Hm, there's another extreme that you're missing, which is that of not just thinking about a problem, but thinking about all of the problems, and just forward-projecting and forward-projecting until the cows come home, branching and branching and branching until you start to find commonalities and convergences between the outcomes of (the outcomes of the outcomes of) various ongoing situations which either provide useful strategic insight, or just satisfy curiosity. I see temporal and atemporal problems in much the same light - it's all just causation, and tracing the patterns forwards or backwards far enough to see the common causes.
I can, happily, quash general anxious negative outcome thoughts (i.e. fixation on a specific negative thought) - but just having to go through them all, even once, as part of the human path-finding algorithm still takes its toll.
Ultimately the benefit, in terms of having Seldon-esque pre-sight on many matters (although I don't hesitate to admit that I do get things wrong, as the imp of the perverse likes to roll the dice from time to time), outweighs the toll - although I do, from time to time, worry that I will end up in a straightjacket.
I can, happily, quash general anxious negative outcome thoughts (i.e. fixation on a specific negative thought) - but just having to go through them all, even once, as part of the human path-finding algorithm still takes its toll.
Ultimately the benefit, in terms of having Seldon-esque pre-sight on many matters (although I don't hesitate to admit that I do get things wrong, as the imp of the perverse likes to roll the dice from time to time), outweighs the toll - although I do, from time to time, worry that I will end up in a straightjacket.