Tool · CBT-style thinking
Worry-Time Scheduler
Pick one 15-minute window each day. Worry freely in that window. Outside it, park worries here. The surprising finding: most of them won't feel urgent when you read them back.
My worry window
Same time every day. The body learns the slot.
Next slot:
Park a worry right now
When anxiety surfaces outside the window, this is where it goes.
Currently parked
How often worries resolve themselves
The point of worry-time isn't to solve them — it's to find out that most of them don't need solving. This is the visible evidence.
Self-resolved at review
0
Worries that didn't need solving
Still alive at review
0
Worries that needed attention
Self-resolution rate
—
Across 0 reviewed worries
Distribution by original intensity (filled = self-resolved, outlined = still alive)
What this actually does
Worry-time (developed by Adrian Wells and Ed Hackmann in the 1990s, refined in many clinics since) restructures the relationship between you and the worry. The worry doesn't go away — your relationship to it does. The mechanism is two-part: first, the parking practice trains your brain to treat the worry as not-now, which dampens the urgency; second, the worry-time review shows you — concretely, in your own data — that a meaningful fraction of worries don't survive until the window.
The distinctive bit here is the resolution tracking. Worksheets can't show you this; this tool can.
Who it's for
People with chronic, free-floating worry — especially across work, family, money, health. People whose worry interrupts their day but doesn't rise to clinical levels. People who already try to "save it for later" but find they can't.
It's not for acute crisis, where the worry is happening because something is happening. If a worry is about something with a real, immediate deadline, the right response is to act on it, not to park it.
How to read the results
The self-resolution rate is the headline number. Most people settle into 40–70% within the first few weeks — that is, two-thirds of what felt urgent at 2pm turns out not to need anything by 6:30pm. The histogram by intensity is interesting because it usually shows that medium-intensity worries self-resolve most often (the low ones didn't really need parking; the high ones are usually the real ones).
Limitations
Doesn't work for worries that need an action answer (a real problem that needs solving). For those, use a planning slot or break it down — but don't park them. The tool tries to nudge you away from parking actionable worries via the intensity dropdown; high-intensity worries probably won't self-resolve and that's information.
FAQ
What if I have a worry during the window itself?
Look at it. That's what the window is for. If it has a real action attached, do the action immediately or break it into a next step. If it doesn't, mark it as resolved — most will be.
What if my worry time is going to be missed today?
Move it. Skip the ritual once and you've lost the slot. The tool lets you set the time in the morning, but you can change it any time. Better to do it 90 minutes late than to skip.
My self-resolution rate is low — what does that mean?
Two possibilities. One, you're parking worries with real action attached (a deadline, a person to call) — those won't self-resolve, by design. Two, your worries are mostly about a small number of big things, in which case worry-time might pair well with a thought record for the recurring ones.
How do I use Worry-Time Scheduler step by step without mistakes?
Follow the order given in the usage section: Schedule a daily 15-minute worry window. Park worries outside it. At worry-time, see them in one place. Track how often they resolved on their own. The step-by-step part matters less than the unit check that sits inside it. Confirm every unit matches the thing you are actually trying to measure before you press calculate - that single check catches more wrong answers than any other habit, and it costs about ten seconds.What are the common mistakes when using Worry-Time Scheduler?
Most common mistakes come down to four habits: entering 20 when the field expects 0.2 because the field is a percentage; leaving a field blank and accepting the default without checking what it stands for; changing one input and reading a result that was calculated before the change; and quoting the output as an exact figure when the page describes it as a reference estimate. Press calculate again after any edit, and treat the number as a reference point rather than a final answer.Advertisement