How Overthinking Made Me Slower Than a Beginner.

One of the most memorable lessons from my early college years, I received from a fellow student in a computer lab for Mathematicians. I don’t remember his name, so let’s just call him Max.

It was one of my first years in college, and I was sitting right next to him, each of us with a computer in front of us.

I had already learned two programming languages quite well, so, in my juvenile overconfidence, I decided that this course would be boring. Rather than listening to the instructor’s lengthy description of the operators and functions we had to use, I browsed the documentation of this new programming language called MATLAB and learned the more advanced concepts.

When we got our worksheets, I read both task descriptions and realized that I could come up with an abstract solution that would solve both of them.

While already compiling the solution in my head, I chuckled a little when Max sitting next to me, asked the instructor a question of the kind: “How do I start this MATLAB thing? Oh, I have to click twice on this icon?” He clearly had not spent much time in front of a computer screen. He asked one more questions of this type, just to get to the point where he could actually type something.

My amusement turned into judgmental annoyance when, what felt like a minute later, Max summoned the instructor for yet another question. Then it quickly turned into embarrassed bafflement and confusion, when Max didn’t ask another question about how to use the tool, but instead asked a mathematical question about how to interpret the result on his screen. He was finished with the first task while I was still writing up my solution.

I still tried to keep my flow and kept working on my generalized solution, but it took a while because I had to teach myself how to interpret and deal with syntax errors created by all the cool new features I was using. Before I could finish my work, Max showed the second task’s solution to the instructor.

At this point I got up from my chair, walked over to Max, and asked him if he could show me what he wrote. He showed me eight short lines of text, each of which was just a combination of the three functions the instructor had shared earlier on the board, and some of the numbers copied from the worksheet sprinkled in.

Needless to say, I was humbled. There was no need at all to research operators, data models, or anything else in the MATLAB documentation. Because I did, I completely overthought the problem and missed the crucial point of the MATLAB programming language: The name is an abbreviation for “Matrix Laboratory”, because the language makes it easy to work with n-dimensional matrices and, in this case, allowed to write a program that looked almost the same as a mathematician would write on paper. There was no need to learn about indices or create data structures and abstractions at all.

It was a great lesson. I don’t know why, but many of life’s best lessons are the ones where the ego crumbles away.

When it comes to overthinking, one of the best ways to catch myself is to listen to what is going on inside me. Am I annoyed at others who are not as far ahead in the thinking process? Am I feeling superior? What would have happened if I hadn’t been so judgmental with Max in the first place, but had tried to help him start MATLAB instead of waiting for the instructor? He would have taught me a new way that I hadn’t seen before, right away.

And yes, I still overthink solutions, and I see it with leaders, too. CEOs who might have founded or turned around several companies can get into situations believing they already have many answers. But once they slow down and listen to the problems of this specific team, this specific company, they learn something new. And when they try to mentor based on their experience, they discover that some of what they thought was always true is not.

If you are a leader who wants some practical tools and some accountability to catch those overthinking traps, before they become utterly embarassing after wasting weeks or months of work, feel free to send me an email.

With care,

Martin