Getting Out of the Trap of Overthinking

Numerous studies over the past two decades have shown that to the contrary, overthinking ushers in a host of adverse consequences: It sustains or worsens [anxiety], fosters negatively biased thinking, impairs a person’s ability to solve problems, saps motivation, and interferes with concentration and initiative.

— Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky (Stanford University)

There’s a huge difference between giving a matter due diligence, versus overthinking it.

The problem for chronic overthinkers is that they believe in the process of overthinking and second-guessing protects projects and outcomes — thus, a smart checklist to follow. Not true.

           

So here are a few suggestions for letting yourself and others out of this trap:

           

If you find yourself feeling troubled, recognize there’s a difference between exercising self-knowledge and brooding. Turning inward cannot yield more creativity but endless, circular ruminations about wouldas, couldas, shouldas. Literally: get out. Get out of your own head. Refocus elsewhere. You may yet carry it in the back of your mind, but what you find in the outside world may ultimately inform what’s troubling you, and help you to overcome it.

           

Call it out if you see it happening within your workgroup. Group overthink kicks up anxious variables like a careening car kicks up gravel. Without appearing dismissive of anyone’s concerns, hold up your hands and say, “Whoa, we may be overthinking this.” Instead, remind the group of intended goals and priorities. If group overthink persists, ask how those objectives will be served by answering all qualms.

           

Steer clear of people and situations that chronically lead to overthink. Overthinking bosses and clients lead internal lives of frantic anxiety and repeatedly lose focus and clarity about intentional goals. Many are convinced, all evidence to the contrary, that they’ve been “set up to fail.” They’re unwilling to confront that which makes them anxious, and may even believe their cautionary role adds to their value and importance. Their thinking falls into biased grooves, which means creative problem-solving is shut out in favor of formulaic solutions that have worked in the past. The most egregious overthinkers become passionate about blame assignments (because their motivations are fraught with anxiety, they seek to deflect blame). It’s your call how long you can work within this no-win situation. Personally, what frustrates me about rabid overthinkers is that they never address themselves to the problems—usually only to picking apart solutions once provided by others.

Marketing research cannot guarantee 100% of the answers 100% of the time. In business, taking calculated risks is better than doing nothing at all. Sometimes, folks, life is just a (calculated) toss of the dice.

The Perils of Overthinking

As a creative, I’ve witnessed this in spades, both in myself and in others. So what is it?

Overthinking is taking something simple and straightforward, and beating it to death with an over-analysis of questions and “what ifs” that seek to illuminate the issue at hand, but instead leads it into more confusion. It usually occurs when the overthinker’s stressed and trying to do some “on the other hand” forecasting, to anticipate pitfalls and objections.

           

Overthinking occurs when:

                       

•  There’s an anxious need to control outcomes. A direct-mail piece is going out, and someone on yours or the client’s team is worried about “how everyone will react” to a visual element or a phrase in the copy. What’s more, they ask questions like, “How do you think everyone will respond to this?” (re: a mailing list of 375,000 names)….

           

•  The individual doesn’t know what they’re doing. Micromanagement occurs when the individual doesn’t understand — or hasn’t been properly trained to do — their jobs, so there’s an escalating need to control, to predict, and to analyze every detail for every possible contingency. It’s a tortured way to live and work — chasing the unknowables, seeking pat answers to open-ended questions, spreading anxiety around to others.

           

•  The overthinker was once praised for detailed analysis, but it’s become a chronic habit of diminishing returns. Not every situation requires the same level of analysis, and most professionals know that. The danger of overthinking is that you lose sight of what’s really important — eg, as staff is sent out to research answers or to confirm endless variables, deadlines are missed, opportunities forfeited, budget dollars expended. In my career, I’ve seen more money and man-hours wasted on the “due diligence” required by a single overthinker, than any dollars spent on actual production. Savvy business professionals learn to take calculated risks; overthinkers ask for implausible guarantees.

           

Next week — how to let yourself and others out of this trap called overthinking.

Titanic Days

This being the 100^th anniversary of Titanic, I recalled the first time I saw James Cameron’s movie, watching those passengers face the growing inevitability of their situation, most of them realizing the life-or-death decision had been made for them. Who can forget the gallantry of the ship’s band, playing to the very end; the elderly woman who refused to leave since her husband could not also leave in a lifeboat; or the mother in steerage, singing her doomed children to sleep?

A hundred years later, I feel we began our new century—our new millennium—with less optimism and bravado than our Titanic-bound predecessors. There was 9/11, an unwanted war, the hunt for Osama bin Laden, a financial collapse, a couple recessions, and collective dismay over the uncovered moral lapses of our political and corporate leaders. Our first black president was elected, dogged by contentious public discourse, our current election year preceded by a relatively new phenom—the “human mikes” sounding out the grievances of the “99%” at Occupy sites across the world.

Titanic’s great-grandchild was the luxury liner Costa Concordia, in which the captain not only didn’t go down with his ship, he didn’t even bother sticking around to direct search-and-rescue. Instead he reached shore safely ahead of his passengers, hopped a cab, and waited at home for the consequences. At the time I posted on Facebook, “The only thing worst than a second Titanic disaster is the moral Titanic of people not doing what they know to be the right thing when their special skills are most needed.” 

It’s been said we now live in the age of narcissism. Does anyone “do the right thing” any more? 

Therapists sleep with patients; teachers have been arrested for sleeping with their under-aged students. School shootings and child abductions have become news report staples. Office security cameras routinely capture employees stealing from the company till—and why not, they must rationalize, since their CEOs are walking away with multi-million-dollar compensations (even as their leadership skills have driven their organizations into the ground). During the last recession, I heard no less than five tragic stories about businessmen who suicided rather than face a reversal of fortune. More recently, an armed man in Florida shot an unarmed teen, and it took roughly 40 days of public clamor to convince state law enforcement that you can’t just discharge a firearm into another human being and be sent on your way with an “Okay, thanks, have a nice day.” In the furor, the man who created a movie about doing the right thing did the wrong thing by reTweeting what he believed to be the shooter’s home address. 

We live in an age of highly charged emotions. Does anyone do the right thing any more?

Yes, I believe most of us do. We raise our children, educate them, teach them right from wrong by word and by example. We care for our aging parents, tackle the bills, get on our business flights, attend jury duty when asked, pay our taxes when told, show up for work every day. During the daily grind, we encounter a million small infractions of courtesy and civility—on the road, in the markets where we shop, in our workplaces—and yet, as the Titanic ballad says, our hearts will go on.

Another love song said it well for me, although I think of it in terms of life’s possibilities rather than romance: I will go down with this ship / I won’t put my hands up and surrender / There will be no white flag above my door / I’m in love and always will be. *

Get up every day and persist. Persist because you love life and your family. Persist—and by so doing, learn how to save ourselves, whether that means finishing up on a degree, finding another job, leaving a bad relationship, getting out of debt, or just working another 8-hour day. The life-or-death decision of our times is not about finding our way to a lifeboat that will deliver us, but simply to persist. The decision to persist is our lifeboat.

* "White Flag," by Dido. I don't own the song or the lyrics (I just like it).

How to Alienate and Please Your Customers

Everyone knows these, has experienced them as customers, yet few organizations are able or willing to change the workplace culture that engenders such issues:


Customer Gripe #1: 
Raising the cost of doing the same business with you. If you're going to raise the cost, I need to see more benefits as a result.


Customer Gripe #2: 
Making me deal with "automated" conveniences that serve your convenience, not mine. (How much do you like repeating the same accountholder info over and over again to a pageantry of employees?)


Customer Gripe #3: 
Having to deal — on an ongoing basis — with your surly, defensive, ill-informed, lackluster employees.


Customer Gripe #4: 
Blaming or arguing with the customer when any customer complains.


Customer Gripe #5: 
Don't insult my intelligence by claiming something's done for my good when clearly it's not. Most of all, don't lie to me (because if it's discovered to be a deliberate lie, I'll walk away and never return).


What gives a customer joy and delight in doing business with you? What engenders loyalty?


Customer Joy #1: 
You resolve my needs, questions, and complaints with courtesy and understanding.


Customer Joy #2: 
You acknowledge my loyalty to you. If I question or complain about a product or service, you see the complaint as an act of loyalty.


Customer Joy #3: 
Your employees are informed, enthusiastic, courteous, and professional. They are well-trained in handling complaints, empowered to provide meaningful service recovery, and they're good listeners (which means they take time to fully understand the problem before attempting to resolve it).


Customer Joy #4: 
If I have complained or raised questions, you follow up to make sure the problem stays resolved, and reiterate you appreciate my business.


Customer Joy #5: 
You give me the choice of dealing with a human being or an automated resource.