How to stop overthinking: write the next step, then take it

Overthinking is running the same thought over and over without it ending in a decision or a step. You stop it by turning the thought into a next step with a day and a time, then doing that step or letting the date hold it. Telling yourself to stop thinking about it only brings the thought back harder.

Merriam-Webster defines overthinking as putting too much time into thinking about or analyzing something in a way that does more harm than good, and that last clause is the test you can run on yourself. Twenty minutes on a pitch that ends with three questions to ask is preparation. Two hours on it that end with a knot in your stomach is the loop.

In 2008 Edward Watkins, a psychologist at the University of Exeter's Mood Disorders Centre, reviewed the research on repetitive thought. It cuts both ways. Going over things helps people plan ahead and get over upsetting events. It also feeds depression and anxiety. Which way it goes depends partly on how concrete the thinking is, and that part is easy to change.

For a seller, abstract sounds like "why do I always lose them at the proposal?" Concrete sounds like "what do I say in the first line of the call?" The first question has no end. The second one does, and you can answer it.

Overthinking isn't a diagnosis on its own. It's a habit of thought, and habits change with small steps repeated. If it's there most days and getting in the way of your life, read the section on getting help near the end.

It rarely looks like sitting still. It looks like being careful. Check last week against this list:

• You read a WhatsApp message to a prospect six times before you send it, then keep checking whether it's been read.
• You replay a lost pitch and rewrite what you should have said about price.
• You put off a call because you can't choose how to open it.
• You go through tomorrow's meeting in bed, one objection at a time.
• A prospect goes quiet for two days and you decide they've bought from someone else.
• You guess what your manager thinks of your numbers before the 1:1 instead of looking at them.
• You research a prospect for forty minutes when five would do.

Three or more in one week means it has turned into a habit. Look closer and each one is built the same way, an open question with nothing to do attached to it, so the fix is to attach something.

Executive coach Melody Wilding, who teaches human behavior at Hunter College, names three kinds of overthinking in Harvard Business Review: rumination, future tripping and overanalyzing. Sellers get a fourth, mind reading, because so much of the job is guessing what a silent buyer thinks. Each loop has a question that ends it.

Rumination looks backward and future tripping looks forward, while overanalyzing gets stuck on a choice. Stuck on whether to offer a discount, or which list to call first? For a choice like that, put a clock on the decision and pick one. A replay, a dread or a guess has no options in it at all. Each one ends when a next step goes on your list with a date.

Three things feed it, and selling hands you all three every week.

The first is unfinished business. A quote with no reply stays switched on in your head, and so does the callback you promised for Thursday. In 2011, EJ Masicampo and Roy Baumeister at Florida State University gave people an unfinished goal and watched what it did to the rest of their thinking. The goal kept popping into their thoughts during an unrelated reading task, and they did worse on an unrelated word puzzle. When the researchers let them write a specific plan for the goal, those effects went away. Nobody had finished the goal yet. Writing the plan was enough to quiet it.

The second is silence. A buyer who hasn't replied leaves a question open, and your head fills the gap with the worst answer it can find. Two days without a reply turns into "they hate the offer" by the third evening.

The third is a number you can't see. If you don't know where your month stands, every slow day feels like the month falling apart. The guess keeps the worry going. The real number is nearly always less dramatic than the guess, and it takes two minutes to look up.

The obvious fix is to push the thought away, and it's the one that fails. In 1987, Daniel Wegner and colleagues asked people not to think of a white bear for five minutes and to ring a bell whenever they did, and they couldn't keep the bear out. When they were later allowed to think about it, they thought about it more than people who'd been asked to think about it from the start.

In a second experiment, people got one specific thought to switch to while they pushed the bear away, and afterwards they were less caught up in it.

So don't fight the replay of a lost deal. Hand your head one specific replacement: the next step, with a day on it.

Use this the moment you notice the loop, between calls or at your desk after a meeting. It takes ten minutes at most.

1. Name it. Say it plainly: "I'm replaying the Lim meeting." Once it has a name, it's one thing you can deal with.
2. Pick the loop from the table. Replay, dread, a choice or a guess.
3. Swap why for how. "Why did she go quiet?" becomes "How do I find out where she stands?"
4. Write the next step with a day and a time. Not "follow up with Lim". Write "Message Mr Lim Friday 10am, ask if the scope works or needs trimming."
5. Do it now if it takes two minutes. If it doesn't, the date holds it for you.
6. Go back to what you were doing. When the thought returns, tell it the date.

The step has to be one you'll take. In the Florida State studies, the people whose thoughts quieted down were the ones who went on to carry out their plan. A vague note to yourself doesn't count, and neither does a plan you already know you'll skip.

Step 4 is where most people stop short. A sticky note that says "chase Lim" has no date on it, so your head keeps the reminder running. In ActivityTracker you type the follow-up in one line, like "message Lim fri 10am", and it gets its date and a reminder 30 minutes before. When Friday comes, the sales follow-up process covers what to say.

Some worry won't fit into one next step: the month's number, a big deal still in play, a rough week. Give it an appointment instead of the whole day.

Psychologists McGowan and Behar tried this on 53 heavy worriers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in a 2013 study. For two weeks, one group did all its worrying in a 30-minute window each day, at a set time and in a set place, while the other was simply told not to avoid worry when it came up. The set window did better on worry and anxiety, and on trouble sleeping too. The study was small, so run your own two-week test: same time, same desk.

• Pick 15 minutes at the same time every day, for example 4:30pm, right after your last call block, at the same desk.
• When a worry shows up during a call block, write three words on a "later" list and keep dialling.
• In the slot, go down the list. Turn each worry into a next step with a date, or cross it off.
• When the time is up, stop. Anything left goes on tomorrow's list.

Put the slot in your daily sales routine the way you'd put in a client meeting. A kitchen timer is enough to end it. If you already time your call blocks in ActivityTracker, the focus timer has a 15-minute setting that counts down and chimes when it ends.

A thought at 11pm feels like a fact. Write it down and put what you know beside it. Fill the middle column only with things you can show someone, like a date on a message or a number in your pipeline.

If the middle column stays empty, the thought is a guess. Treat it like one, and pick the step that tests it. A short, friendly check-in answers "she's gone with someone else" faster than another evening of thinking.

Two more ways to test it. Say it out loud to a colleague, because a thought that sounds certain alone often sounds thin when you share it. And talk to yourself the way you'd talk to a teammate who fumbled a call. You'd tell them it was one call. Tell yourself the same.

Reps who overthink rarely say so. You see it in the work instead, in a deal note rewritten three times or follow-up dates that keep sliding, and in a day with no calls right after a lost deal.

In the 1:1, stay concrete. "Why did you lose it?" sends a rep straight back into the replay. Ask "what's the next step on each stuck deal, and when?" and write the answers down together. Keep them in your one-on-one meeting notes so you both check them next week.

Two things not to say:

• "Stop overthinking it." The white bear study is the reason this fails.
• "Just call them." If the rep found that easy, they'd have done it. Help them write the first line instead, as the call reluctance guide does.

Most overthinking is a habit, and the steps above are enough. Sometimes it's more. The NHS describes the main symptom of generalised anxiety disorder as stress or worry that affects your daily life and is difficult to control, and among the signs a GP looks for, it lists feeling anxious a lot of the time for at least 6 months.

If that sounds like you, or the loop has been wrecking your sleep and your work for weeks, talk to a doctor. Asking is a practical step, the same as asking your manager for help on a hard deal. If you're in crisis right now, call your local emergency number.

List every open follow-up that's living in your head, from the quotes still out to the leads that went quiet last week, and put a next step and a day beside each one. Tomorrow, book a 15-minute worry slot after your last call block. Overthinking feeds on loops with no date, so the first job is to date them.

• Merriam-Webster, Overthink (definition), read 28 October 2026
• Melody Wilding, 3 types of overthinking and how to overcome them, Harvard Business Review, 7 February 2024, read 28 October 2026
• Edward Watkins, Constructive and unconstructive repetitive thought, Psychological Bulletin, 2008 (abstract, PubMed), read 28 October 2026
• EJ Masicampo and Roy Baumeister, Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2011 (abstract, PubMed), read 28 October 2026
• Daniel Wegner and colleagues, Paradoxical effects of thought suppression, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1987 (abstract, PubMed), read 28 October 2026
• SK McGowan and E Behar, A preliminary investigation of stimulus control training for worry: effects on anxiety and insomnia, Behavior Modification, 2013 (abstract, PubMed), read 28 October 2026
• NHS, Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), read 28 October 2026