A casual observer, of the "expert", practitioner or frustrated family member variety, if they have enough patience and restraint to observe a person while otherwise standing back and remaining peacefully silent, may witness the following effect -
The person walking around, standing here and there, picking up this or that object, doing rounds of churning.
Then, nothing changes.
But, this is where it falls down, they misunderstand and mislabel what happens, and jump to the wrong conclusions.
This is what detractors will label as "stuck", "unable to progress", "difficulty making decisions", "failure to organize", "failure to discard".
And they may be right - to a degree - but what they don't understand is that the process, at its core, is more valid than they think, what the nature of it is, and what the missing ingredients are.
I end up doing it from time to time - I am conscious about it, as well as its nature, its benefits and its limitations, and how to avoid getting stuck unproductively.
Walking around ( or stopping and standing in places ) and looking - this is what I have termed "mapping".
This is what a person might naturally do when approaching any project, given a bit of breathing room and lack of someone standing over them "cracking the whip".
This is "surveying the battlefield" - like a general before a battle ; "mapping", establishing a fresh picture of the situation, doing a sort of mental inventory, identifying opportunities, subprojects, tasks, actions.
The problem is the sheer size and scope of the project, difficulty of containing it all in memory without a written plan, and insufficiency of available resources, tools and structures.
I think it's still good to do this, to a degree, from time to time - as a sort of check point - but it's also good to acknowledge the limitations, and take measures to address them - specifically, using written plans, and recognizing and resolving blockages - friction, sticking points.
Churning results when one, naturally striving to go to action, begins to reorganize / process batches of things, only to run into enough "hard inbox items" ( whose next action is unclear or blocked ) that, absent specific tools, methods and resources, it all ends up being blocked without making substantial process.
Detractors are superficially right on this being unproductive and unsuccessful, but they are wrong to label it a "trait" or a "symptom". It's just insufficient understanding, lack of tooling and resources.
The methods put forward by detractors also have some validity - but the problem is, they fixate on "discarding" too much and too early, and they don't offer more constructive, holistic framing or solutions around this.
This is what I would do, instead of attempting to discard things on the spot, for such surveying passes - generally, the "organize first" method -
* use written plans, todo lists - when each subproject, task, missing tool, etc. are identified - write it down! ( keeping it all in memory is expecting too much from it )
* do not mix surveying and processing / organizing - if you spot something obvious that can be done, do it, but getting into random "skirmishes" and ending up caught up in "churning" won't do it
* beforehand, review what you have so far in your written plan / todo list beforehand - you might spot the next actionable task and end up doing it - you might not even end up needing a pass at this point, because you already have enough obvious actionables
* identify friction / blockages - "what is the sticking point?"
* when deciding to tackle some reorganizing, processing - if this makes sense within the overall plan - pick some specific area or batch, and crunch through it, with "processing" in mind
To recap without jumping elsewhere - by "processing", I mean a somewhat more structured handling of items whose status may be somewhat unclear or complicated.
Pick each item, one at a time, forgetting all the rest, forgetting everything else, and for each item, ask these questions -
* what is it ? ( not a stupid question, as David Allen in his Getting Things Done pointed out - generally, this is what we're aiming for, more or less )
* what about it - what is it's status - are all the things that need to be happening to it, what is my intent towards this?
* what are the actions that need to happen ?
* where does it go to facilitate those actions?
Give or take.
Repeat on all levels - individual item processing in batches, plan review and survey passes.
Note how I'm not even mentioning any discarding explicitly - this is by design - if, during processing, you realize that indeed all that's needed is to discard the item, so be it, do it - but, chances are, you didn't keep items for which you had no intentions, right ? You might end up reevaluating those intentions, upon fleshing out the practical aspects, or you may identify additional ones. Action is the magic sauce.
But, for an otherwise minded observer, it sure looks like confusion and indecision - "this is garbage, why aren't you discarding it right and left?" - exactly the same problem of projection and impatience we see everywhere - while the person is simply reviewing and planning, and they might benefit from some structure and methods they are lacking.
That should do it - structure and methods.