Stop Spinning: How to Tell if Worry Is Helping or Hurting

Not all worry is created equal—learn which kind drives results and which just drains you.

It’s the nature of the human mind to worry, particularly during times of stress. High-pressure situations, ambiguous demands, and complicated team dynamics are breeding grounds for increased worry. However, not all worry is helpful and productive. Productive worry leads us to make decisions and changes and generates specific steps to solve a problem or to better prepare us for tasks and situations. Unproductive worry is focused on unlikely events, things we can’t control, or problems that don’t yet exist and may never occur. Unproductive worry does not generate a clear course of action and can lead to rumination and emotional distress, interfere with focus and concentration, and get in the way of more helpful and effective actions.

Questions to determine whether your worries are productive vs. unproductive:

• Am I focused on a realistic problem that exist right now?
• Is the problem solvable?
• Is the worry motivating me to take action?
• Am I generating potential solutions?
• Am I acting on those solutions?

It may be helpful to conduct a cost-benefit analysis and decide if worrying works more to your advantage or disadvantage. Is the time and energy taken up by worry better utilized? If so, what might these things be?