The Filmmaker's Curse : When Thinking Becomes Overthinking

I'm standing on the cricket field, the ball coming towards me, and I've already decided where to hit it, I decided this three minutes ago, before the bowler even started his run-up. I'd calculated the gap, analyzed the field placement, mapped out my strategy.

But I got out. This is what happens when you spend years training your brain to think in layers. To overthink every move.

Last match, I just moved in the moment. Better shot, perfect gap, and it was a four!

The Army Kid Who Became a Filmmaker

Growing up as an army kid, moving every three years, I learned to see stories everywhere. Every new place was a new world to decode, new people to understand, new patterns to recognize. When I chose film as my medium, this became my superpower. Real life looked like cinema, and my cinema borrowed from my real experiences.

My first feature film is my childhood story. To get it right, I had to dig deep—therapy sessions to understand my patterns, emotional archaeology to help my actors feel what I'd felt. Thinking in layers wasn't just helpful; it was essential. Without it, there would be no film.

But here's what nobody warns you about: when the cameras stop rolling, that thinking muscle doesn't just switch off. It becomes muscle memory.

When Your Superpower Becomes Your Prison

Once my film wrapped, I found myself stuck in loops. Not creative loops—life loops. I'd analyze every conversation, calculate scenarios for every decision, run mental scripts for situations that hadn't even happened yet. I'd lie awake processing, reprocessing, finding meaning in everything.

Playing cricket? I'd overthink the gap. Having dinner with friends? I'd analyze their responses three layers deep. The spontaneity in me, the fun—it was getting buried under all this analysis.

The irony was : the very thing that made me a better filmmaker was making me a duller human.

The Excel Solution (That Wasn't Really a Solution)

Being a problem-solver, I built a simple VBA app in Excel. I mapped out my major worries across my different worlds—Under The Mango Tree Photography, Born Yesterday Films, Personal Life. Each category had subcategories: worries, roadblocks, development areas.

Hit a mental loop? The app would guide me through options: "Wait it out" or "Take action." Choose action? Next question: "Do you know what to do?" If yes, do it. If no, figure it out first. Complete the loop, get a random reward I'd programmed—sometimes ice cream, sometimes gulab jamun.

It worked, but only partly.

I kept trying to improve it, adding more layers, more options. Then I realized what was happening: I was trying to solve overthinking by creating more systems to think about. Classic!

The Conversation That Changed Everything

After a long time, I met up with friends. We started talking about uncertainty as creatives, how we handle the financial instability, the endless questions about our choices. The conversation went deeper and deeper—and then I caught myself.

"Maybe we're overthinking this," I said.

"But thinking is your superpower," one friend argued back.

We went back and forth until someone said something that stopped me cold: "You know, it's like chess. My friend plays really well, and he told me—until your opponent moves, whatever you think is useless. And until you move, nothing happens."

It clicked immediately.

All that planning, all those mental scripts I'd been running—they were just floating in air. They had no weight because they weren't connected to reality. Only when life presents the actual moment, only when you make the move, does the game begin.

Thinking Is Just Awareness. The Move Is the Move.

That conversation rewired something in me. I realized I'd been treating thoughts like decisions, when they're really just possibilities. I'd been worshipping my thinking instead of using it.

Now I let thoughts flow without attaching emotions to them. I spend more time in nature, walking, doing things instead of consuming endless content. I give my brain less data to process so it can actually process better.

Most importantly, I've learned to see thinking for what it really is: awareness. It shows you options, patterns, possibilities. But it doesn't make the choice for you.

The choice is the move. And the move is the move.

From Loops to Life

I still think in layers—I'm a filmmaker, that's not going to change. But now I know the difference between productive thinking and thought loops that lead nowhere. I can feel when I'm analyzing the cricket ball instead of just playing.

As a daily observer, I've noticed this pattern everywhere: people stuck between thinking and acting, mistaking analysis for progress. But analysis doesn't get the shot. It doesn't build the relationship. It doesn't win the match.

Thinking makes you aware, but action makes you alive.

And maybe that's the real filmmaker's superpower: not just the ability to imagine worlds that don't exist yet, but the courage to take the next step into making them real.

The move is the move.

Thanks To Prashant and Sandy for the lovely conversation :)