Why We Worry and What to Do About It

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The Evolution of Anxiety: Why We Worry and What to Do About It

by James Clear
Read this on JamesClear.com

Let’s pretend for a moment that you are a giraffe.

You live on the grasslands of the African
savannah. You have a neck that is 7 feet long (2.1 meters). Every now
and then, you spot a group of humans driving around on a safari taking
pictures of you.

But it’s not just your neck and their cameras
that separates you from the humans. Perhaps the biggest difference
between you and your giraffe friends and the humans taking your picture
is that nearly every decision you make provides an immediate benefit to
your life.

• When you are hungry, you walk over and munch on a tree.
• When a storm rolls across the plains, you take shelter under the brush.
• When you spot a lion stalking you and your friends, you run away.

On any given day, most of your choices as a
giraffe—like what to eat or where to sleep or when to avoid a
predator—make an immediate impact on your life. You live in what
researchers call an Immediate Return Environment because your actions deliver immediate benefits. Your life is strongly oriented toward the present moment.

The Delayed Return Environment

Now, let’s flip the script and pretend you are
one of the humans vacationing on safari. Unlike the giraffe, humans live
in what researchers call a Delayed Return Environment. [1]

Most of the choices you make today will not
benefit you immediately. If you do a good job at work today, you’ll get a
paycheck in a few weeks. If you save money now, you’ll have enough for
retirement later. Many aspects of modern society are designed to delay
rewards until some point in the future.

This is true of our problems as well. While a
giraffe is worried about immediate problems like avoiding lions and
seeking shelter from a storm, many of the problems humans worry about
are problems of the future.

For example, while bouncing around the savannah
in your Jeep, you might think, “This safari has been a lot of fun. It
would be cool to work as a park ranger and see giraffes every day.
Speaking of work, is it time for a career change? Am I really doing the
work I was meant to do? Should I change jobs?”

Unfortunately, living in a Delayed Return
Environment tends to lead to chronic stress and anxiety for humans. Why?
Because your brain wasn’t designed to solve the problems of a Delayed
Return Environment.

The Evolution of the Human Brain

The human brain developed into its current form while humans still lived in an Immediate Return Environment.

The earliest remains of
modern humans—known as Homo sapiens sapiens—are approximately 200,000
years old. These were the first humans to have a brain relatively
similar to yours. In particular, the neocortex—the newest part of the
brain and the part responsible for higher functions like language—was
roughly the same size 200,000 years ago as it is today. [2]

Compared to the age of the brain, modern
society is incredibly new. It is only recently—during the last 500 years
or so—that our society has shifted to a predominantly Delayed Return
Environment. The pace of change has increased exponentially compared to
prehistoric times. In the last 100 years we have seen the rise of the
car, the airplane, the television, the personal computer, the Internet,
and Beyonce. Nearly everything that makes up your daily life has been
created in a very small window of time.

A lot can happen in 100 years. From the
perspective of evolution, however, 100 years is nothing. The modern
human brain spent hundreds of thousands of years evolving for one type
of environment (immediate returns) and in the blink of an eye the entire
environment changed (delayed returns). Your brain was designed to value immediate returns. [3]

The Evolution of Anxiety

The mismatch between our old brain and our new
environment has a significant impact on the amount of chronic stress and
anxiety we experience today.

Thousands of years ago, when humans lived in an
Immediate Return Environment, stress and anxiety were useful emotions
because they helped us take action in the face of immediate problems.

For example:

• A lion appears across the plain > you feel stressed > you run away > your stress is relieved.
• A storm rumbles in the distance > you worry about finding shelter > you find shelter > your anxiety is relieved.
• You haven’t drunk any water today > you feel stressed and dehydrated > you find water > your stress is relieved.

This is how your brain evolved to use worry,
anxiety, and stress. Anxiety was an emotion that helped protect humans
in an Immediate Return Environment. It was built for solving short-term,
acute problems. There was no such things as chronic stress because
there aren’t really chronic problems in an Immediate Return Environment.

Interestingly, researchers have found no
evidence that wild animals experience chronic stress. As Duke University
professor Mark Leary put it, “A deer may be startled by a loud noise
and take off through the forest, but as soon as the threat is gone, the
deer immediately calms down and starts grazing. And it doesn’t appear to
be tied in knots the way that many people are.” When you live in an
Immediate Return Environment, you only have to worry about acute
stressors. Once the threat is gone, the anxiety subsides.

Today we face different problems. Will I have
enough money to pay the bills next month? Will I get the promotion at
work or remain stuck in my current job? Will I repair my broken
relationship? Problems in a Delayed Return Environment can rarely be
solved right now in the present moment. [4]

What to Do About It

One of the greatest sources of anxiety in a
Delayed Return Environment is the constant uncertainty. There is no
guarantee that working hard in school will get you a job. There is no
promise that investments will go up in the future. There is no assurance
that going on a date will land you a soulmate. Living in a Delayed
Return Environment means you are surrounded by uncertainty.

So what can you do? How can you thrive in a Delayed Return Environment that creates so much stress and anxiety?

The first thing you can do is measure something.
You can’t know for certain how much money you will have in retirement,
but you can remove some uncertainty from the situation by measuring how
much you save each month. You can’t be sure that you’ll get a job after
graduation, but you can track how often you reach out to companies about
internships. You can’t predict when you find love, but you can pay
attention to how many times you introduce yourself to someone new.

The act of measurement takes an unknown
quantity and makes it known. When you measure something, you immediately
become more certain about the situation. Measurement won’t magically
solve your problems, but it will clarify the situation, pull you out of
the black box of worry and uncertainty, and help you get a grip on what
is actually happening.

Furthermore, one of the most important
distinctions between an Immediate Return Environment and a Delayed
Return Environment is rapid feedback. Animals are constantly getting
feedback about the things that cause them stress. As a result, they
actually know whether or not they should feel stressed. Without
measurement you have no feedback.

If you’re looking for good measurement strategies, I suggest using something simple like The Paper Clip Strategy for tracking repetitive, daily actions and something like The Seinfeld Strategy for tracking long-term behaviors.

Shift Your Worry

The second thing you can do is “shift your worry” from the long-term problem to a daily routine that will solve that problem.

• Instead of worrying about living longer, worry about taking a walk each day.
• Instead of worrying about whether your child will get a college
  scholarship, worry about how much time they spend studying today.
• Instead of worrying about losing enough weight for the wedding, worry about cooking a healthy dinner tonight.

The key insight that makes this strategy work
is making sure your daily routine both rewards you right away (immediate
return) and resolves your future problems (delayed return). [5]

Here are the three examples from my life:

• Writing. When I publish an
  article, the quality of my life is noticeably higher. Additionally, I
  know that if I write consistently, then my business will grow, I will
  publish books, and I will make enough money to sustain my life. By
  focusing my attention on writing each day, I increase my well-being
  (immediate return) while also working toward earning future income
  (delayed return).
• Lifting. I experienced a huge
  shift in well-being when I learned to fall in love with exercise. The
  act of going to the gym brings joy to my life (immediate return) and it
  also leads to better long-term health (delayed return).
• Reading. Last year, I posted my public reading list and began reading 20 pages per day.
  Now, I get a sense of accomplishment whenever I do my daily reading
  (immediate return) and I become a more interesting person and the
  practice helps me produce relevant work and develop into an interesting
  person (delayed return).

Our brains didn’t evolve in a Delayed Return
Environment, but that’s where we find ourselves today. My hope is that
by measuring the things that are important to you and shifting your
worry to daily practices that pay off in the long-run, you can reduce
some of the uncertainty and chronic stress that is inherent in modern
society.

FOOTNOTES

1. I first came across this distinction between Immediate Return Environments and Delayed Return Environments in The Mysteries of Human Behavior by
   Mark Leary. I found the whole course fascinating and definitely
   recommend it if you are interested in psychology and human behavior.

2. Interestingly, for millions of years the
   human brain expanded in size, but evidence suggests that our brain size
   has actually decreased slightly over the last 25,000 years.

3. Research has shown that the ability to delay gratification is
   one of the primary drivers of success. Isn’t it interesting that
   delaying gratification is both the opposite of what your brain evolved
   to do and the skill that matches the Delayed Return Environment we live
   in today? For millions of years, humans survived because we were wired
   for immediate gratification (eat now, take shelter now, have sex now),
   but today the opposite strategy helps us achieve “success.” I doubt we
   will know in my lifetime, but it will be interesting to see if delaying
   gratification is merely a tactic favored by our current society that
   will fade away in the long-run or if it is a sustainable long-term
   pressure that will shift the course of our evolution.

4. Even many of the acute problems we face
   today are very different from the acute problems of Immediate Return
   Environments. Consider turbulence on an airplane. This is an immediate,
   short-term problem that makes many travelers feel stressed and anxious.
   Unlike acute problems in the wild, however, there is nothing you can do
   about it except sit there. When you saw a lion in the grass, you could
   at least run. But our environment has changed so much that many of the
   acute problems we face, we can no longer take action on. We can’t
   resolve the stress ourselves. We can only sit and worry.

5. Yet another reason to focus on the system and not the goal.

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