What a revelation I had this morning while IM’ing with my friend and collaborator Jonathan Brown. I was asking him a programming question in relation to a project I am working on. After I asked a very detailed question, he shoots back “you’re over-thinking it.” In that moment came a flood of clarity. I am over-thinking the problem. I’m over-thinking to the point of anxiety and exhaustion a great deal lately. The issues mostly surround business and work, but also personal issues as well.
What is the answer to over-thinking it? I think I may have a way to confront this.
Over-thinking for me typically involves diving deep into the problem and getting narrow with my perspective. I sometimes get buried in the minutiae of what ever is at hand. The gears in my mind grind away to reveal smaller and smaller components of what I am thinking about. Eventually I get stuck either because I cannot break something down into a smaller piece, or I have two possibilities/directions that I can go and can’t figure out which is best.
Something happened a few months back that came to mind when Jon said those words to me this morning. I was attending a GTD (Getting Things Done) seminar. (If you are not familiar with GTD and its many ways of employing its methods, please investigate–it is a beautiful thing. Also, see my previous post). During the seminar we were taking projects and breaking them down into definable next actions. What next action will move a project forward? To figure this out you need to break things down. For example the next action on a project might be “Call Jon about starting new project.” In my mind I might take that action and break it down further.
- Lookup Jon’s phone number
- Dial Jon’s phone number
- Talk to Jon about project
- Confirm agreed next steps
- Hang up
You see how ridiculous this can get–I’m over-thinking it. I would start out with these project lists and then start falling off into the land of micro-next-actions. I was getting stuck and frustrated. So I asked our presenter, Maurice, about what I could do to stem the tide. His answer was genius.
“Look a the level of complexity with any project or task. At what level does the complexity not serve you?”
Simple, elegant, and perfect for this issue. Stop over-thinking, pull your head out of the sand and look at the bigger picture.
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