I’ve experienced numerous situations, both at work and in daily life, where I felt stuck in a loop of repetitive thoughts, unable to move forward. This has occurred in both professional and personal contexts. When faced with certain engineering problems, I felt the pressure to find a solution but couldn’t pinpoint one. In my daily life, both at home and work, I’ve experienced negative consequences when I or someone else said, did, or didn’t do something. And again, I found myself going in circles, seemingly ‘thinking’ about what happened or was said, yet making no progress.
I call this Circular Thinking and mentally it looks like this figure:
Circular thinking isn’t true thinking; it merely gives the illusion of it. It keeps you busy without results, it prevents progress towards a solution.
Circular Thinking can also affect entire groups. On one occasion, I was called into an emergency meeting to cover for my manager who was away on a business trip: a critical server was down, affecting operations and costing the company money by the minute. While the technical teams were working to restore the server, the immediate need in the emergency meeting was to devise a strategy to manage the resulting consequences. Despite being outranked by two levels, the others in the room could only focus on and discuss the problem: “We have this big issue”, “it affects reputation”, “it will cost money” (and internally they might be thinking “my bonus or job might be on the line”). Focusing only on the problem prevented anyone from articulating a path forward. Their circular thinking prevented them from doing so. It wasn’t until after several loops of problem amplification that they could begin to think about how to address the issues caused by the service interruption.
Contrast circular thinking to what I call Linear Thinking. In its purest form, linear thinking takes you directly from problem to solution, as illustrated by the arrow below:
So how do you get out of the trap of thinking in circles and move towards a solution?
To break free from the loops of circular thinking, I’ve found that adopting a problem-solving attitude is most effective. Instead of getting caught in a loop saying, ‘I have this problem’, shift your mindset to: ‘This must have a solution, and I’m working to find it.
You might have a direct solution, maybe you need to evaluate different options or you might need to investigate deeper to find a solution. In any case, you will be making progress!
The mental shift from circular to linear thinking can be visualized as follows:
Next time you face a problem, try to focus on the solution and not on the problem. Good luck going forward!
I’ve also developed some theories about the underlying reasons why we sometimes fall into the trap of circular thinking. If you’d be curious to learn more about these ideas, please let me know in the comments section. Your feedback helps shape future content!
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