“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” Sylvia Plath.

“The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.” Carl von Clausewitz.

The time you spend agonizing is likely better spent actually working on the thing you’re avoiding. Lemmy user berryjam.

You sound as if you may be as neurospicy as I am. Meditation has helped a lot with keeping me in the moment. Also good drugs.

You’ve set yourself up with some serious expectations my friend, and it seems like the mere concept of not meeting those expectations is causing you distress. One solution would be to develop psychological flexibility. It seems like your drive to be perfect has you stuck, because perfection is an ideal and is not achievable. You need to learn to effectively tolerate being imperfect and doing things imperfectly.

You might try to see a psychotherapist who specializes in treating anxiety disorders like OCD or OCPD. I’m not saying you have either of those, but what you’re experiencing would certainly be in their wheelhouse.

When I get decision paralysis (fairly often), I spend 15min drinking my yerba mate, smoking my cig, snacking on my fav cheeses, and thinking about random, unrelated stuff. It’s my way to force myself to slow down on purpose, and enjoy doing so, without the associated agony.

Then if I reach a conclusion I write it down. And, once I second think it, I tell myself in loud voice “you’re already in the paper, I already chose what to do, so get out of my head.” (Often alongside a mental image of myself picking the “copy” of the question inside my head, crumbling it down into a ball, and throwing it into a mental rubbish bin.)

Now, regarding workload optimisation: the key here is to acknowledge the fact that you won’t be 100% efficient, ever. So change the focus from “I need to optimise my workload” into “I need to fix obvious issues with my workload”. It sounds like a small difference, but it’s actually a big deal - it allows you to improve your workload without going out of your way to find small flaws with it.

If I get stuck on something, I just move on. I have quite a large backlog of things that I’d started and plan to revisit once my proficiency in the skill is better. You need to build on what you already have.

By doing less things and forcing myself to worry less. I’d wager that a lot of what you’re fretting over is not absolutely vital to survival. If it was you wouldn’t have time to fret about it like this.

Attempting to optimize your entire life in some vain attempt to maximize certain outcomes is a fools errand that reveals a significant lack of maturity and life experience.

There are plenty of people in the world who put far less effort in and will be more successful than you, and plenty of people putting in more effort who will be less successful than you. One of the most unfair parts of reality is that level of expended effort is not a reliable determinator of quality of outcome, except that putting no effort in guarantees failure.

There will be plenty of times in life where all the effort in the world is undone be factors outside of your control. There will be plenty of times in life where despite everything aligning against you, you will still succeed.

All of this is not to say that you should just give up on your plans and dreams, because you’re nearly guaranteed to not achieve them if you aren’t trying. What I’m trying to say is that you need to be open to opportunities outside your plans. You need to understand that personal plans you make for yourself are not some sort of contract with the universe guaranteeing certain outcomes if you follow certain actions. Don’t steal joy from the present for some hypothetical future that may or may not come to pass.

The reality is that most people don’t end up where they planned to be when they were younger, or even working in a field they studied for. Most people don’t end up doing great amazing things or leaving a mark on the world outside the immediate lives they interact with on the way to the grave.

There’s a very common saying, with permutations of the concept the world over: Man plans, god laughs.

If I had pinned the concept of my self worth to the idea of where I thought my life was going or where I thought it needed to go when I was 16, 18, 21, or even 25… if that was some true determinant of success or happiness… I would have killed myself ages ago.

I’m nowhere close to where I thought I would be, but I am proud of where I am, what I do for income, what I do for fun, what I have accomplished over the years, etc. While it may be cope, I honestly feel like I have a better relationship with myself for my circuitous path.

Another saying with concepts echoed in different forms: “It’s about the journey, not the destination”.