Chapter 20: Tomorrow Has Not Happened Yet

Julian was to give a toast at his sister’s wedding, and for two weeks before it, he lived the wedding over and over.

He lived it in the shower, where he ran through the opening line. He lived it on the drive to work, where he imagined the microphone failing, and then the long walk to the front of the room, and then the faces turning toward him. He lived it at night, where he saw himself forgetting the speech entirely, standing in silence while two hundred guests looked on, his sister’s smile fading. He rehearsed apologies. He rehearsed jokes that failed. He rehearsed, with great precision, the sensation of his face going red.

He wrote the speech seven times. He could recite it in his sleep, and sometimes did. He had not enjoyed a single dinner in a fortnight.

On the day itself, the toast took four minutes. The microphone worked. He forgot one line, which nobody noticed, and the room laughed in the right places. His sister cried a little, which was the purpose of the whole thing. Afterward, a friend said, “That was great. Were you nervous?”

Julian looked at him. “I’ve been nervous for two weeks,” he said. “The actual speech was the easiest part.”

Living through it twice

There is a peculiar feature of the human mind: it can experience an event before it happens. Anticipation lets us prepare, and it lets us savor. But it also means that a four-minute event can be experienced, with all its dread, for a fortnight. In a sense, Julian lived the toast hundreds of times, and only once did it go well.

The neuroscientist Gregory Berns and his colleagues, in a 2006 experiment on what they called dread, scanned the brains of volunteers who were waiting to receive a brief electric shock to the foot, and let them choose how strong the shock would be and how long they would wait for it. Most people preferred a shorter wait when the strength was the same. But about a third of the volunteers, whom the researchers called extreme dreaders, sometimes chose a stronger shock sooner rather than a weaker one later. In those people, waiting produced more activity in brain regions involved in the perception of pain, which led the researchers to suggest that dread comes partly from the attention we devote to what we expect to feel. For some people, waiting for something unpleasant was worse than the unpleasant thing.

This helps explain why overthinking the future is so costly. We pay for the event in advance, often many times over, and the payment is real even if the event never turns out to be as bad as we feared.

Planning is not pre-feeling

The difference between a useful and a harmful relationship with the future is the difference between planning and pre-experiencing.

Planning asks: What do I need to do, and when? It leads to actions: writing the speech, testing the microphone, practicing twice. It has a natural end. Once the preparations are done, they are done.

Pre-experiencing asks: What will it feel like? and then proceeds to feel it, again and again. It does not prepare anything. It simply produces the emotion early, and it has no natural end, because there is always another possible scene to rehearse.

Julian’s writing of the speech was planning. His nightly rehearsal of the speech failing was pre-experiencing. The first one paid off. The second only cost him sleep.

Containing the worry

Many people ask: if I stop worrying about tomorrow, won’t I be unprepared? The answer is no, and one of the best-supported techniques for managing worry actually relies on this insight. In the 1980s, the psychologist Thomas Borkovec and his colleagues developed a method called stimulus control for chronic worriers. Instead of trying to stop worrying altogether, which is nearly impossible, the person sets aside a specific worry period each day, perhaps twenty or thirty minutes at the same time and place. Outside that window, when a worry arrives, you postpone it: I’ll think about that at six. During the worry period, you can worry as much as you like.

It sounds odd, and it works for many people. Several things happen. You discover that many worries have dissolved by the time the appointment arrives. Others turn out to be more manageable on paper than in your head. And you learn, through repeated experience, that you can postpone a worry, which means that you are not at its mercy.

Today, later, and not mine

An enormously useful habit is to sort the contents of your worry into three simple categories:

Today. Things I can act on now or soon. Finalize the speech. Test the microphone. Ask the venue about the sound system.

Later. Things that will become actionable at a specific future time but not yet. Whether I will be nervous when I stand up. How the audience will respond. I can note them, and return to them when the moment comes.

Not mine. Things that are outside my influence. Whether the guests will like me. What my sister’s in-laws will think. I may acknowledge them, and let them go.

Most of the content of the dreaded fortnight lived in the second and third categories. It could not be handled in advance. It could only be carried, at a cost, or released.

Try this: The worry window

This practice combines the sort above with Borkovec’s worry period. Give it two weeks.

1. Choose a daily time. Fifteen to twenty minutes, at roughly the same time each day, not close to bedtime. Choose a place and, if possible, a notebook.

1. During the day, postpone. When a worry arrives, jot it down in a few words and say, Noted. I’ll deal with this at five. You are not suppressing it. You are scheduling it.

1. In the window, sort. Go through your list. For each worry, ask: Is this today (something I can act on), later (not yet actionable), or not mine (outside my influence)?

1. For “today,” choose the next step. Write it down, with a time.

1. For “later” and “not mine,” say so. Write: Not actionable now. I will revisit on [date]. or Not in my control. And close the notebook.

1. End on time. When the window ends, stop. Do something that anchors you in the present: a walk, a meal, a conversation.

You may find the first few days awkward. The worries may feel urgent and impatient. Stay with it. As the days pass, many people find that fewer worries show up for the appointment, and that the ones that do are easier to sort.

Before his own next big event, a presentation at work, Julian used a version of this. In his worry window he wrote down what he could prepare and prepared it. Outside the window, when the movie began to play, he said, Not now. Five o’clock. On the day, he was nervous for the first few minutes and then, to his surprise, absorbed in what he was saying. That was his experience. Other people’s nerves run on other timetables, and there is no correct amount of time to be nervous.

Give it two weeks. The first few days can feel as though the worries are louder, because you are paying attention to them on purpose. By the second week, many people find that fewer worries turn up to their appointment. If you cannot postpone worries at all, or if worry fills much of your day, talk to a health professional; persistent, hard-to-control worry is treatable.

A THOUGHT TO CARRY

Tomorrow deserves your preparation. It does not deserve to be lived twice.