There was a time I thought overthinking was just being thorough. You know — "I'm not panicking, I'm just prepared for 43 possible outcomes of this one WhatsApp message." Classic strategy, right?
It started innocently. A simple "Hey" from a colleague on Slack would lead to me replaying every task I'd done in the last month. "Did I mess something up? Did I miss a deadline? Wait — did I forget to reply to that email from last Thursday? Oh god, I did. That's it. I'm done. He's probably typing my name in the performance review doc as we speak."
Of course, the actual message would just be, "Hey, where did you order the Chur Chur Naan from?" Naan. Not chaos.
But that's the thing with overthinking — it takes a teaspoon of uncertainty and brews a whole pot of panic.
Meetings Were the Worst
In every meeting, while others were giving updates, I was mentally rehearsing my turn 17 different ways. "Should I say we 'explored the idea' or 'ran an initial pilot'? Should I mention the hiccup? No, wait, that might look like a failure. But if I don't, I'm hiding information. Okay, Plan F it is." By the time it was my turn, I'd already had a full-blown debate with myself. And still ended up saying, "Yeah, so we, uh… explored some stuff." Inspiring.
The Breakthrough (Sort Of)
One day, during a 1:1, my manager casually said, "You don't need to pre-answer everything in your head. Let's figure it out together." That hit. I realised I wasn't being more prepared — I was being more paralysed. I wasn't solving problems — I was simulating failure. Over and over.
So I tried something new. The next time I got a message, I didn't decode it like Morse code from HR. I just… replied. I started writing things down when my brain spiralled. Turns out, when overthinking gets written down, it often sounds ridiculous. ("What if the intern thinks I'm rude because I used a period instead of a smiley?" looks very silly in bullet points.)
Sometimes, the message is just about naan. And sometimes, good enough really is good enough.