I recently came across the idea that taking action, any action, produces more information making it easier to think and make progress. So I wanted to put it to the test.

For one week I set up reminders everywhere to be mindful of catching myself thinking about things. Yes, I labelled any thinking at all as “over thinking”. My idea was that this approach would increase my offs of catching myself overthinking. It worked quite well, and had a profound side effect.

When I caught myself I had to stop thinking and do something, anything. Since I work with design on a computer this usually meant I had to step away from the computer, clean up, do dishes, whatever I could do without thinking about it first.

This experiment was a success.

Doing things instead of getting stuck thinking gave me a lot more energy so I ended up finishing more work and feeling less tired.

I also had a profound insight. Nearly all my thinking was overthinking. Before this experiment I had assumed I spent a lot of time productively thinking about things, and some time over thinking. It turns out most of my thinking time is really spent looping arguments and thoughts I’ve already had. In fact the only time I noticed I was thinking productively was when I was writing my thoughts down. I suspect this is why writing is so useful. And why so many people dislike doing it, because it creates cognitive load.

I really recommend you try this one. Let me know if it worked for you.