Deeply Thinking versus Intuition

Overthinking, Deeply thinking, intuition, how does it all fit?

Last week, I introduced the concept of “overthinking” vs “deeply thinking”. “Overthinking” is when you’re thinking about something but there are no new thoughts and ideas, just increasing anxiety and frustration. In contrast, “deeply thinking” is when you’re learning more and more about the problem to hopefully get to a solution.

I never liked the term “overthinking” as I’ve found it to be a lazy way to critique an idea or a concept. It doesn’t offer any insight into what has already been said. And the solution appears to be “start underthinking.”

I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to imagine a high performer that is “underthinking.”

However, you will have people who base their decisions more on intuition and emotions. They say, “I follow my gut.” They may have successful careers and lives.

So what is the relationship between overthinking, deeply thinking, thoughts, intuition, and action? How do we get this hodgepodge of things we do every day to work for us?

Life can be viewed as a series of repeated thoughts, decisions, and actions. You have a thought, you make a decision, you take action. This action interacts with the environment which inspires new thoughts, creates new decisions, and new actions.

Creating a positive loop of thoughts, decisions, and actions will lead to a better life. I hope that is obvious.

Overthinking implies that the thoughts you are having isn’t helping you make a better decision. Deeply thinking means the more time and energy you put into the issue, the closer you are to a solution.

So what is intuition?

Sometimes, there are problems in the world that do not have a clear solution but a decision needs to be made right now. You COULD flip a coin but that doesn’t feel very reassuring. Instead, you follow “your gut” or “your intuition”.

Intuition is the last step towards an action if the problem has been understood from every possible angle. Sometimes, intuition is a good guide on what to do. Sometimes, people use it to be lazy because they don’t actually want to do the hard work of understanding all the consequences of a decision.

But sometimes…intuition is a proxy for guidance from a Higher Power. What happens then?