I Postponed My Worries, and Here’s How That Went

Around a week and a half ago, I found myself in a fix.

I looked at my business's financial runway and realised I had only a few months left before I run out of my existing capital.

When I moved to working full-time on Hulry, this was the situation I had desperately wanted to avoid by ensuring I always had a decent buffer between now and the end of my runway.

Operating with a small buffer is not optimal because I have to focus more on what could make me money now and keep the business running, and less on long-term ideas that could pay off later and shape the business for the better.

But the last few months have been tough.

None of my efforts have been fruitful to bring enough sustained revenue that would keep expanding the runway and let me do this work full-time.

Therefore, with a dwindling runway and no clear measures to remediate the problem, I spiralled into a state of worrying that I could not easily shake off.

I eventually handled my stress and was able to refocus on what I could do to solve the runway problem, and that is what I will discuss in this article, so that, should you ever find yourself in this situation, you know a quick way out.

Let's start with:

Where my worries spiralled out of my hands

For years, I've practised and preached the art of handling stress and stopping incessant worrying through visualising the worst-case scenario and making peace with it.

And generally, that has worked well for me in many situations.

Usually, after imagining the worst outcome regarding what I'm worried about, I either realise that the worst case isn't as catastrophic as my mind projected it, or the outcome is scary, but I make contingency plans to deal with it should it become a reality.

In any case, I equip myself to be comfortable handling the worst-case scenario and move on.

But this time was different.

First, after hours of thinking, I could not visualise a clear and realistic plan that would help me dodge the worst-case scenario — running out of money — at least not while I was drenched in a thick syrup of worrying thoughts.

I could not see through the fog of anxiety that had suddenly appeared before me.

Second, I wasn't willing to accept the worst-case scenario.

Burning through my financial runway before making significant revenue from my business means I have to start looking for a corporate job.

After working on my terms and building the foundation of my business for over a year, and sitting on the long-term ideas I have for it, I didn't want to walk away from all this by rejoining the corporate workforce.

Yes, I could get a salaried job and run my business on the side like I had done before, but a 9–5 job would decimate the momentum I've built on Hulry and related projects over the last year, as I would have much less time and energy to work on it than I do now.

Moreover, landing a good job in this economy is a long and arduous game, and even then, tech jobs are no longer the secure income source they used to be. I could find myself out of a job in a year and land in the same spot.

It was a catch-22 situation.

I couldn't stop worrying until I made tangible progress and revenue, and I couldn't make progress because I was worrying too much to focus on anything else.

The stress grew intense with each passing day because deep down, I knew I was wasting valuable time from my already limited runway.

After spending three days in this bad, stressed and demotivated mood, I realised I had lost half of that week to excessive worrying and had only three more days left to prevent the week from being a complete time-waste.

I knew I had to get this situation under control before losing any more days, but how?

That is when I remembered a concept I had read about years ago, which I had thought wacky at the time.

It was:

Postponing my worries to next week

When I first came across the idea of postponing our worries to a designated day to regain a productive mind space, I thought it was an impractical gimmick that would never work.

But, nothing else was helping me keep my debilitating anxiety aside and focus on work for the past three days.

So, on Thursday, I decided to postpone my worrying to the following Monday.

The deal was simple:

Anytime I caught myself worrying about the business or anything else in these next three days, I would defer that activity and reassure myself that I'll do all the worrying I want on Monday, but not now. Now is the time to act.

And it worked.

I noticed momentarily giving in to worrying a few times in those three days, but every time I noticed, I remembered that I had a planned worrying session on Monday and returned to what I was doing before. The worrying can wait.

“Planned worrying session.”

It feels ridiculous even to write this, but hey, if it works, it works.

But here's what surprised me the most:

When Monday came, I didn't even remember to catch up on my backlog of worrying thoughts.

By having a clear mind and the space to think in the last three days, I had worked on plans that indirectly addressed what I was stressing about.

The problem still exists; I didn't make thousands of dollars overnight. But now I have rethought a plan different from what I had been doing that could make this business more sustainable and resilient.

But how did postponing my worries help solve the problem?

Per my understanding, this concept works the same way as the popular “close your open loops” advice from David Allen in his book Getting Things Done.

David suggests that whenever a new task pops into our heads, we have two options: deal with the task immediately or note and defer it for later.

This way, we can get closure on the ad-hoc task and return to what we were doing before.

Postponing stress works the same way.

When we're struck by worrying thoughts, we have two choices: deal with it now, which I often do by visualising the worst-case scenario, or deal with it later.

By deferring worrying to a later date, I was not ignoring or suppressing the problem, but rather saying to myself:

I know this is causing me stress, but I don't want to focus on it now. Instead, I'll give this matter my complete attention on this day and time.

This closed any open loop in my mind that was stressing me out and instead allowed me to focus on what I could do at present.

Now, I know this is not always an option.

When you're stressed about an exam or a bill you must pay tomorrow, you can't put off thinking about it. You don't have that time.

But when you're not too short on time, postponing your worrying can give you back the productive mindspace that incessant worrying robs you of.

This, in turn, will help you focus on attacking the root of the stress instead of being high on it.

So:

Try this the next time you’re worrying too much

If what you're worrying about isn't due in a few hours or the next day, try postponing your worrying to a later date.

For example:

If it's Wednesday and you're stressing about a huge presentation at work that you must deliver on Monday, postpone your worries to Friday or Saturday.

With that, you give yourself time and space to work quietly on your presentation without stress for two days.

If you have no clue how you will deliver the presentation by Friday afternoon, you still have time left before the deadline to hit the panic button and take emergency action.

But it's likely that with a clear mind, you'd have solved whatever needed fixing by Friday, and your postponed worrying becomes a cancelled event on your calendar.

Now, as with every advice, there's no guarantee that this will work for you in every scenario.

Therefore, try this technique on a low or medium-stakes worrying scenario where the consequences are not fatal before you apply it to a more serious problem.

Postpone your worries when you can. It works.