Are You An Over-Thinker? A quiz in three questions that could have been just one.

Question One:

What do you think about after you have a conversation with someone (person in the grocery line, your best friend over coffee, the kids hockey coach before the game…basically anyone, anywhere, for any length of time) or when you wake up in the morning after partying the night before?

A. ‘Lovely chats, what’s on my list to do next? Might grab myself a coffee/panadol and hop to it.’

B. ‘Jeezus, why did I say that, and that AND THAT? Now that friend/relative/stranger is going to think I was trying to insult them/their child/their choice of groceries or judge their relationship/their favourite song/their dietary requirements and feel really shitty about me/themselves. I am going to need to apologise and make things right. I will text them/buy flowers/head to the same shop on the same day for the rest of my life hoping to bump into them again and say ‘sorry bout that, I wasn’t meaning what it sounded like I was meaning’ but in a really casual surprised way so they don’t think I am creepy/weird/obsessed. God I really should never go out again, or talk to anyone other humans ever.’

C. ‘That was so awesome. I can’t wait to tell someone/tweet my hilarious comment!’

D. ‘Yep. Did that. Got the t-shirt.’

Question Two:

What are your thoughts on wasting time?

A. Time is precious and we should use every second we have on this Earth wisely and with joy.

B. What is considered a waste of time? Sleeping, eating, watching The Handmaid’s Tale, conversing with friends, working? It’s so subjective and lets be honest, whenever you are not being obviously productive (i.e not presenting yourself as ‘rushed’), your mind is still whirring at light speed. Even a quick shower can produce 5 volumes of Sartre-esque ponderings, and a glance around a café can be mind-exploding as you analyse the body language in every interaction, create a backstory for every patron, dissect the choice of lettering on the blackboard, and worry that you gave off the wrong vibe when you asked for a long black with milk on the side which may have made the barista think you were snobby/ unappreciative/intolerant/ overconfident. Is it wasting time to process the last 17 conversations you had just as your head hits the pillow, or make up 4 different jokes about unreliable garbage bags while you take out the bins (until you remember plastic is not something to joke about), or have a sudden traumatic response to a comment you made 26 years ago to a stranger that you just realised could have been taken the wrong way? Ok, possibly all of those things are a waste of time and you can see that, but you do it anyway and you could debate the philosophy of wasting time and the right tone of voice for requesting coffee, in your mind, ad infinitum.

C. It’s not wasting time, it’s self care. And if you take pics of yourself doing it it’s called keeping your followers happy!

D. This quiz.

Question Three:

What are your thoughts on this quiz?

A. It’s going to help a lot of people, and from what you can tell a lot of people need a lot of help. The world needs more helpers. Lovely.

B. No one could miss that this quiz is a bit obvious because the over-thinker options are always going to have the longest answers AND it’s likely that only the over-thinkers would actually read all the answers because they need to see it’s an accurate representation of them. Really there only needs to be one question to decide if someone is an over thinker or not and the question is ‘do you think you are an over-thinker?’. Of course you could not present the question like this:

Do you think you are an over-thinker?

A. Yes

B. No

C. I am not sure

because obviously an over-thinker would not just think ‘yes I am an over-thinker’ as it has not been really thought-through. Therefore the people that are ‘not sure’ are the most likely to be the over-thinkers because they are contemplating it on the most levels so

A. is No

B. is No and

C. is yes.

It would probably be more accurate to ask the question ‘are you an over-thinker?’, then have two short simple answers (‘yes’ which means no and ‘no’ that means ‘no’) and then one convoluted and unnecessarily complicated answer that has another question at the end of it being: ‘did you read this particular answer’?

A. Yes

B. No

then it would be clear and simple that the A’s are the over-thinkers. Just to be sure you could then asked if they did the whole quiz with a nagging guilty feeling that they are wasting time and should be doing something more productive...

SO DID YOU READ THIS WHOLE ANSWER WHILE EXPERIENCING A NAGGING GUILTY FEELING??

C. I stopped reading the answers ages ago. I’m not even reading this, but I’m still going to tell my friends about how I did it. I love quizzes! I will definitely tell them I am an over-thinker. I’ve always been super deep!

D. Said waste of time. Add boring.

So are you an over-thinker? Scroll down to find out!!!

What’s he thinking about? What’s she thinking about? Is she thinking about what I’m thinking about? Is she thinking that I’m thinking about what she’s thinking about? OMG WHAT THE HELL IS THAT GUY THINKING ABOUT??!!

If you answered:

Mostly A’s: Good for you.

Mostly B’s: I don’t need to say it, do I? It’s you, you are the over-thinker. Go and read my posts on over-thinking, then go and do something that brings you joy (which is NOT texting an apology to the mum at the bus stop for your comment the other day about high school placements that may or may not have seemed like an insult to that particular schooling system – they don’t care I promise!!). *

Mostly C’s: You are so deep you could have been named Ocean, and that’s such a cute name! You should try the other quizzes on this blog, you will win them all! Btw, you are awesome and I love you but it might be worth reflecting every now and again to make sure you haven’t been a total dickwipe to other people while you were being so great.

Mostly D’s: Owning being an arsehole, it’s hard to fault (and we both know that no matter what advice anyone gave you it would be ignored, so...).

* You poor over-thinkers, I know you read this wishing you were answering D to every question because those peeps must be CHILLED and are probably really comfortable in their skin and would be seriously well-slept…but then you thought maybe they are also a bit ignorant and don’t realise when they are being insulting to others (or are humiliating themselves) which would be awful, except that they don’t know/care that they are doing it, so maybe it would be fine! It wouldn’t be great for the people around them though, who would receive no empathy or understanding which would also be a terrible way to be, so you have probably finally concluded that maybe it would be better to be a C-answering type person…although looking back they do seem a little vacuous…