People with overthinking tendencies seem to get sick more (one sample size: myself). The more you get sick, the less you can implement whatever good thoughts came from the overthinking. So, if you accept that ideas are only useful if implemented, then overthinking is really an inefficient way of thinking.

That overthinking makes you more sick does not mean you are a bad person for doing it. But you have to accept the reality that physically the human body and its systems do not seem to be designed to hold and process multiple complex thoughts for a long time.

In any case, there are now two solutions: either reduce thinking (then be healthier, and act more). Or keep overthinking but somehow stay healthy while doing it.

Both of these are challenging to do, but the former seems less laborious.

To stay healthy while overthinking seems to require a whole set of healthy habits. Exercising, good resting protocol, mindfulness, and so on. These are good habits to have anyway, but building the habits will be difficult and time consuming.

Meanwhile, to think less, all you have to do is change your mindset. Not easy, but less laborious.

Overthinking comes from the belief that not knowing all the facts is dangerous, that not figuring out all the possible risks is risky. Its root is fear of failure.

In reality, though, a lot of problems can’t be solved just by thinking (and whatever its secondary actions are: researching, discussing, brainstorming) alone. Thus, overthinking is not the right answer for these types of problems.

(These are called wicked problems, by the way)

Some problems require you to start some action before you can uncover more information. Action generates information that you can’t get by thinking alone. An easy example is learning to swim: you can think and read and watch tutorials, but only by actually being in the water you get the information you need to learn. How your body reacts to the water, how it feels to move your legs, how tiring it is, these are information you can’t get just by thinking.

Thus, here is an important idea that can help change the mindset:

Action is planning.

The problem with the overthinking mindset is that it  separates planning and action. And, to make matters worse, action is seen as something final, that you either succeed or fail.

But since action generates information, it makes sense to put it as part of planning. You do the action not to see if you’ll succeed or not. If you do, great. If you fail, that’s probably even better. The point of action is to generate new information, something you can’t discover by thinking alone. Discovering that something does not work is often a very useful information.

You can then take that new information into the thinking process, generate new ideas, then put it into a more informed action to see if you get new information.

In other words, now you iterate.

The cure to overthinking is the iteration mindset. That to succeed or solve something is never a one shot effort. You can have many chances, and the chances get better and better if you iterate between thinking and action.