[ergothus]

I struggle to understand the target audience for this. I'm currently crushed by lack of productivity, and overthinking is definitely a large part of the problem. But I can't just "not think" - I'm painfully aware of how behind I am, how much I don't understand in my current workload, and any time taken to understand it quickly overwhelms me with frustration and fear. This means I don't get any progress made, I understand things no better, the fear is heightened, and it all gets worse.

Logically I'm aware that I'm my own enemy here - that my natural evasion of dealing with the problem is amplifying the problem. But that logic doesn't translate to action. Like an adult that tells a child to not let someone teasing them bother them, the child doesn't really have the option to NOT feel the humiliation of the teasing. When I go to try and tackle the problem, within minutes my brain shuts down except for that active amygdala, pumping fear hormones into my system and blocking any actual learning.

So avoiding the problem doesn't help. Attempting to tackle the problem doesn't help.

The problem is real, but who are the people that just go "oh, I just need to relax!" and that WORKS?!

[johnfn]

Yep, exactly right. I suspect that authors of posts like the OP are people who might have small blips on the productivity/overthinking radar but otherwise are generally productive. They run into a small problem, "don't think about it," and get back to work, and everything is again fine. (Of course, everything would have been fine no matter what they did.) They then write blog posts about how they can just stop thinking about issues. Then people with more serious difficulties read those posts, try them, and go, "huh?"

I had these sorts of issues, too. The true answer to overthinking isn't to stop overthinking, of course. The true answer is to realize that overthinking is a symptom but not the cause, and so you need to find the root cause and treat that instead.

Just imagine you have some meter in your mind somewhere, not sort of unlike an HP bar, that measures how you're doing mentally. There are some actions you can do to replenish this bar, and some that will deplete it. If you find yourself overthinking constantly, it's possible that that bar is quite depleted. However, remember, it's a symptom of a low bar. Telling it to go away won't actually go away. You can also do a self-inventory to see how you're doing on replenishing it by checking to see how much you overthought on a given day.

Everyone has their own things that replenish and deplete from this reservoir. I personally like hanging out with friends and exercising, but your mileage may vary. Other people like meditating, or cooking, or walking. It's pretty crucial to remember, though, that your current source of anxiety is probably just a red herring.

[tim58]

> It's pretty crucial to remember, though, that your current source of anxiety is probably just a red herring.

Everytime I have anxiety it's my brain focusing on one thing to avoid confronting the real problem. When I finally find the thing I am avoiding it's usually not that bad of an experience to deal with it directly. Some examples are "I should call person X to deliver news Y." Or "I need to make a big decision soon."

[_AzMoo]

When I was faced with this issue I found that spending about 30 minutes at the start of the day planning, and then another 15 minutes or so at the end of the day conducting a retrospective, really helped. Start by creating a list of tasks to be completed, and then prioritise them. It helps to be very specific with your tasks. Don't have a task be "work on assignment 3", have the task be, "Find 6 articles to support section 1 of assignment 3". Once you've got your prioritised list, work on them starting from the top and mark them off when you're complete. Sometimes you will have emergency tasks come in that take priority, and that's ok. Log them in your task list and work on them like any other task. It's ok to not complete the tasks you planned for the day. In your retrospective, critically examine the tasks you completed, and determine (and log) why you either did or did not complete everything you'd planned. Next morning in your planning session, take yesterday's list, re-prioritise with any new tasks that have come up, and work through the process. If your tasklist keeps growing and growing forever, then it's just fundamentally clear that you have too much work to do in the time allocated and you need to either bring somebody else in to help or start making sacrifices, either with the tasks you take on or the quality/effort of your work.

[grugagag]

Dont avoid the problem, take a thin slice at a time, don’t think how much behind you are because that is bound to stress you and spiral you down into an unproductive loop. Just do something. Whatever you don’t know put it down on a list, get it out of your head

[rajangdavis]

I second this sentiment. Breaking a problem down into a smaller set of problems tends to help for me. It's much easier to start and be consistent with a small set of changes and grow them over time.

If I can add onto "just do something", sometimes a brute forced/hacky solution is better than nothing. I know that I will delay something if I don't think I can do the "perfect" version of it (either in diet or exercise); however, I have found that starting a behavior in a small way and being consistent is infinitely better than waiting to have the circumstances be perfect.

[tim58]

When I am having difficulty starting a task I start with making a list of everything that needs to get done to solve the problem. It always make it more manageable.

[grasshopperpurp]

Fake it 'til you make it applies. When you're in the habit of stressing/overthinking, it's temporarily built into the way you process things. To overcome it, you have to practice controlling your mind. Sometimes starting with, "What is the worst way I could do this?" is helpful, because there's nowhere to go but up, and sometimes you trick your brain into producing solutions that seemed too ridiculous to consider - my own experience, anyway.

[westoncb]

A useful thing I've learned: "just relax" doesn't work, but if you take the same idea and apply it to the more specific things which are causing you to not be relaxed, you can make some headway.

In other words, if you take note of what you're having concerned thoughts about, you can pause and ask, "is it that important right now? Is it okay to leave this alone until tomorrow?" And if you can honestly say it's alright, you'll begin to relax.

[steverb]

What works for me, is to ask myself what is the next step and then try and focus exclusively on that. When my mind wanders three steps ahead, I mentally kick myself in the butt and remind myself to focus on the next thing only.

It's a discipline like a lot of things, and it gets easier the more you do it.

[marcosdumay]

I have been on the situation that I was overstressed, but thought I was unproductive because everything was boring, and I had to push myself more until I got into the interesting stuff. Just somebody telling me I had to relax was already enough to help.

But I don't think in any circumstance I could simply read this in a web article and get the point. The person that told me to relax was a psychologist, that had a list of symptoms to base his advice on.

[SN76477]

I understand your perspective. I am yet to read the OPs submission I did want to give some insight that helps me a lot with overthinking and just doing.

I use GTD and Trello to manage my reoccurring tasks. I eliminate a lot of overthinking at the wrong time by planning and scheduling at the appropriate time.

After several months I have built a system that I have learned to trust. It has taken a long time to get here, but it makes a real difference for me.

[josefrichter]

It does work, but not magically from day 1. This stuff requires practicing and building up some habits.

[ddbb33]

I’d strongly suggest getting a therapist or professional help. It has worked wonders for me so far.

[sukilot]

You need to admit that you can't do everything on the list and say No to some. Declare plan bankruptcy so you aren't allowed down by work you aren't going to do anyway.