Worry time: how to give your worries their own 15 minutes a day

Worry time means giving your worries one short, set slot each day, about 15 minutes, early in the evening and away from bed. When a worry turns up during the day, you write it in a few words, with one next step if there is one, and leave it for the slot. In the slot, you go through the list and sort each worry. Then you stop.

"It's easier to tell your brain when and where to worry than to tell it to not worry," says McAdam in a video on scheduled worry (7:12). The video compares worrying to a moving train. "If you try to stop a train, it's super hard," McAdam says, "But it's relatively easy to direct a train to a specific track" (6:02).

The idea is older than YouTube. Researchers first tested it in 1983, and public health services in Britain and Australia teach versions of it today. But when a large online trial simply told adults to put their worries off, it made no difference. Below: what McAdam teaches, what the trials found, and the parts that seem to matter most. The steps and their order are ours; each idea is credited.

A note on scope: worry time here is a habit for everyday worry. The 1h Protocol to Reduce Worry and Overthinking is a wellness program about everyday worry and overthinking, not health care. It doesn't give medical advice, and it doesn't diagnose or treat anything. It isn't for anxiety disorders, panic, OCD, trauma or depression.

Know what worry time does, and doesn't do

1. Postpone the worry, don't fight it

Telling yourself to stop worrying rarely works, because pushing a thought away tends to bring it back (see how to stop overthinking). Worry time asks something easier. You don't have to drop the worry, only move it.

The Black Dog Institute, a mental health research institute in Sydney, puts the appeal plainly in its short guide: "It's reassuring for a worrier to know that they don't need to let their worries go completely" (0:28). There will be a time each day when the worries get full attention.

2. Know what the trials found

The evidence is encouraging but thin, and it's worth knowing which parts.

• The early studies. In Borkovec's 1983 experiments, people who called themselves worriers were taught to keep worry to one time and place, and their daily worry reports fell compared with people given nothing (Borkovec et al., 1983).
• A later trial. In a two-week randomized trial, people who worried a lot and kept their worry to one daily slot in one place reported less worry, anxiety and trouble sleeping than a comparison group (McGowan & Behar, 2013). The authors called their evidence preliminary.
• The null. In a large online trial in the Netherlands, adults from the general population were told to postpone their worries to a set period in the early evening, with nothing else. They worried no less often and for no shorter time than people who only logged their worries (Versluis et al., 2016). Many found postponing hard, and many dropped out. The authors concluded that a paper method can't simply be moved online as it is.

Only the summaries of these studies were available to us, so we give no figures from them. Read together, they say worry time is promising but small-scale, and that a bare instruction isn't the whole method. What seems to matter is the rest: a real time you keep, a quick way to park the worry, and something to do with the list when the slot comes.

"It's easier to tell your brain when and where to worry than to tell it to not worry." Emma McAdam

Set up your slot

3. Pick a time early in the evening, well before sleep

The guides agree on a fixed daily time and disagree on where to put it. McAdam's advice: pick a consistent time, and not "first thing in the morning or last thing before bed" (6:28 to 6:50). The Centre for Clinical Interventions, a public clinic run by Western Australia's health department, says the time "should be convenient so you can regularly follow through with the task, and not close to bed time" (CCI). Tobias Teismann, a psychologist at Ruhr University Bochum, suggests moving the worry to the evening, at least two hours before you go to bed, and for no more than 20 minutes, as reported by the German consumer magazine Stiftung Warentest (Stiftung Warentest, 2015).

The NHS page on worries is the odd one out: it suggests a short worry time "every day or so before bed" (NHS Every Mind Matters). No study has compared the timings. We follow the clinic and the trials, which used the early evening: if the slot sits right before sleep, the worries go to bed with you.

Here's what that looks like in practice: 6:30, after dinner, if you sleep around 11. If your evenings aren't yours, a daytime slot works too, such as after lunch.

4. Pick one place, and a back-up time

Use the same place every time, and never your bed. McAdam suggests something like the kitchen counter (6:50). The Australian clinic goes further: not somewhere you go regularly, "like a lounge room chair" (CCI). A walk around the block counts as a place, as long as it's the same walk.

Then set a back-up time for the days the first one gets taken. The Black Dog Institute suggests it so that "the worrying gets done" (0:50). A slot that keeps getting skipped teaches your mind that "later" never comes, and parking stops working.

5. Choose a length, and let yourself stop early

About 15 minutes is a good place to start. The guides range from ten minutes to half an hour: the NHS says "say 10 or 15 minutes", McAdam says 15 to 30 (6:28), and Teismann no more than 20. None has been tested against another, so treat any length as a starting point.

Voices in other languages land in the same range. The Argentine podcast Psicología al Desnudo, from the psychology platform Psi Mammoliti, suggests no more than 15 minutes a day, writing down the worries and possible solutions, with the rest of the day "para vivir", for living (episode, in Spanish, 18:28 to 19:24). The Italian psychologist Luca Mazzucchelli calls it making an appointment with your worries, and gives half an hour at six in the evening as an example (video, in Italian, 3:10 to 4:16).

You can stop early, too. The slot ends when the list is sorted, or when you've had enough, not when the worry feels finished.

Run it every day

6. When a worry arrives, write a few words and go back

During the day, catch the worry, write it down in a few words, with one next step if there is one, and turn back to what you were doing. The Black Dog Institute says to "jot down a few words" and set the worry aside (1:12). The Australian clinic asks for "a couple of words only", and suggests carrying a small notebook (CCI). Your phone's notes work too.

Keep it short on purpose. A worry journal of full pages tends to turn into more worrying; a line with a step turns the worry into something concrete. Mazzucchelli makes a related point: putting a worry in writing gives it a clearer shape and a size (4:29 to 5:12).

Then say "not now, later", and mean it. McAdam's version is a short line to the worry: "Let's talk at 6:00, okay?" (8:13). The CCI worksheet adds the next move: bring your attention back to the present and do something practical or pleasant right now (CCI worksheet). Something you can sink into works better than a bare "think of something else".

7. In the slot, sort each worry into one of four

When the slot comes, sit down in your place and take the list one worry at a time. For each one, ask "how could I deal with this?" rather than "why does this keep happening?". "Why" has no last answer; "how" usually does. Then sort it:

• Gone: it sorted itself out, or it doesn't matter now.
• Step booked: there's a next step, with a when.
• Let go: nothing to do, and you choose to leave it.
• Back tomorrow: still open, so it waits for the next slot.

The Black Dog Institute describes the same sorting: some worries "can be discarded straight away because those things have resolved themselves already", some deserve a little more attention, and the ones with no answer yet move to tomorrow's list (1:33). The Australian clinic says that if a worry no longer bothers you, no further action is needed, and you only work on the ones you feel you must.

Many worries may land in "gone". Teismann's observation: "Wenn man einem zunächst sehr drängenden Gedanken erst später nachgeht, scheint er oft nicht mehr wichtig." In English: when you come back later to a thought that felt very urgent, it often no longer seems important (Stiftung Warentest).

When the time is up, McAdam says, step away, leave the paper there and do something different: call a friend, go for a walk, whatever is engaging for you (7:53 to 8:13).

8. Give it practice before you judge it

The Australian clinic warns that it "does take some time and patience", and that people often predict they won't be able to postpone, then find they can put off many of their worries (CCI). Try it for two weeks, then look back. Did the worries take up less of your day? Which slots did you skip, and why? Move the time if it keeps getting taken.

If worry keeps you up at night despite a slot, see overthinking at night for what to do in the moment, and our sleep guide on sleep anxiety. For worries about things that haven't happened yet, see how to stop worrying about the future.

Back to the train

McAdam's point holds up: you can't stop the train by standing in front of it, but you can give it a track and a timetable. The trials suggest the timetable has to be real, kept and paired with a quick way to park. Pick your time and place today, and write the next worry in a few words.

To build your own slot around your own hours, try the 1h Protocol to Reduce Worry and Overthinking, a program of practical education. Its free first chapter asks a few short questions to find your pattern, shows the three things that keep a worry coming back, and gives you one first step for your pattern. The full program takes about an hour: you catch and park one of your own worries, live, with one next step, set your daily slot with its time, place and back-up, and can run a short first slot right away. You leave with a plan built from your answers, a card with your slot and three questions to ask when a worry starts, a fourteen-day log, and day-7 and day-14 reviews in your calendar. If you're signed in, four short check-ins follow by email on days 1, 7, 14 and 30. Start free

Frequently asked questions

What is worry time?

A short, set slot each day when you give your worries your full attention. Outside it, you write each worry in a few words and leave it for the slot. In the slot, you sort each one and then stop (Black Dog Institute; CCI).

How long should worry time be?

About 15 minutes is a good start. Guides range from ten minutes (NHS) to half an hour (McAdam's upper end), and Teismann suggests no more than 20. No length has been tested against another. Stop early when the list is sorted.

When is the best time for worry time?

Early in the evening, at least two hours before you sleep, as Teismann suggests. The NHS suggests before bed, but a slot right before sleep takes the worries to bed with you. If your evenings aren't yours, a daytime slot works.

What if a worry comes up outside worry time?

Write it in a few words, with one next step if there is one, and tell yourself "not now, later". Then go back to what you were doing, ideally something that holds your attention. At night, a few words "for tomorrow" on paper by the bed is enough; see overthinking at night.

Does worry time actually work?

Small early trials found that keeping worry to one daily time and place eased it (Borkovec et al., 1983; McGowan & Behar, 2013). A large online trial that only told people to postpone found no difference (Versluis et al., 2016). So it's promising, not proven, and the practice around the rule seems to matter. If worry doesn't ease, or it starts causing problems at work, at home or with friends and family, see a doctor. See one too if what you're trying isn't helping.

Sources

This article draws on Emma McAdam's video on scheduled worry, the Black Dog Institute's guide to worry time, Tobias Teismann's advice in Stiftung Warentest, voices in Spanish and Italian, and the studies and guidance listed below.

• Emma McAdam, How to Stop Worrying: Scheduled Worry (YouTube video, creator captions, 2023; title shortened)
• Black Dog Institute, Worry Time: Working Towards Wellbeing (YouTube video, creator captions, 2021)
• Stiftung Warentest, Schluss mit Grübeln (consumer magazine article quoting Tobias Teismann, German, 2015)
• Borkovec et al, the first worry-time experiments (two controlled experiments, abstract only, 1983; descriptive title)
• McGowan & Behar, a two-week trial of a daily worry period (randomized trial, abstract only, 2013; descriptive title)
• Versluis, Verkuil & Brosschot, An internet-delivered worry postponement intervention (randomized trial, general population online, abstract only, 2016; title shortened)
• Centre for Clinical Interventions, WA Health, Worry resources and information sheets (public clinic self-help sheets, 2023)
• Centre for Clinical Interventions, WA Health, Postpone your Worry worksheet (public clinic worksheet, undated)
• NHS Every Mind Matters, Tackling your worries (public health page, 2026)
• Psi Mammoliti, Cómo dejar de preocuparte por todo (podcast episode, Psicología al Desnudo, Spanish, 2025)
• Luca Mazzucchelli, 5 tecniche psicologiche per smettere di pensare troppo (YouTube video, Italian, 2024; title shortened)