How To Use Occam’s Razor To Stop Catastrophizing

This is an except from Mind Macros 07.

“Simpler explanations are more likely to be true than complicated ones. This is the essence of Occam’s razor, a classic principle of logic and problem-solving. Instead of wasting your time trying to disprove complex scenarios, you can make decisions more confidently by basing them on the explanation that has the fewest moving parts.”​ — From The Great Mental Models by Shane Parrish

Many of us tend to dramatize everyday events, believing we are victims or the universe conspires against us.

Imagine our partner doesn’t reply to our text for a few hours. They usually reply within 15 minutes. After a few hours of silence, our thoughts begin to cascade:

Why are they ignoring me? Did I do something wrong? Who are they with? Are they seeing someone else? Is our relationship over?

Next, we begin cherry-picking examples from the previous week that reinforce the idea that something is amiss in the relationship.

All this might be helpful if you write romance thrillers. But it’s difficult to find a better definition of delusion than inventing narratives that support pre-existing theories, which in turn are used to justify actions.

If we apply Occam’s razor to this situation, they haven’t replied because they haven’t checked their phone, which could be due to several factors - none of which are likely as serious as we’re imagining. The most common being that their phone ran out of power.