The Anti-Worry List

Hey there,

It is Matthew Larsen, back with my daily newsletter.

In today's email, we will talk about the Worry List, which is how I get unresolved problems out of my head and put them somewhere I can actually handle them.

It is amazing how long I have put off things simply because they worried me, and I know other people do the same. Most of the time the thing is not even difficult. It is a phone call, an email, or an appointment you have not booked, and it has been sitting there for months.

By late 2025, I had become so focused on my work that I neglected a bunch of basic chores and personal responsibilities that I could not delegate to anyone else. They accumulated until I felt almost crippled internally, and they started making me less effective during the work itself.

So I opened Apple Notes and wrote down every single thing that was worrying me, and then I used my work hours to knock them out. Not over several months, and not over several weeks. It took literally about three hours.

Things that had been piling up for months, if not years, were handled in a single morning. Along with them went much of the worry, anxiety, tension, and constant nagging feeling they had created.

Most worries have a clear series of actions attached to them, and those actions usually take substantially less time than you imagine. A problem may have occupied your mind for six months even though the actual solution requires one phone call, an email, an appointment, a payment, or a few hours of focused work.

Once the worry is written down, it stops being a vague source of anxiety and becomes something you can actually work on.

Open Apple Notes or whatever equivalent you use, create a new note called "The Worry List," and pin it so it is always easy to find.

Then write down every single thing that is currently worrying you. Do not keep some of the worries in your head because they feel too small, embarrassing, annoying, or difficult to explain. Put everything on the list, and whenever something new begins weighing on your mind, add that too.

Once the list exists, block off an hour and start going through it:

I would do this in the first hour of your Monday. If you are an exceptionally important person with an enormous number of worries, or you have simply allowed your life to implode, do it every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until you are back on track.

I have tested this at different times and on different days. I originally thought the weekend would make the most sense because nobody would be bothering me, but I quickly discovered the opposite.

Many worries require responses from other people. You may need to make a phone call, send an email, book an appointment, pay something, or contact a business that is closed or unresponsive during the weekend, so you end up doing the work and getting almost nothing across the line.

Monday morning is perfect because people are working, businesses are open, and you can begin receiving responses immediately. More importantly, you begin the week by removing the problems that have been sitting in the back of your mind, and it is difficult to describe how good it feels to start Monday by knocking those things out.

Your life becomes substantially better when you stop carrying these problems around and simply handle them.

Talk later,

Matt