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Comment by andyidsinga | Hacker News Reader

> 5. Smart people sometimes see in-depth thinking and reflection as the solution to every problem. Bright people are accustomed to succeeding through their thinking skills, but can sometimes overlook when a different approach would be more beneficial.

This really resonated with me.

One of the "problems" with over thinking things and "figuring out all the potential problems" is that when presenting the ideas/concepts/solutions one doesn't leave enough room for response by the target audience. You end up with responses like "well - you're really smart - you seem to have thought of everything". Often we really do want and need the audience to have a chance to respond, poke holes, describe what they find to be useful / not useful.

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I disagreed with that point, thinking through things means not making the mistakes later.

Presenting your data should spark questions or proposals or agreement regardless how much time you put into it.

I agreed with the first 4 points, but the last one seemed weak.

I read that point as sort of analysis paralysis where you just end up spending a lot of time researching and thinking through and not enough time taking action. For me, I've noticed there are times when I use thinking as a crutch to avoid actually doing. Often, doing, making a mistake, and then correcting is more expedient than analyzing all options to find the optimal one.

AB test have humbled me many times in the past and now accept that careful planning is overrated.

Instead of spending time trying to come up with the perfect idea, I work on finding the best way to test many half baked ideas.

Thank you for the AB test metaphor on this. I’ve been working through some overthinking recently, and I like the idea of trying to find the best way to test many ideas quickly.

This is pretty spot on - I hate to be the one arguing for "less thought" on a subject/concept etc. But I've definitely gone too far too often .. so I try to stop earlier more often now - for feedback (and implementation as you suggest) knowing I can always go deeper.

I find that asking one's self this question is helpful : "Are the barriers to believe for concept ________ technical or something else?"

If the answer is that there aren't deep technical barriers - its a good time to stop and start collecting feedback.

> Presenting your data should spark questions or proposals or agreement regardless how much time you put into it

Step back and take a look at that statement again.

If you put too little time into it, it'll spark questions - about you, and your process, and the lack of completeness.

If you put too much time in, it'll also spark questions about your productivity; or it will overwhelm the audience and put them into that sort of compliant/bored state where they somewhat shut down and don't engage.

There's an art to answering just enough potential questions while leaving room for people to feel like they're contributing, which builds engagement and really helps turn bored listeners into real stakeholders.

It seems very open to interpretations but my take on it is a combination of the addages

"Perfection is Achieved Not When There Is Nothing More to Add, But When There Is Nothing Left to Take Away"

"Perfection is the enemy of good"

which in the context here relates to smart people wanting to overdo or over-complicate things restated as

"premature optimization is the root of all evil"

recognizing simply that it is possible, easy, and more frequent for smart people to do worse solving problems by trying too hard to do better.

The last one is probably the hardest to relate to because we live immersed in a ideology that values reason and rational thought above everything else. That's the best tool a human has and can solve every problem if used properly. That's what we inherited from a 300 hundred years old cultural movement that today feels outdated. The whole premise is faulty, a good amount of people got over it already, but not society as a whole and for sure not engineers, because supposedly they are good at analytical thinking. It's hard to willingly let go your position of power by saying: "well, the thing I'm good at maybe it's not the most important in the world".

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