Thoughts from an overthinker

Today, e hoa mā, I’m going to tell you a light-hearted story.

It began in January, when a business-strategist-writer guy got in touch with me. He’s running an interview project on insight, and a reader had suggested me as an interviewee. Would I be keen, he asked? I admit I was a bit flattered, for reasons we’ll get to. Mostly, I was curious. If there’s one topic I love, it’s brains.

I’ve never studied brains in any formal way: first year psych at university was as close as I got. But I love that humans tick differently, each of us with our strengths, our weaknesses and our unusualness. A project exploring that difference was always going to grab my fancy.

Sign me up, I cheerfully replied to the guy, and the interview appeared in my calendar – but despite having plenty of time, I never quite managed to prep for it.  

This was uncharacteristic. Normally, before something like this, my thoughts bubble away automatically, ordering themselves by the time I need them – helped along by the kind of positive anxiety that kickstarts my noggin. But this time something was amiss. The thoughts just wouldn’t come. Now, instead of positive anxiety, the negative kind began to brew. Was insight a topic I had no insight into? Seriously? Somewhere out there was Alanis Morissette laughing at me?

An hour before the interview, I was still drawing a blank. Thirty minutes before, I took a raggedy notebook and started scribbling what felt like clichéd shite. Fifteen minutes before, I resorted to praying. Five minutes before, I put on lipstick. There was no real reason for the lipstick. I just figured that if I was going to make a dick of myself, I should try to look my best.

Why was this all so hard? As I logged onto Zoom with seconds to go, I finally had an insight about insight. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very helpful.

I realised that the concept of insight, as we might normally understand it, doesn’t sit well with me. Here, I’m going to pass on someone else’s insight, shared with me years ago. I found it super thought-provoking, and you might too. Let’s step back a bit.

Our dominant culture often thinks about insight (or more generally, how people come to understand things) in a particular way, like it’s a flash of something bestowed on certain people. This is a romantic idea, but once you start to scratch the surface, it’s got real downsides. People who are bestowed don’t have to work to understand stuff – understanding just happens to them. People who aren’t bestowed can’t change that, and there’s no point trying. They come to understand things the ‘lesser’ way, by doing the mahi. To think about understanding as something bestowed in flashes creates two fixed groups: the haves and the have-nots.

And who are these haves and have-nots? I reckon this is where things really get interesting.

Historically, our dominant culture has celebrated what we’ll call a ‘lone man’ model of how people come to understand things. A classic example is Sir Isaac Newton. As the story goes, an apple fell on the fulla’s head, and he suddenly grasped gravity, just like that. Of course, this was exaggerated – Newton had been doing a bunch of thinking that fell into place when he happened to be sitting in a garden – but the story’s so attractive we tell it to this day.

Lone men actually were doing work behind the scenes, like the rest of us, not relying on flashes bestowed from somewhere. And they weren’t men alone at all. Some of them built their careers on the insights of overlooked others, including women and people of colour. All were supported by invisible women who cooked and cleaned for them so they could do their stuff. The lone man model isn’t a thing.

You can probably see it: the lone man model has all sorts of baggage, not just to do with gender, but also race and class. It subtly ranks the ways people come to understand things, suggesting some ways are better than others. Captain Cook sailing to Aotearoa? Great job, lone man. Polynesian navigators using collective mātauranga to figure out the same thing centuries before? Whatever.

I reckon this romantic idea, that insight is something bestowed on people in flashes, is still with us and still unhelpful – still sneaking around with the lone man model and all its baggage.

Take my mechanic, for example. He’s like Yoda, almost sensing what’s wrong with my manky Prius before he lifts the hood. The workings of his brain are a delight. But as a guy in an oil-stained hoodie, his kind of insight doesn’t get the same kudos. No one ever thinks of car guys as bestowed with flashes of understanding, like Sir Isaac Newton. We just expect they gain insight through experience, care for what they do, and good old hard work – the unromantic way of the have-nots.

Righto: we’ve taken a detour, through some ideas that relate to insight. But how did my interview go? Did that lipstick pay off?

You’ll remember that 30 minutes before I logged onto Zoom, I scribbled a Hail Mary of a list. It’s not scientific, and I’m too whakamā to call it advice. It’s just how I navigate the world – but I figure I’ll share it, mostly for fun. Quality may vary.

Embracing the overthinker inside me (but not too hard)

Ever been told not to overthink it? Ever been mildly annoyed by that? We’re about to take another detour.

It’s true that some overthinking, often called rumination, can make people miserable. Rumination is replaying stuff in your mind – typically something that upsets you from the past, or something that worries you about the future. It’s pretty common.

I ruminate, adding a bonkers twist. Before I start a task, I feel I have to figure out the optimal way to do it – even silly tasks, like cleaning the kitchen. But what if the optimal way isn’t clear? Please don’t laugh.

I need to wipe down the bench. That means clearing the bench, which means putting stuff in the dishwasher. But the dishwasher’s full. I could empty the dishwasher, putting the clean stuff in the cupboards – but the cupboards could use a wipe down first. I’d need to pull everything out of the cupboards and put it on the bench. But how can I do that? I need to wipe down the bench!

Worse: the clutter caused by tasks I haven’t done impairs my thinking. Now my brain isn’t just on a loop, but running slowly too. I feel stuck, and end up staring mournfully at my messy kitchen.

OK, I’ve described some downsides of overthinking – and you might have your own. There’s plenty of advice for overthinkers. Some of it I find helpful, like trying to frame things positively, avoiding negative self-talk, and using exercise to shift my brain to less taxing thoughts if I need to. Some advice I find unhelpful. For example, mindfulness is often pushed on overthinkers as a cure-all. It works for some, but I find it unpleasant – and I’m not alone. Growing evidence shows mindfulness can even be harmful, worsening or inducing mental health problems.  

Stepping back a bit, is overthinking always bad? Some advice seems to assume this, but I’m not so certain.

Sure, overthinking isn’t great in some situations. Brains that can make split-second decisions, weaving judgement and experience in a heartbeat, are beautiful – and if we didn’t have people with split-second brains, then our collective lives, from sports matches to emergency responses, would be the less.

But there’s another school of thought that reckons overthinking, done right, can be helpful. Yes, overthinkers might be a neurotic bunch. But we have stamina to chase a topic to the bitter end, like a rat up a drainpipe. We tackle it from every angle, sharpening our problem-solving skills. And we take learning from one topic and chuck it at another topic, just to see what will happen, building our creativity.

In other words, a bit of overthinking can help find insight. That’s what I did my best to impress on the business-strategist-writer guy.

I’d go further. On a good day – maybe a day when I’ve succeeded in wiping down the bloody bench – overthinking can be joyful, like a free ticket to a circus inside my noodle. Overthinkers don’t always want to be fixed. Sometimes we want to be accepted for who we are, and allowed to spend quiet time in our own heads.  

Learning to live with, and laugh at, my moments of uselessness

I have an atypical brain.

Atypical brains are sometimes stereotyped for being quirky or creative or funny: think Phoebe from Friends. And sometimes the stereotype’s true. Other times, atypical brains are a shit show, bringing little joy to their owners. I offer you Exhibit A: my relationship with time.

Years ago, a senior leader, someone I respect, shared a post on social media. I can’t remember the wording exactly, but the gist was this. Whether you’re smart or not, important or not, you can still do the basics. Anyone can turn up prepared and on time. As I read the post, I flumped into sadness. It took a while to extricate myself from the flump, and even longer to talk about it.

Clocks trick me. I sometimes misread the gap between two points, so I think I’ve got longer to prepare than I do. I get absorbed in a task, lose track, and forget I have a meeting coming, so I turn up looking slightly startled. Sometimes – I can’t even explain why – I forget to check my calendar altogether. None of these are fatal flaws that ruin my life, but they’re not the norm for people in my line of work.

It took a while, but I’ve learned to manage my relationship with time pretty well. I get enough sleep, then do my planning ahead while my brain’s relaxed. I make a dorky list, colour-coding tasks to prioritise them, then rewriting often so the tasks stick in my brain. Feeling self-conscious about this has sometimes been harder to manage.

It's easy to think about skills like they’re a ladder – in part because our education system used to be based on this idea, pushing kids down either a vocational or university pathway. At the bottom of the ladder are the ‘basic’ skills: turning up on time, listening, and following instructions. If you can do that basic stuff, you’re fit for an ‘unskilled’ job. If you’ve got the basic skills plus a few more, you’re stepping further up the ladder. You might be a fit for a ‘skilled’ job.

But this ladder idea has a subtext. That’s why I flumped at the senior leader’s post: Anyone can turn up prepared and on time. If the first step’s hard for you, aren’t you shut off from the second and third and fourth steps, because that’s how ladders work?

Of course, skills aren’t a neat hierarchy, like a ladder. Yes, the basics matter – but finding them tricky doesn’t disqualify you from having other skills. You might just need to work a bit harder, get some support, and maybe make a colour-coded list.  

I thought about bringing up this stuff in my interview, but in the end decided against it. I’m not qualified to say whether atypical brains have more or less insight – but if I’m honest, I was happy mine hadn’t cut me out of an opportunity to talk about insight. If I can tautoko others who have the odd glitch between their ears, I’m happy to share here.  

Borrowing shamelessly

Before we go on, I want to tell you the same thing I said in my interview: I don’t have original ideas. It goes without saying I’m not Sir Isaac Newton with his apple. A bird shat on my head one time, but all the moment taught me was the value of shampoo.

I don’t think truly original ideas are common. Coming to understand is a collective business, hence the lone man model isn’t a thing. Overthinkers like me patch other people’s ideas together.

And I’ve got an even dirtier little secret. When I think, I cheat. I even encourage others to do the same.

It all started almost two decades ago, when I joined the policy profession. At first, I was bamboozled. All around me, people seemed to be bestowed with flashes of insight that went straight over my head. It was easy to see these folks as the haves – and other people, like me, as the have-nots. It took a while for the truth to dawn: the policy people were following a recipe they’d figured out by working. They’d gather evidence, come up with options, weigh the costs and benefits, and Bob’s your uncle. There was nothing romantic about it, and I was almost disappointed.

There are heaps of thinking recipes. The Five Whys gets you to the root causes of a problem or critical incident. A business case helps you figure out whether buying or building something big is a good idea. Risk analysis makes you ask what might go tits up, and how you’ll respond if it does. I borrow recipes like these left, right and centre.

Of course, what I’m describing to you isn’t cheating. It’s learning, and learning is just work – nothing special. If our dominant culture dumped the lone man model once and for all, admitting insight isn’t bestowed in flashes, we would break down a line between the haves and have-nots.

Maybe that’s why we can’t quite bring ourselves do it.  

Finding the joy in not knowing stuff

In 2005, Stephen Colbert coined the word ‘truthiness’ on the pilot of his new satire show. It was funny, for sure, but poignant too – and it turned out to be the kind of insight I could only dream of having. As Colbert put it:

I know some of you may not trust your gut, yet. But, with my help, you will. The truthiness is, anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news 'at' you.

Colbert was onto something. All humans, to the very last of us, think with our feelings to some extent. Exposure to new ideas makes us feel criticised for holding old ones. Dumping the old ones takes effort as well as humility. George W Bush, for all he was an eejit, must have sensed this much.

Colbert’s truthiness wasn’t just a comment on the president’s style, but on the era that Bush and his cronies helped to usher in. Reality became a negotiable grey area, while the emotional line dividing good and bad guys became more absolute and, with it, more comforting. When those weapons of mass destruction were never found, the world went on. A new reason for war was found, and the same old flags were waved in support of it.    

Nothing’s got better in the two decades since. But what has any of this got to do with insight? Well, I’ve got a theory. I believe that when you already feel you know all the answers, insight gets harder to find.  

In this era of truthiness, our dominant culture rewards us for being definitive, not thoughtful. To reconsider because you’ve learned something new is to flip-flop. To argue black is white is to show you still stand strong in a world of wokeness. It’s a new twist on an old theme. Truthiness feels like being bestowed with a flash of something. Thinking carefully to reach a conclusion, one you might revisit when there’s new information, is for suckers.

Thinking carefully matters if we want to solve the world’s challenges. The problem is, it’s hard to say this without sounding like an absolute wanker – and politicians who benefit from truthiness are quick to point this out. Heard the phrase ‘smug liberals’? Implying that other people are stupid, while you hold yourself up as a much better thinker, is the best way to put them off your cause.

What can we do instead? I think we need to make not knowing things great again.

Like we covered before, split-second brains are great for some things. Where quick thinking matters, like giving first aid for example, you want someone decisive and confident (not someone like me saying ‘Well, it depends’, and conducting a literature review). But split-second brains are generally weaving judgement and experience in a heartbeat, not simply making shit up. And making shit up remains a viable career – perhaps because shit-maker-uppers can seem like they’re bestowed with a flash of something the rest of us don’t have.

Of course, the trick doesn’t always work. We’ve all sat through that team meeting thinking OH, F*CK UP GLENN.

To give Glenn his due – and he’s not always a he – more careful thinkers can learn something from him. We’ll never have his Glenn-level certainty, but we can try to communicate better, and not get tangled in overthinking (this definitely includes me). But at the same time, more Glenn isn’t what the world needs.

For what it’s worth, the best leaders I’ve worked for are upfront they don’t know everything, because that’s not their job. Instead, their job is bringing together what others know – or when no one knows, judging the best way through an uncertain situation, being clear about the limits of their knowledge, and adjusting when they know more. Think about COVID, and Ashley Bloomfield versus Boris Johnson. I’ve got a strong view on who kept people safer; but if that’s the kind of leadership we want, we need to reward it, not diminish it. At least, that’s what I told the business-strategist-writer guy.

These are world-level considerations, but I think there are personal ones too.

I love knowing things – but I also love not knowing things. Not knowing things means the chance to learn. I get to go through life with that wonder we all felt as little kids, pulling things apart to put them back together, and looking into rockpools for critters. It’s a hell of a privilege, when I stop and think about it.

For everyone’s sanity, I hope the day I reckon I know everything will be my last.

In case you were wondering, the interview wasn’t so bad after all. I remembered another recipe, taught to me by someone who once coached me through a job process: if you can’t answer the question exactly, turn it into something you can answer. Once I figured out what I think – that I’m not really sold on the idea of insight – the positive anxiety turned up. I was away laughing.

My final insight, if you can call it that, came too late, after I’d hung up the call. When you get over all that dominant culture stuff, the lone man bestowed with flashes of something, all you see are brains doing things you wish yours could.

My mechanic. People who can cook with their eyes shut, because they just get the physics and chemistry behind it. Funny people, who take crazy ideas and smoosh them, so laterally and cleverly you think you’ll die laughing. People who instinctively know how to dance, because their minds are actually connected to their bodies – damn them – and people who pick up languages off the cuff, because they just see the workings of words. Friends who know exactly how to love in your hardest moments, judging when to leave that space around you or to fill it with a hug.

I have all these people in my life, and it’s the most joyful envy ever.

This isn’t much of an insight, maybe, but it’s still worth repeating.