Stop overthinking

This is a brain dump for me.

I have not released any new articles on my blog for quite some time. I didn't have time and energy for it for a long time during summer because I chose to give work and other areas of my life more focus.

After being away from writing for over three months, it was hard to get back in. I had no idea how to start with it again, even though it is something I really enjoy doing.

Recently I have realized that I was overthinking too much. It doesn't matter what I write about because I do it more as a personal exercise to get my thoughts out on paper and less because I hope to help someone else with a specific problem. I choose to put my thoughts and experiences online because I hope someone else can relate and maybe start their own thought process.

This realization made me sit down now and finally start writing again. I make these thoughts as I go along, so if I get off-trail through this article, please bear with me.

Do you overthink?

I realized that I was overthinking how to get started way too much. So now I have just started writing something. I don't have any specific goal in mind except getting started and showing that overthinking often does more harm than good and can easily keep you from doing what you actually like and want to do.

Let us take me as an example. I started this blog, where I had a free space to write down thoughts, ideas, and new experiences in my life. It revolves around personal development because that's what interests me right now. But I got a lot of immediate, excellent feedback from friends and family. Suddenly I felt like it could mean a difference for people down the line. Don't get me wrong, this was always my intention, but I started overthinking a bit because I wanted to give genuine good value to you, the reader. The overthinking wasn't too much of a hindrance when I was still writing and learning about YouTube.

But after being away from it all for a long time, I felt like I had to get back to it in the same or better quality than I thought I had before. What I forgot in my overthinking was that progress in life is not linear. Sometimes you are on fire, and everything you touch turns to gold. Other times life is just crap and whatever you are doing probably turns out as shit. In the end, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you take action anyway because movement is the only way to get from high to low and back to high. If you start overthinking too much, it will stop your actions, and you will keep your current situation until you start doing something again.

Overthinking is the enemy of action.

Why does overthinking usually happen in a less productive or less motivated chapter of life?

As explained above, life goes up and down and up again like an endless curve of shit and cake. When your life is going well, it's almost effortless to keep momentum and take action. Everything you are doing feels good, and you are not afraid to mess up because small failures don't mean too much to you compared to everything else in your life. You have a substantial mental reserve and are very hard to break.

Naturally, with all this movement, you will come to your low part of life one way or the other. In the low part of life, you usually start being much less active in the activities you like. You maybe turn a bit more antisocial and use more time by yourself. Perhaps you use your phone or Netflix a lot more than usual. When all this collapses, you take much less action and become much less active in your own life. So you lose touch and forget how actually to do things. I know this feeling all too well... I have had to stop all streaming subscriptions because it was hard to control.

When I realized I was in this low part of my life, I wanted to return to the things that I felt made a real difference for me. Some of this was writing this blog. But because I had been away from writing for so long, I started to overthink, and I had no idea where to start. I began to think about what I wanted for my blog, what kind of image I wanted to show, and how I wanted the blog to be down the line. My problem was that I am currently not skilled enough to make all of this high-quality content because I'm very new to all this. I had never done writing like this in my life before I wrote the first article on my blog.

Doing your best is impossible.

The reason behind overthinking was that I wanted to do my best. But what I forgot was the natural curve of life. No matter how hard you try, you can not always do your best. What you can hope to achieve is that over time, your worst and best moments will be better than last time.

The conclusion is that you should stop overthinking and start taking action. It is much more important to take action and then review it after. Bad action is better than no action. Once you start taking action, you will automatically roll out of your low and start rolling up the hill to your high. Don't worry when you come back down again; at least now you know that the low chapter in your life is just a phase, and with action, you can come back right on top again. See life as curves always going one way and the other.

Start the action

Usually, I have some exercise or some advice in my articles, and I really have no idea what to put in for this one. As mentioned, I didn't plan this article, and I am just writing from my heart.

Nonetheless, I always have something to pull out of the hat.

Step 1.
Right now. Think of whatever you wish you would do more of.

Step 2.
Think of the smallest step you can take to do this task or at least start on it

Step 3.
Set a timer on your phone for 5 minutes, and take that first small step.

Step 4.
Feel how you don't want to stop after 5 minutes and keep going! Or if other parts of life call for your attention. Set 3 alarms for tomorrow when you think you might have time, and start from step 1 again.

My first step

And with this article, I finally took my first step in what I believe is the right direction for me. I am so happy I finally started writing again, and I can't wait to turn this into another YouTube video! Thank you for reading, and I hope you found some relatable and helpful across my complete ramble here.

Have fun, and keep going!