tend to overthink on regular basis.

In this article, we will learn how our thinking turns into overthinking? And how can we transform our overthinking into deep thinking or even critical thinking? We will learn the difference between overthinking, deep thinking, and critical thinking, but first, let us understand how our thinking works.

What is Thinking?

Every moment of our lives, we are thinking. Even while sleeping, our brain remains active— although conscious thinking slows down when we are asleep. Thinking works through brains cells called neurons; these neurons connect together to form complex networks through which they send electrical and chemical signals to one another. Through those signals, our brain creates patterns and connects those patterns to make sense of the world around us. These neural networks form our memories, concepts, and physical sensations as well.

Thinking is a complex process. The miracle organ that gets this complex process going is our brain. While many other animals have brains, human brain is unique in its size and capabilities. Below are its salient features that stand out:

• Human brain is three times bigger than our closet primates such as chimpanzees, and gorillas. Despite making up only about two percent of our body weight, our brain consumes about twenty percent of our rest time energy— it is a massive energy consumer.
• Our brain’s highly wrinkled outer layer maximizes surface area within the skull, boosting its processing power— like a supercomputer. 
• The front region of our brain is significantly expanded compared to other mammals, driving higher level decision making— and still many of us struggle at making simple decisions !

Your brain is a fabulous machine; use it for thinking, not for overthinking.

From above features, you can clearly understand that our brain is a superior thinking machine.  And it has a lot of thinking to do from, birth to death. There is nothing wrong with thinking— that is what our brain is supposed to do. Thinking is fine, but overthinking can spoil our personal and professional lives. What exactly is overthinking? And how do we know when we are indulged in it? Let’s delve into it.

What Is Overthinking?

As pointed out earlier, our brain is a thinking machine, thinking is its job. But how would we know if we are thinking or overthinking? Following factors should help you differentiate between normal thinking and overthinking:

Time Versus Task

How much time should a particular task take? It depends on the task off course. For example, if you are writing a book and researching for it for last six months, it is probably normal, you aren’t overthinking. But if you are planning to write a blog post and thinking about different ideas for about a month, that clearly indicates overthinking.

Action Or Inaction

If your thinking process leads you to take action, it indicates healthy thinking. However, if it leads to inaction, it may well be overthinking. Imagine you go out for swimming. You are about to jump into the swimming pool; you assess the depth and safety of your jump and then take the leap — this is normal thinking.  

On the other hand, if you start wondering if the water would be too hot or too cold? Will the splash be noisy? Will I look clumsy to anyone watching? This thought process is taking you away from action and falls into overthinking.

What Ifs and Their Solutions

Life is full of what ifs. What if people laugh at my speech? What if I fail in the marathon? What if I miss my train? What if my plane crashes? So and so forth. If your what ifs don’t have an action plan, that might lead you to overthink. However, if you can come up with solutions to your what ifs, your overthinking can turn into normal thinking. A few examples:

• What if people laugh at my speech? Well, I will prepare my speech to the best of my abilities, and if people still laugh, I will try to identify what caused them laugh, and work upon improvement areas. I will look for a mentor, if needed. If nothing else, this will help me overcome my stage fright.
• What if I miss my train? First of all, I will leave early enough to catch the train. Even then, if I miss, I will search online to look for a bus option? Worst comes worst; I will keep enough cash in my pocket to hire a taxi.
• What if my plane crashes? How often do planes crash? Very rare. More people die on the road than in plane crashes.  They can crash but the likelihood of a plane crash is minimal. 
• What if I fail in the Marathon? Even if I fail, I will get an idea of my fitness level? Most people don’t succeed the first time. Look at Michael Jordon who said. “I failed again and again and again, and that is how I succeeded.”

Stop overthinking about what ifs and failures; try your best each time.

One important thing worth noticing here is that our overthinking starts turning into normal thinking as soon as we seem to gain control over our situation. They keyword here is “control”. However, this control doesn’t mean total control; total control over your life is impossible to achieve, but possible means of controlling an unforeseen situation can be considered.

At this point, it would be useful to understand the difference between overthinking and deep thinking. And if you want to get to the next level, what is meant by critical thinking.

What Is Deep Thinking?

Deep Thinking is a level of thinking where we focus our mind on complex matters. It involves questioning basic assumptions and looking past surface details— hence called deep thinking because it involves thinking deeper than the surface details. The objective of deep thinking is to comprehend underlying truths, and to establish effective stratagies.

While overthinking involves a restless state of mind where you find yourself trapped in fear of unknown, deep thinking is a purposeful reflection where you ponder over your problems and their solutions, and gain clarity about your future.  This often involves filtering out irrelevant information and personal biases, while focusing on patterns and weighing multiple viewpoints.

As an example, imagine a manufacturing company plans to automate its manual operations. Deep thinking will be required to ponder over the pros and cons of this change e.g.  would it improve production capacity? Would it reduce employees’ health and safety claims due to less manual handling?  Would the workers and customers accept this change? Is this change aligned with the overall values of the company?

Deep thinking is a level of thinking where you think beyond surface details, while trying to find solutions and establish strategies.

It is desirable to convert your overthinking into deep thinking. But there is a further advanced level of thinking process called critical thinking. Let us briefly touch upon that level as well.

What Is Critical Thinking?

While deep thinking is a deeper level of thinking, it usually offers a broader overview of situations, often focusing on why something is happening and why does it matter. Critical thinking, by contrast, is a process through which we can analyse if something is true or not based on logical reasoning. So basically, deep thinking is a level of thinking while critical thinking is a process based on evidence and logic.

In general, deep thinking would be required for defining goals and strategies for an individual or organisation. Critical thinking, on the other hand, would be useful for solving specific problems on day-to-day basis.

Taking the example of the company considering automation of its manufacturing operations, the company directors would carry out deep thinking to understand why or why not should they consider automation. Based on their deep thinking, they might come up with a list of objectives e.g. better production capacity, less manual handling, reduction in labour costs, improving market supplies etc.

Once the directors have relayed their expectations, critical thinking and analysis would be required to determine if those assumed benefits are true or not.  In this case, when the company’s engineers, accountants, analysts etc. put in their efforts to estimate the market demand, calculate the required investment to enable the automation process, quantify the increase in production capacity, evaluate cost vs benefit, and figure out the payback period, all of this would enable critical thinking process.

Critical thinking is an analysis process to determine if something is true or not; often involving verification of information, data collection, and trails to prove or disprove something.

Getting back to overthinking, let us understand why overthinking is a problem, and why should we get rid of this undesirable trait as soon as possible.

Why Overthinking Is a Problem?

The first and foremost problem with overthinking is that it drains your precious personal resources. Those resources include your time, energy, attention etc. All these resources are scarce and should be used efficiently. For example, the time and energy you spend in overthinking about tasks can be spent in executing them. This is called “analysis paralysis”— meaning you are paralysed with analysing tasks rather than accomplishing them.

Apart from stealing your time and energy, overthinking impacts your mood and emotions as well. For example, if you spend too much time in replaying your past mistakes and worrying about future failures, this will rob your ability to live in the present moment and will take you away from taking actions that can ensure a better future for you.

Apart from creating mental and emotional problems, overthinking can take a physical toll on your body causing sleep problems, body stresses, headaches, tiredness etc.

Overthinking will steal your time, energy, health, joy, everything. Get rid of it this habit as soon as possible.

Now that we have examined what overthinking looks like and why is it bad for you, let us probe into its causes.

What Causes Overthinking?

Reasons for overthinking can be different for different people, but most of those reasons revolve around negativity. Here are a few common causes of overthinking:

Childhood Trauma

For some people, overthinking stems from childhood traumas, such as memories that cause them to ruminate about their negative childhood experiences. While it is healthy to reminisce good old memories; overthinking usually involves painful recollections. When we overthink, we pick those bad memories and try to apply those to our future.

A couple of examples:

• A sibling passed away in an accident; can this happen to my kids?
• Dad suffered a big loss in business causing financial difficulties for the family; what if I lose my job and my family has to suffer through similar situation?

Uncertainty

Life is inherently unpredictable. And that is true for every one of us. That means we can only have a limited control over our lives. For some people, this uncertainty leads them to overthink, and they always remain worried that something untoward might happen. While we don’t like uncertainty in our lives, it is essential for our growth; more on this at the end.

Over Perfectionism

Imagine you want to be a blogger. You created a nice blog post on a subject you find interesting; you have done a lot of hard work in creating that; the topic is in demand as well. It all looks good, except that you keep thinking it is not perfect yet and hence you never press the publish button. Being a perfectionist is good, but looking for extreme perfection can sometimes border overthinking.

People Pleasing

If you think too much about what other people might think about you, you will naturally tend to overthink about your impression in others’ eyes. You will always be overcautious; always wary of hurting someone’s feelings. You will always be overthinking.

Paradox of Choices

Living in the twenty first century is a blessing in many ways. Many of us can lead a prosperous life thanks to modern facilities, but a downside of this modernity is that we have too many choices. Too many clothing brands to choose from, too many TV channels to watch, too many restaurants to dine in.

With so many options at our disposal, it is natural to be confused about which option to choose.  And once we have made a choice, we keep thinking and rethinking whether we made the right choice? Was that other option better than this?

Habitual Overthinkers

Finally, there are those who find solace in overthinking. Because that allows them to stay away from tasks they know are important but also hard to undertake. Those habitual overthinkers use it as an escape route from facing the real world and its challenges.

Different people overthink due to different reasons. Identify what causes you to overthink and work on addressing it.

How to Overcome Overthinking?

If you have come to the point where you understand that you might be indulged in overthinking, and what could be causing this in your situation, kudos! You have diagnosed a disease. The next step is how to cure the disease. Here are a few tips that can help you overcome overthinking and be more productive.

Know Your Thoughts and Manage Them

Identify your thoughts and categorise them as positive and negative thoughts. Determine what triggers those negative thoughts; if possible, avoid those trigger points. Reframe negative into positive; for example, change what if something doesn’t work to what if it works.  

Practice Making Quick Decisions

Tame your brain for quick decision making. Sometimes quick decisions will backfire so starting with low-risk situations would be better. Divide your decisions into two categories: reversible and irreversible decisions. Conduct a risk versus impact assessment. If the decision is low risk and reversible, make a quick decision; if the decision is irreversible and high risk, take you time before choosing an option.  

Write Down Your Thoughts

Make a habit of writing down your worries. List down the thoughts that are bothering you. Oftentimes all we are worried about is that we may forget about something important such as an appointment; writing it down will free your mind from that worry. Sometimes when you look at your list later on, you realise that some of your worries were unfounded. 

Stop Pleasing Everyone

Stop thinking about what others think about you, focus on giving out your best no matter what.  This will help you boost your confidence.

Start Living in The Present

When you seem to be occupied with overthinking, use your five senses to get into the present moment: focus on what you can see, hear, or touch. This will help you disperse your worries.

Embrace Uncertainty

Finally, accept the fact that a lot of what happens in our lives is unpredictable.  No one likes being uncertain, but it is uncertainty in life that makes us innovate and solve our problems. Embrace uncertainty and solve your problems; stop wasting your life in overthinking.

Overthinking is pretty common. But once you identify its causes and trigger points, it can be treated and eradicated.

Related:

Emotional Intelligence for Beginners