Stuck in Analysis Paralysis? Do This First

Chris Lippincott (0:00)

You've been going back and forth on a decision, looking at it from every possible angle. But what if all that thinking just isn't getting you any closer to an answer? You go over the options again and again, afraid that maybe you'll miss something or perhaps you'll choose wrong. And eventually, you don't even feel any clearer. You just feel stuck where you are. But by the end of this, I'm going to show you exactly why overthinking can actually keep you stuck, why you can start spiraling and second-guessing yourself, even when you have all the information that you already need, how to recognize when that's happening, and the first thing to do before you try to make any kind of decision. So if having more information isn't necessarily what gets you unstuck, maybe we've been looking for clarity in all the wrong places. So where are we supposed to look? Because when you can't decide, what do you normally do?

Well, maybe you think some more. Maybe you research a little more. You run through all the consequences that just might happen over and over again. You look for some kind of risk that you haven't considered, because you assume there's still something that you haven't figured out. But what if there isn't? What if the reason that you can't decide has less to do with the decision itself, and more to do with what's happening inside you while you're trying to make it? Well, I saw this recently with someone that I was working with in my private five-day clarity reset program. I'm going to call him Jim. And Jim was wrestling with a pretty big decision. And what made this interesting wasn't that he wasn't careless about it. Actually, it was almost the opposite. See, he wanted facts. He wanted a plan. He wanted to understand the costs. He kept coming back to the same question. Well, is this the right move? And there is a reason for that. Because a few years earlier, Jim had actually made another big decision. He'd spent several thousand dollars starting a business. He rented space, bought the equipment, put in all the work, and after an entire year, that business made a whopping $175.

So put yourself in Jim's shoes for a second. Now you've got another very important decision sitting in front of you. Are you really going to just trust yourself and go for it again? So Jim did what a lot of smart, careful people do. He thought, he analyzed, he looked at the facts. He tried to figure out the right first step because underneath all of it was this fear. Well, what if I put in all this effort into something again, and it just doesn't work? And here's what fascinated me, because the more he tried to think his way into certainty, the harder that decision became because there was something influencing the way Jim was looking at this particular decision that had almost nothing to do with the facts sitting in front of him. And this is where something that looks like careful decision-making can quietly turn into analysis paralysis.

So, look at what was happening with Jim. He wasn't just evaluating a new opportunity. Every time he looked at it, there was another question running underneath it. He kept on thinking to himself something along the lines of, well, what if this turns out like the last decision? And that changes what the thinking is trying to accomplish. You see, now you're not just trying to understand the decision. You're trying to protect yourself from making another mistake. And once that happens, there's almost no natural stopping point. You find one risk. You figure out how you'd handle it. Then your mind finds another problem.

Okay, figure that one out. And then another. And pretty soon, it feels like the answer is always one more piece of information away, except that the finish line just keeps moving. And there's a reason for that. Because at some point, you're not really looking for information anymore. You're really looking for certainty, right? You want to know, this thing's got to work. I'm not going to regret this. I'm not going to make another mistake. And no amount of thinking can give you that feeling. You can understand the risks. You can do all of your homework. You can make a thoughtful decision. But you can't think your way into a guarantee, can you? So, if certainty is what you're waiting for before you decide, you may never decide. But there's another problem with all of this. And I think this one is even more important. You see, the longer you stay in that loop, the more anxious that you can become. And the more anxious you become, the more threatening that decision can start to look to you. So, now we've really got a really interesting question. What if the state that you're in isn't just making the decision harder to make? What if it's actually changing the way that you see the decision? Now, I'm not saying thinking is bad. Please, I want you to think. I'm a big supporter of thinking. And I'm definitely not saying you should make major life decisions because you took a deep breath.