How to Stop Overthinking and Take Action (Without Waiting to Feel Sure)

By Antonio Neves

To stop overthinking and take action, stop asking your brain to solve the whole thing and give it a question it can answer today: What will make today a success? Then pick one move you can start in the next 10 minutes, give the rest of the thinking its own time slot later in the day, decide with about 70% of the information when the choice can be undone, and write down what you did before bed. Overthinking wants a guarantee before you move. You're not going to get one, so make the next move small enough that you don't need it.

A few years back I'm on a flight from North Carolina to Virginia. We already sat through a five hour mechanical delay to get in the air. Then I smell smoke. The turbulence gets aggressive, and the flight attendants are pulling out these dusty manuals.

Then the pilot comes on and says we're going to "attempt an emergency landing in Raleigh."

I love words. So out of that whole sentence, my brain grabs one. Attempt? Lie to me.

I text my mom. At some point I feel this strange peace and say thank you out loud. Then I say, "Ain't this some..." We land safely, surrounded by fire trucks. I didn't even get to use the slide. (I told the whole story in a piece on how to reset your day.)

That one word is a pretty good picture of overthinking. Your head grabs one piece of a situation, maybe a line in an email or something your boss said in passing, and plays it on a loop. And underneath the loop is a request nobody can grant: promise me this works out before I move. The pilot couldn't promise that, and neither can anybody in your life.

After my family lost our home in the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, each morning I asked one question: What will make today a success? Not the year, not the month, not the week. Just this day. That question gives your brain a problem it can finish before dinner.

Psychologists have a name for the loop: rumination. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a Yale psychologist who studied it, laid out her research in a 2005 talk covered by the American Psychological Association's Monitor. People who ruminate often struggle to find good solutions to problems, tend to have low confidence in the solutions they do find, and often don't act on them. One of her suggestions for breaking the cycle was to take small actions to begin solving the problem.

So more thinking usually isn't the fix, even though it feels like work. Ask yourself: am I working on the problem, or thinking about how bad the problem is? Working on it ends in a next step, and the other one just goes around again.

There's also research on what quiets it. E.J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister found in 2011 that unfinished goals keep pulling at your thoughts and get in the way of other tasks, and that making a specific plan for the goal quieted those thoughts, even before people did anything about it.

Want this on paper? The free 1-Day Method Starter Kit has the morning question, your 3 priorities, five daily acts and a spot for the day's wins. It's the same question I asked every morning after the fire. Print it and answer the question for tomorrow tonight, before your head starts running laps.

Before email, before the news, write down your answer to What will make today a success? Keep it about today. If the overthinking is about something big, like whether to leave your job, the answer for today might be "I called one person who left a job like mine and asked what the first month was like." You can check that tonight. "Figure out my career" you can't.

Look at your answer and ask what the first 10 minutes of it look like. The actual move. Open the doc and write the first ugly paragraph. Send the text. Pull up the numbers. Then use the check from making a to do list you'll actually finish: could somebody else tell whether it's done? If they couldn't, it's still thinking, and you need a smaller move.

Start it before you feel ready. Ten minutes is short enough that you don't need to be sure. There's more on that in how to stop procrastinating on a task you dread.

Tom Borkovec, a Penn State psychology professor emeritus who published research on this approach back in 1983, told Live Science in 2011: "When we're engaged in worry, it doesn't really help us for someone to tell us to stop worrying." Postponing works better. "If you tell someone to postpone it for a while, we are able to actually do that."

He was commenting on a small study from the Netherlands. People dealing with adjustment disorders, burnout or serious problems at work practiced keeping their worrying to one scheduled 30 minute period a day, and those who did it before therapy reduced anxiety, stress and depressive symptoms more than people who only got standard treatment. It was small, and it needs to be repeated with bigger groups, but the move is simple enough to try today.

So when the loop starts at 10 AM, write the thought down in one line and give it a time. 4:30 works. When 4:30 comes, give it up to 30 minutes and ask the step 2 question: what's the next move? If there is one, it goes on tomorrow's page. If there isn't, it waits.

Sometimes overthinking is really just waiting for information you're never going to get. In his 2016 letter to shareholders, Jeff Bezos wrote that most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had, and that waiting for 90% is usually too slow. He also pointed out that a lot of decisions are doors you can walk back through, and that being wrong may be less costly than you think.

He was writing about running a company, but it works on a Tuesday too. Ask one thing: can I undo this? If yes, like trying a new routine, sending the pitch or signing up for the class, decide today with what you've got. If no, like selling the house, give it a decision date and write down the one fact you're still missing. Then make getting that fact today's move.

Before bed, write one line: the move you made today. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer looked at knowledge workers' diaries for their Harvard Business Review article "The Power of Small Wins" and found that nothing contributed more to a positive inner work life than making progress in meaningful work. One line tonight is a record that the day moved, and it's there tomorrow when your head tries to tell you it didn't. If you want a simple way to keep that record, here's how to track daily wins.

Changing jobs, moving, ending something, starting something. These are the ones that keep you up, and they deserve real thinking. They just don't need all of it at once.

Give the big decision a real decision date, maybe two weeks out, and put it on your calendar. Between now and then, every day gets one move that makes the decision better informed: one conversation, one number you look up, one honest list of what you'd give up.

If the loop won't let you sleep, if it's there most days for weeks, or if it comes with feeling hopeless or numb, talk to a doctor or a therapist. Nolen-Hoeksema's research tied rumination to depression, and that's worth taking seriously with someone trained to help. If you're having thoughts of hurting yourself, reach out right away. In the US you can call or text 988.

A lot of the time it's your brain trying to get certainty before it lets you act. When the outcome matters and you can't control all of it, your head keeps running scenarios looking for a guarantee. Shrinking the question to today and picking one 10 minute move gives it something it can actually finish.

They overlap. Rumination is the psychology term for going over the same negative thoughts again and again. Yale psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema linked it to weaker problem solving, low confidence in solutions and not acting on them. A simple check: if your thinking is producing a next step, it's problem solving. If it keeps circling the same worry, it's rumination.

Put it on paper before bed. Write tomorrow's answer to "What will make today a success?", one 10 minute move, and one line about what you did today. Research by E.J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister found that making a specific plan for an unfinished goal quieted intrusive thoughts about it, even before people acted. If you lie awake most nights, talk to a doctor.

For anything you can undo, less than you'd like. Jeff Bezos wrote in his 2016 shareholder letter that most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had, and that waiting for 90% is usually too slow. For choices you can't easily reverse, set a decision date and go get the one fact you're missing.

Thinking is useful when it ends in a decision or a next step. It stops helping when it circles. Give it a set time later in the day, up to 30 minutes, and ask what the next move is. If there's an answer, do it. If there isn't, it waits until tomorrow.

The 1-Day Method Planner is the paper version of the question I asked every morning after the fire. Each day has room for your answer to "What will make today a success?", your Essential 3, up to five focused tasks, the Top 5 and your wins. On an overthinking day, that's steps 1, 2 and 5 of this post on one page: the answer, the 10 minute move written as one of your 3, and the line about what you did. Finish is one of the Top 5, so taking one thing all the way to done is already sitting there when you plan. It's undated, covers 90 days, takes under 5 minutes a day and costs $29.99.

The book, The 1-Day Method, is short on purpose. It walks through the question, the Essential 3 and the Top 5.

Not ready to buy anything? Grab the free Starter Kit and write tomorrow's 10 minute move on it before bed.

Antonio Neves is an author, keynote speaker, and former journalist for NBC, PBS, and MTV Networks. He's delivered more than 400 keynotes for companies like Google, McDonald's, and Visa. After his family lost their home in the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, he created The 1-Day Method to rebuild his life one day at a time.