How's your anxiety?

10 low-effort ways to improve your mental health, plus the advantage of overreacting.

We’re a couple of weeks now into the 4-year term of a President and his BFF who wake up every morning thinking of new ways to throw America into disarray for their own wealth, power, and popularity contest. Each morning we’re told of the latest institutional shit show with many warning we’re at the foothills of Fascism or a hostile government takeover. Planes are crashing, and we’re firing the people who are meant to stop that from happening. There’s economic chaos, tariffs are here and will drive up prices, and investors more than spooked by the instability with stock and crypto portfolios fumbling in the red.

As much as we want to, it’s hard to not worry about anything when it feels like everything is happening all at once and accelerating.

Because you read newsletters, including this one about growth, you’re almost certainly smarter than average. And intelligence correlates with more anxiety. Combine that with the fact that half of American adults under the age of 30 report feeling anxious all or most of the time, I think it’s safe to hazard a guess to my opening question…

“How’s your anxiety?!” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s something my wife and I have been feeling more of than usual, and it’s something my mom experienced a lot of.

So, as I sit down with some coffee in hand and start typing up my thoughts for this first edition of this new letter—which was inspired by my mom and my motivation of wanting to write more personally —I can’t think of a better place to start than here.

Whatever your mood, I hope this short letter does two things:

1. Makes a case for why anxiety can be good, and why overreacting is beneficial

2. Gives you some low-effort things to try when it’s too much

human-made art by Cord Collages

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Good Times is a biased, but researched, guide to improving ourselves. Practical letters on self-discovery, psychology, work, life, philosophy, and other learnings about living a good life. Sign up here for some Good Times in your inbox.

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Feelings vs Moods

It’s easy to see why things that feel good can be bad. Like drugs.
But it’s harder to see why things that feel bad can be good. Like anxiety.

To understand why on earth something that feels as bad as anxiety has a positive side, we need to create a distinction between two very different levels of emotion: Feelings and Moods.

How we label emotions makes a big difference to how those emotions affect us. A feeling is temporary. A mood is more permanent.

“I feel anxious” is okay and can be an agent of change. “I am anxious” is the opposite and can be crippling.

As I run that hypothesis through a few other emotions, I think it holds up. When my mom died I felt a lot of guilt and overwhelm. Fortunately, I’ve found ways to use those feelings—and the corners of thought they pushed me towards—to change my behavior and values, and even start new things like this newsletter. But those useful changes only came outside of being inside the feelings. I know that if I let those feelings slip into identity-defining characteristics—I am a guilty person—then the emotions would be less a tool and more an anchor.

The trick is to use feelings as signals for change rather than letting them define your identity

Don’t remove the smoke detector

A common thought when we feel anxious is wondering whether we’re overreacting.

There’s a spectrum for how much anxiety you might feel. On the one end, there’s existential dread and you’re paralyzed by anxiety—so much so it affects your ability to get things done and enjoy the good times. On the other, you have none at all. The blinders are up, and like an ostrich, your head is buried to the surrounding chaos—the peace and quiet of not reacting at all. Neither are healthy and evolution is the evidence.

The little monkey who never left the tree out of constant fear of getting eaten, or the other one who eagerly climbed right down while the leopard circled below are no longer around.

The surviving monkeys all have sensible levels of concern.

This crappy feeling is a necessary, forward looking, emotion that helps us to stay vigilant to potential threats like suss people on the subway, unfamiliar surroundings, running out of money, rising cholesterol, angry bosses, or more expensive grocery bags.

When we don’t think and worry at all about potential consequences beyond what’s happening right now, there’s a cost. People (and monkeys) who lack sensible concern are far more likely to get hurt or die in preventable accidents. Or more mundanely, to bomb an interview or lose money in economic downturns because they didn’t have the right dose of angst to prepare properly.

The cost on the other side of the scale is more obvious. Outside of the fact that being stressed all the time just sucks, too much leads to overthinking which leads to us often doing nothing about anything. Also, it taxes our physiology to the point where it even damages our bodies and organs.

So, while it’s a helpful tool to keep us prepared and on top of situational changes, most of us are more likely to suffer from too much, and we often feel it unnecessarily when there is no actual danger or looming threat. A reasonable follow up question is why isn’t our regulatory mechanism for anxiety calibrated so that we only feel it when we absolutely need to?

The answer is that in most situations, we don’t know whether or not anxiety is needed, and, if so, how much.

In this way overreacting is just like a smoke detector, setting off an unmistaken alarm when there’s a fire. Except, it doesn’t actually detect fire—it detects smoke, answering its call of duty as loudly as possible at the merest hint of potential danger, including your perfectly searing steak. As annoying as it is—that’s a feature, not a bug. A false positive is much better for you than a false negative.

That’s why, like anxiety, these things are calibrated to be annoyingly over responsive. Under responding once in the face of ambiguous risk is worth a million overreactions.

The result is we all have a version of our “most anxious” self that is ready to hijack our energies and show up at the most inopportune times. And as normal as it is and as much as we need the feeling of anxiety, most of the time we need to tell our smoke detector to just shut the fuck up.

Low-energy habits to turn down the anxiety and improve your mental health

I used to think self-care had to be loud—morning alarms at 5 am, rigid routines, calendars filled with color-coded tasks. But when you’re anxious, you’re often low on energy, and productivity hacks rooted in chasing a version of self-improvement that feels like a second job just doesn’t do it. This is when the self-care stuff that can change the beat is about the small and low-effort things that tune down the anxiety and make life feel easier today.

Here are some habits to help…

1. Focus on the “just one thing” rule

I’ve always believed action is the antidote to anxiety. But, long and ambitious to-do lists, even when you’re not anxious, usually end up being procrastinated on altogether. I’ve often found myself trying to navigate out of feeling down or anxious by writing long lists of plans and goals, thinking that’s how I gain back control. Except the inverse happens and I avoid it. There’s just something paralyzing about seeing twenty unchecked tasks staring back at you. Which only adds to the feeling of things being out of control.

Instead, ask yourself this: What’s the one thing I can do today that will help me with my goals, or just make tomorrow easier?

One thing is doable, and it gives you a small win.

2. Actively try to slow your life down

Quiet mornings. Walks through the neighborhood. Reading in a coffeeshop. Sitting with my cat without a phone. Staring at a nature. Not mindlessly rushing to the next thing.

No one told me how much joy slowing things down would bring.

So this is me telling you. Slow down when you can. You’ll be happier.

3. Acknowledge every single good thing, and get your “full benefit”

I know how terribly cliche it sounds to say focus on gratitude, but things are usually cliche because they are true. And gratitude works because it’s just science. Dopamine and serotonin are the brain's natural resistance to negative and intrusive thoughts. And you can make them on-demand by simply taking a moment to appreciate something. The best way to drown out the bad is to try see more good.

Outside of releasing a good chemicals, it has another benefit: Gratitude helps to reframe our perspective and change something bad into something good.

The Navy Seals have a saying. When something sucks or goes wrong (and a lot does for a Seal), they look at each other and say: "Full benefit”.

Two words that unlock an instant and powerful mindset shift.

Getting fired. Working on a project that fails. Flight gets delayed.

That’s a “full benefit”, because the only way forward—which is a non negotiable direction for an operator under pressure— is realizing that every adversity is an opportunity to grow, learn, or evolve.

The next time you're facing something hard, welcome it. Reframe it. Work through the process. Find the lessons. Get the full benefit.

Always remember, the greatest weapon against stress is to choose one thought over another. Worrying does not take away tomorrow's troubles. It takes away today's peace.

4. Do things at 70% effort

One of the falsest (and most harmful) beliefs I used to have was that if I wasn’t doing something perfectly, it wasn’t worth doing at all.

If I couldn’t write the perfect newsletter, why post anything at all? If I didn’t have the time for a full gym session, why bother going?

Perfection is exhausting. Nothing gets done when you’re constantly waiting to do it perfectly. And the thing with perfection anyway, is it’s an infinitely moving goal post.

“If you can’t beat fear, do it scared.”
— Glennon Doyle (American author and activist)

So, especially when you’re low on energy, allow yourself do things at 70%. Hey, even 50%. Not great, not terrible—just done.

The saying “How you do anything is how you do everything” is nonsense. The best know when to give something their all and when to just get it done.

5. Ritualize (and romanticize) something small

For me it’s my morning coffee.

I used to drink it mindlessly, sipping while scrolling the news, hardly caring for the taste (which I love!).

Now, I’ve made it a sacred start to my day. I take my time grinding the beans and enjoy watching the espresso slowly pull from the machine. I sit on my chair and let it be a quiet moment, slowly sipping and enjoying the smell and taste. I might pair it with a book, some low-fi music, or just time with my cat. It’s 15 minutes of my day where I’m not thinking about what’s next, and just being present.

When I think of travel, I always romanticize having my coffee somewhere new.

The point here is making something mundane and small that you enjoy something meaningful and grounding.

6. Get outside for five minutes a day

“Getting fresh air” doesn’t mean going on an hour-long walk. That’s a big commitment. Make it easy for yourself and just step outside—feel the breeze on your face, get some sun, find a tree to sit under and do nothing. It’s small, but those small moments when I get out the apartment always reset my brain in a way nothing else does. If it’s raining, stand under some cover and listen to it.

It’s quite literally a super low-effort silver bullet to feeling better.

7. Do something for the sake of the thing itself

We have a tendency to turn the things we enjoy into some end pursuit. If you have a hobby, like Chess, just go play it purely for the sake of the playing the game. I’ve found a lot of happiness when I remind myself to do something for the sake of enjoying the thing itself, not for any other reason. Not to win. Not to become something. Just because I like it.

It’s good to have goals, like getting better at something we enjoy. For example I love Padel and I love playing competitively. But when we’re stressed and tired, turning to a hobby to try break the feeling and then getting upset when we don’t perform (and the odds are that we won’t be our best in these cases) just adds to our frustration.

Use your hobbies, but remind yourself they’re hobbies because you like doing them—productive outcomes aside. The by-product is you usually end up doing better anyway.

8. Write something—literally anything—down

Writing has brought me a lot of clarity and confidence. And I don’t mean writing letters like this that I publish, more so the small and scrappy and private and chain-of-thought types of ramblings. Ideally with a real pen and paper.

Before I started writing, there was a lot of noise in my head. Now, I use writing to figure out my messy thoughts, to make sense of my emotions, and to find direction when I feel aimless.

If you’re struggling, and you’re not sure what you think or feel about something, just start writing. You don’t need to have some plan about what you will write, just start putting words to paper and seeing where it takes you. And when you’re writing for you, always be honest with yourself.

9. Avoid filling empty space with your phone

We’re wired to avoid boredom at all costs. If there’s a moment of idleness, we grab our phones. If we’re doing something else like watching a show, we also, often grab our phones. This is a bad habit we’ve all formed.

Our phones are one of the biggest drives of feeling shit or anxious because they plug us into mindlessly scrolling through feeds.

And feeds are machines made by companies to capture our attention and dish us ads, with “connection” as an soft added bonus. The problem is that these platforms only really believe in one thing: growing, endlessly. More is always better: more clicks, more miles scrolled. More.

And they get their More by serving you things that change your emotions. Like stuff that makes you compare your life to other peoples, or get caught in cycles of bad news that makes you angry or anxious.

I wish I could say that I was stronger than a silly little app feed, but I’m not. Each time I jump into the machine, I can feel it changing how I feel.

I hate it. Yet I still do it. Because our phones are designed to be addictive.

I’ve noticed that when I’ve had a good day, it’s often when I barely used my phone.

I really believe that when you remove social media from your life, you’ll realize the only thing you were missing out on was living your own life. Because this is such a big one, here’s 5 ways to cut the phone time down:

• Turn your screen grayscale—colors make apps more addictive.

• Remove all the app icons from your home screen—out of sight, out of mind.

• Turn off your notifications (besides texts)—why allow apps to reach you whenever they want to?

• Use Do Not Disturb—set it to activate in the mornings and evenings

• Delete social media apps and use a browser to access them (and log out after each session)—extra frictions helps with cut mindless opening scrolling.

• Put the phone in another room—especially when working or spending time with others.

10. Consume less news

Imagine a new drug hit the streets. It’s highly-addictive, and in no time everyones hooked.

Scientists investigate and find out that the drug causes, and I quote, “a misperception of risk, anxiety, lower mood levels, learned helplessness, contempt and hostility towards others, and desensitization”.

Would you use it?

Yes, because you already do. This drug is a huge and silent modern addiction. Used daily, heavily subsidized, and distributed to us at a massive scale.

That drug is the news.

My dad listened to the news every morning on the radio when driving me to school, and my gran on the way back. I was always told that the news was good for your growth. That if you didn’t care to read it, you weren’t an engaged citizen. That it’s your duty to be informed.

This is a very popular narrative, but more and more studies are telling us it’s a mental health hazard. The news makes us cynical and pessimistic by shouting loudly in our faces about how bad things are.

You are what you consume. So, mind your information diet—especially in this new age of America ruled by gangsters.

These low-lift habits aren’t about changing or fixing yourself, they’re about meeting yourself where you are, making the hard days a bit easier, and remembering that even in chaos, there’s good times to be found.

If you have any other little tricks that work for you, feel free to share in the comments. Also, since this is the first Good Times post and it’s quite different to How They Grow—I welcome your feedback!

Otherwise, see you next time.

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Good Times is a biased, but researched, guide to improving ourselves. Practical letters on self-discovery, psychology, work, life, philosophy, and other learnings about living a good life. If this was forwarded to you, sign up here for some Good Times in your inbox.