How a Short ‘Worry Time’ Can Help You Feel Less Anxious

Here’s the thing: you can’t just tell your brain to stop worrying. That doesn’t work. But you can teach it when to worry. That’s where a short “worry time” comes in. Think of it like giving your brain a specific appointment to do all its worrying. Instead of letting worries sneak up on you all day long, you pick a time – maybe fifteen minutes, maybe twenty – and you save all your worries for that slot. Sounds a little weird, right? But it actually works. Let me explain how.

First, pick a time that works for you. It shouldn’t be right before bed, because then you might keep worrying into the night. It also shouldn’t be during a busy part of your day when you need to focus. A good time might be right after lunch or before dinner. The key is to keep it short. Fifteen minutes is plenty. You don’t need a whole hour to worry – that’s just a recipe for a bad mood. Set a timer on your phone. When the timer goes off, worry time is over. No exceptions.

Now, what do you actually do during worry time? You take out a piece of paper or open a notes app, and you write down everything that’s bugging you. Don’t try to solve anything yet. Just get the worries out of your head and onto the page. Write down that thing your boss said that made you feel stupid. Write down the money stuff you’re stressed about. Write down the homework you’re dreading. Don’t judge yourself. Just dump it out. If you have trouble thinking of worries, that’s fine. You can also write down what you’re worried about tomorrow. The point is to give your brain a safe place to put all the stuff that’s been bouncing around in there.

After you’ve written your list, you can either set it aside or you can spend a few minutes thinking about each worry one at a time. But here’s the rule: if you can’t do anything about a worry right now, just let it sit. You don’t have to fix everything during worry time. The goal isn’t to solve your life in fifteen minutes. The goal is to let your brain know, “Hey, I heard you. I wrote it down. We’ll come back to it tomorrow.” That alone can take a lot of pressure off.

Now here’s the hardest part: the rest of the day, when a worry pops up, you tell yourself, “I’ll save that for worry time.” And then you let it go. It’s like when you get a text message but you know you’ll reply later. You don’t have to answer it right away. Your worry can wait. At first, your brain will argue with you. It will say, “But this is important! I need to think about it now!” That’s okay. Just say, “Yes, it is important. And I will give it my full attention during worry time.” Then go back to what you were doing. Over time, your brain will start to trust that you really will come back to the worry. And it will stop bugging you so much.

I know it sounds like you’re just delaying the worry. But that’s actually the whole point. You’re not getting rid of the worry forever – you’re just giving it a smaller window. Think of it like this: if you let a worry run wild all day, it gets bigger and bigger. It takes up your whole brain. But if you put it in a little box for fifteen minutes, it stays small. You can still worry about it, but then you close the box. The rest of your day is yours.

This trick works because your brain is a creature of habit. When you train it to only worry at a certain time, it becomes automatic. After a week or two, you’ll notice that worries show up less often. And when they do show up, they’re easier to push aside because you know you have a plan for them. You’re not ignoring them – you’re just scheduling them for later.

One more thing: be patient with yourself. The first few days will feel weird. You might forget to save a worry, and it will sneak in while you’re eating dinner. That’s fine. Just say, “Oops, I’ll put that in my worry time tomorrow.” Don’t beat yourself up. This is a skill, and skills take practice.

So if you’re tired of your brain running on worry-mode all day long, try this. Pick a time. Set a timer. Write it down. Then close the book. You’d be surprised how much lighter you feel when you know the worry has its own time and place. Give it a shot. Your brain will thank you.