Overthinking? Perhaps you'll relate to this...
Journal 04: Struggles, struggles, struggles. Focus, intentions, and not enough time or energy to make everything work.
I’ve made somewhat of a pact to myself.
Every time I feel like I’m struggling to push forward with my work or see my ideas through, I’m going to write about it in an attempt to provide some value to you.
(At least, that way, I know that throughout my struggles I’ve been able to help others in a similar situation).
Currently, I’m stuck in the middle of a bunch of ideas and I’m failing to focus on any of them. It can often feel like i’m flitting from one to the other and missing out on some quality, deep-working time.
It’s frustrating to say the least. Partly because my mind travels ridiculously fast, meaning I can end up thinking about multiple things in such a short time span.
I’ve managed to overcome this for some time. I always have a pen and paper handy (or my iPhone ‘Notes’ app) to record any random thoughts and ideas that could potentially be worth investigating. The problem is that those ideas very rarely tie into each other and thus I begin to get lost in them all.
I’m sure you’ve experienced this at some point? If you haven’t, then let me know how you deal with it, because I’d love to know!
Realistically, though, it takes up more time than its worth, so how do I rationalise all these ideas and weed out the bad ones (and the even worse ones)?
Photo by Usman Yousaf on Unsplash
I think I’ve too many ideas and not enough brain!
This struggle is exacerbated by my self-talk. I’ve never considered myself an academic and, therefore, have come to the conclusion that I’ll always struggle to learn.
The caveat is that I need to learn in order to, 1) rationalise my ideas, and 2) make the valuable ones reality. Writing this will most likely take up some of the time I could be spending learning or engaging with those ideas, but I just can’t move forward without fully clearing my head.
I wonder how people in my situation actually cope with this free flow of ideas and burning sensation that something valuable is being lost now that said ideas are left in my incapable (technically very capable) hands.
I’ve learned a key lesson in idea generation, but it still frustrates me.
Having experienced this cycle for quite some time, I’ve come to learn that very few ideas make the cut.
In fact, I’ve even read books like Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Sagan, which rationalises and simplifies the idea process. But, I just can’t seem to find a system to organise these thoughts. (Perhaps I should go back and read the book again!) I just can't bring myself to believe that building a business or bringing plans to fruition can be that easy.
The internet doesn’t help… well, it can, but it doesn’t.
Scrolling through endless pieces of content to inspire a different trail of thought is somewhat to the ideas alone.
Content is available in abundance, but sifting through it to find the value seems to be the difficult challenge. I can’t even rely on a single YouTube Channel or blog to tell me all the things I need to know, and when I start to look further, I end up in this labyrinth of information that is incredibly overwhelming. It’s hard to avoid all the signals jumping out and attempting to pull me in more directions than I have already done so myself.
Coming up with a great idea in my generation (Gen Z —just about) is as difficult as finding a revolutionary piece of content on the internet.
If you relate to this, I feel for you! This is just one of many occasions where I’ve shared my internal thoughts, and you can find more on by Substack and subscribe for new ones as and when they arise. It feels somewhat cathartic to write this, but more so to rationalise it with others.