The Work of Worry

I admit, I'one thousand a worrier. Ever have been – when I was a teenager, I used to lay awake nights worrying most… well, any teenagers worry about. In college, I used to worry about classes, girls, money – and eventually near the fact that I was laying upwards nights worrying instead of sleeping. Today, I worry about… well, I worry about the same things, I estimate, except now I'm on the other side of the classroom lectern.

Here's the thing I've learned, though: it takes virtually as much piece of work to do or fix the thing we're worried about as it does to worry about it. Often, it actually takes fifty-fifty less. Consider this admittedly extreme case drawn from Neil Fiore's Overcoming Procrastination (originally published every bit The Now Habit):

Carolyn had procrastinated for months over… [buying] her mother some Chinese cooking utensils. A number of small problems would get in her fashion, making the task seem complicated and hard to deal with – it seemed like a long trip, she didn't know where to get off the train, information technology would be embarrassing having to ask strangers for directions, she wasn't sure of the exact place in Chinatown to shop. I rainy day… she decided to simply become on the train and ask someone for her stop and trust that she would find her way. Everything unfolded magically from one footstep to the next. Upon reaching her destination she checked her watch and discovered that it had taken her nine and half minutes. "Nine and a half minutes!" she said to herself. "I've been procrastinating for months over something that took me nine and a half minutes!" (Pg. 111-12)

Think of how much work Carolyn invested into avoiding those nine ½ minutes of activeness. How many times she must accept remembered (and probably at the nearly ridiculous times, when it could simply distract her from other tasks) that she'd promised her mother to get her those kitchen utensils, how much guilt she must have felt on non delivering on that hope, how many excuses she had to come up with to avert completing this simple project, how many times she must have had to repent to her female parent for not getting to it nonetheless (and how many new promises to "get to it before long" she must have fabricated, each adding another layer of guilt and worry to her routine) – all over a task that required next to no effort at all.

Now, multiply that times a lifetime of worry. That'south some serious work we're doing. Work we're wasting, actually, since it produces nil except greater feet, guilt, and negative feelings well-nigh ourselves. And recollect of how many different means we create this negative, unproductive work for ourselves.

• Procrastination: Carolyn'south is a archetype case of procrastination, investing our energy in anxious fretting instead of in our ostensibly chosen work. Procrastination has a lot of negative qualities, just here, the important matter is that when we procrastinate work that we'd be a lot better off finishing, we actually create more than work for ourselves in the form of worry. The guilt, the self-recriminations, the excuses – these are all work. Stupid, unproductive, useless piece of work.
• Disorganization: One of the things that struck me most when I interviewed Regina Leeds, writer of 1 Year to an Organized Life, was her insistence that fifty-fifty the worst disorganization is a organization – it takes a lot of work and endeavour to maintain a chaotic life. Part of that effort is merely finding everything, but part of information technology is the worry and fear we experience that nosotros won't be able to detect what we need, that something of import will get lost, that others will gauge united states harshly, that we won't work chop-chop or efficiently plenty, and do on. Though the start-up costs of a more efficient system can be somewhat steep, the long-term gain in productive not-worrying generally outweighs past far the negative feelings we pay for the privilege of disorganization.
• Over-organisation: Past the same token, after a certain signal our organization organisation tin get its own source of anxiety, as we spend more time and effort worrying nigh where things go or about putting things in the wrong identify that we end getting done the things that the organization organization was ostensibly supposed to make possible.
• Unattainable goals: This is a tough one: goals that nosotros've set for ourselves that either ever were or that we ultimately realize are beyond our power to reach. Null hangs on us like an unfinished project, and to save ourselves from the stigma and shame of failure, we are frequently hesitant to permit go of tasks we simply cannot complete. This is why it's important to set attainable goals, and to accept failure and larn from it when we tin – the culling is a lifetime of regret and worry.

I'grand sure in that location are other situations where we work harder at worrying than at the thing we're worrying about. How about relationships?

Here's a story: I went to a motion-picture show with a adult female I really liked, and we got popcorn. "Do yous want butter on that?" asked the teenage popcornière behind the counter. I don't like butter on my popcorn, but always the gentleman, I turned to my date and asked her if she wanted any. She doesn't like information technology either, only ever the lady, she said, "well, light butter is ok."

"OK, " I said, turning dorsum to the young popcorn chef.

"Merely if y'all want butter," she said, stopping me before I could club butter. After an awkward back and forth, it emerged that neither of us likes butter on our popcorn, but both of usa were willing to brand the cede out of worry of offending the other. Fortunately in this example, we straightened it out before we both had to suffer a greasy purse of disgusting oiled popcorn. But how often do couples, whether on an early date or afterwards decades of union, undermine their relationships by worrying instead of acting? And how much better off might they be without all the wasted work of worry?

It'due south something to consider. And what about you? What worry do you work hardest at? Let us know in the comments.

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/the-work-of-worry.html

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