Thinking in Circles: How to Exhaust Yourself with Thoughts and Stay Right Where You Are

A hypothetical scene: dead of night, an empty kitchen, cooling tea, and an endless internal monologue weighing whether it’s finally time to quit your job. The script has been polished to perfection: the pay is lower than you'd like; the team is actually rather warm; but what awaits at a new place is an utter void. By midnight, the thinker collapses from analytical exhaustion, defers the verdict until tomorrow, and wakes up the next morning bearing the exact same weight. It feels as though monumental intellectual work has just taken place. Yet, if you balance the books and ask what fresh facts were unearthed over these grueling weeks, the answer is concise: precisely zero.

This piece is about what distinguishes genuine forward momentum from running in place. Our working yardstick is straightforward: for ordinary difficult choices, we suggest checking whether the thought actually changes anything—yielding a new fact, a testable hunch, a fresh alternative, or a concrete decision on the very next step. We are not dispensing clinical diagnoses, nor are we demanding you wring immediate utility out of every stray notion like paste from an empty tube. This is merely an attempt to take apart the machinery of the process.

I. Repetition Itself Is Not Yet a Loop

Revisiting a thorny issue multiple times is entirely natural. Serious decisions often demand time: you need to gather data, sleep on an idea, seek counsel. Returning to a question doesn't, in and of itself, declare you mentally bankrupt. The only real question is what actually transpires between those passes.

Let us untangle concepts that people love to dump into a single heap. Reflection attempts to examine underlying premises, weigh alternatives, and identify blind spots. Worry cheerfully projects impending catastrophes into the future ("what if everything collapses?"). And rumination is the stubborn, stuck chewing-over of grievances and their hidden meanings. They can pace around the exact same topic and sound equally sophisticated. The difference isn't the subject matter; it is whether there is any actual motion.

On the first evening, sorting through your arguments is useful: at the very least, you have honestly admitted what irritates you. On the second evening, you might spot an information gap: you don't actually know what the market currently pays for your work. But if by the third night nobody has bothered to look up the numbers, and you are weighing those same three complaints for the tenth time, the function of the process has quietly shifted. You are no longer uncovering anything; you are merely sustaining uncertainty without obtaining any new information.

Hence a concise checking question: what has changed in content since the last pass? Mood doesn't count—that fluctuates on its own. Has a new fact emerged, a hypothesis you could test with your own hands, a fresh option, or a decision regarding the next step? If nothing new has appeared after several laps, the process is quite possibly stuck spinning its wheels. This criterion doesn't slap labels on you or demand an itemized receipt for every minute; it simply evaluates the quality of the process.

II. What an Outsider Can Hear: The Shift in the Narrative

The gap between purposeful deliberation and pacing in circles can be detected even in speech. Tilmann Habermas and colleagues (2021) set out to test this: from an initial pool of 492 students, they selected 94 individuals showing pronounced tendencies toward either adaptive reflection, rumination, or scoring low on both scales. The students narrated aloud their experiences of failure, rejection, and significant life milestones.

The researchers discovered that those inclined toward constructive reflection voiced significantly more so-called "innovative moments"—meaning they noted that something in the problem had shifted or changed. Meanwhile, habitual ruminators analyzed the links between events and their own character just as much as anyone else. Linking an event to your life story does not, by itself, distinguish productive deliberation from a loop. Amusingly, chatting with an attentive listener improved mood across all three groups, even if the baseline for the ruminating cohort remained noticeably gloomier.

Ultimately, the authors hypothesized that getting stuck reveals itself through tangled chronology, endless open-ended questions hurled into the void, rehashing the same arguments, and a pervasive sense of inconclusiveness. But keep your wits about you: this checklist of features is merely the researchers' hypothesis, not a standardized diagnostic test. The study itself was non-clinical, correlational, and relied on self-reports from university students whose ruminative tendencies were decidedly moderate. And most certainly, innovative moments have not been proven to be a therapeutic cure: one cannot simply drop a couple of canned phrases about progress into conversation and expect the obsessive mental carousel to dissolve. Yet the conclusion holds: it isn't the volume of words that matters, but the presence of a shift.

III. Dewey: Thought Begins with a Snag and Is Tested by Observation

The pragmatist John Dewey, in How We Think (1910), had little patience for idle reverie. By his definition, reflective thought is the active, persistent consideration of any belief in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends. Without examining those grounds and consequences, it doesn't even qualify as reflection under his framework.

Dewey reminded us that thinking is provoked by a specific difficulty. In the absence of a practical snag, conjectures drift aimlessly. A complete act of thought, according to Dewey, comprises five clear steps: feeling a difficulty; defining and locating it; formulating a suggested solution; reasoning out its consequences; and finally, engaging in further observation or experiment.

In our midnight self-torture, this blueprint breaks down predictably. The snag screams at top volume, options swirl, consequences are debated night after night. Yet step two—clearly defining the problem—is skipped, and step five—testing against reality—never gets any boots on the ground. Dewey held "suspended judgment" in high esteem, but his brand of delay was intensely active: one suspends judgment for the sake of ongoing inquiry. In an endless loop, a person stalls for the precise opposite reason: they aren't investigating anything at all.

The test here is rudimentary: ask yourself what specific fact could actually change your mind? If you have an answer—go hunt down that fact. If you have no answer yet, perhaps the problem still needs clarification. Naturally, the requisite fact won't always be served on a silver platter, a talk with the boss might yield only evasive mumbling, and taking an action guarantees no triumph. But it is at least contact with reality, rather than the meticulous polishing of your own fantasies.

IV. Aristotle: We Deliberate About What Is in Our Power

In the third book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle methodically broke down what is actually worth spending one's mental bandwidth on. In his account of choice, deliberation pertains to means toward an already established end—means that lie within our own power. A physician does not agonize over whether to heal the sick, nor does an orator sweat over whether to persuade an audience. They deliberate over which specific tools will accomplish that aim.

Aristotle compared deliberation to geometric analysis: we trace the chain backward from the desired objective toward the means, step by step, until we arrive at what can be performed right now. The final step in the reasoning becomes the first step in practical execution. Bumped into an objective impossibility? Turn around and abandon the venture.

Furthermore, Aristotle wryly noted that not everything under the sun requires intellectual dissection. The question of whether this object before us is bread, and whether it has been baked properly, is decided by your eyes and teeth, not by profound dialectics. Otherwise, the analytical enthusiast risks spiraling into infinite regress. The viability of a job opening is tested by sending an application and interviewing; the fate of a project can simply be asked of management. Deliberation is meant to lead up to an action, not to serve as its substitute.

All the same, let's not overstate ancient Greek pragmatism: Aristotle was discussing virtue ethics in a worldview where fundamental ends were largely taken as given, not designing modern psychotherapy for rumination. In actual life, people frequently spin their wheels precisely because they don't grasp their own underlying aims, forcing them to deliberate over the objective itself. Yet his core premise—that deliberation ought to conclude with a first step within one's sphere of control—remains a solid beacon.

V. Delay Does Not Make a Decision Wiser on Its Own

The coziest alibi for procrastination always sounds remarkably noble: "I just need to think about it a bit more; the decision needs to mature." One experimental example offers a handy check on this confidence.

José Mauro Hernandez and colleagues (2023) conducted three experiments examining consumer decision-making. Participants were presented with incomplete product descriptions and asked to make a choice either immediately or after a one-week delay. Those who waited a week performed worse: they were less adept at noticing the absence of critical specifications, yet displayed greater confidence in their choices and were far less inclined to defer the decision. This phenomenon was termed "omission neglect": the authors linked the outcome to missing information simply fading from salience.

This is hardly a manifesto to shoot from the hip whenever uncertainty strikes, nor does it prove you must decide everything this very second. In those experiments, people were merely picking items out of an incomplete catalog, and stretching those conclusions to a career change, relocation, or divorce would be foolish. What the research does puncture, however, is the smug conviction that the passage of time inherently acts as a quality filter. A delay can manufacture false confidence without providing any necessary gain in information; in everyday life, jotting down known facts and known gaps is a sensible step, not a bulletproof guarantee verified by these trials.

VI. An Objection: Doesn't Insight Sometimes Arrive When We Stop Thinking?

A reasonable skeptic will immediately point out: epiphanies routinely strike us in the shower, while scrubbing pans, or strolling through the park. This is the well-documented incubation effect—the benefit derived from taking a temporary break from a problem.

Kenneth Gilhooly (2016), in a review on creative thinking, cites a meta-analysis by Sio and Ormerod (encompassing 117 studies). The incubation effect was indeed supported, but the average effect size proved modest—falling into the small-to-medium range (an effect size of d=0.29, which by no means translates to a "29% surge in raw genius"). On average across these tasks, the benefit was greater when switching to an undemanding, light activity rather than grinding away at another complex problem or lying around like a log. Gilhooly himself attributes this to unconscious information processing by the brain, though that represents just one theoretical view of the reviewer, not absolute dogma.

The crucial point here is not to confuse genuine incubation with compulsive chewing. Incubation begins only when a task has been set aside after conscientious, effortful work, not when you continue to drag it between your teeth under the shower spray. Furthermore, this phenomenon was studied using puzzles and brainstorms on unconventional uses for a brick, not gut-wrenching life crises; nobody guarantees automatic ripening for momentous life decisions.

And there is another vital distinction: not all repetitive thought demands immediate utilitarian output. Moving through grief or profound bereavement can pull a person back to the very same memories repeatedly. This is a natural, agonizing process, and applying a cynical metric like "where are your new facts?" to it is completely unacceptable.

VII. Learning and Deliberating: Confucian and Biblical Perspectives

Ancient authors didn't possess the clinical term "rumination," but they captured pointless circular spinning brilliantly, each strictly within their own paradigm.

Confucius, in the Analects, delivers a crisp verdict: learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. The author's analogy here is simple: thought can run dry of fresh raw material. For Confucius, "learning" meant something very specific—mastering the cultural and ritual legacy of the ancients (recall his admission: "I transmit and do not create, I believe in and love the ancients"). This wasn't an exhortation to refresh job boards, yet the formula itself hits home: the mind requires fresh fuel.

The author of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes targets our other beloved vice—waiting around for ideal conditions: "Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap." The author immediately reminds us that the workings of God's providence are beyond human reckoning. Hence, the advice is pragmatic to the point of bluntness: sow your seed in the morning and do not let your hands be idle in the evening, for you do not know which will succeed. Demanding a hundred-percent guarantee is merely a respectable excuse for sabotaging your own efforts.

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, a similarly devastating question is posed: can any one of you by worrying add a single cubit to your height? And the conclusion follows: each day has enough trouble of its own. This is not a pop-psychology cheat sheet for modern time-management, but a religious call to place trust in the Father. Yet for our subject, a limited analogy is possible: late-night agony over an uncontrollable future adds zero resources to the present moment.

These traditions do not blend into a tidy, seamless cocktail: Confucius leans on ancestral tradition, Ecclesiastes addresses toil beneath the inscrutable designs of God, and the Gospel calls for faith and trust. Yet they converge on one truth: infinite brooding will never stand in for the deed itself.

VIII. Unwise Attention, Fasting of the Heart, and the Fruits of Action

Eastern traditions approach the dilemma even more radically, and once again—from vastly distinct vantage points.

In the Pali Canon (Sabbasava Sutta, MN 2), the Buddha draws a firm boundary between wise and unwise attention. The unwise thinker wanders into a barren wilderness: "Was I in the past? What will I become in the future? Do I even exist?" From this emerges a tangled thicket of views concerning one's personal ego. Wise attention, by contrast, focuses strictly on the Four Noble Truths—suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the concrete path. This is, of course, a doctrine concerning liberation from the fetters of samsara, not a behavioral checklist for rumination, and the parallel is entirely the author's. Yet the core holds: a question is useful only if it points toward a way out, rather than spinning a tighter web.

In the Daoist classic Zhuangzi, young Yan Hui is eager to charge off to the bloodthirsty tyrant of Wei armed with grand reform proposals. Confucius (acting here as a mouthpiece for Daoist philosophy) reins him in: you have far too much agitation and contrivance; you require the "fasting of the heart." Hearing should stop at the ears, and the bustling intellect must cease its striving, clearing space for stillness and the Dao. This is a spiritual practice of internal emptying, not a tip to blow off studying for tomorrow's exam. But the analogy is evident: a glut of contrived schemes frequently blinds us to the terrain as it actually is.

In the Bhagavad Gita, the warrior Arjuna freezes in paralysis right on his chariot just as the battle is about to commence. In the article’s retelling of 2.47, Krishna teaches him to act according to duty without attachment to the fruits. This injunction exists strictly within the framework of caste warrior duty and communion with the Divine, and it cannot be used to justify reckless everyday gambles. For our purposes, the authors isolate a plausible driver of loops—the demand to know the outcome in advance; this is by no means the sole cause of Arjuna's anguish or that of a modern human.

IX. Schedule Your Worry and Stop Treating Every Triviality as a Monumental Choice

If it feels physically impossible to halt the swirling vortex of anxious thoughts, experimental psychology suggests putting that assumption to the test.

Clara Krzikalla and colleagues (2024) evaluated the worry postponement technique. The study involved 47 patients diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and 35 participants with hypochondriasis. The intervention was brief: just two instructional sessions, six days of practice, and a waitlist control group. Rather than forbidding themselves to worry, participants were told to defer their anxious thoughts to a designated, pre-scheduled time slot.

The results are revealing: among GAD patients, worry scores dropped significantly compared to the waitlist group, and the improvement held up over a four-week follow-up. For the hypochondriasis group, however, the benefits were decidedly limited. It is a modest study, and plainly not a universal panacea for all forms of psychological distress. It reflects an outcome for a specific sample and protocol, not definitive proof that everyone can effortlessly master the timing of their anxious mind.

For everyday rumination, the authors suggest a possible experiment: stop declaring war on your thoughts and instead grant them a formal audience—say, from 5:00 to 5:20 PM, with pen and paper in hand. Keep in mind, however: if you sit down at the appointed hour and simply crank up the same old hand organ all over again, the issue may not just be a lack of data. You may be confronting very real external obstacles, suffering from a deficit of physical energy and resources, or find yourself so emotionally depleted that taking a step right now is simply impossible.

To preserve mental bandwidth for decisions that actually matter, it helps to recall a historical observation by psychology pioneer William James (1890). He observed that there is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision: if you must burn willpower every morning debating which pair of socks to pull on, little energy remains for life itself. James urged automating the mundane through habits. This is a nineteenth-century philosophical insight rather than the verdict of a modern laboratory trial, but the premise is sound: standardized rules for trivialities can leave more fuel for problems that truly warrant analysis.

X. When the Loop Is a Reason to Seek Help

Despite all our sarcasm toward mental carousels, a vital line must be drawn: running in circles is an experience familiar to anyone, but behind it can lurk conditions that are no laughing matter. Circular thoughts on their own do not constitute a diagnosis, but they can occur in clinical conditions.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) notes that if distressing or severe symptoms persist for two weeks or more, it is an indicator to consult a professional. These include sleep disturbances, shifts in appetite, difficulty getting out of bed due to emotional heaviness, loss of focus, loss of interest in activities that once brought pleasure, and a sense that ordinary life is unraveling. Anxiety disorders can extend well beyond transient nervousness and significantly interfere with daily functioning.

Note carefully: the two-week threshold serves as a general guidepost for assessing the persistence of symptoms, not a rigid instruction that you must endure half a month of misery before speaking up. A practical starting point is a primary care doctor or general practitioner, who can evaluate the picture and, if appropriate, provide a referral to a psychologist or psychiatrist. However, if thoughts of self-harm or suicide arise, do not wait a single minute: seek immediate assistance; if there is imminent danger, contact your country's emergency services right away.

Habermas's study observed a poorer emotional baseline among ruminators, but correlation is not causation. Nobody is promising that forcefully willing away intrusive loops will magically cure depression on its own. Our novelty criterion is merely a modest tool for ordinary household dilemmas, not a clinical treatment protocol. But acknowledging a problem and calling a specialist is also a concrete, external action that can change the game.

Practical Steps and the Finish Line

For those still perched at the kitchen table at 3:00 AM, weighing the destiny of their career, here is an entirely voluntary algorithm. These are the author's suggestions rather than a sacred clinical protocol, and putting them to work depends entirely on your real bandwidth and timeframes. Writing things down and picking an option don't offer ironclad guarantees of smooth sailing, but they can alter the course of the process:

Define the problem concretely (Dewey's step). Instead of the existential dread of "What am I doing with my life?", ask: "Am I prepared to accept salary X at company Y if my current project is wound down by March?"
Capture changes on paper. What new information has been added since yesterday? If a week passes without a single fresh line of facts or alternatives appearing in your notebook, admit that the engine is simply idling in neutral.
Separate questions requiring reflection from those requiring external data. Actual market pay, the official status of your project, and the climate within the department may demand observation or an actual conversation. Jot down an action next to each: whom to call, where to check.
Set a real deadline. Not a mythical "whenever I feel ready," but a specific day and hour when the step will be taken.
Engage in honest incubation. If you need a fresh angle, set the problem entirely aside, do the dishes, or take a walk, rather than continuing to chew on it under the table of your awareness.
Drop the demand for absolute guarantees. Flawless choices devoid of risk do not exist. Determine the maximum ceiling of risk you can stomach, and proceed within those boundaries.
Assess your current state. If you are thoroughly depleted, cannot sleep, and the loop has been suffocating you for weeks—drop the self-analysis and go see a specialist.

There is no moral failing in thinking endlessly. It’s simply that at a certain point, thought has done everything it is capable of doing and hits a wall. Beyond that point, progress is driven not by more thinking, but by real-world action—a question asked, an inquiry made, or a first practical step.