3 types of overthinking

And how to conquer them in your professional life

I’ve been thinking about thinking again. (Meta, I know.)

Modern life seems to demand our attention at every second: endless pings, last-minute meetings, the relentless parade of self-optimization advice we see on social media. Our minds have become browsers with too many tabs open - flashing red notifications, playing background music we didn’t mean to start, and somehow still buffering.

It’s no wonder that around three-quarters of adults admit to thinking too much – and apparently, drinking too much (probably related).

In our professional lives, overthinking can be disguised as “being thorough” or “preparing.” But often, it’s quietly stealing away our focus, dimming our confidence, and stalling our decision-making. In workplaces that thrive on clarity and speed, overthinkers (hi, it’s me) can unintentionally slow things down and set a culture of caution that stifles momentum.

Recently, I stumbled upon a breakdown of the three types of overthinking, written by Executive Coach Melody Wilding – and it feels like someone finally cracked the code I’ve been unknowingly living by. I used to lump all my mental spirals into the same blurry bucket. But naming them helped me start to notice their patterns, and eventually, start to interrupt them.

So, let me share what I learned. Here are the three types of overthinking – what they look like, how they show up at work and in life, and a few ways to move through them.

1. Rumination

If overthinking had a favorite direction, it would be backward.

Rumination is the mental habit of rehashing the past, especially events where we think we could have or should have said something differently, noticed something sooner, or just… shown up better. It masquerades as reflection but rarely ends with insight – just a hollow feeling and a familiar pit in the stomach.

(Fun fact: “rumination” comes from the Latin ruminare, which means to chew again – like cows do with their food after regurgitating it. If you didn’t want to stop ruminating badly enough, now hopefully you do!)

Signs you’re ruminating:

• You’re obsessing over how someone interpreted your tone in a meeting.

• You keep proofreading the same email, already sent.

• One piece of critical feedback keeps replaying in your head on loop.

How to stop ruminating:

Schedule ‘worry time.’ If you watched Shrinking, you’ll recognize this as Paul’s go-to exercise. But it’s also one that therapists and mental health professionals recommend as a feasible coping mechanism. The strategy entails setting aside 10-15 minutes to try to immerse yourself in a troubling emotion, such as fear, anxiety, grief, or worry. The goal is to train yourself to actively sit with uncomfortable, often intense feelings for an allotted time of day, allowing you to manage them without letting them dominate the rest of your day.

For additional reading on ‘worry time’ read: A study conducted by Talker Research, which surveyed 2,000+ Americans, revealed 10% of Gen Z and millennials schedule worry time.

2. Future Tripping

If rumination is the rearview mirror, future tripping is the foggy windshield.

This flavor of overthinking is rooted in uncertainty, fear, and the need to predict and control outcomes. It’s imagining every version of how something might go wrong and pre-living each one like it’s already happening. For many of us, it’s not just about the future - it’s a hybrid spiral: trying to fix the past through thinking about the future.

Signs you’re future tripping:

• You draft entire conversations in your head before they happen—rehearsing tone, facial expressions, and escape plans.

• You obsess over future outcomes tied to your self-worth (a job offer, a diagnosis, a market trend).

• You check your metrics/dashboard/email compulsively, searching for clarity that doesn’t exist yet.

How to stop future tripping:

Your ability to anticipate can actually be a strength - if you use it selectively. One tool I love (and that gets used in Dialectical Behavior Therapy) is the Cope Ahead skill: visualize yourself calmly navigating a stressful future scenario as your wisest self. Prepare what you might say and how you might cope if the situation did go horribly wrong (usually, things go much better than we think). In this way, you’re preloading your nervous system with resilience.

Another helpful reframe is “temporal distancing”: picture yourself five years from now, looking back at this moment. Suddenly, that presentation or awkward email feels much smaller.

And of course: practice “selective ignorance”. Know what information fuels your anxiety (endless news cycles, Slack channels, or your coworker’s frantic KPI updates) and mute or set boundaries on your time accordingly. Not every input deserves your attention. Maybe this one sounds very Gen Z of me, but if Gen X began their professional careers in an era of constant slack pings and the expectation to be “on” 10000% of the time - they’d be having a hard time with it, too. Adjusting to the work world is tough already, but the information overload we experience today adds a whole new layer. Know when you need to go the extra mile, and know when you need to give it a rest. It’s essential.

3. Overanalyzing

This one’s trickier to spot because it’s not about time - it’s about depth. You might be stuck in the past or the future, or neither. But you’re spinning out in the layers of analysis before making a decision: the pros and cons lists, the research rabbit holes, the endless Slack messages asking for input. I call this one “The Paralysis of Possibility.”

This is me when I delay sending a document or email because I want it to be 5% better… and then miss the moment entirely.

Signs you’re overanalyzing:

• You procrastinate by researching a topic “just a little more.”

• You crowdsource opinions, then feel even more unsure.

• You can’t tell what’s urgent and what’s noise, so everything piles up.

How to stop overanalyzing:

Shift your language from “What if?” to “We’ll see.” This quick reframe can help you loosen your grip on outcomes and take action - even when you’re uncertain. Most things reveal themselves through doing, not through thinking.

It can also be helpful to build micro-deadlines. Set a timer for 20 minutes, make a decision, hit send. Let that be enough.

The Case for Less Thinking (No, Really)

“I swear to you that to think too much is a disease, a real actual disease.”
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

Dostoyevsky might’ve been the original overthinker. His characters spiral so deep into their own minds that it starts to feel like a form of self-imposed torture. In a conversation between journalist Sean Illing and philosopher Simon Critchley, Critchley made a point that stuck with me: he doesn’t believe in a literal Hell, but feels like he lives in one when he’s trapped in his own mind.

Here’s the secret: sometimes the answer isn’t more self-analysis. Sometimes it’s less. According to Melody Wilding, “Sensitive strivers” — the high-achievers who are also more sensitive to their emotions, the world, and the behavior of those around them — like us are already wired to over-reflect. What we might need more of is not another thought spiral, but a return to presence.

This doesn’t require a silent retreat or deleting your apps (though, not a bad idea). Sometimes it just means looking outward - through art, love, nature, poetry, music, movement, connection. Through noticing. Through doing.

And as Brittany Morazan points to in her blog, The Soul of Artful Living:

“You don’t have to fix everything at once. You just have to come home to yourself, one breath, one pause, one soft reorientation at a time.”

Reclaim your attention. Reclaim your presence.

<3 Delaney