the house in search of the certificates, checking every place I could think of, over and over again. They were nowhere to be found.
As I pinged from room to room, I started mentally outlining what I would do if I couldn’t find the papers. Would I have to go back to the pediatrician? They needed three business days’ notice for paperwork, and you had to show up in person. I began to calculate how many hours of my life it would take to get replacements, if it came to that: one hour at the office, twenty minutes in the car each way. Was it even possible to get replacements before the first day of school? What would happen if my kids couldn’t start on time? I was quickly spiraling from “my paperwork is a mess right now” to “my whole life is a mess.”
While I perceived I was spinning my wheels, wasting energy and getting all upset for nothing—I was writing this book at the time, after all—I couldn’t pull myself out of the cycle. Or chose not to. But then again, it’s hard to choose anything when it’s past your bedtime and you’ve whipped yourself into a frenzy.
If I hadn’t already known I was overthinking, my outward behavior would have given it away. It was almost like I was acting out the detrimental cycle of thought that ensnared me. I literally roved in circles through my house, looking in the same places for those papers, growing more agitated each time I did. My thoughts and actions were repetitive, unhealthy, and unhelpful. I felt exhausted, even though I hadn’t accomplished anything.
Our Habits Can Serve Us—or Not
We tend to think of overthinking as something that happens in our heads. But overthinking is systemic. We also see its causes and evidence on our to-do lists, in our laundry piles, and in our habits—both mental and physical. It’s about not only what we think but also what we do. My paperwork problem didn’t begin when I realized the papers were missing; it began when I put off doing something that needed to be done. I didn’t just delay the task, I made it way more complicated—and that means I needed heaps more brain power to finally get it done.
Our habits can serve us or they can be our undoing. My habits were undoing me.
It’s both discouraging and empowering to realize how many problems we create for ourselves when we neglect the basic tenets of responsible adulthood. It’s discouraging because even if we don’t want to, we need to do these things. Many of these tasks—basic, boring things like keeping your desk tidy enough to find what you’re looking for, getting enough sleep so your brain can function properly, and scanning those papers for the school secretary—don’t feel important in the moment. They may feel more like time-wasters than sanity-makers at the time, but they give us an incredible payback on our small effort. It’s empowering because these habits are well within our control. For better or worse, these basics are essential, and setting up systems to ensure they actually get done has a profound effect on our mental load. When we establish the right habits—in our physical spaces, with our physical bodies—we can stop much overthinking before it starts, because the things that need to get done actually get done. We’ll never waste an hour frantically searching the house for something we should have taken care of long ago.
We may not realize the importance of these habits until they fail us. A usually organized friend lost her credit card for a week last summer and finally found it in her wallet because she hadn’t taken the extra three seconds at the checkout to return it to its usual slot. When you spend your time searching for your credit card, that is what you are doing with your life. Wouldn’t you rather be doing more interesting things?
Completing the Cycle
Just yesterday I spent half an hour looking for a paperback I needed for a book club discussion. Around here, we keep books all over the house—in my office, the library, the kids’ rooms, the basement—and we like it that way. Our nightstands and coffee tables hold current reads. There’s a system to it, and the system works—as long as I reshelve the books when I’m done with them.
But sometimes I don’t. I’m often rushing to finish a literary blog post at the end of a workday or staging golden-hour photo shoots right before I race