Overthinking and Underacting.
I’m your classic OverThinker.
My brain wakes me up because it’s like HEY WE SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW!
My brain is like a superprocessor. One of my friends describes it by saying that my brain is on fire.
I agree.
What does this translate to for me?
I’m in a super high energy mode LOTS of the time. Sometimes, when I sit still, it’s excruciating for me. When I have ideas my brain wants to act on them NOW.
But even with all that action that happens because of my overthinking brain, I also have the tendency to get nothing done- a symptom of my OverThinking = UnderActing.
Why?
Because my brain re-prioritizes what it wants me to work on all the time.
I get into one task and my brain is like, “oh my god have you ever heard of this AMAZING idea?!? It’ll be wildly fun to make it happen! So let’s stop doing this boring thing and move on to that.”
Sometimes I listen.
What I try to do is stay on task. But so many times I’d switch and then never really get to check anything off my list.
At the end of the day, I’d look at what I got done and though I felt really busy I had really nothing to show for it.
So frustrating.
Here’s how I tackle that:
Superthinking time planned into my calendar daily.
Planning my schedule + sticking to it
The Now + Later List
Meditating / Yoga Nidra
SuperThinking
I schedule time to just think BIG into my schedule 3x a day–morning, mid-day and evening. These white spaces allow my mind to explore and express itself and come up with wild ideas that are super compelling to it. I record them in my phone (using Notes app) and then I have this really amazing Superthinking list of great stuff to do and write about and create at my fingertips when it’s time to do that.
So, instead of all this cool stuff either being lost or throwing me off-track, it now gets recorded and reviewed regularly. It’s mostly full of creative tasks like writing, new product ideas, ways to make my business better, coaching tools, marketing images, etc.
Planning my Schedule and Sticking to it
This has proven to be really hard for me.
Obviously that is that THOUGHT I have about it, so it’s making it harder, haha.
This is what my brain says to me when I plan my schedule:
“This is the stuff you SHOULD do.”
“You better do this stuff or your business / life is going to fail.”
“You won’t enjoy anything on this list but you’ve just got to do it.”
I don’t actually find those thoughts helpful so when I get to those things on the list I have all this drama around them like if I DON’T get them done that I’m a failure and people will not like me and my life will fail.
Which, oddly enough, makes me NOT want to do those tasks. I guess what I’m learning is that negative motivation is actually not motivating at all.
However, planning my schedule and sticking to it requires that I just get stuff done. Part of why I think I have to tell myself those awful things is that I will avoid those tasks in favor of more ‘fun’ tasks. Which is not helpful to my life. I don’t think I fully trust myself to get stuff like that done.
Planning my schedule and sticking to it helps me:
prove to myself that I CAN keep my word
take the drama out of certain tasks and just get them done
allow myself to feel emotion and do the task anyway
It’s all good stuff that feels uncomfortable in the moment. But I have to trust myself that these tasks are necessary and will help me reach my goals.
I use The Life Coach School’s Hour One planning method + Pomodoro Method. The LCS Planning Method can be found HERE. It’s a way to plan your schedule in roughly an hour each week and then stick to it. Once I begin my actual work, I really like the Pomodoro Method- it’s 25 min of focused work on one task and a 5 minute break at the end. I like it for now because I am someone who gets easily distracted so this gives me a 5 min break to attend to anything that has come up, grab some water, use the restroom, stretch, re-set body and get back to task.
The Now + Later List
I keep a list of AWESOME ideas that pop up randomly in my life that I don’t want to forget. I don’t need to fully explore them RIGHT NOW but I do want to record them. I actually find that because I’ve been sticking to my Hour One + Pomodoro, my brain is way less distracted by these thoughts. But I do keep this list to record awesome things so they’re out of my brain for later.
Meditating + Yoga Nidra
I have a hard time shutting off my brain sometimes. So, especially at night, I practice Meditation and Yoga Nidra and it has really helped me exercise control over my thoughts as well as connect back to my body / breathing. Allowing thoughts and emotions to be in my body without having to do anything about them has been wildly transformative.
I used to just listen to anything my body was telling me.
“Go grab a snack.”
“This is uncomfortable, let’s get out of it.”
“OMG IF YOU DON’T GET THIS THING DONE NOW YOU’RE GOING TO DIE.”
I would listen to my brain and act on those thoughts instead of sticking with my plans- like sleeping when I should sleep. Or reading when I should be reading. Or doing work on a specific task when I should be working.
Allowing my body / brain to have moments of discomfort and not immediately rushing to do anything about it has helped me tremendously in staying on task and actually getting stuff done.