Stop Thinking
Doing to Simplify Your Thinking and to Start Taking Action Today
Stop setting your day up for stress and confused thinking.
Crazy and overwhelming days are nothing one can avoid entirely. At least not if you want to live a full life.
But if you have bad habits for how you plan and live your regular day then that can lead to a lot of unnecessary stress, suffering and overthinking.
What to do instead:
- Get a good start. The start you give your day often sets the tone for the whole day. Start your day with a few simple habits like a good breakfast, maybe a bit of exercise and then get started with your most important task of the day. Or if that feels too hard, no worries, instead start with an easy task to get the day rolling.
- Single-tasking + regular breaks. If you just work and work your whole day then your body and mind will become overwhelmed. Thoughts will start running wild and often down negative paths as stress rises in your body and mind. To prevent this and to do focused work without tearing yourself down, schedule regular breaks every hour.
- Minimize your input. Too much information, too many times of “just taking a few minutes” on Facebook, Twitter and in the email inbox add more and more input and thought clutter into your mind during a day. The clutter and extra input shoots your thoughts off in more ways and gets your mind extra active. To keep your thinking simple, simplify and reduce the input.
Stop thinking without any limits.
I sometimes think there is some kind of wish when overthinking that thinking will somehow replace action. A wish that if you just think enough you can find some easy way out or get what you want without having to actually do something.
But that is not very likely to happen. Instead you just keep thinking and thinking and hoping that something will happen or someone else will take action.
What to do instead:
Getting the day off to a good and action-oriented start, as described above, is one thing that has helped me to become more of a person of action.
Setting deadlines for decisions works well too.
- Set a 30 second deadline. For small decisions like if I should get started with the next important task of the day, go do the dishes or work out I give myself 30 seconds or less to make a decision.
- Set an end of the day deadline. For somewhat larger decisions that would have taken me days or weeks to (over) think through in the past I may set a deadline for 30 minutes or for the end of this work day.
- Now, of course, for some important things you need to take more time. But in many cases you can make good decisions more quickly and get started with moving towards your destination. And through that build a new and helpful habit.
