True Offer Lab | 1.1 Why You’re Stuck in Overthinking

You probably know this moment. You're sitting at your desk, pen in your hand, a fresh document on your computer screen, and you're ready to create. But instead of working on your new course, publishing your sales page, or hitting record on your camera... you're thinking.

What if I spend three months creating this and nobody buys?
Maybe I should choose another niche...
Since everybody is using AI now, I need to incorporate it into my product.
What if people buy, but I can't deliver?
Are people still buying online courses at all?
I need to change my prices, or people won't afford them in this economy.
Maybe I should rethink my strategy... just to be sure.

And just like that, you're stuck in the overthinking loop:

And you stay there for hours, days, weeks, months and maybe even years.

I've already talked about this in the intro, so I won't go further for now. This lesson aims to help you understand why you're stuck in overthinking in the first place. You'll identify when you're in a loop, and I'll present you with a couple of strategies to get you into action again.

The psychology behind overthinking

To me, overthinking used to happen a lot, and it's still happening fairly often. I'd lie wide awake in bed, and my mind would literally race unstoppable. No matter what I try in order to sleep, my brain just won't stop with all the "what ifs", "maybes", and "great ideas".

Since I always sleep with my smartwatch, I can provide you with an exact report on the nights I overthink and how long it takes me to stop it in order to finally sleep. Here's an example:

The orange part represents my awake state, light blue indicates REM sleep, darker blue represents light sleep, and the darkest blue represents deep sleep.

On this day, I spent about 1 hour and 30 minutes overthinking. As a matter of fact, I know exactly what I was spinning my head around: building a membership or selling online courses. I had the idea of a membership and just couldn't stop thinking about it.

And this overthinking part of my sleep cycle wasn’t just there one night. Upon closer examination of my sleep data, I realized this used to happen multiple times a week to me. On average, about 3 nights per week, obsessive thoughts kept me awake.

That’s 90 minutes of not sleeping, spinning ideas, feeling productive and smart in my head... but moving nowhere in real life. Just do the math: 90 minutes x 3 nights a week = nearly 200 hours a year lost to overthinking. That's literally a month of work (or 400 dreams never dreamed 😆)

Now, if you take a look at the overthinking loop graphic again, this is just me being stuck in the "too many ideas" phase of the loop.

Fortunately, in this case, I broke free the next day and started building my membership instead of moving into the next phase and staying stuck. But sometimes you're not so lucky and spend much longer in the loop. And this is exactly what the overthinking loop explains.

It doesn’t matter if it shows up at night in your bed, or in the middle of the day when you try to work... the pattern is always the same. Too many ideas, doubts piling up, endless scenarios… and then fear & paralysis, a little bit of pseudo action to make yourself feel better, and then you start spinning again, doubting everything, and getting too many ideas again. Rinse and repeat. I've explained it in the intro of this course:

True Offer Lab | Intro

This is the introduction to the paid online course “True Offer Lab.” It’s a NEW course, and lessons will be uploaded weekly.

Build quietly. Sell smart | Stefan ZangerleStefan Zangerle

Why does it happen?

It all comes down to basic psychology and evolution. The brain prefers clear certainty over uncertainty. So it analyzes all potential outcomes and tries to come up with the safest, most certain solution.

The problem is, there simply is no safety, especially when it comes to business decisions. It's all dependent on so many variables, so many "ifs", that your brain is in a nonstop loop.

There is also the "Zeigarnik effect", which contributes to overthinking. Without going too deep, it basically says that the brain remembers unfinished tasks/memories better than finished ones. So you can't really break free until you make a decision, take an action, and "finish" the open loop.

The negativity bias makes this whole overthinking loop even worse. The brain tends to focus more on risk and danger than on potential opportunities. For evolution, this is great, but for business... it's a killer. Because with every scenario, there is more potential danger, and you get stuck deeper and deeper in the loop.

And even if you take action and try to break free. Well, your mind fucks with your productivity again. The brain gets dopamine from planning alone, not just doing. So planning to take action (instead of actually doing anything at all) feels just as good as seeing progress.

Put all of this together, and you’ve got the perfect storm. Your brain rewards you for circling, punishes you for uncertainty, and convinces you that planning is progress. Which means: the loop is not your fault. Nonetheless, it's your responsibility to spot when you're in the loop and break free from it.