Turn the Negative of Worry into the Positive of Planning

Worrying is a waste of time, stress, and effort. It ties knots in your soul. Forget the worry. Turn that energy into a positive: planning.

Seth's BlogI just read Seth Godin’s brilliant small post, from last weekend, asking

In When is it okay to start worrying? With apologies to Seth for quoting the whole thing (but it’s that short, and that good), here it is:

A friend was waiting to hear about the results of a job interview. He hadn’t heard in a while and he asked me, ‘how long before I should start worrying?

Of course, the answer is, ‘you should never start worrying.’

Worrying is not a useful output. Worrying doesn’t change outcomes. Worrying ruins your day. Worrying distracts you from the work at hand. You may have fooled yourself into thinking that it’s useful or unavoidable, but it’s not. Now you’ve got one more thing to worry about.”

While I agree completely with every word of that, even in the exact example Seth uses, there is a time when you start thinking about what comes next and what else to do in the aftermath of a job interview that has produced no word.

What else to do? What are the contingencies? Next steps? Is there an action point? Have you gained any new information? Are your assumptions still correct?

Don’t worry: Plan.

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