A Strategy To Deal With Worry: Boost Productivity With A Worry Journal

“I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about it tomorrow.” 

I’ve always loved this line from “Gone With The Wind.” You may have thought that this was Scarlet’s attempt to avoid what was going on, but it’s actually a productive strategy to deal with worry. 

Many of us have uncertainty in our lives right now. Changes are coming in faster than we may be able to deal with them. Anxiety and worry can plague our minds and make us less productive than we want to be in our homes or at work.

Worry fuels anxiety and our brain subconsciously believes that worry protects us, because sometimes it does keep us safe. We may feel like we are doing something productive, but being stuck in a cycle of hypothetical dangers, we actually make ourselves more anxious and less productive.

So, “thinking about that tomorrow,” is a way for us to set up boundaries around this time-consuming distraction. We can take note of the worry and mentally file it away for later. Put a date on your calendar when you’ll actively address the worry (Don’t pick a time right before bed). When a worry pops into your brain, either make a mental note or jot it down and say to yourself, “I will give this some thought when it is my worry time.” By doing this you can diffuse the distracting thought right away. Your brain will accept this new behavior, because once you follow through and actively use your worry time, your brain will then trust that you will come back to the thought. 

The goal of the exercise is to be your most productive self throughout the day by not focusing on your worries in the moment. Your worry time is best spent by journaling. There is no need to come up with solutions; however, different solutions and strategies for dealing with the worry may come to you.

I have used this technique before and it worked really well. I was able to stop my brain from ruminating over all the horrible outcomes that my worries stirred up. After writing for a while, my thoughts switched from negative to positive. I was able to look at the worry from a new angle and focus more on what I could actually control. And, by doing that I came up with some changes that I could make to reduce my fears.

For the science behind this technique I highly recommend looking up Therapy in a Nutshell on YouTube. Emma is a therapist and introduced me to this concept a few years ago and she has several videos explaining how you can use a worry journal.