5 Ways to Stop Overthinking Everything

Make confident decisions in less time

Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels

Beth works for a major tech company as a project lead, and making decisions is her job. How should tasks be prioritized? Who should be assigned to each project? What type of reporting is needed? Every time Beth oversees a project, she makes hundreds of decisions to shape its strategy, direction, and vision.

Although Beth loved her job, she found it stressful to be responsible for so many decisions. Her thoughts would loop around again and again as she analyzed every last variable, hoping to make the “right” choices. She would fret about upcoming projects and envision every possible way things could go wrong. And then Beth would criticize herself for wasting time scrutinizing options instead of taking action. Her thoughtful nature had a shadow side: she would overthink everything.

Beth is a perfect example of what I call a sensitive striver — a high-achieving person who processes the world more deeply than others. Studies have proven that sensitive individuals have more activity in brain regions associated with mental processing. In other words, not only do sensitive strivers’ minds take in more information, but they also process it in more complicated ways. While sensitive strivers like Beth are celebrated for their nuanced explorations of different angles and…