While life goes on here and I have a growing number of tasks on my plate, I've been feeling somewhat paralysed and defeated by my own state of inaction lately. What I previously thought of as procrastination might actually be a case of "analysis paralysis". Maybe the two are related. Yes, I'm constantly on the hunt for fitting labels to my psychological problems!
Analysis paralysis is defined as the state of over-analyzing (or over-thinking) a situation so that a decision or action is never taken, in effect paralyzing the outcome (Wikipedia).
Analysis paralysis is defined as the state of over-analyzing (or over-thinking) a situation so that a decision or action is never taken, in effect paralyzing the outcome (Wikipedia).
There might be many reasons for this condition, according to my analysis (hah!). Being too theoretical, spending too much time inside the head, trying to meet unrealistic ideals for deliverables like reports (a.k.a. perfectionism) and over-estimating the amount of work that goes into making a perfect deliverable. While it can lead to good quality outputs, it's a terrible way to live, really. And it's certainly not the way to work smart or efficiently.
It is also possible that over-thinking to an extreme can lead one to being disconnected with reality over time. For an over-thinker, I think that being sanely present in reality is a fine balance between the interpretation of facts and external feedback on one side and going with assumptions and intuition on the other side.
So my resolution THIS new year, is that I'll try to think less and just act on the things I have to do! Kind of like the Nike inspired memes below.
The strategy is to go from this state of mind...
(Image source: The Oatmeal)
... to this.
As Bruce Lee once said, “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”
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