3 ms·

If you want to be absolutely right, overthinking is necessary. If you want to be productive (while being 80% right), it isn't. I've spent my (short) life over

If you want to be absolutely right, overthinking is necessary. If you want to be productive (while being 80% right), it isn't. I've spent my (short) life overthinking and being "right" about things, but I've noticed that people that don't overthink and just go for something that's just kinda right have better results than me. Maybe in the upper echelons of achievement (Elon Musk and friends), overthinking is necessary, because they've already used other resources (like, actually doing things) to the point of diminishg returns, and then overthinking can become a competitive advantage. For the remaining 99.9% of us, actually trying things, even if not 100% right, is better, I think. I'm personally making an effort to reduce my overthinking.

yen223 4y ago
Thinking is good only when your mental model is correct with respect to reality. The best way to get your mental model correct is to do the thing, and learn from it. That's why people who do things are more likely to have better thought processes than people who overthink things.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  > Thinking is good only when your mental model is correct with respect to reality. Now that’s as good of a blog post thesis statement as it gets. Genuinely well said, this really simplified a really common fallacious pattern of thought that constantly frustrates me. This helps. Put it in a T-shirt.
  - csquires 4y ago
    amen. couldn't agree more