I have been on both ends of this one, and not too long ago either. you’re either so involved in ruminating and pondering that you become stuck, unable to truly do, just to think of doing and this is a common problem in my circle of peers. Then you get to the point where your mind is too distracted by? well by what is the question of all questions really as I couldn’t say what I was so distracted by on those days and by definition I cant even try to remember as my brain had turned off its important functions in lieu of flitting about on the nothingness of whimsy.
As I am currently trying very hard to think about a particular matter, and yes I am aware I am blogging whilst not actually doing that too. and I am so concentrated on not being distracted that I am on the cusp of losing focus entirely. I am writing here in the hope that , just like in groups or therapy, putting it out there might clear it up somewhat. I feel a little hypocritical even getting into this situation as I advise so many people on how to avoid it and preach about the dangers of it, Rumination leads to ruination should be my tagline, and yet here I am.
I cant even use the excuse of “not really interested” in my current task, its a focal point of my life at the moment and as with everything I do I expect myself to deliver, and that’s the bit I worry about. In the past I have been in similar situations, albeit less important although at the time I wouldn’t have agreed, and when the concentration failed I would have thrown the toys out of the pram and just stopped. I know now that much of my aggressive behaviour was borne of this frustration and not as I believed the cause of it. This minor insight is probably the most critical element to how I move from here, in fact the reason I know I can and will move forward from her but I also know that my arch enemy, my nemesis of old is waiting just out of sight to spring in and screw things up.
Thinking is the most wonderful gift we have, add in speech and dexterity and our thoughts can become great things, Brunel, Darwin and Monet had to think prior to there creating and discovering, Newton and Einstein may be the prime thinkers of our history but everyone who understood their work and rightly lauded them had to think too, otherwise they’d have been like so many other geniuses, ignored. So yes thinking can be crap or rather over thinking can be but I am resolved to never allow my thoughts to be over cooked, the problem is I need to think about how I am going to do that now, C’est la Vie.
An eloquent imbecile 
A few thoughts, or ruminations, on your thoughts Steve. Rumination may indeed lead to ruination but it also took us to the moon and back based on quantum mechanics which was born out of creative thinking as science alone was not enough. So I am a big fan of rumination whilst, like yourself, wary of procrastination. I think your “minor” insight is actually a major insight as no doubt it ruled your life for years, and what are we thinking about when the emotional part of the brain (where our bastard temper lurks) goes from 0 to 60 in milliseconds? Pretty much nothing I would guess. So what does the brain do when it learns, through therapy etc., not to do the nought to sixty temper takeover? Well, it suddenly finds itself with a lot of extra brain space to fill and new neural connections to be built like a flyover to avoid the 0 to 60 lane, and when the brain has space to fill it will shove anything in there (including the arch nemesis) which causes us to ruminate. Old thoughts come back but new ones do too. When in danger of too much thinking and inertia do what Socrates did…take the dog out for a walk.