Are You Struggling With Overthinking?
Find Out How to Turn Things Around, Before It’s Too Late
Hi friend,
How much should you try to optimise your life?
How much should you be thinking about ways to improve?
How much should you care about things?
For many people, perhaps even most, the answer to all of these questions is “more”.
Indeed the world largely belongs to the intense optimisers, not the laissez-faire guy chilling in a hammock who hit snooze 3 times this morning.
Telling people to optimise more is a reliable way to improve the lives of most people because most people need to be tightened up, not loosened off, and being more obsessive will tend to deliver better results in worldly success.
Most advice is charitably given to people who need to think more carefully, be more deliberate and work harder.
The problem is when this message lands with the wrong audience.
The perennial perma-optimisers.
Then it creates a world where overthinkers are convinced to think even more.
These people need loosening off, not tightening up.
Given that you read this blog, I’m going to guess you fall into this category.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be obsessive and pay attention to detail.
The problem arises when you can no longer delineate between the very small number of things that matter enough to obsess over, and *everything else*.
Assuming you have a small bucket of pursuits which are important, you’ve probably learned that a very deliberate, effortful, optimised approach is a successful strategy
This obsession and addiction begins to bleed into all other areas of your life.
Turning off the tap of optimisation is hard and soon the entire map is flooded with the same desire to always push for perfect.
Your brain tells you “Look at how effective your perfectionism has been in your professional life! Why don’t we try to apply that to your sleep routine and training plan and love life and house cleanliness and toenails?”
One solution I learned about this week is Deliberate Deoptimisation.
Purposefully letting areas which could be dialled in further fall by the wayside in order to give your brain capacity to focus on the ones that really matter.
Focusing on your pounds, not everyone else’s pennies.
Sure, you could have 5 credit cards with special cashback bonuses and capture all the points for your air miles, but given that you’re already close to capacity on Things To Give A Shit About, is it wise to add yet another to the list?
Sure, your intra-workout nutrition could probably be dialled in more with some pre-digested grass-fed whey & dextrose, but what if this takes your energy away from the key area of just hitting the gym 5 times this week?
Sure you could spend all day watching the stock market instead of just investing in an Index Fund but how much damage will this new candle-graph-addiction do to your relationship?
Oliver Burkeman inspired me with a thought recently:
Question: “How much should you care about things?”
Answer: I’m unsure exactly but I know that it’s not “the absolute maximum amount, all the time, for everything”.
Not everything is a life-or-death situation.
And even if you know this cognitively, you still need to stop reflexively behaving like it is.
Deliberately letting go of certain areas is a good way to give overthinkers like us more space to regain some sanity.
Thank you for reading!
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