What does “all this thinking” mean?

Question

I've come across with the below sentence:

The mistake most people make is to assume it’s stressful and exhausting—all this thinking.

I think it symply means "all this kind of thinking" but I'm not sure. So, could you please tell me what it means exactly?

The fuller text is:

Mindfulness is the process of actively noticing new things. When you do that, it puts you in the present. It makes you more sensitive to context and perspective. It’s the essence of engagement. And it’s energy-begetting, not energy-consuming. The mistake most people make is to assume it’s stressful and exhausting—all this thinking. But what’s stressful is all the mindless negative evaluations we make and the worry that we’ll fi nd problems and not be able to solve them.

Answer 1

The pronoun it in it’s stressful and exhausting has no antecedent. It is not anaphoric there. The referent is tacked onto the end of the sentence: all this thinking.

It's not good for you, all this work with no time off.

All this work with no time off is not good for you.

all this is a colloquialism that can be paraphrased as so much.

All this corn syrup can't be healthy. It's in everything.

Answer 2

You are mostly correct. The "thinking" in that phrase is referring to the thinking done as you practice mindfulness.

However, it is not quite the same as "all this kind of thinking". If the writer had used that, it would imply that the people they were talking about understand the difference between thinking (mindfulness) and thinking (other types), but those people do not; they lump it all into one category of thinking (everything).