Don't Overthink It - Anne Bogel Page 0,10

as I insisted on comparing my good outcome to the ideal one in my head, I was going to make myself miserable. Perfectionism makes us critical, uptight, and generally not fun to be around. Plus, we’re more likely to overthink when we’re in a bad mood. There’s no need to be so hard on ourselves, because it doesn’t have to be perfect to be good.

Give Yourself Permission to Fail

It’s one thing to want to loosen the hold perfectionism has on you, but how do you actually do it? The remedy is to give yourself permission to fail—failure being defined as “anything short of absolute perfection”—and grace when you actually do.

Like it or not, failure can be incredibly instructive. Ironically, sometimes we get better results when we screw up than if we never get it wrong. If mistakes aren’t okay, we miss out on one of the fastest, most effective ways to learn. But failure can be a scary word to throw around, especially for recovering perfectionists like me. To learn from it, we need to get comfortable with it—and a change in terminology can help. I’ve learned to say, “Let’s experiment,” because that phrase doesn’t make my insides clench up like the word failure does. An experiment is neutral, dispassionate. There’s none of that paralyzing pressure to get it right. When I try an experiment, success is getting an outcome. Any outcome. The goal is to get results, not a win.

Adopt a “Try It and See What Happens” Approach

Lest you think embracing failure is a feel-good technique for softies, know that there are compelling reasons to adopt a “try it and see what happens” approach. It’s not weak or lazy, it’s savvy. My husband used to work in software development, where “minimum viable product” is a phrase they toss around a lot. Software developers take an iterative approach to product development—they never try to deliver a perfect product on the first attempt. Instead, they want to build an imperfect product, and they want to do it quickly. When they have something to work with, they can quickly see what works and what doesn’t, give it to users to test, and identify core problems and possible solutions—not in the abstract, but in a real, tangible way. Creating an imperfect product helps developers determine if pursuing a perfect version is even worth it. Not everything is worth doing perfectly.

With an experiment, there’s no “do it right or do it again.” Instead, it’s “do it and see what happens.” Or “do it and then do it again,” incorporating whatever you learned the first time. This iterative approach frees us from the need to always get it right. Instead of waiting to feel certain before we take action, we can get good information, and fast, by trying something and seeing what happens next. There’s no agonizing over the right decision, and there are rarely regrets. Because all you need is an answer, not a victory.

As we move forward, I’m going to invite you to experiment with the strategies in this book—with no agonizing and no regrets. Identify which ones seem most promising to you, give them a try, and see what happens next.

Putting It All Together

Let me show you what working this process might look like in real life with an ordinary, low-stakes example of recognizing and overcoming analysis paralysis. As I write this, I feel like I’m devoting an awful lot of ink to an inconsequential decision. But since this is exactly what happens when overthinking hijacks our thought processes, I’m going for it.

For well over a decade, my family of six has spent one week each summer at a certain Gulf Coast beach. We love our beach week but have never loved getting there. The drive takes about eleven hours, and that’s a long time to spend cooped up in a minivan. We used to always make the drive in one long day, assuming it would be best to power through and get it over with.

But Will and I long wondered if we would be less miserable if we broke the trip into two segments. For reasons I cannot explain, my kids adore hotel pools and the kind of all-you-can-eat breakfast served at your typical Holiday Inn Express. What if we drove halfway, spent the night at a hotel, and drove the rest of the way in the morning?

We debated doing this for years—literal years, maybe six or seven. Every summer as our departure date approached, we’d revisit the question yet again,