Everyone calls themselves an overthinker
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Everyone calls themselves an overthinker.
It’s the most socially acceptable excuse in the world. You didn’t start the business because you were “overthinking it.” You didn’t have the conversation because you were “in your head about it.” You didn’t make the move because you were “still processing.”
And people nod. They always nod. Because “I’m an overthinker” sounds almost noble. Like you’re cursed with too much intelligence. Like your brain is so powerful it works against you and you just can’t turn it off.
You’ve probably said it this week.
Here’s the problem: You’re not overthinking anything. You haven’t been overthinking a single day in your life.
You’ve been overfeeling — and calling it thinking because that sounds better.
A Feeling Wearing a Thinking Costume
Real thinking ends somewhere. It moves toward a conclusion. A chess player calculating three moves ahead is thinking. An engineer stress-testing a bridge is thinking. A surgeon planning an incision is thinking. It’s structured. It produces a verdict. It resolves.
What you do at 2AM staring at the ceiling doesn’t resolve. It loops.
You replay the same scenario fourteen times with slightly different emotional weights. You imagine telling your boss you’re leaving and you feel the awkwardness before it happens. You picture yourself failing at the new thing and you feel the embarrassment in your chest. You rehearse the hard conversation with your partner and your heart rate spikes like it’s already real.
That’s not analysis. That’s your nervous system running dress rehearsals for disasters and billing you full emotional price for events that don’t exist.
And the cruelest part — every time you label it “overthinking,” you give yourself permission to keep going. Because thinking sounds productive. Thinking sounds responsible. Nobody ever got criticized for being too thoughtful.
Charlie Munger said the goal of thinking is to arrive at a few big ideas that really work. Not to collect more information. Not to explore every possible angle. To reach a verdict.
If your “thinking” never reaches a verdict, it was never thinking.
