Nagarjuna, the 2nd-century Buddhist logician, spent his career demonstrating something unsettling: most of what we take to be solid positions turn out, under examination, to be self-refuting. He called this śūnyatā — not 'emptiness' in the nihilistic sense, but the discovery that no concept fully captures reality on its own terms. The relevance to overthinking is this: when the mind loops endlessly, it's often because it's trying to find the one true framing of a situation — the analysis that will finally be complete enough to act on. But Nagarjuna's insight, sharpened by what modern cognitive science calls 'epistemic perfectionism' (the drive to eliminate uncertainty before committing), suggests that completeness is not what thinking produces. Thinking is generative, not conclusive. The loop doesn't stop when you find the right answer; it stops when you decide that good enough is the point. Today, the move isn't to think harder or think less — it's to notice the next moment you demand certainty from a tool that doesn't manufacture it.

Name the specific question you keep returning to this week — then ask yourself: what would 'good enough to move' actually require, and have you already passed that threshold without noticing?

Drawing from Madhyamaka Buddhist Philosophy / Cognitive Science — Nagarjuna (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā)