Before you start
This is a short book. You can read it in two or three evenings.
It's about one habit. Something might go wrong next week or next year, and you go over it in your head, days or months ahead, many times. Most of the time the thing never arrives. When it does arrive, it's rarely in the form you rehearsed. And all the way through, the going over has felt like the responsible thing to do, as if it were a kind of preparation.
I'm not going to tell you to stop worrying. You've been told that before, and if it worked you wouldn't be reading this. I'm also not going to tell you to think positive, or that everything will be fine. Some things won't be fine. In the best study I could find, about one worry in eleven did come true, and chapter 12 is about those.
What I'll argue is narrower. Worrying and getting ready are two different activities that feel alike from the inside. Getting ready is worth your time. Worrying mostly isn't. You can learn to tell them apart, and then to do more of the first and less of the second.
Two cautions before we start.
This book is about things that haven't happened. If something is happening now, the answer is action and other people's help, and a book about habits of thought is the wrong tool. A lump you've found needs a doctor. Letters about a debt need a debt adviser. A partner who frightens you is a reason to ring a domestic abuse helpline. None of those is a worry in the sense I mean. They're problems, and problems are dealt with differently.
The second caution is about how much you worry. Everybody does it to some degree. But suppose you've worried on most days for months, about many different things, and you find it hard to control. Suppose it comes with poor sleep, tense muscles, tiredness, or trouble concentrating. Then it may be what doctors call generalised anxiety disorder. It's common and it's treatable, and a GP is the place to start. You can read this book as well, but don't read it instead. Chapter 13 says more. If you take medication for anxiety or low mood, nothing here is a reason to stop it or change the dose.
The middle chapters each take one belief that makes worrying seem sensible. "I'm just being prepared." "It didn't happen because I worried." "At least I won't be caught off guard." "It shows I care." Each one is partly true, and I'll try to give it its due before I argue with it.
Some of the arguments rest on research. The notes at the back say which studies, and how far I think they can be trusted. The rest is my own reasoning, and I'll say so where it matters.