Analysis Paralysis - Don’t Look At the Surf Cams For Too Long!
We’ve all done it. At least as surfers in this modern era, I would assume we’ve all done it. We’ve checked the surf cams over and over, only to find ourselves frustrated and unsure of whether or not we should make the effort to surf.
For me, my day starts by taking a look at the surf cams before I get out of bed. It is debatable whether or not it’s healthy to immediately look on my phone when waking up (most experts agree that it is not healthy), but that’s a topic for another day.
This is typically a quick look for me. Living on the East Coast and it being summer, the waves are usually small and if the it’s high tide then it typically doesn’t matter what the wind is doing, it’s going to be meh at best.
It’s only on the days where it looks good-enough that I find myself getting sucked into the trap of over analyzing. Should I get my gear on the car and go (I currently live about 20 min drive from the beach) or should I get on with my day?
It’s often hard to tell just by looking at the camera feed. In an ideal situation, I just put my board on the roof and my shit in the car and get out of here before the duties of the day summon me. Most of the time though, it turns into a game of should I or shouldn’t I.
In the summer months I don’t typically have a “job”, as my “real-job” work is seasonal. I’ve addressed this in previous posts, but the point I’m making here is that, other than working on personal projects (like this blog) and trying to be a good father and husband, I don’t have a typical job in the summer that I have to report to in the morning. When I was younger and less disciplined with my budget I did, but now that I am older and less willing to trade my life for meager pay, I typically budget my way through the summer lull and pick up where I left off in the fall.
With that said, I have the freedom to surf or not surf in the summer. So it is truly a choice of whether or not I want to go. The one caveat of this is that it is better for me to go early in the morning before my Dad and Husband duties take over, but still, I don’t typically have to report to a job. All this is to say that, I have true freedom of choice in the summer of whether or not to actually go surfing.
If you surf you know that the best times for wind are typically the beginning and end of daylight hours. So, without considering tides, these are typically the best times to surf because the lower wind speeds lead to cleaner, more rideable and therefore more fun waves. So the morning ritual is to at least take a quick look at the cams to make sure I’m not missing anything before I get on with living.
The point is that sometimes you miss opportunities that could be good by over analyzing whether or not they are actually good. Sometimes, it’s better just to jump in the water and find out first hand. There have been times where I look at the cams for so long (on and off checking throughout the day) that I literally miss it because I waited too long. It was good, but now the wind is on it and the tide is wrong. I just needed to do the work of getting my shit together and getting in the water. But nope, I am trying to optimize and therefore I lose. Sometimes, it works out, but analysis isn’t a great move when it becomes excessive. Even if I did save myself the time of gearing up just to find that the waves weren’t all that good, I still wasted the time, energy, and focus required to keep looking at the cams weighing out whether or not I should go. This pulls my focus away from the things I should be working on and puts me into the abyss of overwhelm.
Here’s a tip that I have tried to implement in my own life: Don’t get caught in the trap of overanalyzing. Trust your gut, make a decision, and move on. I’ve spent a great deal of my life overanalyzing and I can tell you first hand that it leads to missed opportunities, frustration, lack of focus, and it depletes momentum because your mind is stuck on whether or not to proceed, so your life is literally on hold during these moments distracting you from living out your best experiences.
I feel like it is much better to take imperfect action than to wait for the perfect moment. Just make a fucking decision and get the data points that result from that choice. For instance, on such and such day I saw that the wind was slightly on it, but there was some size and the tides were favorable. So go! Afterward, I have the experience and I have information that will help me next time - definitely better than sitting home staring at the surf cams.
The point is that if you spend too much time analyzing you are bound to lose, even if you eventually make the “right" decision. You spend so much time and energy on the decision itself that you deplete your energy and have suboptimal performance. Just make a decision and move on, gathering data along the way, so that the next time you are in a similar situation, you can more quickly make a decision which leads you to your desired outcome.
Quick decision making is better than over analysis in most instances. In major life decisions, it is good to contemplate the outcomes because they take a long time to fix if it goes wrong. I would suggest this as a general rule. For low significance things, just make a quick decision and go. For more significant things like whether or not you should move away from family to pursue a dream, it makes sense to take more time to process the decision. But at some point, you have to decide. A non-decision is still a decision, but it usually is tainted with some level of angst in that you have no closure on that particular aspect of your life.
After the decision has been made you are in data collection mode. How has this decision turned out? What factors are at play? Are there other areas of your life that you can use this information to help you make better decisions faster? Be proud of the fact that you were decisive and live with your decision. You will make mistakes, but mistakes are still data and data is ultimately what will help you navigate your life more efficiently and on a level more true to your being.
Now it is time for me to practice what I preach. As I’ve typed this article, I’ve checked the cams at least three times. This is one of those days were it looks okay, but not great. I’m not sure that I want to go over because I know I will be over there later with my family. So . . . I decided to write this article, move on with my day, and get some data. Hopefully, I didn’t miss anything, but it’s possible that I did. That is how it goes. When one door closes, many more will open. So live your life fully. Make decisive moves and get after it. Your time is precious, respect that by making decisions and moving forward.
Get out there and get after it!