Melody Wilding (00:03.604)
One of the most common questions I am asked is how do I stop overanalyzing everything that happens at work? And that’s what we are going to dive into today, but we have to start by getting on the same page about what we mean by overanalyzing. So for today, the definition I’m going to use is overanalyzing happens when we get way too deep into the minutia of a situation. We dissect it from every single angle.

often to the point of indecision or paralysis. It’s when your thinking starts to interfere with your ability to take action or move forward. I want you to think of this a little like getting stuck in a mental loop where you’re constantly trying to seek answers, but instead of getting clarity, you find yourself with more and more and more questions. So what does overanalyzing actually look like specifically in a work?

context. I want to give you a few examples. And as I read through these, just think about how often you find yourself in these situations. Number one, maybe you have drafted an email and instead of hitting send, you reread it 20 times and maybe even brought it to a colleague or two to get their opinion. Number two, when you are faced with multiple options, instead of just choosing one based on the available data that you have, you delay, you put it off.

You hope that more data will make the choice clear. Number three, you get feedback and instead of taking it constructively, seeing it as an opportunity for growth, you fixate on every word, wondering about the deeper meeting, the possible non -existent implications that it has. Number four, simple tasks like deciding on a meeting time take you way longer than they should.

Number five, seeking validation. Before you move forward with any task, maybe you feel the need to consult with multiple colleagues or your boss or other stakeholders, even for things you are the expert in. And last, maybe you also have an avoidance of commitment. You find it hard to make a final decision. And instead you use phrases like, I think, or maybe we’ll see, rather than making definitive statements.

Melody Wilding (02:28.972)
So why is it even crucial for us to recognize and tackle overanalyzing, especially when it comes to our work and our careers? Well, overanalyzing does not just rob us of our time, though that is a big thing it takes away from us. But more importantly, it can really destroy our confidence. It makes us second guess our capabilities. It can hold us back from taking risks that we need to, trying new things, speaking our minds. And over time that

doesn’t only affect your performance on the job, it impacts your mental wellbeing, how you feel about yourself. So if we are going to overcome overanalyzing, then we need to understand a bit more about the psychology behind it. Why do we do this in the first place? Well, in my experience, overanalyzing is a habit. It stems from the fear of making a mistake, our need for control.

or even past experiences where we faced harsh criticism. And so now we try to overanalyze as a way to protect ourselves. So when you are overanalyzing, your brain is doing its job is trying to protect you. And in its attempt to do that, it’s prompting you to dive deeper, to dissect, to be absolutely sure before you move forward. But in doing so that often does us a disservice.

Melody Wilding (03:55.158)
When you give up overanalyzing, things just get simpler. You’re not second guessing every move. You’re not drowning in the minutia. You hit that sweet spot of decisiveness, the one where you assess, you decide, and then you roll with whatever comes. Your efficiency goes up the time you used to spend thinking about every email presentation, every word you say that is now yours to invest in bigger goals or just

Maybe just take a break. And here’s the really important part. When you stop overanalyzing, people come to see you differently. They see and respect that clarity in you. Your colleagues, your bosses, they start valuing your input even more. Not because you have all of the answers, but because you’re not getting tangled up in unnecessary details. You have a more streamlined approach.

And that’s not only good for the task at hand, the things you need to get done, but that is excellent for building your reputation as someone who is sharp, who is to the point, who can get things done and act quickly, even when there’s ambiguity. And let’s face it, there’s a lot of ambiguity now more than ever before. Now you also might be wondering to yourself, isn’t overanalyzing just overthinking? Aren’t they the same thing? And the answer is yes and no.

Overthinking, least how I think about it, overthinking is a broader umbrella and overanalyzing sits underneath that. Because what I teach inside of my programs is that there are three different types of overthinking. The first is rumination. That is where you are stuck on past events, particularly negative ones. It’s like your mind is a scratched record that keeps replaying the same song.

over and over and over again. And you’re thinking about what went wrong. You’re often blaming yourself. And a key aspect of rumination is that it’s often stuck in the past. The second type of overthinking is future thinking. And that’s the opposite of rumination in that it’s focused on the future. It’s focused about all those what ifs and what might happen.

Melody Wilding (06:17.686)
The uncertainty of what might happen, the potential for failure, the fear of the unknown, that can make future tripping very debilitating. And then the last form of overthinking is overanalyzing what we’ve been talking about. So while rumination and future tripping are bound by time, one is looking back, the other is looking forward, overanalyzing is centered on depth.

And so, as I said earlier, this is where you’re going incredibly deep into a topic, a thought, a situation, often to the point of excess where you’re dissecting it into micro pieces to the point where you’ve lost the bigger picture. Now you might also wonder why, why even have these different forms of overthinking? Why is that important? And it’s because it helps you be more strategic about finding the best solutions about how to move forward.

And today I want to focus on overanalyzing specifically. And the tips I want to give you really center around how do you set clear limits around your decision making and the amount of external perspective that you’re seeking so that you can make decisions more quickly. I also want to mention that inside of my signature coaching program, Resilient, we go much, much more in depth into strategies to

regain your confidence at work, get out of your own way, master your emotions, find inner peace while also being successful. So what I’m going to share with you today is just barely scratching the surface on some of the things we cover in that program. And if you want to hear more about that, you can head to melodywilding .com slash resilient, where you can get all of the details. But today I want to share with you three of my favorite techniques to curb overanalyzing and make a better

faster decisions. Number one, focus on satisfying. What is satisfying? It’s a weird term. Well, it refers to finding that middle ground, finding the happy medium between satisfying and sufficing. So, satisfizers prioritize the good enough solution, one that meets certain key criteria. Now you compare this

Melody Wilding (08:43.214)
to another group of people that researchers call maximizers. Maximizers are people who look at every single option. They are constantly searching for a better alternative, a better deal, a better outcome, often to their own detriment and the people around them. So of these two decision -making types, maximizers, probably not surprising, are more prone to over -analyzing. They are less likely

to feel happy with the results of their decisions and they are more likely to negatively compare themselves to others. Cutting through the noise in your mind and getting to the heart of a decision is what satisfying is all about. It’s about finding that just right zone where a decision is both satisfying and sufficient without spiraling down into the black hole of just endless possibilities and researching.

So I want you to imagine if you are able to reach a conclusion faster, but more confidently instead of getting bogged down in all of the possibilities, you focus on this’ll work. I can work with this. It’s freeing and more often than not, it really streamlines everything you do. So in order to leverage, satisfying, you have to know what you are optimizing for.

This is a coaching question. am constantly asking clients in resilient in my program lead from within for graduates of resilient. What are you optimizing for? That’s where a concept of key decision criteria comes in. Key decision criteria. You can think of these as principles, guidelines, requirements. They are any variable that helps you prioritize what’s most important when making a decision.

And your decision criteria could be professional or they could be personal. So let’s say you’re overthinking whether or not to launch a certain feature for your product or service. Your decision criteria could be things like cost, profitability, effort, the risk level, the impact on your customers. You might optimize for any of those things. Now, on the other hand, let’s say you’re trying to make a personal decision like,

Melody Wilding (11:06.946)
whether to move for a new job. In that case, your key decision criteria might be things like the salary, the convenience, how well the role fits your strengths, whether the role will give you opportunity to learn new skills.

Melody Wilding (11:42.68)
When you define your key decision criteria, you are not just settling for mediocrity. You are strategically choosing to be more efficient. You are being proactive, so you nip overanalyzing in the bud. You’re making room for an actionable decision. So the next time you catch yourself diving deep into the rabbit hole of over analysis, I want you to think about this concept of satisficing. What are your…

key decision criteria. How might you optimize for that?

Melody Wilding (12:18.658)
The second strategy to overcome overanalyzing is to create positive constraints. I want to know if you have ever given yourself one month to work on a project and then you noticed it takes you a full month to finish it. And then later on for the same task, maybe you only had one week and yet it was much less time, but you finished the task in just one week. And this happens

because overthinking expands to the time we allow it. This is exactly why there is so much power in creating constraints and creating accountability for yourself so that you don’t delay or agonize over a choice. There’s really interesting research from the Association for Talent Development. They have found that your likelihood of success increases up to 95%, 95%.

when you simply make a commitment to do something and you share that commitment with someone else. Creating those external limits disciplines your brain into taking action, taking less time to mull things over. One way you could put this into practice is as simple as time boxing how long you spend on a task. So many of our clients like to use what’s called the Pomodoro technique.

setting a timer for 25 minutes, work until the bell rings, take a five minute break. And then after four rounds of that, you get a 15 minute break. You can also create constraints by limiting the amount of resources you allow yourself to consult. Maybe you determine a certain amount of stakeholders that you’ll speak with before making a decision, or you create a short list of credible websites for you to reference.

Giving yourself a deadline also helps. So pick a date and a time by which you will make your choice. Put it in your calendar, set a reminder on your phone, or even better yet, contact the person who is waiting for your decision and let them know when they can expect to hear from you. That’s a great way to leverage that accountability principle. Committing to a deadline publicly in a meeting via email is one of the best ways to ensure you actually follow through.

Melody Wilding (14:46.818)
You can also recruit the help of others by maybe you schedule a chat with a coworker to flesh something out, your manager, a friend, that having that scheduled chat on the calendar is going to prompt you. It’s going to give you a forcing function to actually organize your thoughts, synthesize the information you’ve been bouncing around in a clear, more concise way.

Melody Wilding (15:12.982)
Your final strategy for overcoming overanalyzing is to listen to your gut. There’s many names for gut feelings, a hunch, an instinct, a deeper knowing a gut feeling. How I am defining it here is the ability to almost instantaneously understand something without conscious reasoning, without totally knowing why. So the answers, the solutions seem to come to you more.

easily, but you may not be aware exactly how or why you’re arriving at it. And we live in an age now where everyone is talking about data. Everyone’s talking about AI, trusting your gut often gets a bad rep and intuition, which is the term that researchers use to refer to gut feelings is often dismissed. It’s often thought of something that’s very mystical, unreliable. It’s very woo woo.

And it is absolutely true. Intuition is not perfect. It can be very fallible. It can be subject to bias, but at the same time, there have been many strong and fascinating studies that have shown when you pair gut feelings with analytical thinking, that is what helps you make better, faster, more accurate decisions. You are more confident in your choices rather than relying just on data and intellect alone. So the key there is the combination of both your gut feeling and analytical thinking. They are stronger together. And this is especially true when you are overthinking something where there is no clear cut correct option. And what’s really cool about this is they have done surveys of top executives that have found that the majority of leaders leverage feelings and experiences when they are handling crisis, and even the U S Navy has invested millions of dollars into helping sailors, Marines refine what they call the six cents, their intuition, precisely because especially under high stakes situations in the, in the battlefield, that intuition can come to you so much more quickly and is that much more useful.

Melody Wilding (17:32.226)
So even if you are someone who has been taught to devalue your gut feelings, the good news here is that intuition is a bit like a muscle. It is something you have to strengthen, but you can do that with practice. And a good place to start is by making minor decisions. Maybe you just choose an outfit that calls to you without factoring into many things. You raise your hand and you speak up in a meeting without censoring yourself. You take quick action.

with small consequences. Doing that gets you comfortable using your intuition. And by starting small, by choosing low -stake situations, you stave off feelings of overwhelm. You can gradually step your way up to larger, higher pressure decisions. And this approach is effective, and I recommend this all the time, because it helps build what’s called distress tolerance, your ability to emotionally regulate when you’re faced with overwhelm with discomfort, a daily reflect front.

Melody Wilding (18:44.918)
A daily reflection practice can also be a great way to hone your intuition. Just a few minutes a day to reflect on your decisions. Why did you do something? Writing down instances where you felt a strong gut feeling and what your outcome was when you followed it or ignored it. And this can help you recognize patterns and trust your intuitive signals more and even get ahead of that.

And it goes without saying that mindful moments really matter too. You can’t hear your intuition when there is just constant busyness and chaos. And so whether it is a quick meditation, a couple of deep breaths, a walk, those activities allow your conscious mind to step back, allows your subconscious to come forward, your brain to make connections that you can’t at any other time. And over time, you will find that that allows you to tune in more, to trust your instincts and for that sense to grow. So there you have it. Those are three of my favorite strategies to stop over analyzing everything. We talked about focusing on satisfying, creating positive constraints and listening to your gut. The sooner you take control over analyzing,

The sooner you take control of overanalyzing, the happier, the more productive and effective you’re going to be at work. And if you want more support, if you want the fast track and all of the specific tools for doing this, then you really need to check out Resilient. That is my three month coaching program that gives you all of the tools to regain your confidence, master your emotions and get out of your own way at work. Spots always sell out.

We only run the program a few times a year, so get the details now at melodywilding.com/resilient. Thank you so much for tuning in today and I will see you next time.