Thinking isn't solving: how to tell brooding from real decision-making

“I just need to think it through a bit more.” How many evenings have started with that sentence — and ended three hours later, with the same dilemma, the same arguments and no closer to a decision? Changing jobs, a difficult conversation you keep putting off, the question of whether to stay or go. You think and think. And you have the feeling that you are doing something.

Here lies one of the craftiest traps of the mind: at first glance, mulling things over is indistinguishable from genuine problem-solving. Both happen in your head, both are concerned with the problem, both look like responsibility. But one leads to a decision and an action, the other into a circle. And research shows that our brains don’t tell these two states apart well on their own — which is why you need a simple test that separates them.

In this piece I’ll give you one. And alongside it: a structured problem-solving procedure that psychology has been testing for half a century, a two-loop rule for quick self-diagnosis, and an answer to the question of how to decide at all when you will never have all the information. If you’re interested in the wider picture of why thoughts spin in circles in the first place, you’ll find it in my main piece on overthinking — here the two of us focus solely on the question: when is thinking work, and when is it escape?

When brooding dresses up as responsibility

First let’s look at why the trap works so well. Mulling things over almost never introduces itself as mulling things over. It introduces itself as conscientiousness: “A serious person doesn’t make a decision this important overnight.” As care: “I have to anticipate everything that could go wrong.” As self-improvement: “I need to understand why this is happening to me.” All of that sounds mature and responsible — and precisely for that reason the circle keeps turning with a clear conscience.

But science has tested that sense of usefulness and disproved it. Sonja Lyubomirsky and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema (1995) showed in experiments that after a period of rumination people solve their problems worse: their solutions are of lower quality and their willingness actually to carry out a solution is lower — even though they themselves are convinced that the brooding has given them insight. Edward Watkins (2008) showed in a review article where the difference lies: thinking helps when it is concrete and process-oriented (“what exactly, when, how”), and harms when it is abstract and evaluative (“why me, what does this mean, what if”). A sense of responsibility is therefore no proof that your thinking is working. There is only one proof: movement.

In my work with people I meet this trap constantly — most often in those who had to earn safety in childhood by being sensible, considered and free of mistakes. For someone like that, a decision without one hundred per cent certainty isn’t just a risk; it feels like negligence. And mulling things over becomes a way of being “good” without ever exposing yourself.

The test that separates work from circling

A simple test you can use at any time, in the middle of any thinking session: has this thinking produced anything in the last ten minutes that wasn’t there before? A new option, a new piece of information, a conclusion, a decision, a first step? If yes — you’re solving. If no — you’re circling.

Productive thinking has a recognisable shape: it converges. It starts with a broad question and narrows towards a choice. Along the way it produces tangible outputs: a list of options, a criterion for weighing them, a piece of information you still need to check, a conclusion. Mulling things over doesn’t converge — it circles. It visits the same stations in random order, each time with the same emotional force, and its only output is tiredness. Another reliable sign: productive thinking ends by itself (once the decision is made, the topic empties out), while mulling ends only when something interrupts you.

From this follows the two-loop rule, which I suggest as an everyday tool: the first time you think a dilemma through, that can be problem-solving. But when you catch yourself going over the same dilemma a second time without having gained any new information in between — that is no longer problem-solving. A new loop without new input cannot produce a new outcome. At that point you have three honest options: decide with what you have; work out which piece of information you need and when you will get it, and put the topic aside until then; or admit that this is a worry that cannot be solved — and use different tools for it, such as the worry postponement exercise.

Five steps psychology has been testing for half a century

If mulling isn’t problem-solving — then what is? That question was answered in 1971 by Thomas D’Zurilla and Marvin Goldfried, who were the first to describe solving life’s problems as a skill that can be learned, and laid the foundations of the approach that grew into problem-solving therapy. Meta-analyses decades later confirm that this structured procedure significantly reduces depression and distress — precisely because it replaces brooding with a sequence of steps:

• 1. Define the problem — concretely. Not “my job is a disaster”, but “my manager has given me weekend work for the third time and I still haven’t told him about it”. A vaguely defined problem is unsolvable by definition; a large part of mulling is in fact circling a problem that never got clear edges.
• 2. Generate options — without censoring. Quantity first, quality only afterwards. Put the bad ideas on the list too: they clear space for the good ones.
• 3. Choose. Weigh each serious option along two axes: what it gives me and what it costs me. Then choose — not the perfect one, but one that is good enough.
• 4. Act. Make the first step so small that you can do it within 48 hours. A decision without an action quickly turns back into a dilemma in your head.
• 5. Review and adjust. Did it work? Partly? What will you change? This closes the loop — which is exactly what mulling never does.

Do you notice how different this procedure is from spinning at night? Not because it is cleverer — but because it has structure, direction and an end.

An example: the same dilemma, two evenings

So that the difference doesn’t stay theoretical, let’s look at the same dilemma in two versions. The first evening, without structure: you lie down on the sofa and start thinking about whether to accept the new job you’ve been offered. Your mind jumps to the salary, then to the fear that you won’t like your new colleagues, then to what your partner will say, then to the memory of how you regretted the last move, then back to the salary. An hour and a half later you are tired, mildly anxious and exactly where you started — except that you are now convinced the decision is “really hard”.

The second evening, with structure: you take a sheet of paper. At the top you write the problem in one sentence: “By Friday I have to say whether I’m accepting offer X.” Below it two columns — what I gain, what I risk — and into them you write everything your mind was spinning last night, but this time each thing only once. Then you realise that one piece of information really is missing: you don’t know how much working from home the new job allows. That is not a reason for another loop — it is a question for tomorrow’s phone call. You write: “Tomorrow at 10 I’ll call and ask. I’ll decide on Wednesday evening.” You close the sheet. Fifteen minutes, done.

Do you notice what changed? The content is exactly the same — the same fears, the same arguments. What changed is the form: every thought got its own place, the missing information got its phone call, the decision got its date. And perhaps most importantly: your mind got permission to let go of the topic until Wednesday, because it knows it hasn’t been forgotten — only stored. That very feeling of “it’s stored” is what mulling never produces, since it doesn’t trust anything enough to let go.

How to decide when you don’t have all the information (and never will)

“But I can’t decide, because I don’t know enough yet.” I hear this objection often — and sometimes it’s even true. But often “more information” is just a socially acceptable form of postponement, because with most important life decisions complete information simply doesn’t exist. You cannot know in advance what the new job will be like, how a relationship will develop, what the future will show.

Here a concept helps for which the economist and psychologist Herbert Simon received a Nobel Prize: satisficing (1956). Simon showed that the ideal of a perfectly rational decision-maker who weighs every option and picks the optimal one is not even attainable for real beings with limited time and knowledge — and that sensible decision-makers instead look for good enough: they set a standard in advance and take the first option that meets it. This isn’t laziness but wisdom. Research by Barry Schwartz and colleagues (2002) showed that people who persistently maximise when deciding — who look for the best possible option — do sometimes objectively choose better, but are less satisfied with their choices, feel more regret and have more depressive symptoms than those who can say “this is good enough”.

The question, then, isn’t “do I have all the information”, but “do I have enough information for the decision to be reasonable — and will waiting genuinely produce a better one?”. If decisions still get stuck for you again and again, to the point where you come to a standstill, I write about that in more detail in my piece on decision paralysis.

Why paper beats the mind

One more tool that turns mulling into problem-solving almost mechanically: write. The difference between solving in your head and solving on paper isn’t cosmetic but cognitive. Working memory — the space in which we juggle thoughts — is painfully small: it holds only a handful of elements at a time. That is why we literally cannot “see” a dilemma with ten factors all at once in our heads; when we bring up three, four drop out, and the loop starts again. Paper doesn’t have that limitation.

Writing also imposes linearity: a sentence has to arrive somewhere, a thought has to reach an end. And it imposes concreteness — “everything will go wrong” looks so empty on paper that you almost automatically ask: what exactly? James Pennebaker’s research on expressive writing has shown since the 1980s that pouring burdensome thoughts onto paper improves mood and even physical health — partly because writing organises scattered thoughts into a story with a structure. For decision-making, a simple format is enough: one sheet, the problem in a single sentence at the top, the options below, a plus and a minus for each, and at the bottom the decision and the first step with a date. Fifteen minutes of that kind of writing often does the work that three weeks of mulling did not.

And what about thoughts that can’t be solved?

There remains a third category — thoughts that are neither a solvable problem nor a postponable uncertainty, but simply noise: “what if I messed up”, “what if they don’t like me”, old stories the mind replays out of habit. For these, neither the five steps nor the paper helps, because they are not a problem to be solved at all. For them there is a third path: notice the thought, let it be and don’t grab hold of it. Psychology calls this skill cognitive defusion, and I devote a separate piece to it — here let it stay at a signpost: solve what can be solved; postpone what needs information; let go of what is neither.

Sorting things into these three drawers is a skill we often practise in therapy. Many people treat all their thoughts as problems to be solved — and then spend whole nights “solving” things that can’t be, while the one genuinely solvable problem (a conversation that needs to happen; a boundary that needs setting) remains untouched. If you recognise yourself in this, it can be a good theme for individual therapy: not so that someone teaches you to think even better, but so that together we can look at what all this thinking is protecting you from.

Try it tonight

The next time you catch yourself in the middle of a thinking session, stop and ask three things. First — has anything new emerged in the last ten minutes? Second — is this the first loop or already a repeat with no new information? Third — is this even a solvable problem, or an uncertainty, or just noise? Then choose your tool: paper and the five steps, postponement with an appointment, or noticing and letting go.

Thinking is a wonderful tool — but it is a tool, not a virtue. Its value doesn’t come from its quantity but from where it leads. And sometimes the most thoughtful act of the evening is exactly this: closing the notebook, because the decision has been made.