The art of overthinking

Whenever I stumble upon a dilemma in my life I tend to overthink things a tiny little bit. When I say a tiny little bit I actually mean that, depending on the gravity of the dilemma, for the foreseeable future it is all I will think about non-stop. I look at it from my perspective, from the perspective of friends and family and from the perspective of imaginary people with whom I can discuss the issue eternally.

By the time I start circling around the same handful of arguments over and over again I generally realize that I must have completely sorted out the problem. By that point I make a list of all possible scenarios and what the end-result would be of these. I cross all of them off and look at the benefits and the risks and see what I can and cannot live with and finally I am able to make a very solid decision.

People always think I overdo it a little bit but I must say I disagree. How else am I supposed to decide life altering things such as whether to send a text to someone or wait for them to do it?

The truth is; it’s an art. The art of overthinking is what I like to call it. The beauty of it is that by the time I finally make that long awaited decision I know in my heart and in my head that it was the right call.

Or maybe not.

In general what happens is that by the time I make the decision and start following through I suddenly realize that reality is not as predictable as I had originally expected it to be. Things come up, stuff happens and I find myself in strange situations that I could not have imagined with the best planning imaginable. And every time I find myself wondering: how did I not see this coming?

So, what do I do? Next time I have another dilemma coming I take out pen and paper and I plan and plan and plan and plan so that next time I will have seen it coming, because in the end it takes a while to master an art and an art it is.