You see, sometimes I have the tendency to over-think a problem. It has pros and cons, but sometimes, I feel that there are more cons.

Part of the reason why I feel that way is also because I seem to always be late on my deliverables when I “think” about a solution. It then begs the question: How can one achieve critical thinking without stepping into over-thinking?

After reading a few articles about Over-thinking vs Critical thinking, I am now a firm believer that over-thinking is subjective. Imagine this, another person can be thinking the same amount and depth(i know, it’s not a tangible matter) as me but still be able to achieve what he needs to achieve. What else could it be if not for the subjective nature of this thinking thing that we all do.

Another aspect of me wants to believe that given the same amount of thinking time, over-thinking does not kick in until one starts to creep away from the actual scope of this thought. In other words, if you were to thinking about something for a very long time, that does not mean that you are over-thinking. The moment you start thinking about other aspects of this thought, a.k.a its side effects and especially when it really does not matter, then you have stepped into the zone of over-thinking.

On the next part, we shall look at how one can detect over-thinking and steps to take to get out of it.