Overthinking
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Overthinking
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Re: Overthinking
#2I remember a period of time before I could confidently call myself a productive programmer in which I’d spend 90% of my time trying to understand best practices instead of building shit. It came from a place of wanting to “get it right” as education had incentivized rather than “being valuable” as capitalism rewards.
I got out of that frame by working with and watching other doers. I think real education happens when we see masters practicing their form, not when we symbolically learn about the form
Re: Overthinking
#3I remember a period of time before I could confidently call myself a productive programmer in which I’d spend 90% of my time trying to understand best practices instead of building shit. It came from a place of wanting to “get it right” as education had incentivized rather than “being valuable” as capitalism rewards. I got out of that frame by working with and watching other doers. I think real education happens when…
> I think real education happens when we see masters practicing their form
It's worth being 'in the trenches' just watching, not having to do much, just observing how the nitty gritty tasks are done. Just like an internship: you mostly watch, not commit to complex tasks. Unless you are an intern & want to risk it and accidentally mess up the company's code. There are so many companies wrecked by interns' bad decisions, but luckily most of them bounce back from that with grace.
Re: Overthinking
#4Thank 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 all of this stuff, and just stop thinking about what, or what not to use.
Re: Overthinking
#5I think this advice assumes a lot about the reader. I find that quite a fraction of people rather think too little, often sold on some distorted misconception of "agile".
I guess there is an art of thinking through things at a reasonable amount, knowing when to move forward, and when to stop again and think more.
Sure, learning this art surely has to be done to a large part by experience, so the points in the article has their merits, but things, people and circumstances are not always the same.
Re: Overthinking
#6I'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 overthink.
I overthink everything all the time and there are still many things I miss and do wrong. I can't imagine trying to limit my thinking just for the sake of not overthinking.
I'm not necessarily concerned about this blog post, but I'm curious if our frequent warns against overthinking can be a net loss?
Re: Overthinking
#7I find that overthinking is a byproduct of overly complex expectations.
These expectations are often externally imposed either by industry or by our own experiences.
This dissonance is exacerbated by tools which require as much complex skills or lack the expected complexity in their output.
"Hello world" town reminds a hopelessly overpopulated slums detached from glitzy shine of a megapolis that one can experience but not truly become one.
Re: Overthinking
#8I'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…
- You didn’t think this through
- That was a stupid idea
- Do you even have a plan?
- Do you know what you’re doing?
- Darwin awards
- …
I think there is a lot of cultural concern about not thinking enough.
Re: Overthinking
#9I'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 it should not be a value.
Re: Overthinking
#10I'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.
If you're like me, this is probably because the time spent thinking wasn't necessarily productive. It wasn't spent thinking about the right things, or about the things in the right way, with the right understanding or knowledge, etc.
This is hard to overcome because at least in my case this occurs because of a lack of understanding of what I'm doing, or perhaps a worry that I won't execute on something as well as I believe I could. But in there lies a significant problem. My overthinking is motivated by 1) impressions and hypotheticals (could I actually execute better? And what if I don't need to understand the problem better? What if there is no attainable solution to the problem that's better enough to warrant researching it?) and 2) insecurities like fear of failure, fear of being wrong, of appearing incompetent.
I often overthink because I want to do the best job I can (good) but... I want to do it on my first try (bad). I end up with massively diminishing returns on the thinking I do because of the first point mentioned above. I'm pursuing something that is arguably imaginary, and if I make good progress it's often pure luck rather than a calculated, predictable step forward.
This is what makes it overthinking in my case. I'm wasting my energy and potential. I could act on what I know much sooner and be more productive, then revise my work with what I learn in the process or what I learn later. I should move forward with a better balance of confidence and critcal thinking, being sure to consider what I know carefully, how well I understand what I'm engaging in, but also knowing that I'm acceptably competent and that I'll learn more by doing.
Easy to say, harder to do. But I do believe I lose a lot of my potential to overthinking. It becomes more neurotic than effective after a point. I'm often unaware that I'm even doing it; almost like I'm addicted to the process of analyzing, deconstructing, reconsidering, starting again. It feels somehow safer than taking the risk of making a (likely correctable) mistake!
I agree that underthinking, or I suppose an absence of thinking, should be more critically considered and addressed when it occurs. It's a much different beast though. I believe they occur for perhaps entirely different reasons.