Devin graber

Since as far back as I can remember I have oscillated between thought paralysis and immediate action, either taking action without thinking of the purpose and desired outcome or thinking about all the possibilities to where I am unable to take action. Neither of these is conducive to success but of the two overthinking is far worse.

There are a couple ways to think about success, but thought paralysis is especially detrimental. Success is more likely to happen if you make more attempts. There have been countless analogies made about this, many using sports and all describing different aspects of attempting and trying. Starting with “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” and ignoring the logical issue with having 100% of nothing, it’s clear that if you don’t make any attempts you won’t have any success. Another way of stating this is, you will only have success if you try.

So you have to start making choices and begin taking action and it would seem that trying as many things and taking as many attempts as possible would be the ideal solution. It can be, if you have time, meaning in particular you are young. As you get older you need to be a little more thoughtful with your attempts. This doesn’t mean give up on moonshots, but rather weed out those options that are less likely to be successful for whatever reason. The risk here is overthinking. Because time is limited, because energy is limited, because people are possibly depending on you, you want to spend a little more time thinking, but not too much. At some point you still need to act.

Even when it comes to writing this post, assuming the first draft isn’t absolute garbage, it is often easier to edit and improve something than it is to start from the beginning. So there is a benefit to putting something down on the page and then reviewing and revising.

The same is true for business and actions. Do something and then modify it for the next time based on the signs you get back. This requires you to be able to notice and interpret any feedback received, another skill that will improve with practice, which is good, because some of us are crap at it.

All of this means the more you do and the more you look back at your choices and actions and review, the better your choices will become and the easier it will be to push them closer and closer to the ideal direction.