062 • The obvious method I missed when trying to avoid overthinking

Aug 17, 2024

Decision fatigue and overthinking are silent killers of consistent and patient progress.

Lord knows I’ve been there myself, dedicating too much time during the day to doing just one thing, ending in overthinking and making no progress.

You only have a certain amount of worthy attention and focus to spend during the day, and there’s no more once that’s gone.

Instead of forcing yourself into too many hours of work, it’s better to be more consistent with less over more time, giving your projects space to grow and develop.

I wanted to talk about a couple of ways you can limit the work and distraction you do and are exposed to, in case they help. They have for me...

Build in some artificial limits for yourself

I’m going to come back to one fact that I always seem to mention - that I block myself out of things on my devices strongly.

I can’t access the internet first thing in the morning, making me work more on creating and writing. There’s no access to distracting apps or websites likely to pull my focus

An example - I always see people that I look up to preaching using just Apple Notes (advising to keep things simple I guess).

I tried to use the app many times and this was a source of decision fatigue and stress getting it wrong. I didn’t in fact need Apple Notes.

So I permanently blocked access to this app on my computer so that decision is made ahead of time, completely removing this avenue of distraction.

It’s extreme, I know, and perhaps not the most sustainable method of building focus.

There’s something else that works that I'd like to get better at, which would likely reduce the strictness of the blocking I’d have to do...

Be patient and give your work room (non-artificial limits)

You don’t have to be a one-dimensional person, spending all your life on work without any pauses or change.

It’s a popular narrative to tell people to become overly-absorbed by their work and to push things to the max but from what I've experienced, this doesn’t work.

The more you drag work out, the more you’re going to struggle to enter deep focus, leading to a reduction in the quality of output, which after all is one of the most important things.

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Thank you! Now back to the issue...

If you have other things going on in your life, relationships, sports, hobbies or others, then you’re going to have no choice but to spend some time away from your work.

When I haven't taken this on board, I’ve struggled with overthinking and spending too much time with certain parts of my business work.

Adding in other dimensions to life again, fatigue and neuroticism reduced along with silly decisions like moving all my notes to Apple Notes from Obsidian (for example).

This works wholistically as there’s no point optimising for only building a good business or for being good at one thing. It’s better to aim to be as good as possible in all areas of life.

Admittedly you’re going to have periods where you’re more dialled in on your work because you have things to build and deadlines to meet. When you’re not though, don’t just force the same level of immersion.

Take time out, plan things and give the work room. Figure out how to get more bang for your buck in terms of time investment, and plan your next steps and goals to make sure you’re headed in the right direction.

This is just a lesson I have to remind myself in the summer when I have fewer other commitments that university amongst other things puts on my shoulders.

I hope you’ve found it somewhat helpful (I'm praying it’s not me finding a subconscious excuse to rant at myself).

Recently I’ve been doing some of the planning I just mentioned above, rather than being completely immersed - building a new idea of what I'll be sharing in the future.

Keep an eye out on the website and the socials below for this new work when it comes out!

See you next week,

-- Theo