There’s overthinking and overacting. There’s a balance to find.
The QUICKER you can test and tinker and iterate — the less you have to think.
Why bother thinking — if problem naturally solves itself anyway.
If the problem is NOT solving itself however — is when you obviously should stop and STRATEGISE.
Repeating the same procedure and failing all the same is just stupid.
Thus you balance ACTIVE TINKERING (testing in real world) with MENTAL TINKERING (trying different ideas).
The above concept is not mysterious.
You have hands to perform actions and brain to think.
Even if you are lazy — you did do something before.
Even if you are stupid — you did use your brain before.
I don’t believe we overthink because we don’t understand the above procedure.
I don’t believe we overact because we don’t understand the above procedure.
There’s a balance to find. Usually you want to both think and act. Act and think.
You will fall into either extreme when the other part of the equation is somehow demotivated, discouraged, disincentivised.
Thus:
When you don’t want to ACT — you will OVERTHINK. Procrastinate.
When you don’t want to THINK — you will be stubborn and ram your head against the wall, hoping to get through.
You are not aware of this disincentive.
AND you are not aware how it distorts your natural, optimal problem solving instinct.
What this means is:
You are not aware of what discourages you from ACTING, or THINKING, and that you are discouraged in the first place.
This discouragement skews your approach to the problem, but you are not aware of that skewness.
You believe your approach is optimal, or at least “normal”.
Well it’s not
And for you to recognize it’s not — you would need to develop a certain standard of problem-solving — with which to gauge the quality of your efforts.
That standard could be this idea of BALANCING ACTING AND THINKING, in a strategic way.
For instance: attempting to brute-force through the problem, attempting to power through — and depending on the progress made — spend more or less resources on trying to actually understand what is going on, so as to make strategy more focused.
Whatever your standard should be is secondary, as long as it works,
The problem is becoming aware when you are becoming irrational.
That’s the point of having a standard. Of becoming aware of the problem-solving-mechanics. Only when you have a standard do you know that you are deviating from it.
Once you recognise that you indeed do have a tendency to sometimes deviate from the optimal approach — is when you become aware that there is a certain distortion happening,
This is when you realize that your overthinking may be reluctance to act,
This is when you realize that your overacting may be reluctance to stop and think and reflect and face reality.
This is how you become aware.
I recommend becoming aware of all of those processes:
-every resistance you have to certain actions, solutions
-every resistance you have to certain reflections and ideas
-and the resulting inconsistency in your problem solving
When there is resistance — there is disincentive. When there is disincentive — there is distortion.
When there is distortion — you are deviating from the course.
When you are deviating from the course — you are FAILING.
Therefore become aware. Observe vigilantly. Eradicate resistance. Solve problems. Attain clarity