Thinking too far ahead too often

[mw2530]

I often find myself thinking too much about the future. I think a certain amount of planning and thinking about the future is healthy and necessary in the world we live in. In my career we often have to plan things many months in advance. But for it to be healthy, thinking far in the future should be kept fairly minimal and our thoughts should be focused on the day at hand.

I struggle with this though. There are so many possibilities about the future that it makes no sense to stress a whole lot about it. I know this logically but really have a tough time. Any one have strategies to combat this?

I need to practice mindfulness because when I do, I feel much better. I feel less anxious and depressed and feel like I have a lot more power and control over my life. But thinking about the future can be useless, because one cannot really solve a problem we may face in the future. So that leads to feelings of powerlessness and helplessness which are feelings I want to avoid.

 

[Bolletje]

I wish I had advice. I struggle with the same problem.

 

[Crossbreed]

I plan as far as I can reasonably anticipate the variables. And usually have a rudimentary back-up plans, like escaping an unexpected house fire, for instance.

For me, it's more important to be aware of all of my immediate options than to have an excessive number of fleshed-out plans, especially when driving.

 

[George Newman]

mw2530, this is an interesting post. I’m glad you entered it. I hope you don’t mind if I ask a clarifying question. Did you realize this thru self awareness or is it based on feedback from others?

 

[Pats]

Other than hoping I'll be able to do this or that someday, I don't think I've really ever planned for the future. When people talk about goals or even their bucket list I don't have any. I guess I have a hard enough time just getting through today.

 

[mw2530]

mw2530, this is an interesting post. I’m glad you entered it. I hope you don’t mind if I ask a clarifying question. Did you realize this thru self awareness or is it based on feedback from others?

Thru self awareness. I spend many hours alone so I have plenty of time to think about things.

 

[Peter Morrison]

I used to spend a lot of time thinking about the same problems over and over again every day. I realized that it was putting me into a bad mood (negativity) and I never solved my issues after spending most of the day examining the problem. To combat this, I denied myself the time I devoted to thinking about problems and all things negative. It was not easy to do, but I found that it worked. I would have to be conscious of the fact that I was thinking of things that are negative and push those thoughts out of my head. I gave myself 1 hour of negativity per day - no more. I could only push the negative away if I brought something positive into my head. Essentially, I would switch focus toward something productive and positive. With time, I managed to stop wasting time on negativity if I had no resolve to the negative issues. I always knew that the problem would be waiting for me the next day, so I could continue to deal with it. If I couldn't find a solution in less than an hour, I would switch it off.

The key was to wipe away the negative mood. This helped me to see things more clearly. Running the same problem around in my head was a total waste of time and energy, and it was not conducive to finding a solution. I think this is called "mind over matter", but I don't really know. It takes training to learn to push negativity aside, but I did it by incorporating positivity in its place. I tend to be OCD, so pulling away from a topic that has a grip on me isn't that easy. I could not let my problems consume me, so I fought the negativity with positive alternatives. I developed a saying years ago to exemplify some issues in problem-solving. "If you take out the garbage at night, and find it in the living room in the morning, you have to admit there is something wrong with the way you take out the garbage".

 

[Mr Allen]

I'm like Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy "Always looking to the Horizon, never my mind on where I'm going, what I'm doing", like Yoda said in Empire Strikes Back the first time he revealed himself to Luke.

 

[Mattymatt]

I often find myself thinking too much about the future. I think a certain amount of planning and thinking about the future is healthy and necessary in the world we live in. In my career we often have to plan things many months in advance. But for it to be healthy, thinking far in the future should be kept fairly minimal and our thoughts should be focused on the day at hand.

I struggle with this though. There are so many possibilities about the future that it makes no sense to stress a whole lot about it. I know this logically but really have a tough time. Any one have strategies to combat this?

I need to practice mindfulness because when I do, I feel much better. I feel less anxious and depressed and feel like I have a lot more power and control over my life. But thinking about the future can be useless, because one cannot really solve a problem we may face in the future. So that leads to feelings of powerlessness and helplessness which are feelings I want to avoid.

I can relate because I've found myself sometimes even putting the cart before the horse. Some of the best advice I have ever received was to really concentrate on living in the present. A Zen master once said, "Yesterday has already happened, today is happening, and tomorrow is uncertain." Thinking about the future or past too much brings me mentally down. I've found living for today an easier life to live. One thing I do when I find I need to be more in the present, is art meditation. I work on mandalas with colored pencils. I do this if I need to quiet the inner voice in my head.

 

[Gritches]

I have the same problem. The way I reel it in is with some advice I got from a boss about "taking a step back". It's about catching and stopping those thoughts from the future, analyzing where we're at right now, and moving forward based on that.

 

[tducey]

The future's always good to have in mind but don't let it consume you, the present is what matters most right now.

 

[George Newman]

Thru self awareness. I spend many hours alone so I have plenty of time to think about things.

Thank you mw2530. I just wondered. Normally, this mind-set is adopted from others and their ridicule(or caution). Worry about the future never did a darn thing we thought it ought to do. Nothing wrong with thinking and planning ahead a bit. IMO.

 

[mw2530]

Thank you mw2530. I just wondered. Normally, this mind-set is adopted from others and their ridicule(or caution).

So you are saying that this type of thinking is the result of other people's opinions and worry about their judgement or opinions. Yeah, that's probably a big part of it.

 

[Gracey]

If it’s powerlessness and helplessness you’re the most uncomfortable with,
I’m guessing a certain amount of control is very important to you.

Work on the control thing ?

I find trying to predict the future an interesting concept.
A bit like my own idea of time travel.

You’re here, now, in September,
Your thoughts are in March of next year, for example.

Physically you haven’t experienced March because it doesn’t exist yet but your brain is trying it’s best to guess at how you may physically experience March.
What to be aware of, what to expect, what to prepare for, what living in March will be like.
(Even though it doesn’t exist yet)

You’re losing September in the here and now because you’re not experiencing September.
You’re trying to exist in March. (Of next year)

I think analysts study trends and things in the world of finance and maybe able to offer sound advice about how an investment may perform in the future but they are armed with facts, data and the like.
Huge amounts of money and it’s all got to go somewhere, right? It exists, leaves a trail.

Our thoughts don’t exist in the future.
?

 

[watersprite]

In listening to some podcast today I heard (paraphrasing here) that obsessing about the past is depression and obsessing about the future is anxiety. It's a bit trite but I liked it because it snapped me out of my usual train of thought in which my brain is convinced that mulling stuff over actually gets me somewhere.
I can only clear my thinking up when I write (and re-write) the important issues out on paper, or the computer, but paper is better.

 

[On the Inside]

I could do with a bit more thinking about the future in positive ways. I agree with the idea that anxiety is obsessing about the future, in part.

I do wish I could plan things more effectively.

I've done a lot of work around dealing with the past, though I can get caught up in thinking about how things could have been different if.

Mostly I am struggling to deal with the here and now, what is coming up that day or the next day. A struggle mainly due to my difficulty with planning. Being a parent has increased this difficulty, but my son is getting old enough to make his own plans, so is less dependent on me. I am feeling more free to wing it like I did before and it has helped.

 

[Dangun]

I also think far into the future. I'm big on planning. Downside is, I also struggle to stick to a schedule or routine (I used to not, for a couple years before high school).

Thinking about the future has given me anxieties in the past, and caused depression. Back then, and to a more controllable extent now, I would snowball my thoughts of the future.

I still always think of the future, even in conversation (which the thought would be relevant to the conversation, so it's not totally random), which throws people way off. I constantly think of what-ifs and come up with backup plans. In some ways, this has been helpful, while in others, it's been unhelpful. Blessing and a curse, though I see it more as a blessing.

 

[Bella Pines]

So you are saying that this type of thinking is the result of other people's opinions and worry about their judgement or opinions. Yeah, that's probably a big part of it.

Not sure, I do this all the time and really couldn't care less about other people or their opinions.

I think the reason I do this comes from the data and pattern matching aspie side. I see all the permutations. ALL the permutations. Even the unlikely ones. I'll then focus on the most disastrous and try to avert it. When planning projects at work I take a 3 year view and am pretty much always right with my predictions. Am I appreciated for it? NOT AT ALL. No one wants to hear that their ridiculously short sighted plans are flawed, no one wants to hear that the project requirements will take 18 years to complete and they are often freaked out by any suggestion of planning past a week. Even when I'm proved right, no one thanks me for it, they just say I have the wrong attitude and should be helping fix their mess (that was completely avoidable).

The curse of foresight.
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Also, I find that I lose focus on day to day tasks because of it. Right now, I'm in my early 40s but am absolutely freaking out about my pension. The final salary schemes are dead and everyone is on this "defined contribution" scheme, which will not pay out enough to live on. I can't think straight now because my head is 20 years from now and given me and my families current trajectory, we are not on a good path.

This is pretty debilitating for me, so what I try to do is redirect my energy. My focus is entirely on the future path that is most likely, but then by focusing on it... I'm making it happen!! So what I'm trying to do now is focus on something else, an alternative income, something to improve the future. I'm trying very hard to ignore the future possibilities and focus on the current decisions (which will effect the permutations). I sometimes touch the desk and wall around me to remind me to come back to now and breath slowly, focusing only on what is directly around me.

This will always be a big problem for me, so if you have any other tips, then do share!