126. Why Overthinking Is Slowing Down Your Online Business (and How to Fix It)

Overthinking is the hidden trap that’s slowing down your online business. In this episode, I’m sharing how to make clearer, faster decisions that actually move your business forward. You’ll learn why calm is your secret superpower when making choices, how to shift out of perfectionism mode, and the one mindset question that can break you out of an overthinking spiral.

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

Transcript

Hey, hey, and welcome back. This is your podcast teacher, Julia Levine, and you're listening to Podcasting for solopreneurs, the show that helps online business owners grow their podcast to get more listeners, leads, and sales. Do you ever feel like your brain is working overtime on all of the wrong things? Like you're spending 45 minutes. Check. Choosing a podcast intro song. Or maybe you are rewriting your freebie title for the seventh time this week. Meanwhile, the important move the needle in your business type tasks are being put on the back burner because you, quote, unquote, don't have time for them. If that sounds familiar, we are cut from the same mold.

Last week, I spent an embarrassing number of hours picking out a new font for my social media graphics, something that's not really important, and that kept me from working on the priority tasks in my business. I told myself that I ran out of time. I'm just too busy. But if I dig a little deeper, the truth is that I just didn't. Didn't use my time wisely. I was stuck in an overthinking spiral. Now, there's probably a lot of psychology that we could dive into here to explain why we do this, but that's for a different podcast. Here I am all about helping you work smarter, not harder, when it comes to your podcast and your online business in general.

Because overthinking isn't just annoying, it's expensive. You know, it drains your time, your energy, your confidence. And while you're stuck in the overthinking spiral, you are not creating new content. You are not connecting with your audience. You're not getting new clients. So today, I want to help you break out of that loop. I'm sharing five simple but powerful tips that are helping me to curb my overthinking habit. I still struggle some days more than others, but these are tools that are helping me to get through it.

Okay, so let's dive in with tip number one, which is to make decisions when you're calm. You know those moments when your brain feels like Your browser with 27 tabs open and one of them is playing music, but you can't figure out which one? Ugh. It is so hard to ask your brain to focus when it's noisy like that. It is so much easier to think clearly when you close metaphorical tabs. For me, this is actually often literal tabs. I used to have a bad habit of leaving a million tabs open at a time. I actually counted one time, and I had 62 tabs open at that Time. And I know I had more than that at some points.

I have been working on starting fresh each day and it's had a big, big impact on my productivity and my decision making abilities. Anyway, it makes sense that you don't make your best choices when you're tired, wired, or just juggling multiple tasks at once. You make choices quickly, easily, rationally. When you're grounded, when your nervous system is regulated and you actually feel like yourself. For me, that moment usually comes when I'm in the pool. That is my happy place where my body can relax and the chatter in my brain can quiet down. And while I do live in Florida and there's a lot of pool friendly weather, sometimes I can't do this as often as I'd like, and boy do I feel the difference. But when I can, it's often a case of floating along.

And then I suddenly get clarity on whatever it is that has been taking up space in my brain. Not because I forced it, but because I stopped pushing and gave my brain space to breathe. We are so used to just pushing through that it feels counterintuitive to pause, to slow down. But that is where the magic happens. As hard as it is to embrace, sometimes when you intentionally create this space, you allow your intuition to speak up without the static noise of stress in the background. So my tip here is to stop trying to force decisions and productivity during chaotic moments. Instead, choose a time and environment that helps you feel centered. The point here is that calm can create clarity.

All right, tip number two. Let go of the myth that there's only one right answer. I think this tip is the one that I need to repeat to myself the most. Because I. I still struggle with this a lot. Perfectionism and overthinking often go hand in hand, and so often I find myself thinking that I need to make the quote unquote, right choice. But in reality, there is no right choice most of the time. Most decisions in online business aren't right, right or wrong.

They're not black and white. They're not moral dilemmas. They're just simply choices. And almost all of them are completely reversible. So instead of asking what's the best option out of all the infinite possibilities, I start asking, what feels good enough for now. I also remind myself that clarity does not come from more thinking. It comes from action. You don't figure out what works by brainstorming alone, in isolation.

You figure it out by launching the thing, testing the idea, trying the approach, and if it flops, yes, it's temporarily going to suck. But then you learn, you tweak, you move on and you end up miles ahead of where you would be if you didn't test any idea at all. I heard someone once say that you can't learn to drive in a parked car and I feel like that's a really good comparison. You are not going to learn what works in your business unless you try different things. And I'm talking to myself as much as I'm talking to you right now because I have a hard time with this one. I want to do all the research and carefully evaluate all the choices before I move forward, but it wastes a lot of precious time and it keeps me stuck in place. So if you are stuck waiting for clarity to magically appear, this is your sign to pick something and move forward. So if you are stuck waiting for clarity to magically appear, this is your sign to pick something and move forward.

Remember, there's not only one right choice, there are lots of good choices. You just need to pick any one of them. Pick one, move forward and then you can adjust as needed. This is what smart and empowered business owners do. They take action and they move forward. And we are smart and empowered business owners. Right? Right. Okay, moving on to tip number three.

Ask the question of how can I make this easy? This one is a favorite one for me. It is simple, it is powerful, and it works every single time I remember to use it. When I catch myself getting stuck in the weeds, I like to pause and ask myself how can I make this easier? Easy? That's it. That's the question. That's the tip. No fancy system, no 10 step framework. Just one simple question. The beautiful thing about this question is that it shifts your mindset instantly because it prompts your brain to start looking for solutions.

Sometimes making it easy means delegating the task to someone else and accepting their work as good enough. Sometimes it means reducing the volume of data that you are analyzing that you're thinking about. Maybe you pick just one guru that you like and you do whatever it is that they advise you. Follow the method that they teach rather than exploring every possible option and making your own decision. Sometimes it means doing B work instead of A work. Sometimes it means that that particular task can wait until tomorrow. This process isn't about cutting corners, but more so about being realistic. It's about building a business that feels sustainable, especially as a solopreneur.

It's really, really easy to stick day stuck because you're over complicating everything. To give you a tangible example I have been running a sale over the past few days and when I was setting this up I was going to use Deadline Funnel, a tool that helps convert buyers with a countdown clock. That was my vision going into the sale, and in order to do it through Deadline Funnel, I would have to duplicate my sales page, change the pricing to reflect like the sale pricing. I'd also have to create a new checkout page with that accurate sale pricing, set up all the automations again from that new checkout page, and of course set up everything within the Deadline Funnel tool as well. It would take me at least a few hours to do all of that, probably more, because inevitably I would find other things that I had been meaning to update and then I'd sit there and say, oh, I'll just do this while I'm in here. Anyway, I had a very full schedule this week and so when I asked myself, how can I make this easy? The answer was to just forget Deadline Funnel. Simply create a coupon code that applies the discount instead of all those new pages and automations. It's not as fancy or as pretty, but it works and it made my life a whole lot easier.

By the way, Podcast Startup Academy is 40% off in celebration of my 40th birthday through the day that this episode airs, which is June 24, 2025. If you happen to be hearing this in time, you can take advantage by heading to thepodcastteacher.com academy and using the coupon code birthday. So anyway, this is your gentle reminder. The next time that you feel stuck or overwhelmed, pause and ask how can I make this easy? Then listen, trust the answer that comes up and go with it. Sometimes the simplest solution is also the smartest one. Okay, tip number four is to set a deadline. As a solopreneur or even the leader of a small group, you are in charge of what gets done and when. For me, that ended up being a really bad thing because it was so easy to say things like, oh, it's okay if that project doesn't get done tonight, I'll just continue working on it tomorrow.

And then before I know it, it's a week later and the thing still isn't done. There's no boss or teacher asking you why you haven't turned in your work, why that project hasn't been finished. So it's really easy to extend and extend. When you're stuck in that spiral of overthinking and perfecting something, setting a deadline helps to keep you on track. Sticking to the self imposed deadline can be a little more challenging, but just keep working at it. Aside from some recent health challenges that threw me off course a little bit, I have been rocking this strategy most of the time. You have probably heard me mention in past episodes that I am not usually putting these podcast episodes together at the last minute anymore like I was this time last year. And that's partly due to the fact that I am now setting deadlines for the different podcast episode tasks.

For example, when I sit down to edit, I set a deadline of 30 minutes. That's it. And at first, I started doing this close to bedtime so that I could tell my husband, okay, I need to get this episode finished before I come to bed. And then I would ask him to come check on me if I wasn't coming to bed on time. Now, I'm better at meeting the deadline independently, but that helped me build the muscle at first. An example that I see often with new podcasters is that they often overthink their music selection. There are so many song choices, and it's really easy to sit there and think, well, I do like this song, but I might find one that I like better if I keep looking. So when they're working with me, I tell them that they have an hour to pick out their music.

Before I started doing that, the process would sometimes drag on for weeks, even months, in a few select cases. And for my VIP clients who work with me one on one, I make it even easier because I do all of the research for them, provide them with five song options, and ask them to choose their favorite. It works like a charm, so you can apply this to any kind of decision or task. The next time you find yourself with something that's sucking up a bunch of time and brain space, set a deadline to finish it. Your future self will thank you. All right, and finally, tip number five is just make a choice. This one is super simple, but not always easy. Just make make a choice and start moving forward.

I mentioned earlier that action creates clarity, so you have to get into action. If you can't get out of the overthinking spiral, flip a coin or ask someone to decide for you. This isn't a business example, but Jeff and I have the hardest time deciding what to have for dinner. Like, it's a serious problem that sends me into an anxiety spiral that I can't even tell you about in detail because I am too embarrassed about it. We can spend literally an hour brainstorming and debating what to have for dinner, which is completely ridiculous, when we have more important things to do. So we flip a coin. For example, heads, we have pizza. Tails, we have tacos.

We flip the coin, and then one of two things happens. I'll say, okay, heads, we'll have pizza, and then we move on with our lives. Or I'll say, heads. Ugh, no, I would rather have tacos. All of a sudden, the decision that I could not reach in the previous hour becomes crystal clear. The decision is made for tacos, and we go on with our lives. Jeff is sweet enough to go along with whatever I decide. A lot of times when I'm overthinking, someone will say something like, well, what does your gut tell you? And while I know they're trying to be helpful, it is completely unhelpful because my gut is giving me the silent treatment.

I can't listen to it because it's not saying anything. But as soon as a decision is made, it will loudly disagree to prevent me from going down the wrong path if necessary. So to stop overthinking and get unstuck, make decisions when you're calm, not in chaos. Let go of the myth that there's only one right answer. Ask yourself, how can I make this easy? Set a deadline and just make a choice. You don't have to have everything figured out. You just need the next step. And if starting your podcast is the next step for you, Podcast Startup Academy is 40% off for a few more hours.

You can take advantage by heading to thepodcastteacher.com academy and using the coupon code Birthday. Until next time, Happy podcasting.