Edition #13: you can overthink these things
I'm an over-thinker, and I feel like it holds me back.
There's other people, just doing stuff, seemingly fine. And here's me, still thinking about it.
I started thinking about Bitcoin in about 2015 — and I'm still just thinking about it. Had I thought about it a little less and taken a punt on, say, ￡500, it could have gone on to pay for my first house.
Do I regret this? Not really. ￡500 is a lot to part with, and it's not like there weren't red flags around the crypto scene to trigger notes of caution. Plus "think about it a bit less and take a punt" isn't exactly sage investment advice.
No, I'm a over-thinker and that's who I am. It's those same instincts that meant I happily swerved the disastrous NFT monkey fad and have never broken all my limbs in a skiing accident.
You win some, you lose some.
It's very easy for thinking to be painted as pointless inaction: dead air, a waste of time. Especially when it's dramatically highlighted and underlined as in this week's snippet — and positioned as the opposite to doing things — it can certainly feel like this is inherently true. Yeah, action! Boo, thinking!
Even I'm guilty of this. "You can overthink these things", I like to say, usually as I'm bored of a discussion and just want to do something. Some weeks ago, I wrote in this very newsletter that "after a certain point, you've just got to draw the line and do stuff."
It's true that thinking by itself will get you nowhere. Action makes things happen. It's what takes us forward and enables us to learn. And I wholeheartedly endorse the sentiment of trusting yourself and making a decision in the spirit of driving progress over achieving perfection.
When I was studying on my apprenticeship, I repeatedly faced this battle when writing assignments: how far should I go to make each piece a dazzling piece of groundbreaking academic insight? Or should I just hit the word count and move on?
Inevitably, the answer is somewhere in the middle. Without taking action and submitting, I wouldn't get feedback, and I wouldn't move any closer to graduating.
But it's not like thinking isn't a helpful contribution too.
Sure, there's no such thing as perfect. But there is such a thing as incompetent. Think of all the wasted energy from things that were done without enough thought. Some might have provided valuable learnings, but some were just stupid and expensive mistakes.
So where is the magic line between "thinking" and "overthinking"? What is the "certain point" after which the doing should take over?
If only it were that simple. As with creativity, it's a balance to strike, an instinct to be tempered. An occasional tap on your own shoulder to get our of your head.
In all honesty, I don't know. But I'll have a think.