I'm an overthinker. Even the smallest thing to happen to me, i will overanalyze it. I am not a Talkatone person naturally. I tend to be more on thinking rather than speaking. I don't know why since my family seems like extroverted, my siblings are talkative as well. Maybe I'm just different, and i accept it.
Like in any abundance, there are downsides of being more on thinking side. Overthinking is bad without action. I will list what i think is the bad party of thinking too much.
I just want to share what i experience in overthinking.
Overcomplication leads to negative headspace. It is very obvious but true. When you overthink, you moght think you are just planning at first, but it is a slope when you think a lot and do not create a concise physical plan. If it is not written down, it is probably just a thought and nothing else. How i start overthinking is by having a problem i want to solve. Let’s say that im having trouble to draw/paint. The first thing i think is that “if i just practice enough, i will get good at this!” Thats a nice thought. Then i plan on what are the steps needed to draw good. Maybe practicing everyday, when i think of practicing everyday, things gets foggy up on there. Instead of planning, imagination takes place and wouldn’t you know it, I'm thinking about how I'm praticing but being berated for being bad at it, then I'm starting to not stay at all. Instead of creating and sticking to a plan, in my head, it became a drama about life being hard and that no matter how hard i try, i will not equate to a good artist.
Currently, I'm relearning what I've learned at college. I graduated with the course of bachelor of science of information technology. And right now, if i don't complicate my learning path, i will learn so much so fast. Heck, if i just focus on learning back then at college, i might've landed on a job related to my course. Doing more hands on programming will beat endless amounts of just reading and watching programming tutorials. Doing nothing will lead to higher chance of overcomplication. There are times in the morning where when i wake up early, i have time to do whatever i want. I set my alarm at 5:30 am labeled as “job”, while my day job starts at 8:30 in the morning, I'm just a few minutes away from the store. I use that time to learn back programming. I don't always get up early, but when i do, i try my best to have progress learning. I fear that even after all these study session, i still have nothing to show for it. As much as i can, i clear up my head from negative thoughts and prepare to study as fast as possible.
I am currently doing an IBM free course, and this course is about Web Development. In the topic of Abstraction, they had an example which says, “You don't have to be a car mechanic to know how to drive a car”. I don't know what i took for it to be impactful for me that day but it hit me like a truck. That example was the exact meaning of overthinking and overcomplication.
I dont have to know how html and css are made, i just have to know how to use them. I do not have to know computer science for me to play video games on it. We don’t take the first steps because we want to learn how does the muscles of my feet works instead of just moving them. Through the movement, we will understand how it works. Maybe you are like me who want to know how does things work under the hood. You want to learn everything that is related to your goal, skill, interest. It maybe produce a sense of impostor syndrome in you since you don't know how pencils and papers are made, so therefore you cannot call yourself a writer. Since other people made our tools, we cannot fully be sure if we truly know how things work.
Even if i encounter these problems everyday, i try to make progress bit by bit. The main thing i do is take action. Straight-up doing the activity dissolves imagination from reality. Starting is rough, but when you forgot to think about the activity and instead just be in the moment, you will realize most of the worries are inside of your head. And now that you have hands-on experience, you will recalibrate everything that you know about the task and that will help you to tackle that action again. Keep a positive attitude. Maybe your worries were right, the job is hard. Maybe there are possible ways to start easy, so that Father Time will help you get through this and slowly and surely, you will say to yourself “Huh, it wasn’t that bad. It’s aight”.
Planning is useful too! Just dont plan for so long that instead of doing the task, the task is now to plan. Maybe spend a few minutes at the end of the week to see how things are going. Mindless action is harmful as motionless thoughts. Spending one day of the week on planning will lessen overthinking and less self-sabotaging, making you focus on doing the task. You can plan as simple like making a bullet list, checking it off everyday so that you stick to it. You can also do some detailed plans like how to handle your work, or what specific equipment you need so that you can execute your work efficiently.
Overthinking is hard to avoid, especially is you are not doing anything. You being busy can lessen overthinking. But you have to do good action and not just low level things, like spendy all day playing video games, or drinking or abusing harmful substance just for the overthinking to stop. You have to face it, and make it in your own pace to make actions instead of just thinking without any idea on how to do it perfectly. Do it scuffed rather than perfect.