Decision-Making for Overthinkers

Women: I was thinking of you with this one.

Are you an “overthinker”? Chances are, you think so.

Overthinking feels like a nasty habit we’re supposed to swat away. One of many habits we find ourselves in “recovery” from. It’s a problem we have.

But what if this overthinking is actually a normal amount of thinking applied to an increased number of decisions?

If you’re responsible for feeding a family, or even just yourself, consider that we make an estimated 226 decisions per day about food alone. When you go grocery shopping, if you’re like me, you’re considering:

• What do I like?
• What provides the most nutrients?
• What’s filled with the least garbage?
• What’s the most cost-effective choice?
• What will my kids tolerate?
• What packaging is most eco-friendly?
• Do I have everything else for this meal?
• Is it possible to buy this product local?
• Do I even want to support this company with my money?
• How long is this produce going to take to go bad?
• How long is this going to take to get ripe? (I’m looking at you, avocados)
• …and maybe we should also be avoiding red dye?

Answering that list of questions about every product you buy constitutes a part-time job.

(Which, by the way, is only the grocery list part of feeding a family. It’s not the meal-planning part. Or the actual shopping part. Or the organizing part. Or the actual cooking part.)

And all of those questions end up multiplied across every item I’m considering. But when you look at the list above, how many of those questions have we only been considering in the last 30 years? Grocery stores carry 40,000 more items than they did in the 1990s. Even those avocados weren’t that popular in the U.S. until the 1990s, so nobody had to worry about calculating the 15-minute window in which they’d be ripe.

The authorities we listen to — medical professionals, podcasters, journalists, health coaches, some other mom in a Facebook group — have told us that everything on the list is important. And honestly, I’m not here to tell you that it’s not. I happen to think pretty much everything on that list has some level of importance.

But if you’re giving everything on the list the same level of importance, your brain is going to short-circuit.

And that’s what most of us do. And why most of us feel short-circuited most of the time. We’ve stood in the aisle, frozen, trying to decide whether we care more about our grocery budget and retirement plans or how much plastic is in our landfills. Then, we went to the next aisle and did it again. Waves of guilt wash over us about how much sugar our kids eat or how we aren’t willing to sacrifice our budgets for the environment — and what kind of legacy does that leave for our grandchildren!?

There is a similar list for choosing a vehicle. Or a workout regimen. Or a career. Or a set of sheets.

Instead of recognizing that there’s too much data for a finite amount of life, we label ourselves “overthinkers.”

I dunno if I’m buying that anymore.

I think we’re just smart, and we care.

But I think we can be next-level smart, in a way that helps us navigate decision fatigue and analysis paralysis. (And how much female corporate burnout finds its roots in the grocery store, anyway?)

If you’re interested in opting out of your current decision-making protocol, in a way that’s not “just stop caring about any of it and do whatever you want,” I invite you to consider the following exercises:

1. Get out a notebook. Dump out every decision you might be facing today or this week, including the dumb ones. Try to remember what small decisions you spent a lot of time on, and note them. (I didn’t say judge yourself for them. I said note them.)
2. Inventory your values as it relates to these decisions AND RANK THEM. Yes, you do have to decide whether your budget or the environment are more important. Remember: you won’t need to do this exercise for every decision, because once your values are ranked, these will apply to many decisions. Also remember: these values will be highly dependent on the season of life you’re in. Choosing your budget over the environment might be right for you right now, and in ten years, you may have the privilege of doing more investing in small businesses, for example.
3. Decide to decide and set aside time to do it. If you’re not exercising because you can’t decide what kind of exercise you’re going to do, then put some time on the calendar to make this decision. To avoid self-doubt, also schedule time to revisit the decision if you end up hating it. “I’m going to try this for 30 days and not devote mental energy to analyzing whether I’ve made the right choice until that 30 days is up.”
4. Narrow your choices to 3. Then give yourself 10 minutes to choose one.
5. Choose your authorities instead of your products. If you have a friend who is reasonably knowledgeable about something, such as cars or medicine, outsource your decision-making to them. Do what they say unless you have a strong gut feeling that you shouldn’t. Contrary to popular opinion, you do not have to be an expert on everything.
6. Share the mental load with your partner. If your partner is unaware that you make 85% of the decisions that pertain to your household, talk about what you can do to remedy that.
7. Remember that no decision is permanent. Even the decision to follow any of this advice is only temporary. In analysis paralysis, we worry we’ll be trapped in a decision. Sometimes this is true, such as with large purchases like houses. That decision merits a lot of mental energy. Your groceries don’t.

In closing, I need to tell you that I recently started using aluminum-based antiperspirant again. You heard it here first. I’m at a moderately high risk for breast cancer, and I’m slathering aluminum on my armpits again. Know why? I have probably spent $150 over the last few years on various expensive non-aluminum deodorants that promise to work for me. (Yes, I’ve tried Lume. I’ve even tried hand sanitizer.) I recently started taking a medication that causes me to sweat more, and the smell became unbearable. I was thinking about it all the time. My kids would say, “I want to snuggle you, but you smell bad.”

There’s a lot of research that seems to indicate aluminum could contribute to breast cancer. There’s also a lot of research that seems to indicate it might be unrelated. We’re not sure. But if I have a high chance of getting breast cancer, riddle me this: how am I going to know that it was because of the deodorant? Moreover, how do I want my body to smell if it gets hit by a bus tomorrow instead?

And yet, you better believe I agonized for over a year about trying to use “cleaner" deodorant.

This has to stop.

Our current decision-making strategies are unsustainable, especially for working caregivers like moms. Because scientists are doing their jobs, new studies will be coming out next week, and the next, and the next, about how our food is killing us how screens are ruining our children’s futures, or what plastic is doing to the environment. And they should keep doing that. And we should keep listening to them.

But after we listen, we should take that information and put it through a refining process that determines how we, as individuals, in the season of life we’re in, need to apply that information to our daily actions.

And after we make the decision, at least for a time, release it. Instead of using precious mental resources to agonize over getting every last thing exactly right, determine which things are most important to get right, and allocate your time and attention accordingly.

By the way…you don’t have to do this part perfectly, either.

If you have no idea where to begin with this practice and would like some support, you know where to find me to chat.