A Few Notes on Overthinking

Thinking is about ruminating over thoughts. It’s simply ruminating about various aspects of a thought whether that thought is real or a created scenario.

While thinking is something we cannot possibly remove from ourselves since it is a fundamental biological aspect of us as humans, we have seen the term “overthinking” being tossed all around.

The term however, is always seen in a negative light.

With the variety of commentary on overthinking, it has ironically been overthought.

A simple definition of overthinking: thinking over a thought more than it is necessary to do so.

This means to analyze every aspect of the thought, even ones that are meaningless or rather, the various possibilities that scenario could contain.

This often means thinking about the worst case possibility in our day-to-day scenarios.

Imagine a scenario of a job interview and ruminating over and stressing about your seating posture or the questions that are going to be asked on the previous night.

Both are generally considered overthinking.

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Generalist v.s Specialist

The two so-called polar opposites. Generalists and specialists. One is called as the jack of all trades while another is considered as master of an art.

This is shown throughout mediums we consume that show off an inherent trade-off.

They say that specialists become so at the cost of ignoring everything else including different careers in parallel worlds or their family, friends and such.

While the generalist is the average person who is mediocre at everything and isn’t noticeable since the narrow focused people are rewarded far more disproportionately.

Specialists and generalists only make sense in a cartoon-ish world where only white and black characters exist.

There is no specialist and generalist exclusively. A Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry is, of course, well-versed in chemistry far more than the majority of people.

Saying 1 in 100,000 would still be an understatement but also, this person might also have a hobby of cooking or a sport of their own liking which they are not specialists in.

And in other aspects of simply living life which they learn along the way such as changing the tire of their car and such.

Just because they are a specialist doesn’t mean they are grossly incompetent.

My glib wording of this is: “A generalist when starting out becomes a specialist by the end of it.”

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Superpower of Giving Up

We are often told that we shouldn’t give up no matter the circumstances. This sounds good on paper and what society regularly preaches.

The problem however is when you don’t know when to give up. The advice to not give up is indeed a good one. After all, how can you make progress if you constantly give up along the way?

But there’s a hidden condition we usually don’t mention in this discussion and thus, everyone assumes it doesn’t exist and gives the wrong version of the advice.

Not giving up only makes sense if the process of your goal is the one that’s giving results or if the goal itself is a valuable goal.

To still not give up when results don’t appear or when you find out that the goal is not relevant to your life is considered poor decision making.

It’s simply not beneficial to you nor others.

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The importance of an information diet

We all have been told from time immemorial that everything comes at a cost and even better, what is free is often the costliest.

Certainly, these phrases are, for no doubt, absolutely true. Things might have changed but human biology hasn’t so these sorts of wisdom are of timeless nature.

But today, we aren’t going to be talking about it specifically and I prefer not to preach and talk about things which are already mainstream or can be thought of in a span of a few seconds or minutes since I pride myself as a first principle thinker.

Instead, let me introduce you to a rather, practical yet often glanced through topic. It’s called the information diet and let me tell you it's important.

In Stage One Diet, most of us.. Wait, that’s a bad word. Let me readdress, the average person is likely living an unexamined life.

This kind of life is the most obvious and recognized lifestyle which we all have seen and can easily, at this exact moment, point out someone who’s living it.

Simply living life based on our circumstances and doing almost nothing about it.

Let’s get more specific and introspective on this, okay? The problem with the unexamined life is that it's a life that has no structure, planning, systems or even dreams.

Okay, so why is this a problem you might ask? Well, the problem with such a lifestyle is that whatever life throws at you, you catch based on your mood swings and aren’t willing to be rational and thoughtful to spend your one chance and one opportunity (your life).

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