Don't Overthink It - Anne Bogel Page 0,22

would be wrong. No, I think of our trip when I’m slowly and carefully making a decision—and I see myself wobbling. The memory of that morning’s ride prompts me to ask myself if I’d be better off speeding up.

Waiting Time Is Wasted Time

We all want to make good decisions in life. We may automatically slow down when facing a big decision because we want to make sure we’re taking it seriously. As I pointed out in chapter 1, purposeful waiting has a place; there are times for slow and methodical decisions. If you’re contemplating how to deal with a difficult family member, whether you should go back to school, or if you can afford to buy a house, time may be exactly what you need.

But at a certain point, waiting time becomes wasted time. We think moving slowly will help us, but we can spend so much time considering our options that we get stuck in analysis paralysis. We need to remember that important doesn’t necessarily require slow every step of the way. There comes a time when a decision doesn’t need any more thought—and past this point, we’re overthinking it. We don’t need to keep pondering; we need to speed up—that is, make a decision and take some action.

Sometimes it’s easy to differentiate between purposeful pondering and overthinking; other times it takes a while to recognize what’s going on. But with practice, you’ll get better at recognizing when slowing down is a hindrance instead of a help and learn what to do about it.

Here are some signals that it’s time to move on.

When Making a Decision between Two Good Choices

Deciding between two good options sounds like a great position to be in, but it’s surprisingly tough because there may be no “right” answer and no clear way to decide. Our instinct may be to slow down until the right answer becomes obvious, but we do so at our peril—if we’re not careful, we can plunge straight into analysis paralysis. When we’re facing two good options, we don’t need more time. We need to move on.

Recently, my friend Claire slowed down in order to make a big decision, and it backfired big-time—until she realized what was happening and sped up. Claire has a killer resumé: she was an early employee at Twitter, knows everything about start-ups, and has been successfully running her own business for years. She and I meet regularly with a group of women who also all run their own businesses. We talk through issues we’re facing in our work and share ideas and strategies for what to do about them.

Over the course of one long summer, we listened to Claire discuss big-picture decisions she needed to make about her business. She eventually decided her next step would be to hire a consultant, someone who could help her evaluate her work with fresh eyes and determine how to move forward. She’d done her research, asked around, and narrowed her options to two solid candidates who were both competent, comfortable to talk with, and highly recommended. Now it was time to pick one.

This was a big decision for Claire. Everyone in our small group could see what was happening. Claire had already given the matter more than enough consideration. She needed to make a decision, because until she did, her bike was going to wobble.

And so at our next meeting, we invited her to flip a coin. Right then. Heads for Coach A, tails for Coach B.

She flipped the coin and hired her coach. (Actually, when the coin came up heads, Claire realized she’d been hoping for tails—so she hired the other coach. But she hired one.)

If we recognize that we’re debating between two good choices, we just need to choose one—because until we do, we keep the decision always in our mind, preventing us from moving on.

When You Know What to Do but Are Dragging Your Feet

As I started paying more attention to my own patterns of overthinking, I noticed something surprising. I had assumed that I succumbed to overthinking when I didn’t know what to do, but that’s often not what’s really happening. Sometimes I only pretend I don’t know what to do, because I don’t want to do it. (If you’ve ever spent twenty minutes lying awake in the middle of the night wondering if you should get out of bed to go to the bathroom, you know what I’m talking about.)

Whether the issue is big or small, if we don’t like the answer, we may