How to Overcome Analysis Paralysis?

You may get some thoughts that cannot be overcome, like some thoughts having control over you, such as fear of making wrong decisions or fear of making a wrong start that ruins what you are attempting to do. Then, stress takes over you, so you panic about the idea of moving forward.

Maybe the best thing to do is to wait a little before you start doing what you want to do, inquire into it, realize, and plan for what is “appropriate” completely so that it becomes logical. Once you do that, your stress will start to shrink. 

Analysis paralysis:

It is a kind of procrastination where you feel a sort of resentment towards advancement, and convince yourself that the problem lies within not thinking things thoroughly, not doing enough research, or not having enough information about what you were going to do. When you put off the idea of taking action for a later time, your stress subsides which causes you to delay getting started. 

It can be hard to overcome analysis paralysis because it is not always harmful. Sometimes you really need to do more research about something specific and not make a rushed decision.

So, sticking to the best possible option is better than taking immediate action. Of course, the justifications that succeed in persuading us to postpone are often very tempting. Thus, if you think an idea is bad, the excuse will be that it is difficult to implement.

Why do you get analysis paralysis?

Analysis paralysis has the same fundamental causes as all other forms of procrastination. The difference is not in the cause of procrastination, but rather, the characteristics of the situation you are dealing with lead you to use a different justification to deal with it. 

All forms of procrastination, including analysis paralysis, are caused by the desire to avoid something unpleasant, whether it is real or imaginary. Internally, you do not want to begin doing that thing, so you start looking for excuses to justify avoiding it.

What makes analysis paralysis different is that oftentimes there are fears, mysteries, or doubts, which make doing more research a perfect excuse. For example, if I want to postpone going to the gym, I cannot pretend like I need to do more research, but I can use it as an excuse before writing an article which I do not know how to start, postponing starting a project that intimidates me, or putting off a decision that may go wrong.

When dealing with analysis paralysis, you must adapt to two facts, which are justification and fear:

• Justification: You must treat justification as needing more time to think, plan, and research by preventing that excuse from working.
• Fear: Even if you manage to convince yourself that you are procrastinating and that analysis paralysis is not helpful, it may not stop you from doing what you want; rather, you need to resort to strategies that push you to overcome fear.

Only by addressing these two factors can you cure the analysis paralysis that you are facing.

Overcoming the logical excuses not to get started:

When making difficult decisions, there are no right answers. For example, you know you want to start a business project, but what kind of business should you run? Should you be a consultant or a manufacturer? Should your products be material or digital?  Should you promote your products via the internet or in real life? What should you name your company? Should you save up money? Any of these decisions can easily become a cause of analysis paralysis. 

Clearly, spending some time analyzing possible options is a good thing; however, consuming an indefinite amount of time on it will be bad. We want to spend enough time ruminating on all the options to make good decisions, but we must avoid falling into the trap of infinite persistent analysis.

The best way to surpass this situation is setting limitations. If these limitations are set beforehand, you can prevent the logical part of your brain from using it as an excuse to procrastinate. As mentioned previously, this may not stop procrastination, but at least it will clarify to you that this is what you are doing.

Here are some limitations you can try:

1. Set a deadline for making a decision with a default option:

If you are confused between several options, choose a default option.In order not to procrastinate frequently in the context of the situation, you may want to choose the default option randomly. After that, set a deadline to do all the research, rumination, investigation, interviews, and anything else you do to gather information. When the deadline comes, you will have a default option unless you have changed it previously.

2. Start randomly and change later:

Give yourself a default option, and then force yourself to work on it for a certain amount of time before you get back to your research. This method works when you want to explore your options, but you cannot find out more about them without trying them in real life.

3. Keep the difficult choices available:

Most of the time, you procrastinate on something big only because you cannot make decisions about the little details. For example, you procrastinate on studying because you are unsure of what major to choose, and even so, you may have many semesters and subjects that you can study which can be suitable in all cases, and that is how you can start without making the decision you are afraid of. 

All of these strategies work on the principle of removing the logical excuses not to get started. The first strategy lets you set a reasonable amount of time to do research, which is why you cannot complain about not having enough time to think about the matter. The second strategy lets you give yourself the choice to retreat. That is why you cannot complain that the decision is so important to the extent that you cannot decide on it yet. The third strategy, you start by doing all the things that all options have in common, which is why you can’t use your need to do research as a reason to procrastinate.

Unfortunately, even by using these strategies and removing your excuses, it does not mean that you will begin. You may realize that you are procrastinating, but you keep doing it though. So, to overcome this situation, you must know your emotions behind your justifications.

Overcoming the emotional resistance to begin:

Emotional resistance that causes procrastination often looks like this: When I think of doing something, I imagine bad things happening and I feel all the bad emotions associated with them, so I stay away from the thing that I want to do. And when I think of not doing what I want to do and wait, I feel comfortable, which makes things easier.

To overcome analysis paralysis, you must firstly steer clear of this way of thinking, and you need to remove the stress and fear of doing what you are avoiding. Secondly, you must rid yourself from the comfort that you feel when procrastinating. 

Overcoming your excuses is important because when you feel like procrastinating is justified, there is nothing else you can do. You can only make a change when there is a clash between your mind and feelings.

How to start changing yourself to overcome your feelings towards beginning something?

The easy answer lies within the psychology of dealing with phobias, which is exposure therapy. You are exposed to small doses of what you are afraid of to minimize the fear that it causes. This kind of therapy works with arachnophobia (phobia of spiders) and coulrophobia (phobia of clowns) for example, and it can help you begin doing a task that worries you. 

Hypothetically, you want to write an article, but you are not sure about the subject that you want to write about. If you follow the suggestions above, you choose a hypothetical subject, set a deadline and this deadline comes and you’re supposed to start writing the article, but you are still procrastinating, what should you do?

In this case, you can begin by giving yourself a small enough task so that dealing with the discomfort that comes with it is possible. Instead of sitting for hours to write an article, try to write one paragraph, then take a break. Writing one paragraph will lead to overcoming your primary resistance, and reducing your resentment toward beginning. After doing that, you may try to sit for thirty minutes to write without having high expectations for later, and you can continue until you finish the article.

It is probable that you may face a similar problem when starting a business project, but what if you had to get one client or buy one product only? What if you had to create something without trying to sell it? You can divide your fears into tiny sections to overcome them.

Exposure therapy is only one tool, and you can have another kind of remedy which is rewarding yourself when you take an action so that it positively reinforces overcoming procrastination. There is another kind of remedy. You can punish yourself when you don’t take action. I know someone who would force themself to take a cold shower when they missed one of their goals, so the idea of cold water started to motivate them to work.

In conclusion:

In all of these cases, the main thing is to remedy procrastination by rewiring your emotional reactions to make them easier to control overtime, and not by stressfully thinking about the matter, which only makes matters worse. However, if you are able to do both strategies, which are overcoming the logical excuses for analysis paralysis, and reducing your emotional justifications that prevent you from doing what you know is right, you can start moving forward even when it comes to the most difficult goals and projects.