37. Overthinking Your Podcasting Decisions? 5 Ways to Get Unstuck and Out of Analysis Paralysis!

Do you find yourself getting stuck in the overthinking loop, unable to make decisions and move forward with your podcast? In this episode, I share my personal struggles with overthinking and reveal five practical techniques I've learned to get unstuck and beat analysis paralysis.

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This episode was produced by me, The Podcast Teacher! Contact me at Hello@ThePodcastTeacher.com.

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Transcript

Hey. Hey. And welcome back. Today, we are talking about overthinking. I hear from people a lot that they get stuck on their podcasting journey because they simply can't make the decisions that they need to make to get unstuck, to move forward, and to actually launch their podcast. And I can relate to this because I am the queen of overthinking. I overthink everything. If there is a decision to be made, you can guarantee that I will overthink it.

And this is not necessarily a positive trait, and it's something that I have been working on for a while and that I continue to work on. We're all a work in progress, and I am certainly no exception. And so I struggle with this in every aspect of my life from business decisions to what to make for dinner and everything in between. And one of the things that I get told a lot is just listen to your gut. And the people who are telling me this advice, they're trying to be helpful, and they mean well. But to me, that's incredibly not helpful because the noise in my brain, the thoughts are just so loud, so noisy that I can't seem to access those gut instincts, that intuition. And so if you're listening to this episode and you are someone who can listen to your gut fairly easily, you do have that intuition, then maybe you don't need to listen to the rest of this episode because that's your answer right there. I'm guessing that if you are here, that's probably not the case.

So I am gonna go into 5 techniques, 5 things that I do to get unstuck. These are not necessarily related to podcasting, although they certainly can be in your situation. Obviously, you're listening to this podcast because you are most likely trying to start a podcast, and you need to get unstuck during that process. And so my first technique to get unstuck, get out of analysis paralysis, get out of that decision overthinking cycle is to make decisions, especially more important decisions, when I'm in a calm state. If I am trying to make a decision when I'm already overwhelmed and stressed out, I've had a long day, Things are bothering me. Maybe I don't feel well or something like that. It makes it infinitely harder. And so if I know I need to make a big decision particularly about the direction of my business or something else that's, you know, a significant decision, then I try to find a state where I'm calm and more relaxed in order to make those decisions in the best way that I'm capable of doing.

So for me, I live in Florida and my backyard pool is my absolute happy place. I feel the most calm and relaxed and zen when I'm in the pool. And so I make most of my important decisions when I'm in the pool because that's where kind of the noise of my brain kinda settles down a little bit, and I can think more clearly. And so, you know, for you, maybe there's a certain activity that you enjoy doing where it would be a good brain space for you to make a decision. Maybe you're really sharp in the morning or at the end of the day, you are really tired, so you wanna make those decisions in the morning. So trying to find a time or a space or a place where you can be in a little bit more of a calm and relaxed state to make a decision, particularly an important decision. The second tip or technique that I have for you is to accept that there's no right answer. This is a big one for me because I am a perfectionist, I'm a people pleaser, and I deal with impostor syndrome, which are all things that lead me to believe that the world is black and white.

Things are right and wrong. There's no in between. And so when I'm able to remind myself that there is no right answer, that kind of takes some of the pressure off, and it doesn't necessarily happen immediately because, again, this is something I've been dealing with for a very long time. It's very ingrained in me. But I have to accept that there's not a right or wrong, that there there are just choices. They're just decisions, and they're not right or wrong, they're not black and white, and any decision that I make is okay. This is one that's kind of just a lot of repetition and reminding myself of this mindset. My third technique is more action oriented.

So this one is to ask yourself, how can I make this easy? How can I make this decision easy? So one way to make it easy might be to think about how important of a decision is this. Is this a make or break decision? Is this a life or death decision? Are the stakes high here? And most times, especially if we're talking about podcasting, the answer is no. This is not a life or death decision. This is not a make or break it. This is not a huge deal. And so taking that pressure off and realizing that whatever decision you make, it's going to be okay. No one is going to die, then that makes the process a little bit easier. Another way that you can make it easy is to get some help.

So we live in an age of AI right now. Chat GPT and I are good friends. I ask it for help a lot. And you can also hire someone, delegate, ask for help from another person. And so when it comes to podcasting, maybe you're really struggling with your podcast cover. You can't decide on a color scheme or fonts. And so maybe your way that you make this easy is to just hire a graphic designer to do this for you. And so you say, you know what? This decision is worth the couple $100 that it's going to take to hire this graphic designer.

I have made this decision easy. It's one thing off my plate, and now I can move forward because I've delegated that task. Another way that you can make it easy is to ask an expert and decide to trust their opinion. So when we're talking about podcasting, that could be me. So if, you know, you're trying to decide which microphone to use and you download my guide, which you can grab at podcastteacher.com/equipment. And you see that I recommend this particular microphone. You can make it easy by saying, you know what? This podcast professional recommends this microphone. I'm just gonna trust that they know what they're talking about and buy this microphone.

I'm not gonna go and spend 3 hours researching microphones. I'm making it easy. I'm trusting the expert. Kind of on the flip side of that is you can make it easy by not asking many people for their opinions. So sometimes when we're second guessing ourself, we don't wanna make the quote, unquote wrong choice. We ask everybody and their mother for their opinion. And this kind of leads to a too many cooks in the kitchen scenario. We have too many opinions coming at you, too many different viewpoints, and it just adds to that overwhelm.

And so not asking so many people being like, okay. I'm gonna trust one expert. I'm gonna ask my biz bestie. I'm gonna ask my husband. Whatever the situation is, try and reduce the amount of opinions that are coming at you. Okay. My 4th strategy is to set a deadline. Set a deadline for making your decision.

So if you've been around here for a while, you may have heard me talk about how I really love the happy medium. I'm someone that I believe it's worth some time and some energy to set up good foundations, to do some research, to prepare. So I am not the person who's gonna tell you to just go out there and wing it and just slap things together. It's kind of like that saying of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I believe that it's worth some time and energy upfront. But, of course, it's so easy to go down the rabbit hole and research every possible option, make pros and cons lists, etcetera, etcetera. And so one strategy that works really well for me is to allow yourself a certain amount of time for that preparation, for that research, for that comparison, whatever it is that you need to do to prepare to have that ounce of prevention, allow yourself a certain amount of time. And then when that time is up, you need to make the decision.

And if you need to, you can tell someone else to hold you accountable and say, you know, by Tuesday, I'm gonna have made this decision. Can you please check-in with me and ask me what decision I made so that I'm sure to make it. And so, for example, maybe you need to pick out music for your podcast. And so picking out music, oh, there are 1,000, millions of songs out there that you could choose, and it can take forever if you are indecisive. And so maybe you give yourself an hour and you say, you know what? I'm going to go through these lists of songs. I'm going to put a little heart icon on the ones that are okay, they're a possibility, and then when that hour is up, I am going to pick one of the ones that I said was a possibility. You make the choice and you move on because time is up. That's a strategy that works really, really well for me, especially when I have someone else to hold me accountable to making a decision when I say I'm going to make a decision because I can absolutely kick the can down the road and say, oh, I need to research more options.

I need to look into this further. I need to ask someone else their opinion, whatever it is. Alright. And the 5th and final strategy is to make a decision. I know that sounds silly since we're talking about strategies to make a decision, but literally, make a decision. Any decision. Any decision at all. Just make it.

Take action and move forward. Because especially when we're talking about podcasting, this is not life and death. Everything is changeable. Nothing is carved in stone. If you pick music and you decide you really don't like that music, you know what? You can pick different music. If you designed your cover art in Canva and 2 months later you decide, I really hate this cover art, you can redo it. You can redo your podcast name. You can redo your intro and outro.

You can redo whole episodes if you are so inclined to do so. Every single thing is changeable. Nothing is carved in stone. Sometimes making the decision will allow you to quickly realize that it wasn't the right decision for you. So for me, when I'm in that state of trying to make a decision, I'm overthinking it. There's so much noise in my brain. I can't tune in to that gut instinct. And so once I make a decision, that chatter, that noise, that stimulation in my brain quiets down.

And then suddenly, I can think. I can clearly access that deeper part of me, that intuition, and then I can realize, oh, you know what? That wasn't the right decision after all. So I'll give you the example from when Jeff and I were getting married, and we were hiring our wedding photographer. We had narrowed it down to 2 options, and we were debating between these two people. We had done interviews with both of them. We'd seen their work. We've done pros and cons lists, analyzed price points. We had evaluated all the information we could possibly evaluate, and we just couldn't seem to decide between these two people.

And so it got down to the wire. We had a deadline. We had to make a decision. And Jeff, of course, being the awesome type b to my type a personality, he was like, you know what? This is more important to you. You make the call, and it'll be fine, whatever you choose. And so I said, okay. We're gonna go with wedding photographer b. Good.

Great. Okay. Moving on to other wedding planning tasks. And within hours, overnight, I think I slept on it. The next day, I knew with every fiber in my being that we made the wrong choice and that we were supposed to go with wedding photographer a. Again, nothing is carved in stone, and it was the the act of making the decision itself quieted that noise in my brain, and then I was very clearly able to tap into that intuition that's usually really hard for me to access. And I just knew that the other person was the right choice for us. And so we were able to pivot, contact the other person, and get that taken care of.

And so, again, this was a matter of maybe a maximum of 24 hours that this transpired. And so all it took was making the decision for me to be able to quiet that noise in my brain and tap into that gut instinct. Okay. So there you have it. The 5 ways to get unstuck and move out of analysis paralysis are to make decisions in a calm state, accept that there's not just one right answer, identify how to make this easy, set a deadline, and take action, and move forward. If you are an overthinker, I see you. I feel you. I am you.

And I will tell you that sitting here recording this podcast episode tonight, I had to implement some of these techniques because I am being last minute Lucy over here. I'm stressed to my eyeballs. I've got way too much going on. And recording this episode was just I couldn't make a decision about what to talk about. And then I was trying to put together a script, and, oh, it's just one thing after another was just preventing me from getting this episode recorded and done. So going back to the how can I make this easy? My answer to how can I make this easy was I'm not going to write a script? So if today's episode was a little rambly, that's why. But you know what? It's all good. And another way that I'm making this easy is that I'm not doing a lot of editing on this episode.

I'm doing one quick pass through, and then we're done because I have other things that need my attention. So if you're struggling, I can get through this, you can get through this too. Okay? That is all for today. Until next week. Happy podcasting.