Overthinking and the psychology of peak performance

– Professor Arjun Ramachandra
IIM Bangalore

Overthinking has been increasingly recognized as a major contributor to stress and underperformance in high-stakes situations.

As a manager in a leading MNC, you’re worried. Tomorrow is a high-stakes client presentation that could clinch a major project; every slide is reviewed, every objection anticipated, and the pitch rehearsed to perfection. Now it’s time to relax. But instead, you feel nervous and underconfident. What if the client spots a gap? Or worse, challenges the assumptions? What if we lose this deal?

Or perhaps you are working a job. The interview tomorrow feels make-or-break. You have prepared relentlessly and bring years of experience. Yet anxiety floods in: What if I mess up? What if I don’t secure this deal? Why won’t this happen to me? Why if I don’t get this?

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Overthinking is the mind’s tendency to inflate situations and their consequences far beyond their true importance in the larger arc of life. Managing people and organisational dynamics begins with managing ourselves, and that includes managing overthinking.

Overthinking has been increasingly recognised as a major contributor to stress and underperformance in high-stakes situations — even seasoned professionals are vulnerable. University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock has studied “choking” moments in sports, including golfer Greg Norman’s choke after leading the US Masters after brilliant performances on the first three days. In her book Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To, she writes: “In anxious situations, analysis can occur when people try to control every aspect of what they are doing in an attempt to ensure success, only to disrupt what was once a fluid, flawless performance.”

That is where overthinking begins: effortful, over-controlled and eventually paralysing.

So why do we overthink? Often from a fixation on outcomes rather than the act itself. The Bhagavad Gita (18.24) uses the term bahula ayasam for action performed with excessive effort. Physically, mental effort both drives and undermines us because we depend entirely on personal effort and therefore feel entitled to the results. Another well-known verse (2.47) encourages a different stance: recognise that you are wholly responsible for the outcomes (ma karmaphala-hetur bhur), while continuing to perform your duties with enthusiasm and diligence (ma te sango’stvakarmani).

This shift in perspective can dramatically ease high-pressure stress. But how does one practise it? The answer is surprisingly simple: consciously redirect attention from the immediate pressure to something you love to do. Sian Beilock’s research shows that even a simple trick such as singing or whistling prior to or during a critical moment can ease stress and help performance. The technique is called pre-question the turbulent mind and re-directingness. Such positive distractions can loosen the larger picture and loosen the grip of the mind’s fixation. We are still in the thick of action but no longer obsessed with outcomes, letting go of the invisible mental strings that create for success and fear (we experience joy). In this state of mind, we act more naturally, simply because we’re internally relishing the act itself, instead of merely using it as a means to an end.

Does that mean it is then better not to set goals or be ambitious? Not really. On the contrary, a goal-less endeavour lacks the motivational required to act. Setting ambitious goals is essential, but being overly worried by them is counterproductive. It is wiser to absorb our consciousness in the immediate task at hand and let the goal recede to the background, remaining in view, but not consuming us. The Gita (18.23) explains that such regulated action performed without attachment or love or hate, and without desire for fruitive results, in the mode of goodness, leads to true clarity, contentment and peace.

So the next time your mind spirals into overthinking, pause, reflect on the timeless words of the Gita and reconnect to the larger picture of your life. And remember: overthinking about overthinking is still overthinking.

Source: Deccan Herald