Yes, I am exactly the same. While at work I feel very productive eliminating future risk by being very conspicuous towards all design decisions, but the same attitude in "real life" is very troublesome.
For example, a very small random sample of thoughts that routinely pop up:
- Lent somebody your bike? Oh my god he/she may die, because it's badly maintained (and thinking about the details about different kinds of breakage vs. harm caused).
- Opening plastic containers or cans for food: oh my god, sharp edges may fall into the food (how to keep parts of packaging from falling into food while opening is surprisingly complex topic, think about knifes vs. scissors vs. tearing it open, all have very different hehaviour wrt. creating debris :)
- doing mistakes when filing taxes vs. the risk and penalties that may ensue
- furniture / cupboards being insufficiently bolted to the
wall and coming down (and thinking about how it would move, where it would hit and the likelhood of bad injuries)
- risk of injuries due to electricity after fixing electric installation at home (am I sure I didn't damage some insulator, is the ground wire really properly attached, is the strain-relief properly done etc.)
For me this is pretty much modulated by stress level. Doing a lot of sports, less coffee, and sleeping enough usually leaves me much less inclined of doing these not so helpful analysis for stuff outside work. And I'm always amazed how other people can just "wipe away" such thoughts as unnecessary without any analysis at all. Maybe that's the difference between employing proper intuition vs. striving for "mathematical proof" kind of certainty in all areas of life.
[edit] adding another perspective that is sometimes helpful in stopping overthinking: trying to analyse the full tree of possibilities is the chess computer kind of reasoning (alpha-beta search). It is pretty limited in what domains it can be applied to (e.g. it does not work for Poker or the Game of Go). On the other hand try to learn some Go and feel the difference: after gaining some experience you will give up on exhaustive analysis in many situations and just start relying on intuition, because it's the only thing that actually works for complex, unclear situations. Now sometimes I try to remember how playing Go feels when faced with real-world problems where I'm tempted to do an exhaustive analysis. See also [1].
Yeah sounds familiar. I feel it's related to stress and to not taking time to stop thinking or make myself stop thinking (and indeed do sports or play with the kids, while first clearing my head).
I have had moments where I felt I was almost loosing it because I was just constantly thinking about some (in hindsight minor) issue. And I then start to meditate just to stop the thinking. I don't know if that helps or if there is a natural cadence to it but I do get better after doing that for some days usually (10-15 min here and there, I used the free tier of HeadSpace during 1 period as well). I should just also meditate regularly to see if my general mood improves. From everything I read, it should.
I am about to go camping, that will help, although I'm already getting pissed (and finding nice ways to express said emotion) at that fictitious family with the bluetooth speaker on all day in the spot next to me. What a waste of thought. Just stop brain.
+1 for reducing caffeine intake. Some years ago I used to wake up in the middle of the night with extreme anxiety about ridiculously small problems. Cutting caffeine can definitely help (although it may also have an adverse effect on work efficiency :)
I can relate to this. Let me ask you a thing: when you ship things (release a product), do you feel lifted/happy like ppl here tell you, or does your worries increase (like it happens for me, I hate shipping)
When the code works the way I want it to for the version I’m about to release.
Like if I’ve finished the code for v1.6 and am ready to ship it to customers, I feel great. When I actually send it to customers my anxiety kicks in thinking of all the support requests and criticism I’m about to get.
For example, a very small random sample of thoughts that routinely pop up:
- Lent somebody your bike? Oh my god he/she may die, because it's badly maintained (and thinking about the details about different kinds of breakage vs. harm caused).
- Opening plastic containers or cans for food: oh my god, sharp edges may fall into the food (how to keep parts of packaging from falling into food while opening is surprisingly complex topic, think about knifes vs. scissors vs. tearing it open, all have very different hehaviour wrt. creating debris :)
- doing mistakes when filing taxes vs. the risk and penalties that may ensue
- furniture / cupboards being insufficiently bolted to the wall and coming down (and thinking about how it would move, where it would hit and the likelhood of bad injuries)
- risk of injuries due to electricity after fixing electric installation at home (am I sure I didn't damage some insulator, is the ground wire really properly attached, is the strain-relief properly done etc.)
For me this is pretty much modulated by stress level. Doing a lot of sports, less coffee, and sleeping enough usually leaves me much less inclined of doing these not so helpful analysis for stuff outside work. And I'm always amazed how other people can just "wipe away" such thoughts as unnecessary without any analysis at all. Maybe that's the difference between employing proper intuition vs. striving for "mathematical proof" kind of certainty in all areas of life.
[edit] adding another perspective that is sometimes helpful in stopping overthinking: trying to analyse the full tree of possibilities is the chess computer kind of reasoning (alpha-beta search). It is pretty limited in what domains it can be applied to (e.g. it does not work for Poker or the Game of Go). On the other hand try to learn some Go and feel the difference: after gaining some experience you will give up on exhaustive analysis in many situations and just start relying on intuition, because it's the only thing that actually works for complex, unclear situations. Now sometimes I try to remember how playing Go feels when faced with real-world problems where I'm tempted to do an exhaustive analysis. See also [1].
[1] https://xkcd.com/761/