31 Comments
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Lewis O’Brien's avatar

Love the idea of Napoleon’s Cupboard. I do something similar already in a less literal sense. I try to store different information in different ‘physical’ spaces in my brain.

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George Mack's avatar

Beautiful.

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Daniel MG's avatar

Loved the monk story and the "never trust a thought" idea :))

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George Mack's avatar

Glad you enjoyed.

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Jon Soto's avatar

As someone who's been at war with his mind for so long, I appreciate these insights a ton. Thank you for sharing. I will definitely hold onto these ✍🏾

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George Mack's avatar

Good luck!

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Kamini Rupin_girl's avatar

I love the high agency low agency mode and experiment (test hypothesis) vs ruminate

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George Mack's avatar

Glad you enjoyed.

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Jason's avatar

Bravo! Great post. I’d love to see a full post (or even a book length exploration of each point-I’d buy it) on each of your points. Especially point 6. Can you provide an explanation of how such an experiment would work?

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The Mind Dump Journal's avatar

“ if you want to decrease overthinking, welcome it”. Is so true, I started writing because I felt overwhelmed with my thoughts. The more I welcomed the state of giving my thoughts life on paper, the clearer everything started to become.

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George Mack's avatar

It's a strange paradox.

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Malte's avatar

I wrote a whole book about overthinking many years ago. It's still on Amazon and has no sales. Probably a lot of people overthink the decision hana

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Matty Reed's avatar

“The average person spends nearly eight hours per day mind wandering.”

Source?

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George Mack's avatar

A large 2010 study by Killingsworth & Gilbert (Science, 2010) found people reported their minds were wandering 46.9% of the time across diverse activities.

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Maxwell Dirt's avatar

Whenever I have to jump into cold water, I just convince myself that I am an automaton preprogrammed to go into the water. This takes away all the anxiety about whether I should jump. I now just need to figure out how to apply this to other things in my life

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Roshni Nich's avatar

Loved the idea of running mini experiments to arrive at a decision instead of ruminating

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Everyday Improvement's avatar

This picture cracked me up. I know I shouldn’t

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Julius Darang's avatar

i relate to the story about the novice who try to empty his mind blank but can't stop it racing

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Mark Solomons's avatar

Superb and timely post. Very much enjoyed and read aloud to my kids.

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Randy Mankoto's avatar

Wow this is good

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Harry's avatar

Socrates may have said that the unexamined life is not worth living, with the over examined life isn’t much either

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Klaudia's avatar

I agree with a lot of those however some completely disregard neurodiversity and mental health challenges. Tell average ADD person that their overthinking is narcissism or that they can turn the thoughts into experiments!

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