Overthinking Has Its Price

Being a business student, it’s not unusual for me to pitch for marketing strategies and present ideas to an audience. Although it’s my first year here in the university, I have experienced presenting marketing ideas with the help of the organizations I have.

           During my very first marketing presentation, I was very scared. It was my first time and I wanted it to be perfect. I reviewed the script thoroughly, practicing every sentence in such a way that I have come close to memorizing it. I was scared, terrified that I might utter wrong words during the presentation. I wanted it to be flawless. The time to present came and my heart beat so fast I could hear it. I kept on pushing myself to remember the words I have practiced.  Although I have successfully delivered some of the lines, there were times wherein I would carelessly lose my thoughts and mumble wrong words.

            The next semester, we were again asked to present our ideas for an upcoming event. Remembering my experience from before, I’ve decided to just keep my calm and not think of the presentation too much. Before the presentation, I read the script thoroughly and after scanning the whole thing, I decided to talk with my friends instead of rereading the whole stuff again. I convinced myself that I knew what I was going to present and there need not be any reason to feel scared. The time for presentation came and I didn’t think too much about it. I simply relayed my ideas and presented the plans we had. After that, my friends came to me and told me that I did a good job presenting the ideas in a calm voice. I was happy about it, and I realized one thing. OVERTHINKING can actually lessen your ability to perform well in a certain activity.

           Riding a bike is also like my “marketing experience”. I’ve realized that the more I think about how I’m cycling, the more disturbed I am, therefore accidentally falling from the bike.

           Taraz Lee,  a postdoctoral scholar working in UCSB’s Action Lab conducted an experiment about how overthinking can affect our performance. They’ve conducted the experiment on participants to prove this theory.

“Participants were shown a series of kaleidoscopic images for about a minute, then had a one-minute break before being given memory tests containing two different kaleidoscopic images. They were then asked to distinguish images they had seen previously from the new ones. "After they gave us that answer, we asked whether they remembered a lot of rich details, whether they had a vague impression, or whether they were blindly guessing," explains Lee. "And the participants only did better when they said they were guessing." (Cohen)

This experiment has shown us the disadvantage of overthinking things. The less we overthink, the less chances that we “screw things up” and do something wrong. There’s nothing wrong about preparing for something. Of course, we really have to think of ways to perfection. We have to prepare and do things thoroughly, but there’s a limit between thinking about it and overthinking a situation. We should remember that we still have to keep our cool and let things go. In this way, we may become more efficient in the tasks assigned to us.

Blogpost by: Querubin Anne C. Yap

References:

Cohen, Julie. “Overthinking Can Be Detrimental to Human Performance”. The Current. The Regents of the University of California, 6 August 2013. Web. 24 January 2014. <http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2013/013593/overthinking-can-be-detrimental-human-performance >

Martin, Neal. “Is Overthinking Killing Your Progress and Performance?”.  Combative Mind. Web. 24 January 2014. < http://www.combativemind.com/self-development/overthink-thinking-killing-progress-performance/