71. Oasis & Overthinking

I haven’t written one of these in a longggg ass time.

Summer was fun, and meant different priorities. 

Such priorities included buying a flat (yay, still accepting well wishes btw x), meeting the love of my life, and seeing Oasis. 

All bloomin’ delightful. 

And on the latter point, in their criminally underrated song Some Might Say, Noel Gallagher wrote the following lyric.

“Some might say that you should never ponder on your thoughts today, ‘cos they hold sway over time…”

(or rather, over tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimmmmeeeee).

And as I get back into writing one of these/trying to remember how to pull together a semi-coherent sentence, it’s a line that’s been mulling around in my head… 

Probably as it combines my two passions. Oasis and Overthinking. 

And something I’ve been pondering (Ponderwall?) is whether being an overthinker is a net positive thing, or a net negative thing. 

It’s something that often gets a bad rap. 

However, we’re going to kick off by sticking up for the overthinkers of the world, and acknowledging some of the good…

Take decision making. A classic overthinker’s achilles heel. Well, although we have a real talent for overly prolonging making any sort of decision, I do think this can actually make said decisions more thorough and deliberate. 

This doesn’t always lead to optimal outcomes, but at least a bit of thought has been put into it. There’s some rationale there, and therefore regardless of what happens, there’s some justification behind why we’ve done whatever we’ve done. And that’s probably a good thing.

This drawn out decision making process also probably means we’ve had a think about every possible eventuality under the sun (or sunshiiiiiiiiine). So from a planning point of view, we’ve likely accounted for most likely scenarios/outcomes. 

On top of this, I do imagine that there’s some sort of correlation between overthinking and conscientiousness. 

And by I imagine, ChatGPT confirmed my theory (ish), so we’re going with it.

Conscientiousness is one of the ‘Big 5’ psychological traits, and has a range of benefits. Things like generally being quite organised, all over the detail, having a fair amount of drive, and being pretty reliable. 

As such, I do think that a lot of the traits that can come alongside overthinking can give off the impression of competence. 

It can look good. 

However, looking good and actually being good are two different things. 

By overthinking stuff and doing everything ‘properly’, there is a cost involved. 

Amongst other things, a time cost, an anxiety cost, a stress cost, and a general opportunity cost. 

For example, say we do something 10/10 properly, but it comes with 10/10 stress.

OK. 

Well, what if we did the same thing 8/10 properly, but with 3/10 stress.

Which one is better? 

Of course, it depends completely on the context. If we were performing brain surgery vs doing the vacuuming, I imagine it’s probably best to choose a different approach. 

Though doing absolutely everything with the first ‘10/10 properly’ method probably isn’t optimal. 

The more we deliberate on something, I do think the more sub-conscious pressure we put on the outcome.

Let’s say we’re in a restaurant. 

If we spend 5 seconds deciding on what to eat and the meal is average, then it’s not really a biggie.

Though if we spend 30 minutes doing so, then it’s much more annoying. 

It’s like that episode of The Simpsons ‘Bart gets an F’. 

In short, Bart fails all his school exams. Though as he didn’t put in any work, he doesn’t care. 

However, when he actually studies for one at the end and still fails, then he’s distraught. 

Basically, more effort = more emotional investment.

And that’s not necessarily a good thing. 

Sometimes, more emotional investment means more pressure. And the more pressure, the more we can get in our own heads. 

There’s an American musician called Vinnie Colaiuta (nope, hadn’t heard of him either). But he coined a phrase that I really like… “Thought is the Enemy of Flow”.

I’m sure that’s something we can all resonate with. Being in the zone with something, and then killing it but overthinking the fack out of it. 

I think it was Andy Murray, when going through a dip in form, reflected that his tennis “became conscious rather than instinctive”.

(“Think” being the key word - I wrote that quote down that ages ago, and helpfully didn’t include who wrote it). 

Though basically, it quite nicely sums up the downside of thinking rather than just doing. 

So, as we begin to wrap up this post (you’re probably happy to hear…) and arriving at some sort of conclusion as to whether being an overthinker is a net negative, or a net positive…. Well, I’m not actually sure. 

Like most things, there are pros and cons, and it’s probably completely context dependent. 

Though, despite its bad rap, I do think that (although more time/anxiety/stress/opportunity cost involved), it can lead to positive life outcomes. 

I guess a question is, by overthinking and doing everything ‘properly’, are we actually the apparent competent high achievers that we can externally look like… or is this just a mask for potential feelings of inadequacy, a need for validation, a fear of failure, and generally being an anxious control freak? 

Who knows. 

Possibly yes. Possibly no. Or possibly just maaaaayyyybaaaaaayyyyyyyy.