This practice draws on Epictetus’s distinction between what is up to us and what is not, alongside Seneca and Marcus Aurelius on meeting imagined futures with present reason.
How to Stop Worrying With Two Columns
Choose one fixed time each morning and take out paper for ten minutes.
Use the same small window each day, perhaps after coffee or before opening email. A worry list works better when it has a boundary, because otherwise it can spread through the whole morning. Keep your phone face down or in another room if you can. You are making a deliberate place for worries, so they do not have to keep interrupting everything else.
Write every worry down in plain, specific language.
Put down what is actually circling in your mind, without trying to make it sound sensible or calm. Write, for example, that you are afraid your manager is unhappy with your work, that your child will struggle at school, or that a symptom means something serious. One concern per line is enough. You do not need to solve it while writing, and you do not need to judge yourself for having it.
Draw two columns and sort each worry by what is yours to influence today.
Label the first column “Action” and the second “Set down.” In Action, place things you can affect through a real choice: making an appointment, checking a deadline, preparing for a conversation, or asking a direct question. In Set down, place outcomes, other people’s reactions, the past, and predictions without evidence. This is the Stoic distinction in ordinary clothes: your effort belongs to you, while much else does not.
Choose one action that takes fifteen minutes or less.
Look only at the Action column and circle the smallest useful next move. Send the short email, find the document, make the call, or put a meeting on the calendar. Make it small enough to begin today, even on a crowded day. If the concern requires a larger project, your action can be the first visible piece of it, such as writing three questions to bring to someone who can help.
Give the second column a scheduled return time.
At the bottom of the page, write a brief time when you will look again, such as 6:30 p.m. for ten minutes. Then close the notebook and continue with the day. When a set-down worry returns at lunch or while you are trying to sleep, remind yourself that it has a place on the page and a time later. You are not declaring the concern unimportant. You are declining to rehearse it endlessly when no new action is available.
At the end of the day, review without putting yourself on trial.
During your return time, notice whether the action was completed, started, or needs a new next step tomorrow. Look at the Set down column and ask whether anything has changed in the facts. Often the day has passed without the feared event arriving, or the concern now looks more definite and manageable. If it still matters, write one fresh action if one exists. If it does not, close the page again.