Analysis paralysis: I often overthink and get struggled
Makzan’s Dispatch 2020 week 30
Hi friend,
Last week, I learned a term Analysis Paralysis. That’s overthinking and not moving forward. I often overthink and struggle to make any progress. Now, I am learning to overcome this issue by focusing on one thing at a time. Minimizing external distractions is not enough. I also need to minimize my internal ideas and thinking.
I already know how: focus on one thing at a time and execute them in serial. But still, internally inside my brain, my ideas and thinkings are flighting all the time.
I came across a Reddit post explaining how to overcome too many ideas and focus on the execution. This post gives me a visualization on how to execute things in serial:
For every idea you have, imagine each one as an elephant trying to crowd into the room you're sitting in. It's a hot mess, isn't it? Soon they start crapping everywhere and you don't even want to enter the room.
I suggest you shoo all of them away, bar one. That remaining elephant is the one you're going to eat. You're going to eat it with a teaspoon, one teaspoon at a time.
And now it sounds terrible and it sounds like everything will take forever and will never happen. Not so fast: when you learn to devour an elephant a teaspoon at a time, something magical happens. You pick up speed, productivity and confidence. The universe quietly takes away the teaspoon and gives you a giant shovel. It gets better. It gets faster.
Also, don't eat actual elephants. They're lovely animals.
The visualization of having many elephants standing inside my tiny apartment is exactly how my brain looks like now. It is like I’m inside the balloon room in TeamLab. Almost no room to make progress when filled with those large balloons—ideas and over-thinkings. Now I need to train myself to keep kicking those elephants out of my room but only keep the current lovely one 🐘.
Links worth sharing
→ When should you use ARIA?
https://gomakethings.com/when-should-you-use-aria/
→ Vue 3 is now in Release Candidate
https://github.com/vuejs/rfcs/issues/189
→ is jQuery dead? 2020 version.
https://flaviocopes.com/jquery/
Every year, there is a post for that, until jQuery is really dead.
→ CSS only sweeper
https://github.com/propjockey/css-sweeper
CSS is a programming language thanks to the Space Toggle trick
→ This week I learned: Difference between return and enter
https://daringfireball.net/2020/07/return_and_enter
They have subtle differences.
→ Write code that is easy to delete
https://programmingisterrible.com/post/139222674273/write-code-that-is-easy-to-delete-not-easy-to
→ Comic: Side project showcase
https://www.monkeyuser.com/2020/side-project-showcase/
Quote of the week
“People don't have short attention spans. They have short interest spans. If they're interested, they'll give you their full attention.” — Jason Fried.
Until next week,
Thomas Mak
