I Gotta Think Less

Underthinking my way to a law degree, 44.5 million TikTok views, and a life I actually like.

I am never not thinking.

It’s good, and it’s bad. Good in the sense that it’s probably what got me to law school and what makes me a great lawyer. Bad in the sense that I overthink and second-guess everything to the point of driving myself (and probably those around me) crazy.

No matter how much meditation is recommended to me, I just can’t do it. I cannot stop thinking, and every time I try it, I am just straight up not having a good time. “Well, that’s even more reason to try it.” I know, I know. I’ll get to it.

But in the moments where I am enjoying the benefits of 2018’s Bill C-45, I think about how overthinking and underthinking have affected my life. And, to be honest, I probably have gone way further in life thanks to underthinking.

Law school is definitely one of them. I decided I was going to go, and that was it. I never gave it a second thought. I never even had a backup plan; I simply knew I was going to law school. Becoming a lawyer is one of, if not thee most, correct decisions I have ever made. I didn’t put much thought into which law school either, to be honest. If I wasn’t going to go to the University of Toronto, then I was going to go to the University of Windsor. Reason: the city of Detroit is my favorite, so if I couldn't go to the best law school by reputation, then I would go to the best law school for my personal enjoyment. That was also a correct decision; the three years I spent going to Detroit were some of the happiest of my life. I loved my time at Windsor Law, and some of my best friends came out of that choice.

That’s my grandest example of underthinking going well, but I see it in more mundane things too. For example, I took a video of my horse drooling last year, unceremoniously uploaded it to TikTok, then forgot about it. A few weeks later, I was walking around Sunnybrook Park in Toronto with my friend, Eddie, when I pulled out my phone and realized it had 2 million views and was rapidly increasing. It currently has 44.5 million views (in case you’re wondering, no, not a damn thing came out of it).

Taking a cue from that, I recently started taking random photos of myself, put whatever I was thinking at the time in text, and uploaded them. That also did really well; a random thought I had about Judge Judy got 120,000 views in its first 24 hours (see below). Meanwhile, the videos I made earlier in the year that I put effort and editing into had gotten just a few hundred views.

It just seems the less I think, the better a position I end up in. I asked the same friend from the park, Eddie, what my worst quality is. We dated for 2 years, and second only to my sister, he’s probably the person that knows me best. Almost immediately, he said I overthink too much. At the time, I think we were a month or two into a never-ending debate about what city I should move to, so fair. In the end, my sister sent me a video about how to make difficult decisions. I can’t find the video, but the advice was to make any decision and then make it the right one. So that’s what I did, and now I live in the cutest little town

A photo of my very cute small town

.I want to think less for two reasons. One, it would give me much-needed peace. But, oh, how I love to agonize about decisions. Two, my best work, unfortunately, is produced when I am as minimally involved as one can be in the production of their own creation. I’m allowed to have ideas and post. I’m limiting the amount of review, due diligence, and editing I permit myself.

I should make “think less” a more regular exercise when it comes to my writing too. I love writing, but I overthink it too much and then end up writing nothing at all. “I should have a theme”, I tell myself. Then waste weeks and months trying to figure out a theme that never comes to me. The theme is me.

I’m also not going to overthink how to conclude this post.

I’m done writing now.