Overthinking • Hacker News Board

Re: Overthinking

#11

Post by nuclearnice1 » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

mdp2021 wrote: post #9

gnulinux wrote: post #6

I'm so astonished that we are so careful not to overthink, to the point we accept "you're overthinking it" as a valid excuse to disregard rare risks. But we don't have the same cultural concern against underthinking. I have never heard someone telling their employee or friend "you're underthinking this". Surely overthinking is bad, but when underthinking can be severely dangerous, it's easy to see why some people ove…

So this friend of mine receives a call from the Director about to evaluate his work, and is told "Clearly you are brilliant, but other colleagues are faster than you... For example, yesterday I asked about X, and see how A was fast in replying?" It was not easy to express that A gave a quick response with a largely false content. It is called rushing, it came from a culture of stopping well before decent quality, and…

This great story is only half told!

Is the director the hero, who gave clear feedback to her employees then listened to the response and corrected the course?

Or is the director a lizard who demanded the impossible received junk in reply and didn’t recognize it even when courageously told?

Re: Overthinking

#12

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

mikub wrote: post #4

Thank you, I really liked that post. I'am 40years now and started to teach myself programming 4 years ago. I do a lot of overthinking, like "Linux or Windows", "Should I learn some C before Python? What about all this networking stuff, how does that work?". I know it probably doesn't really matter, because I consider myself still a beginner in programming, but it is sometimes really hard not to feel overwhelmed by al…

That sounds more like choice stress than overthinking. I'd say the latter is rather where you consider something from a million angles (overly many; overthinking) whereas the former is just having many questions to make a decision on because you don't yet have an established language to work with and are simply new to this and so it's overwhelming.

Re: Overthinking

#13

Post by t0mbstone » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 6:58 PM UTC

I overthink things and end up in analysis paralysis, not for any of the reasons listed, but because I don't want to have to untangle an incorrect mess later on.

Re: Overthinking

#14

Post by Yoric » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 7:11 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #6

I'm so astonished that we are so careful not to overthink, to the point we accept "you're overthinking it" as a valid excuse to disregard rare risks. But we don't have the same cultural concern against underthinking. I have never heard someone telling their employee or friend "you're underthinking this". Surely overthinking is bad, but when underthinking can be severely dangerous, it's easy to see why some people ove…

> I'm so astonished that we are so careful not to overthink, to the point we accept "you're overthinking it" as a valid excuse to disregard rare risks.

Very good point.

> But we don't have the same cultural concern against underthinking. I have never heard someone telling their employee or friend "you're underthinking this". Surely overthinking is bad, but when underthinking can be severely dangerous, it's easy to see why some people overthink.

I believe that it's largely a cultural thing.

For instance, in French companies, US Americans definitely have the reputation of underthinking things (which US employees feel is "being productive"). Reciprocally, in US companies, the French have a reputation for overthinking them (which French employees feel is "assessing risks").

One more reason for which balancing cultures (and backgrounds, etc) is actually really important for the future of a company: we all have different blind spots.

Re: Overthinking

#15

Post by civilized » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 7:14 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #6

I'm so astonished that we are so careful not to overthink, to the point we accept "you're overthinking it" as a valid excuse to disregard rare risks. But we don't have the same cultural concern against underthinking. I have never heard someone telling their employee or friend "you're underthinking this". Surely overthinking is bad, but when underthinking can be severely dangerous, it's easy to see why some people ove…

It's not that thinking more is bad, it's just not always the best thing to be doing. You could also make a decision tentatively and revisit when more information is available. The costs of this could be much less than you fear or assume.

Re: Overthinking

#16

Post by majormajor » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 7:20 PM UTC

t0mbstone wrote: post #13

I overthink things and end up in analysis paralysis, not for any of the reasons listed, but because I don't want to have to untangle an incorrect mess later on.

That feels a lot like the "marketing" one. I think the belief that if you just think enough, you won't have to untangle anything later, is almost always incorrect. I've worked on a lot of systems that were very thought through but also ended up very messy - in large part because circumstances and needs changed over the years in ways that would be near-impossible to plan for all of them.

But people selling framework X want to sell you the idea that if you just pick the right tool (theirs), you won't have those problems!

(This is somewhat circular, though: if you had said something like "I think about problems a lot because I want to avoid untangling incorrect messes" then that doesn't have to be overthinking. But once you hit analysis paralysis, building nothing for an extended period becomes itself an incorrect decision. There's a fine line between giving a problem due consideration and not being able to stop thinking about it.)

Re: Overthinking

#17

Post by tshaddox » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #6

I'm so astonished that we are so careful not to overthink, to the point we accept "you're overthinking it" as a valid excuse to disregard rare risks. But we don't have the same cultural concern against underthinking. I have never heard someone telling their employee or friend "you're underthinking this". Surely overthinking is bad, but when underthinking can be severely dangerous, it's easy to see why some people ove…

> I have never heard someone telling their employee or friend "you're underthinking this".

I mean, probably not with those exact words, but isn't that essentially the feedback you would get for almost any mistake you make at work that was foreseeable but not foreseen? Or even things like a code review, where pretty much all comments are of the form "you might want to consider how this effects OtherSystemX," which is a more helpful way of saying "you might be failing to think about something you ought to think about."

Re: Overthinking

#18

Post by afarrell » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

One struggle I have is how to simultaneously embrace uncertainty and take responsibility for the impact of my actions. A high amount of uncertainty makes me feel like I’m a chef taking chicken thighs out of a warm fridge.

I think there is a time to just say “no” — even if we fear that others will accuse us of overthinking.

Re: Overthinking

#19

Post by xyzelement » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #17

gnulinux wrote: post #6

I'm so astonished that we are so careful not to overthink, to the point we accept "you're overthinking it" as a valid excuse to disregard rare risks. But we don't have the same cultural concern against underthinking. I have never heard someone telling their employee or friend "you're underthinking this". Surely overthinking is bad, but when underthinking can be severely dangerous, it's easy to see why some people ove…

> I have never heard someone telling their employee or friend "you're underthinking this". I mean, probably not with those exact words, but isn't that essentially the feedback you would get for almost any mistake you make at work that was foreseeable but not foreseen? Or even things like a code review, where pretty much all comments are of the form "you might want to consider how this effects OtherSystemX," which is…

That's exactly right. Under-thinking is often more obvious in terms of consequences so you talk about those.

Re: Overthinking

#20

Post by Dudeman112 » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #6

I'm so astonished that we are so careful not to overthink, to the point we accept "you're overthinking it" as a valid excuse to disregard rare risks. But we don't have the same cultural concern against underthinking. I have never heard someone telling their employee or friend "you're underthinking this". Surely overthinking is bad, but when underthinking can be severely dangerous, it's easy to see why some people ove…

>I overthink everything all the time and there are still many things I miss and do wrong

Maybe you are just thinking? It only becomes overthinking when you have been at it for "too long". As in, it is not reasonable to guess that thinking more about it will be of value.

Of course, knowing when that is the case is hard. IMO we should spend more time figuring out when it is overthinking than warning people about overthinking.