Outsmarting myself

If I’ve got this right, my brain is essentially tripping over its own feet. I’m drowning in a mix of useful data and total noise, and because I can’t filter the two, I try to process it all at once. 

The moment I start overthinking, my "emotional temperature" spikes. My body misinterprets this mental loop as a physical threat. My amygdala lights up, and my prefrontal cortex shuts down completely. 
So the "choice" is between:

• Paralysis: I’m stuck, unable to make a single move.
• Gut Reaction: I act on raw emotion, which is usually a disaster.

The irony is that the more I think, the more I become unable to use the logic I’ve spent so much time learning.

Since I know my prefrontal cortex is going to bail on me the moment I'm under pressure, I have to stop trying to "decide" in the heat of the moment. I need to make the decisions while I’m still calm and outsource them to a system (i.e. "If-Then" rules).

Moreover, the idea is to stop seeking more and start seeking better through a process of aggressive filtration.

In engineering, there is a thing called a "Low-Pass Filter" that only lets the steady, long-term trends pass through. Before you let any piece of information reach your brain, ask yourself: "Will this still matter in a year? Or even a week?". Signal, by definition, is persistent. If it won't matter next month, it shouldn't consume your logic today.

Often fall into the trap of thinking that more data equals more clarity, but in reality, more data just creates more friction for your prefrontal cortex. 

Which 2-3 core factors actually move the needle?

Everything else is just clutter. If you have ten reasons for a decision, but seven of them are weak, delete those seven immediately. If your decision doesn't hold up once the filler is gone, you never had a strong signal to begin with, you just had a pile of noise trying to convince you otherwise.