Your Mind is a Chainsaw

I was talking with someone I love who couldn't get out of their own head. They were stuck in a loop. Focusing on the wrong ideas, replaying conversations, rewriting their lines, building cases for things that hadn't happened yet. I've been there. I know how fast your mind can go in the wrong direction. That’s when a new metaphor hit me.

"Think of your mind like a chainsaw," I said. "It's a fast moving loop that can do amazing and beautiful things, or take your limb off."

That idea has sat with me for a while. Not because it was brilliant, but because I realized I wasn't just talking to them. I was talking to myself.

I have an inner monologue that does not shut up. Most of the time I can't stop the fucker. I have to listen to history podcasts to go to sleep. They’re just interesting enough to engage, but not so interesting that I stay awake noodling on it. My mind is a powerful loop and it is going to be thinking about something whether I like it or not. My best bet is to try to point it at something productive.

I think this is pretty common for people who get a lot done. The loop is the engine. It's what lets you turn a half-formed idea over and over until it clicks, or run through forty versions of a solution while you're in the shower. That engine is a gift. But just like a chainsaw, if you don't choose what you point it at and stay thoughtful about how you're using it, you can make a terrible mess of things.

You know the mess I'm talking about.

It's the email you sent at 11pm that should have been a draft you deleted in the morning. You spent three hours in your head building a case, getting more righteous with every loop, and by the time you hit send you were convinced you were delivering justice. The other person read it over coffee, confused.

It's lying in bed replaying a conversation from six hours ago, except now you're rewriting your lines. You're sharper this time. More cutting. You win the argument decisively at 2am, and the other person has no idea the argument even continued.

It's refusing to reconsider something because you've already spent so much mental energy convincing yourself you were right. Your chainsaw carved a groove and now it just wants to keep cutting deeper into the same track, even when the wood ran out a while ago.

It's focusing on the wrong things at work. Obsessing over a feature nobody asked for, or perfecting a pitch deck when the real problem is you haven't talked to a customer in three months. The loop feels productive. It feels like work. However, the chainsaw is ripping through a knot in the stump and dragging you into the dirt.

Here's the thing. Most of the time when people talk about mindfulness or managing your mental health, it sounds like the goal is to become calm. Peaceful. Quiet. Sounds lovely. When you're someone whose mind runs like mine does, "just be calm" is about as useful as telling a chainsaw to be a butter knife.

The first step isn't calm. The first step is awareness.

Think about how you think. That's it. That's the starting line. Notice that the loop is running. Notice what it's chewing on. Is it something useful? Is it something you can actually affect? Or is it just grinding on a knot because you haven't picked it up and pointed it somewhere else?

This is harder than it sounds, because the loop is convincing. When you're mid-spiral, the thing you're fixated on feels like the most important thing in the world. It feels urgent and real and worthy of all that creative horsepower. The first skill is learning to pause long enough to ask: is this where I want this thing pointed right now?

The second step is direction. Once you notice the chainsaw is running and what it's cutting, you can start to choose what to focus on. Not every time, and not perfectly, but more often than you did last month. You can pick it up out of the 2am argument replay and point it at something that actually matters to you. A project. A problem worth solving. A conversation you want to have for real, in daylight, with your actual words.

When you're deliberate about what you're focusing it on, amazing things can happen. Weeks of work get done in a couple of hours. Huge ideas come together out of seemingly nothing. Just like a real chainsaw would be to a caveman, it's a miracle machine if you know how to use it and are careful. 

There's another whole level to strive for in this awareness of your mind as a chainsaw. The more you practice directing it, the closer you get to the real goal: being able to turn it off.

Not forever. Not even for a whole day. Just for a few minutes at a time. Sitting on the deck with coffee and actually hearing the birds instead of a running list of things to do. Watching my kids without simultaneously drafting a work email in my head. Being in a conversation and really listening without rehearsing my next line while the other person is still talking.

I'm not going to tell you I've mastered this. I haven't. I still go to sleep with that history podcast to give my brain a bone to chew on so the rest of me can sleep. Over time, I’ve been getting better at noticing when the loop is running somewhere unhelpful, and I'm faster at redirecting it than I used to be. That's progress. It's not enlightenment, but I'll take it.

If you've got a mind like mine (and if you've read this far, I suspect you do) you don't need to become a different person. You don't need to meditate on a mountain or find inner peace or whatever. You just need to start paying attention to what your chainsaw is doing. Notice the loop. Choose what it cuts.

Every once in a while, see if you can find the off switch - it’s nice to enjoy some peace and quiet.