Stuck in the sand, stuck in your head

Trusting yourself again

Anyone who plays golf knows the feeling. Your ball is plugged in the bunker, half buried in the sand. You stand over it, take a practice swing, then another. You start picturing everything that could go wrong: thinning it over the green, leaving it in the sand, taking three to get out. The longer you stand there, the harder the shot seems. The sand hasn’t changed. Your head has.

I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit, on the course and in business.

You send a proposal and spend the evening rereading it, convinced the price was wrong. You have a slightly awkward call with a client and replay it for days. You need to make a hiring decision and draw up so many pros and cons lists that three weeks pass and the candidate takes another job.

Sound familiar? Overthinking is one of the most common, and least talked about, habits among business owners.

Why we do it

Overthinking usually comes from a good place. You care about getting things right. You know your decisions affect your income, your staff and your reputation. And when you run the business, there’s often nobody else to share the weight with.

The trouble is that thinking harder doesn’t always mean thinking better. Past a certain point, more analysis just produces more doubt.

What it costs you

• Time: Decisions that should take an hour drag on for weeks.
• Opportunities: While you’re deliberating, a competitor who decided quickly has already moved.
• Energy: Constantly churning things over is exhausting and often spills into your evenings and sleep.
• Confidence: The more you second-guess yourself, the less you trust your own judgement.

Ways to break the loop

Set a decision deadline. Give yourself a fixed point, say Friday at noon, to make the call. Gather what you need before then, and when the time comes, decide.

Ask what’s reversible. Most business decisions can be undone or adjusted. If you can change course later, you don’t need certainty now, just a sensible first step.

Write it down. Getting thoughts out of your head and onto paper stops them going round in circles. Often the problem looks smaller in black and white.

Talk it through. Explaining a dilemma to someone else, especially another business owner, forces you to make sense of it. They’ll often spot the answer you’ve been circling for days.

Accept “good enough”. Waiting for the perfect option usually means waiting forever. A good decision made today often beats a perfect one made next month.

Trusting yourself again

You got your business this far by making decisions, many of them with far less information than you have now. Your instincts are better than your overthinking gives them credit for.

Back in that bunker, the answer is always the same: pick your spot, commit and swing. It might not finish next to the pin, but it gets you out of the sand and back in the game. Overthinking keeps you stuck. A decision gets you moving.

Something to try: Pick one decision you’ve been putting off and give yourself 48 hours to make it. Then stick to it.