How I Stopped Overthinking

Summary

In this video, the speaker shares five practical strategies to overcome overthinking, a habit that has hindered them in the past. They explain the difference between past and future overthinking, highlighting anxiety as a root cause. The strategies include thinking in terms of experiments, considering expected value, using fear as a compass, maintaining consistent action despite overthinking, and consulting a mental board of advisors. These techniques aim to shift the focus from over-analyzing to taking action, ultimately helping viewers pursue their goals without being paralyzed by fear and doubt.

Takeaways

• 🤔 Overthinking is often categorized with analysis paralysis, where excessive thinking prevents action.
• 🔮 Overthinking typically involves constructing elaborate narratives about past events or future possibilities, leading to anxiety and fear.
• 🏃‍♂️ The opposite of overthinking is acting by instinct, which can be a problem of acting too rashly without enough thought.
• 👂 Brene Brown's definition of fear and anxiety helps differentiate between immediate threats and potential future threats.
• 🦁 Our brains, particularly the amygdala, are attuned to social threats due to evolutionary reasons, which can trigger overthinking in social situations.
• 🧪 Thinking in terms of 'experiments' can alleviate the pressure of decision-making by fostering curiosity and reducing the fear of outcomes.
• 🎰 The concept of 'expected value' (EV) in decision-making can help determine if an action is worth taking by weighing potential outcomes against their probabilities.
• 🧭 Fear can act as a compass, indicating that the scarier option might be the one that leads to growth and should be pursued.
• 🔄 Consistent action is key to overcoming overthinking; it's important to keep taking steps even while analyzing.
• 🧘‍♂️ The 'Mental Board of Advisors' (MBA) is a strategy to combat overthinking by seeking advice from admired individuals in one's mind.
• 💡 The ultimate goal is to shift from a bias towards overthinking to a bias towards action, using these strategies to move forward.

Q & A

What are the five practical strategies discussed in the video to combat overthinking?

The video does not explicitly list five strategies, but it does discuss several, including thinking in terms of experiments, considering the expected value of actions, using fear as a compass, maintaining consistent action despite overthinking, and consulting a 'mental board of advisors' for guidance.

What is the definition of overthinking as mentioned in the video?

Overthinking, as described in the video, falls under the same category as analysis paralysis, where individuals stop themselves from doing things because they are over-analyzing them in their heads, often under the misconception that more thinking will lead to better decisions.

What is the difference between 'analysis paralysis' and 'act by instinct' as per the video?

Analysis paralysis is the state where one overthinks to the point of inaction, while 'act by instinct' is the opposite problem where a person acts too rashly without sufficient thought, often leading to less informed decisions.

Why does overthinking often lead to regretful living according to the video?

Overthinking can lead to regretful living because it prevents individuals from following their dreams and pursuing what they truly want due to excessive worry and analysis, which ultimately stops them from taking necessary actions.

How does the video relate anxiety and fear to overthinking?

The video explains that overthinking is often rooted in anxiety or fear, particularly the fear of potential future threats to one's well-being, which triggers the brain's response to social threats and leads to a cycle of overanalysis.

What is the concept of 'thinking in terms of experiments' as a strategy to overcome overthinking?

Thinking in terms of experiments involves treating potential actions as experiments rather than high-stakes decisions. This mindset reduces pressure and allows for curiosity and wonder to guide actions, making it easier to take steps without being paralyzed by overthinking.

What does the video suggest about the relationship between expected value and decision-making?

The video suggests using the concept of expected value from probability theory to weigh decisions. By considering the magnitude of potential outcomes and their likelihood, one can determine if the action has a positive or negative expected value, guiding whether it's worth pursuing.

How does the video recommend using fear as a guide for decision-making?

The video recommends using fear as a compass, suggesting that if something feels scary or outside of one's comfort zone, it might be the right thing to do, as growth often occurs in uncomfortable situations.

What does the 'mental board of advisors' concept involve, and how can it help with overthinking?

The 'mental board of advisors' is a conceptual tool where one imagines advice from people they admire. By considering what these individuals might say in a given situation, it helps to shift the bias from overthinking to taking action.

How does the video connect consistent action with overcoming overthinking?

The video emphasizes that consistent action is the foundation for overcoming overthinking. It suggests that while it's okay to think things through, it should not prevent consistent effort or action, ensuring progress even when thoughts are overwhelming.

What is the video's stance on the idea that overthinking can be helpful in certain situations?

The video implies that overthinking can be helpful in understanding and analyzing situations but warns against letting it paralyze action. It advocates for a balance where overthinking is tempered with consistent action and decision-making based on positive expected value.

Outlines

00:00

🤔 Overcoming Overthinking: Strategies for Action

The speaker introduces the video's focus on overcoming overthinking, a habit that has hindered personal and professional growth. They share their own experiences with overthinking and its impact on significant life decisions, such as starting a business and relationships. The concept of overthinking is explored in the context of analysis paralysis, where excessive thinking prevents action. The speaker promises to discuss strategies to combat this issue and differentiates between past event overthinking and future event overthinking, with a focus on the latter's role in causing anxiety and fear, which are often the root causes of overthinking.

05:01

🧪 Experimentation as a Cure for Overthinking

The speaker presents the first strategy to combat overthinking: viewing decisions as experiments. This mindset shift reduces the pressure associated with outcomes, allowing for curiosity and wonder to guide actions instead of fear of failure. The concept of expected value is introduced as a tool to evaluate decisions based on potential long-term gains or losses. The speaker uses personal anecdotes, such as starting a YouTube channel, to illustrate how treating actions as experiments can lead to learning and growth, ultimately resulting in positive outcomes.

10:03

🛣️ Fear as a Compass: Navigating Overthinking

Building on the previous strategies, the speaker suggests that fear can act as a compass, indicating the direction for growth and action. They argue that discomfort and fear often signal opportunities for stepping out of one's comfort zone. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of consistent action, even in the face of overthinking. They share insights from their YouTube Academy, where they teach the importance of regular content creation over perfecting every detail. The idea is to maintain momentum through consistent efforts, which can override the paralysis caused by overthinking.

🏋️‍♂️ Consistency Over Perfection: A Key to Overcoming Overthinking

The speaker continues to stress the importance of consistency in action, using the example of health and fitness routines. They admit to their own struggles with starting a workout regimen due to overthinking and highlight the advice from friends who emphasized the importance of just starting and being consistent. The speaker introduces the concept of the 'Mental Board of Advisors' (MBA), a strategy to consult imagined advice from respected individuals to guide decision-making and encourage action over inaction.

📈 Bias Towards Action: The Final Strategy Against Overthinking

In the concluding part of the script, the speaker summarizes the strategies discussed and emphasizes the need to replace the bias towards overthinking with a bias towards action. They suggest that most people, including themselves, tend to overanalyze situations when what is needed is decisive action. The speaker encourages viewers to seek feedback through action, learn from it, and iterate, rather than remaining static due to overthinking. They also promote a previous video on overcoming procrastination, linking it to the theme of the current video.

Keywords

💡Overthinking

Overthinking is the act of excessively analyzing a situation to the point where it inhibits decision-making and action. In the video, the speaker describes overthinking as a natural tendency that has nearly stopped him from taking significant steps in life, such as starting a business or asking his future wife out. The video's theme revolves around strategies to combat this behavior, illustrating how overthinking can lead to 'analysis paralysis,' a state where one is unable to act due to excessive thought.

💡Analysis Paralysis

Analysis paralysis is a state where a person is unable to make decisions or take action due to overthinking or over-analyzing a situation. The term is used in the script to describe the negative outcome of overthinking, where the desire for more information and the fear of making a wrong decision lead to inaction. The video aims to provide strategies to overcome this state and encourage taking action despite uncertainty.

💡Experiment

In the context of the video, treating actions as 'experiments' is a strategy to reduce the pressure of decision-making. The speaker suggests that by considering actions as experiments, one can approach them with curiosity and wonder, rather than with the expectation of a specific outcome. This mindset helps in taking the focus off potential failure and allows for learning from the experience, as exemplified by the speaker's initial foray into making music videos for his YouTube channel.

💡Expected Value (EV)

Expected value is a concept from probability theory, which in the video is used as a decision-making tool. It involves weighing the potential outcomes of a decision by multiplying the magnitude of the outcome by its probability of occurrence. The speaker uses the concept to encourage taking actions that have a positive expected value over the long term, suggesting that this perspective can help mitigate the fear of immediate failure and promote a bias towards action.

💡Fear as a Compass

The idea of 'fear as a compass' suggests that fear can guide one towards the right actions by indicating the direction of growth and learning. The speaker mentions that fear often arises when considering actions outside of one's comfort zone, and choosing the path that induces more fear can lead to greater personal development. This concept is used to counteract the tendency to overthink by providing a heuristic for decision-making that favors growth-oriented choices.

💡Consistency

Consistency is emphasized in the video as the foundation of success, particularly in the context of content creation and business. The speaker advises that overthinking should not prevent consistent action, such as regularly publishing videos or maintaining a workout routine. By prioritizing consistency, creators can continue to produce work and improve over time, despite the presence of overthinking tendencies.

💡Mental Board of Advisors (MBA)

The Mental Board of Advisors is a conceptual tool introduced in the video to help with decision-making when overthinking is paralyzing action. It involves imagining a group of admired individuals, real or fictional, who provide guidance and advice. The speaker uses this concept to shift from a state of overanalysis to one of action by considering what his admired mentors would advise in a given situation.

💡Bias Towards Action

A 'bias towards action' is the preference for taking action over excessive contemplation. The video discusses the need to develop this bias as a counterbalance to the natural tendency to overthink. By adopting a mindset that favors doing over thinking, individuals can make progress and learn from the outcomes of their actions, rather than being stuck in a cycle of indecision.

💡Anxiety

Anxiety is defined in the video as a perceived future threat to one's well-being, which can lead to overthinking and inaction. The speaker differentiates between fear, a response to immediate threats, and anxiety, which is related to potential future threats. The video suggests that recognizing overthinking as a manifestation of anxiety can help in addressing it more effectively.

💡Stoicism

Stoicism is briefly mentioned in the video as a philosophy that may help with a certain type of overthinking related to past events. Stoicism teaches the acceptance of things that are beyond one's control and focusing on one's own responses to events. While not the main focus of the video, stoicism is presented as a potential strategy for dealing with overthinking about past events.

💡Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a psychological treatment approach mentioned in the video that can be useful for dealing with overthinking. CBT focuses on identifying and changing negative thought patterns and behaviors. The speaker suggests that CBT, along with stoicism, could be beneficial for managing overthinking about past events, although the main emphasis of the video is on future-oriented overthinking.

Highlights

The video discusses five practical strategies to combat overthinking, a common issue that can hinder personal and professional growth.

Overthinking is compared to analysis paralysis, where excessive thought prevents action.

The speaker shares personal experiences where overthinking nearly stopped significant life events, such as starting a business or a YouTube channel.

Overthinking is categorized into past event overthinking and future event overthinking, with a focus on the latter's impact on decision-making.

Anxiety and fear are identified as the root causes of overthinking, with a distinction made between fear as a response to immediate threats and anxiety as a worry about future threats.

The concept of 'thinking in terms of experiments' is introduced as a strategy to alleviate the pressure of decision-making.

The idea of 'expected value' from probability theory is applied to life decisions to determine if an action is worth taking.

Fear is posited as a compass, indicating the direction of growth and suggesting that the scarier option might be the more beneficial one.

The importance of consistent action is emphasized, even when overthinking, to ensure progress and learning.

The concept of a 'Mental Board of Advisors' is introduced to help guide decisions by imagining advice from admired figures.

The video suggests that overthinking often stems from a bias towards anxiety rather than action, and encourages a shift towards action.

The speaker shares a personal anecdote about starting a YouTube channel as an experiment, leading to significant personal growth.

The video touches on the evolutionary aspect of overthinking, relating it to social threats and the human brain's response to fear.

A comparison is made between the immediate response to fear and the tendency to overthink in response to anxiety about future events.

The idea that social risks, such as rejection or judgment, are often the triggers for overthinking in modern contexts is explored.

The video concludes with a call to action, encouraging viewers to move from overthinking to taking action in their lives.

A reference is made to a related video on overcoming procrastination, suggesting further resources for viewers interested in personal development.

Transcripts

hey friends welcome back to the channel

in this video we are going to be sharing

I'm going to be talking about five

practical strategies that help me stop

overthinking now I have been an

overthinker all my life and overthinking

has nearly stopped me from doing lots of

things that have ended up being very

good for me overthinking nearly stopped

me from starting my business from

starting my YouTube channel and from

asking my future wife out on our first

date but over the years I have found

strategies that have been actually quite

helpful in combating this natural desire

that me and I've heard other people have

to just overthink the hell out of things

and that's what we're going to talk

about in the video so firstly let's talk

about what is overthinking in the first

place and generally if you search

Wikipedia overthinking comes under

broadly the same category as analysis

paralysis and that's basically where we

stop ourselves from doing things because

we're in our heads about those things

too much and we are sort of thinking

that the more we think about the thing

the more information we're going to get

and that's in theory going to result in

a more legit decision than if we just

acted sooner rather than later now the

opposite of analysis paralysis is X

extinct by instinct which is kind of

funny and that's basically the opposite

problem where you're the sort of person

that acts too rashly and you don't think

of things enough but usually for me and

most people that I know it tends to be

the other way it's not that we struggle

with like acting too fast it's that we

struggle with acting too slow because

we're just stuck in our heads trying to

overthink all the time so where does

overthinking come from and why do we do

it and then I promise we're going to

talk about the specific strategies

afterwards but essentially overthinking

there's probably two types of it there's

like past overthinking past event

overthinking and then there's future

event overthinking now past event

overthinking is when someone has said

something or done something or something

has happened in our lives and we like to

construct this mental narrative about

the thing and we tell ourselves this

elaborate story like oh that person sent

me this sort of text and therefore that

must mean a b c d e f g and we construct

this ridiculous narrative around it that

just serves to make us feel bad when in

reality that person probably didn't even

mean it that way they probably weren't

thinking of it in those ways and we just

sort of make ourselves miserable by

ascribing all of these different

different this different sequence of

events to something that could be just

completely innocuous but that's not the

kind of overthinking I want to focus on

here I mean the solution to that is

stoicism and like CBT and a bunch of

other things along that category

um I like to think about the future kind

of overthinking where it's analysis

paralysis in terms of we want to do a

thing in the future but we find

ourselves overthinking about the thing

and then it stops us from actually doing

the thing and I think it's really that

kind of overthinking that leads us to

not following our dreams and ultimately

living a life that we regret because we

were in our heads too much we over

analyzed and that stopped us from going

after the things that we really wanted

to and broadly the reason that happens

is anxiety slash fear now I'm going to

take a page out of brene Brown's atlas

of the heart which defines anxiety and

fear in different ways and I think this

is actually quite a quite a helpful

helpful definition to appreciate

basically what she says is that fear is

a response to a threat in the moment and

that threat might be a threat to your

survival so for example if a lion were

to walk into this room right now I'd

feel fear because there is a threat to

to my survival right now whereas anxiety

is where I perceive that in the future

there may be a threat to my survival and

so it's worrying about this potential

thing that may happen at some point in

the future now no one overthinks when it

comes to bug standard fear if a line

came in I'd run I wouldn't overthink the

hell out of out of the running but we

all tend to overthink when it comes to

the anxiety side of things when there is

some sort of thing in the future where

we think that like ah if this thing I'm

thinking of doing goes badly that could

be a potentially huge threat to my

survival and generally it's not really

our physical survival mostly when we

think of overthinking in the in the

modern world it's not like oh I'm really

worried I'm going to be jumping over a

cliff or something like it it tends to

be more about social risks I'm really

concerned I'm overthinking uploading my

first YouTube video I'm overthinking oh

asking that person out on a date because

what if they rejected me and what if

that would be bad and the amygdala which

is the part of our brain that deals with

fear and threat and stuff is very very

attuned to social threat because back in

the day back in our caveman times

um any kind of social threat if that

meant that you got Outcast from the

group suddenly that means you're

basically dead because now you have no

friends to help protect you and that

thing which was adaptive back in the day

that stopped us from taking risks and

that caused us to evolve this

overthinking mechanism it's now not

particularly helpful in the current

world today where we're still operating

in caveman brain mode where it's like oh

my God if my friends are gonna judge me

that's going to be bad for my survival

when in reality it's really not and so

recognizing that that really

overthinking is just when we are scared

of something there's a few different

things that I like to keep in mind that

helped me kind of take action despite my

tendency to overthink the first one is

what I call thinking in terms of

experiments and this is like a pretty

magical thing because I find that for me

whenever I'm overthinking or on the

verge of overthinking something I just

tell myself the phrase hey it's just an

experiment and there's something about

that word experiment that just

automatically takes all of the pressure

off the decision if for example I was

overthinking which I was uploading my

first couple of videos to my YouTube

channel ages ago when I was making

Musical singing covers

I kind of treated that as a bit of an

experiment hey it's just an experiment I

don't have to I'm not signing up to do

this forever it's just an experiment and

I'm going to see what happens I'm going

to see how I feel and it's like when

we're when we're thinking in terms of

experiments we're approaching things not

with a sense of wanting things to be a

certain way but we're approaching them

with Wonder and curiosity huh I wonder

how I would respond in this kind of

situation I wonder what it would be like

to try and film a video of me and my

friends singing a song and I wonder what

it would be like for me to edit that

video and that decision I made to run

the experiment essentially of making

music videos on my YouTube channel like

way back in the day ultimately taught me

how to edit videos and helped me get

over that first hurdle of putting myself

out there on YouTube with my channel

five years ago when this thing kind of

started so that was thinking in

experiments and I find that that really

does help my tendency to overthink

things secondly I find it really helpful

again to avoid overthinking to think

about the idea of expected value now in

the world of probability in the world of

gambling in the world of Poker and

actually in the world of anything in

general expected value is where you

multiply apply the magnitude of you know

good or bad with the probability of said

good or bad happening so for example if

I flipped a coin and if it landed heads

I was going to win a hundred dollars

then the expected value of the coin flip

would be 50 because there is a 50

likelihood of winning a hundred dollars

now this concept is super interesting

because if you start applying this to

your life then you start thinking in

terms of rather rather than in terms of

oh my God like is this decision going to

succeed if I ask that girl out is she

going to say yes you're not really

concerned about that all you're trying

to do is weigh up is this plus EB or

minus EV is it a positive expected value

if I were to do the thing enough times

would I expect that in the long run I

would come out on top or would I expect

that actually the risks do outweigh the

benefits of the thing and therefore it's

negative EV minus expected value and the

cool thing about this is that it removes

the kind of uh pressure on a single

decision and it's not so much of like

being wedded to the outcome of a

particular decision or a particular

course of action it's more about hey

it's plus EB it's worth running the

experiment anyway and it's like I was

interviewing a friend of mine Chris box

is a professional poker player and poker

players judge the quality of their

decisions not on the outcome but on

basically the quality of the decision

they made based on the information that

they had was it a good decision even if

it ended up losing it still could have

been the right decision because you know

that if you make enough of those

decisions over the long term you are

likely to come out on top and that's why

something like sending a cold email to

someone saying you want to grab coffee

with them is always plus EV it's like

there's basically zero downside to it

and if you do it enough times you're

probably going to get a response and

someone's probably going to say yes to

you similarly putting yourself out there

on the internet starting a blog or a

podcast or a YouTube channel these

things are generally plus EV you are

very unlikely to experience significant

downsides of them but if they go well as

in the case of this YouTube channel it's

completely changed my life it's a very

plus EV decision whatever the outcome

might be and so whenever I find myself

in this Loop of like overthinking stuff

and that analysis paralysis stops me

from doing anything I think like okay

what if I treated this as an experiment

and then what is the EV here if it's

plus EV I might as well just do the

thing and just not worry about the

specific outcome too much alrighty tip

number 3 is the idea that fear is your

compass I first came across this from my

friend Nathaniel Drew who is a fellow

YouTuber that that phrase put a lot of

things straight in my mind

because broadly what I've realized over

the years is that whenever I'm scared of

doing something it's probably the right

thing to do because really we're only

scared about doing things where we feel

uncomfortable in some way we feel like

it's out of our comfort zone and that is

where growth is found and so if I think

back to my life anytime I've made a

decision where I've been scared of it

I've always been glad of it and whenever

I've made a decision which is safer than

the option that feels scarier I've

always kind of thought oh maybe I maybe

I should have gone with a more scary

option and so these days when I'm at a

Crossroads and I find myself

overthinking one easy heuristic is fear

is my compass let me go towards the

option that scares me more because

chances are I'll be I'll be able to

learn more from that than the option

that's more within my comfort zone

alrighty tip number four for dealing

with overthinking is something that I I

do all the time when it comes to

publishing stuff publishing videos

podcasts blog posts like any kind of

creative thing any kind of business

thing which is that I'm allowed to

overthink all I want but it has to be on

the foundation of consistent action so

what do I mean by this I mean like I I

see this problem in my YouTuber Academy

all the time if you don't know I run a

course I teach people how to be

part-time YouTubers and everyone always

really really really struggles with

overthinking the hell out of their

YouTube channels because they're always

like oh I could upload this video but

it's not very good the production value

is not great the lighting's not great I

don't know how to speak to a camera I

don't know how to edit et cetera Etc et

cetera and because we teach them a bunch

of stuff in the course they get into

this overthinking analysis paralysis

mode whereas the people that succeed on

YouTube the ones you know you know are

students who do really well or the

people the creators that I know who've

succeeded on YouTube and any other

business and any other content thing

since the start of time have always

treated consistency as the fundamental

Bedrock whereby you just have to keep on

publishing videos every week on top of

that you know the way I think it is I

can overthink the hell I can I can

overthink all I would like but I have to

just keep on publishing the videos every

week and that means that overthinking

and Analysis is all well and good but

it's on top of consistent action which

means I'm never in the point and I've

done this occasionally and I've always

kind of regretted doing this but I don't

want to be in in the position where by

over analyzing I actually stop doing the

app action which is ultimately the thing

that matters similarly this sort of

attitude has stopped me from taking my

health seriously a lot because I would

always think that like oh you know I

couldn't possibly start working out I

couldn't possibly start running I

couldn't possibly start eating healthily

unless I had a completely firm plan and

unless I knew exactly what I was doing

and unless I read all the papers that

showed the evidence base on XYZ now I'd

speak to friends who were into running

or into working out and stuff and they'd

be like broke like just get started

honestly showing up and going to the gym

some more consistently is the main thing

for getting henched all of the other

stuff fine you can read about it but if

you don't show up to the gym regularly

it's just never going to happen for you

and so I try and kind of incorporate

that whenever I'm I'm worried about

overthinking final concept that I find

really helpful is something that my

Coach Corey introduced me to a few

months ago and I've been using it a lot

since then and that's the idea of the

MBA the mental Board of advisors one of

the mental Board of advisors a mental

Board of advisors is where you have

people in your brain people that you

admire living or dead you know it might

be creative as it might be authors it

might be entrepreneurs it might be your

parents it might be people you look up

to in some kind of way and you imagine

in your head like that's your mental

Board of advisors and you ask them for

advice on what you should do in a

situation so for me my mental Board of

advisors are like Tim Ferriss and Cal

Newport and Ryan holiday these are

people who write books who I I like

their writing basically and generally if

I'm overthinking a situation if I'm

analyzing the hell out of something that

I don't necessarily need to be I think

all right cool let's just mentally

consult my mental Board of advisors what

would Tim Ferriss say what would Derek's

ever say what would Cal Newport say what

would Ryan holiday say and it's like the

that actually gives me a reasonable idea

of what the reasonable plus EV response

in the situation is obviously my mental

construction of these people is never

really going to be able to predict the

future but that's not the point the

point is I just need to have a bias

towards action rather than a bias

towards anxiety and overthinking which

is kind of my default State and that's

really what combating overthinking in

this sense is all about it's all about

replacing our bias towards thinking

about stuff with a bias towards doing

stuff and recognize that if we are in

the thinking amp more than most people

then chances are we just need to nudge

ourselves more towards the action camp

and I've met very few people that are in

the action Camp who need to think harder

about decisions most of the people that

I meet including me we we tend to

struggle with this idea that we're over

analyzing things when really we should

just be acting because once we do the

thing then we get feedback and then we

can improve and then we can iterate over

time but at least we're moving forward

rather than staying static anyway those

were just some general thoughts on

overthinking hopefully you found them

somewhat helpful if you like this and

then you might like to check out five

strategies on how to beat

procrastination whereas this which is a

similar chilled out video where I just

kind of walk around here and talk about

my thoughts on how I personally beat

procrastination which is another thing

that I like many of us struggle with as

well so check out that video over there

thank you so much for watching do hit

the Subscribe button if you aren't

already and I'll see you in the next

video bye

uh still recording isn't he what a snake