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Look in the side mirror. Maybe check the rear-view mirror? Yeah, best do it, just in case. Check over the shoulder for the blind spot. Turn on the turn signal light… or is the signal before you check your mirrors? Oh, well. Then, I can change lanes. Now, do I have to stop and turn off and on the signal in each lane, or can I just keep going? Umm… oh, crap… I missed my exit!
That’s basically analysis paralysis. It’s a situation or task you analyze so much that you can’t do it at all. Analysis paralysis is a plague that seems to affect the thoughtful, those who care, those who want to do things the right way or who want to make the right decisions. It may show up in a number of things! I’ll hit on a few examples in this article because analysis paralysis can affect all of us, but it doesn’t have to.
Some of you may lift weights; some don’t. Some of you may be CrossFitters; most aren’t. Some of you may have at least seen Olympic weightlifting on TV or social media. Well, if you haven’t, just YouTube it. The reason I bring it up is because the Olympic lifts – the Clean & Jerk and the Snatch – are probably two of the most complex movements in an exercise repertoire. To make it simple (Hint: that’ll be on the quiz, later), the clean is just picking something off the ground to the shoulders, and the jerk is pressing that object overhead while getting underneath it. The snatch is just doing the same thing without stopping it at the shoulders.
Okay. Now, some of the Oly lifters reading this just lost their minds because that horribly underrepresents the technique, finesse, and skill required to perform these magnificent movements! Well, that’s the problem! Yes, these lifts literally take years to execute properly, and the perfect form is highly subjective. Examining just the snatch, you have to be mindful of the following performance points: the wrist over the bars, knuckles under the bar, the lat engagement, the stance, the first pull, second pull, third pull, the shrug, the shoulder activation, the squat, the lock out, the pause at the bottom, the final rise to glory!
OMG!!! Now that you’ve read that and once someone explains it all to you, you can do the lift, right? Ha! This is why so many people don’t even bother trying to learn the lift. It’s just too much! As an athlete, I’ve over-analyzed these myself. As a coach, I’ve been guilty of telling someone too much too fast. Again, these lifts don’t have to be so complicated, and I’ll explain how later.
Unless you’re under 16 years old, a New Yorker, or outside the U.S., you have probably driven a car. You probably remember your driving lessons. Maybe your parents put you in the parking lot and gave you the scary, constant corrections and instructions. Maybe you took lessons at a driving school and were taught the acronyms of how to start the car or how to change lanes. (SMOG – Signal, Mirrors, Over the shoulder, Go! Even I can’t believe I still remember that one.) Maybe you, like me, also ride a motorcycle. Maybe you can drive a stick-shift (aka manual transmission).
In any case, you’ll recall the many considerations to be mindful of in given scenarios. Heck, even going straight, you had to keep hands at 10 and 2, occasionally check the mirrors to be aware of surroundings, and keep a distance of 1 car length per 10 mph you were going at any given time to ensure you had enough distance to brake without hitting the car in front of you. Eventually, after a year or so, it got easier. We’ll touch on that soon.
Now, where else does analysis paralysis show up frequently? If you avoid the weightlifting platform and don’t have to drive anywhere, can you avoid it? Probably not. It shows up all the time! It keeps us from picking a college to attend, from choosing a career path, from deciding to get married or not, even from picking which toothpaste to get from the store!
As a quick note, this isn’t the same thing as decision fatigue, where the decisions made over the course of a day tire us out the point that we struggle to make any more. This is an overload of the brain in an instant. This is trying to cram too much data through a processor that just can’t handle the load and the inputs.
The brain has built in systems to prevent too much data from going through. Case in point, consider what physical sensations you have right now. Can you feel any joint pain or aching? Can you feel the pressure of your seat or the floor under you? If you hit your elbow against the wall, clap your hands, or bite your tongue, are you still aware of all the other lesser sensations? Probably not. Why? The brain can only take so much input in a given moment before it shuts down. Pain is just a data input, similar to the data of remembering all the requirements of a lift or of driving. There’s only so much we can handle.
So, how do we handle it? How do we avoid the paralysis? Even more, how can we perform and make improvements? Simply.
That’s all… Keep it simple. Start with one thing and master it. Once it’s second-nature, add something else.
When you lift a weight, start light. Break down each component; it doesn’t matter where you start, really. Just master one thing, and add another. Connect the two, and add something else. Eventually, you will master the full movement.
When you were learning to drive (if you learned), it was a lot to take in at once, so you took it slowly. You focused. You avoided distractions. You might have been taught to not have others in the car with you for a while or to keep the radio down. All so you could focus. Eventually, things became natural. You just innately knew what to do. It was like riding a bike, as they say. (That could have been an article in itself!)
What about life decisions? What about the daily challenges that we face? How do we handle them? Simply.
Again, keep it simple. This could be done in a lot of different ways, but I’ll propose one model for you that I use myself and with clients I coach.
Start with priorities. Outline for yourself what is most important to you. Develop that into your identity.
Who are you? What are you? How does that type of person act? What kinds of things does that person do and avoid? What do you allow, and what are your limits and boundaries?
From there, it’s fairly simple. When faced with a decision, you just run the options through your identity filter. (Maybe I’ll trademark that.) Rather that thinking about all the pros and cons, the what-ifs, the what-abouts, just simply ask if that person would choose it. Yes or No. FYI, adding in Maybe to your list only complicates things, so try to avoid it.
Viktor Frankl states in Man’s Search for Meaning,
“For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.” (pg. 108)
Admittedly, I’m probably more guilty of over-analyzing things than most. I can’t tell you how many years I wasted (okay, it was probably about 9) thinking about what I was meant to do, what I was placed on this earth to do. Years were spent doing little other than thinking about what my life’s purpose could be instead of just living purposefully. Trying to analyze all of life’s inputs (yes, all of them) to come up with a single purpose that will direct every decision you make from now on is overwhelming. So much so that it prevents us from doing anything at all. Guess what, if I figured anything out about life’s purpose, it’s this… doing nothing but thinking isn’t life’s purpose.
If there are too many inputs, too many variables, or too many options, then how do we move forward? Essentially, don’t overthink it. Just take on one thing at a time. There’s plenty of time to get around to the rest, but there isn’t time to waste being paralyzed. Get moving, one step at a time.
