overthinking is killing you

the biggest tragedy of your career (and life) can be avoided if you get out of your own way

stop shooting yourself in the foot.

every time i run into a hard problem, and my back is up against the wall, i notice an inclination to want to “think my way out.” turns out, that it doesn’t just work that way.

we can characterize this as “overthinking” and it will kill any velocity you have with your career, relationships, projects, and anything meaningful to you.

here’s the solution:

first, identify the source of why you’re overthinking. this in an of itself requires thinking. deep thinking.

which is ironic because this post is all about overthinking, but i digress.

you’ve found the source, the root cause of why it is you feel the need to think your way out.

ask yourself, “what’s the simplest answer to my solution?”

you will probably be able to come up with a very good answer. once you’ve come up with your answer, just do that thing. focus on that one thing and nothing else.

for my ai company, i’ve found that i overthink about our revenue model & growth strategy. i overthink getting more capital from investors.

the simplest answer to my problem is to get more paying subscribers, which we already have. anything outside of that is pure distraction. now i know that in order to do that, i should just focus on making the product as good as possible for our target audience.

more often than not, these problems we create are mere distractions, and not real problems. they are fantasies. we’re getting in our own way with overthinking. but we can stop right now.