Speaker 1: Worrying can take up so much of our time, especially
Speaker 1: when most of what we worry about actually never happens.
Speaker 1: This worrying uses up time that could be better spent
Speaker 1: on the things that truly count. But how can we
Speaker 1: reduce this and actually free up that time. Oliver Berkman
Speaker 1: is a New York Times bestselling author of books such
Speaker 1: as four Thousand Weeks, Time Management for Mortals and Meditation
Speaker 1: for Mortals Four Weeks to Embrace your limitations and make
Speaker 1: time for what counts. Oliver is also a regular columnist
Speaker 1: for The Guardian and if there's anyone who truly understands
Speaker 1: the psychology of time management and happiness, it's Oliver. In
Speaker 1: our chat, Oliver reveals how understanding why we worry is
Speaker 1: the first step to minimizing the amount of time it
Speaker 1: takes up, as well as some key strategies for keeping
Speaker 1: our worrying under control. Welcome to How I Work, a
Speaker 1: show about habits, ritual's and strategies for optimizing your day.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. On today's quick Win episode,
Speaker 1: we go back to an episode from the past and
Speaker 1: I pick out a quick win that you can apply today.
Speaker 1: So Oliver has a concept he talks about in his books,
Speaker 1: and he says that most of the bridges that we
Speaker 1: worry about never end up being crossed. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to know exactly what that means and how he applies
Speaker 1: that mindset in the day to day.
Speaker 2: Worry is kind of fascinating, and I think one way
Speaker 2: of understanding worry is that it's the sort of attempt
Speaker 2: by a human being who is inherently limited to the
Speaker 2: present moment. One of the many ways in which were
Speaker 2: limited is we're sort of temporarily localized. We wish we
Speaker 2: could sort of also be in the future, checking up
Speaker 2: on it, making sure that everything's going to be fine,
Speaker 2: but we can't. And so worry is this sort of
Speaker 2: mental dis comfort that arises from trying to repeatedly sort
Speaker 2: of get out there and secure a place in time
Speaker 2: that we're not actually in and never are in. And
Speaker 2: you know, if I wanted to get sort of evolutionary
Speaker 2: psychology about it, which I don't usually want to do
Speaker 2: very much, but you know, you could see how perhaps
Speaker 2: we sort of evolved in an environment where where having
Speaker 2: that concern and then dealing with it was something that
Speaker 2: happened in a very short order right, like you hear
Speaker 2: a sound, you're worried about it, you check it out,
Speaker 2: you realize it's no threat to your safety. Now we
Speaker 2: live in this world that's been called a you know,
Speaker 2: delayed return environment, where the thing you're worrying about could
Speaker 2: well be whether how an editor will respond to a
Speaker 2: pitch you've made sometime in the next four weeks, or
Speaker 2: whether an attempt to purchase a house will go through
Speaker 2: at some point in the next two months. You know,
Speaker 2: all these kinds of slow things where the worry just
Speaker 2: has nowhere to go. It doesn't motivate a quick action
Speaker 2: to get to deal with the worry. It just sort
Speaker 2: of curdle. And I think the thing about crossing bridges is, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's another way of making the same point. Really, we're
Speaker 2: trying to sort of think through all the things that
Speaker 2: could go wrong, think our way through what we do,
Speaker 2: and reassure ourselves that that will have gone okay if
Speaker 2: that happens. You can't ever be certain that something goes
Speaker 2: okay until it's gone okay. So trying to cross bridges
Speaker 2: before you get to them, in that sense, is just
Speaker 2: a recipe for that kind of unpleasant, anxious state of constantly,
Speaker 2: repetitively trying to do it and failing. There are all
Speaker 2: sorts of ideas in cognitive therapy and elsewhere about you know,
Speaker 2: scheduling a time of day in which to worry and
Speaker 2: things like this, and I think it does help some
Speaker 2: people to do something like that. The version of that
Speaker 2: that I find helpful is to market date in my
Speaker 2: calendar maybe three four weeks in the future, to sort
Speaker 2: of remind myself to focus again on that topic. And
Speaker 2: I find that knowing that that's there and it's coming
Speaker 2: up in the calendar is incredibly powerful in terms of
Speaker 2: enabling me to let go of it in the present.
Speaker 2: If it's still a big issue four weeks from now,
Speaker 2: then I will kick into worrying about it again. I
Speaker 2: sort of on some level, I'm concerned that if I
Speaker 2: were to stop worrying about it, I might completely forget
Speaker 2: about it, right, And it's wild, right as parents, if
Speaker 2: you're worried about some issue with your child's welfare, like,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to forget about that, it's ridiculous. But
Speaker 2: some part of me doesn't trust myself, and it's like
Speaker 2: if I let go and just got into the thing
Speaker 2: I was working on, today, maybe like ten years later,
Speaker 2: I'd be like, oh, no, everything's gone terribly wrong in
Speaker 2: life because I completely failed to attend to this thing.
Speaker 2: So putting that kind of three or four weeks ahead
Speaker 2: thing in I find really effective because then I can
Speaker 2: be like, Okay, just in case I completely forget about
Speaker 2: this important thing, it will come back into my world.
Speaker 1: I love that I've experimented myself with having a worry
Speaker 1: least and then setting a daily worry time and confining
Speaker 1: my worrying to that time of day, and I found
Speaker 1: that quite effective. But what I like about what you've
Speaker 1: just suggested is that it's almost like a test of
Speaker 1: a hypothesis. And the more and more you're like, if
Speaker 1: everything you worry about you actually just put in the
Speaker 1: diary to spend some time thinking about a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks from today, and then every time you get to
Speaker 1: those things, like nine times out of ten, you're going
Speaker 1: to think, what was I even worrying about that never
Speaker 1: eventuated into anything, which I feel then feeds, you know,
Speaker 1: the like a more sensible hypothesis and theory that actually
Speaker 1: I worry about things that I don't even need to
Speaker 1: be spending time worrying about so I really I enjoy that.
Speaker 2: Yes, and even in the one time out of ten,
Speaker 2: right then it comes around and you're like, okay, what
Speaker 2: are some the chances are you'll be in a better
Speaker 2: place to just sort of figure out some actions that
Speaker 2: you could take relative to it.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this little quick win with Oliver.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to listen to the full interview, you
Speaker 1: can find a link to that in the show notes.
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Speaker 1: How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of
Speaker 1: the warringery, People, Out of the Cool and Nake