How to Stop Overthinking and Use Energy Wisely

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Do you have a habit of overthinking? Do you find it exacerbates stress and sends you into a depressing spiral of negative thoughts that hampers your productivity? Wish you knew a way to curb this tendency?

Well, you’re in luck.

In the rest of this article, we’ll find out about two main types of overthinking — rumination and worrying — explore common causes and ways to prevent and limit it.

Let’s get into it.

The Two Types of Overthinking

There are two main types of overthinking, caused by stress and anxiety, which trigger our fight or flight response.

• Rumination – This occurs when we dwell on the past and relive past events over and over.
• Worrying – This happens when we let our thoughts drift into the future and think about what might be in store for us.

There are three modes we slip into when we start overthinking. Let’s investigate.

Mode 1: The Need to be Prepared  

When we start worrying about a future event, we tend to prep subconsciously even if we want to be spontaneous for something like an interview. We end up rehearsing the event in our minds, even if we try not to think about it too much.

This is our brain’s attempt to gain some control and ideally predict outcomes. It is good to be prepared for some things in life, but sometimes it’s better to stop feeding your mind information, keep calm, and go with the flow.

Mode 2: Working more Produces Better Results

Making money can only make us so much happier, right? Well, the same holds true for thinking. There is a limit to how much effect thinking has on results. Some of us who struggle with overthinking do so because we think if we think more about something we can somehow get a better outcome. In fact, once you go past a certain level, thinking more can lead to worse outcomes.

Mode 3: If it Works for A and B, it Will Work for C

When it comes to thinking, there is no one size fits all approach. But anxiety leads many of us to use it anyway.

The problem is, taking such an approach to thinking can drain our energy fast. When we are preparing to give a presentation or sit an exam, we need to focus for a couple of hours, but thinking in the same depth and detail about our weekly shop means we’d end up thinking way too hard about what sort of milk to buy.

Thus, it is useful to accept that thinking too much in certain situations can be detrimental and counterproductive.

Soon, we’ll investigate what we can do to prevent ourselves from overthinking. For now, we’ll discover why it is so bad for us.

Why Overthinking is Bad for Us 

All of us worry and ruminate some of the time, but constantly doing so is not good.

Let’s find out why.

Rumination can Exacerbate Depression

Overthinking can lead to depression because thinking too much about a stressful event can kick worry up a notch so it develops into anxiety and depression. Support for this idea comes from a study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, which found evidence of a link between excessive rumination and increased instances of self-reported anxiety and depression.

Overthinking Kills Creativity

This is because we’re at our most creative when certain parts of our mind are quiet, so less is more when it comes to thinking when you want to be creative.

Thinking too Much can Impair Problem-Solving Skills

Our brains can process a lot of information, but we can still overload them, which can impair our ability to problem-solve. Researchers from Yale and UCR looked into how rumination impacts our ability to problem-solve and exacerbates negative thinking. They found that ruminating maintains and worsens the effects of depression. Rumination also causes us to entertain more negative thoughts which hamper our ability to problem-solve.

We think more to get better results, but we end up falling into the trap of analysis paralysis and causing ourselves further worry. Worse still, because rumination can have a negative effect on our mood — and by extension on our productivity — we tend to reject social support meaning it takes us longer to recover from depression.

It’s time to learn how to prevent ourselves from overthinking.

How to Stop Overthinking

The question that arises then, is how do we avoid overthinking if it’s so bad for us? When we overthink, we make use of certain skills. So, what we need to do is find a way to use those skills to our benefit.

One way to do just that is to concentrate on two elements:

• How we allocate our time.
• The clarity of our minds.

If we plan well, we can stop ourselves from lapsing into overthinking too often and devote our brainpower to high-value tasks and things that matter.

6 Ways to Prevent Overthinking

The following tips all focus on how well we use our time and keep our minds clear, so we don’t fall into the trap of overthinking and end up caught up in a negative thought spiral.

Create an Intentional Distraction

This could be something as simple as leaving the door open when working. This invites interruption which can help you stop overthinking, worrying too much, or spending too long on a single task.

It may be wise then, to find a way to use intentional distraction to your advantage to stop yourself from falling prey to overthinking.

Practice Meditation

Many successful people swear by meditation to help clear their minds. We’ve already explored the question of whether meditation is good for productivity, and it turns out it’s also a great way to halt overthinking. This is because meditation allows you to recognise thoughts as something created by your mind so you can choose whether to believe them.

You can train your brain to filter out negative thoughts, clear your head and stop ruminating.

Keep a Journal

Keep a journal to reflect on your day to constrain rumination and keep your tendency to overthink under control. An effective way to do this is to ask yourself some key questions twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. Three good ones to answer are:

• What single thing could I have done differently to improve today and how can I do that tomorrow?
• What was my favourite part of the day?
• Am I resisting something that’s holding me back from making progress?

By answering such questions, you can force yourself to think in more detail about your day and leave yourself no time or room in your mind for dwelling on the past. Reflecting on your day in this way can also help you manage stress and work more effectively.

Remember to be Grateful

A great way to do this is to write 3 things you’re grateful for every day. This simple exercise can make you happier. Happier people are generally more productive, as we discovered in an earlier post.  

This can work in a similar fashion to meditation and help clear your mind and stop you becoming trapped in a loop of overthinking that perpetuates negative thoughts.

Acknowledge Your Success

Most of us have a habit of focusing too much on what goes wrong in our lives and forgetting about what we’ve achieved.

If we indulge in too much overthinking, it can do real damage to our self-esteem. To counter this, we can reflect on our accomplishments and remember what we’ve achieved, so that we can stop ourselves entering a vicious cycle of negative thoughts.

You can use a journalling app like Day One to help with this. You can save and organise images, screenshots, and emails. You can therefore easily create a positive record of yourself and your achievements which you can refer to when you want to pull yourself out of a mode of overthinking.

Learn to Recognise Cognitive Distortions

Our perspective can alter the way we view a situation. What one of us takes as a loss, another may see as a success. By changing our perspective, we can reframe failures as successes.

We each fall into multiple cognitive distortions every day. One way we can confront this issue is by having a care only for what we can control. The best way to do this is to shift your focus. Instead of thinking in terms of what outcome may result from your effort and industry, think instead of what you can gain from the process of working toward your goals. You will have a more positive outlook and will therefore be less likely to fall into a nearly unbreakable cycle of overthinking.

Wrapping Up   

Overthinking happens because we use our available resources in the wrong way. It stops us from being productive and happy.

In this piece, we’ve covered the common types of overthinking, investigated why it is bad for us and how it can damage our mood, health, and productivity. Hopefully, you can use some of the methods we’ve highlighted to take control of overthinking and limit how often you do so. Put some of your favourite methods into practice today and show overthinking who’s boss.

When you can do this, you will be able to make more room for thinking about things that matter and devote more of your energy to doing valuable work that will benefit you most.