Over-preparing, double-checking, and saying yes to everything can pass for diligence. Here's how to spot anxiety that's running the show.
Meet Sasha. It’s 10:30 on a Wednesday night. Sasha puts her kids to sleep and pulls out her laptop to answer emails. She knows none of them are urgent; she finished those hours ago. These are emails that could technically wait until morning, but she wants to answer now so that nothing is “hanging over” her tomorrow. Sasha knows she should be heading to bed. She feels more tired than usual because of her late nights, but the thought of not being prepared for anything that might come up tomorrow worries her. Sasha knows she has a two-minute project update in the morning team meeting. She has blocked out an hour tonight to rehearse it. She rebuilt a spreadsheet earlier that she’d already checked twice. Yesterday, Sasha immediately agreed to look at yet another “side project” her boss wants her to take on.
From the outside, Sasha is the hardworking person every team wants. She is responsive and meticulous. She is always prepared and never drops the ball or says “no.” Others see her as “dependable.” What nobody sees is what’s actually running the show. Somewhere under all of it is a low, steady hum of “what if I missed something?” People read it as ambition. Most of the time it’s closer to dread. The late emails and the long rehearsals buy her the thing she’s really after, which is being able to lie down without the night turning into a loop of what-ifs and tomorrow’s to-do list. She’ll rehearse that two-minute update for an hour, but these behaviors don’t make her work better. All they do is make the dread she feels quieter for about ninety seconds. The hour of rehearsal isn’t really preparation. It is the price she pays to the fear of looking unprepared.
This is anxiety performing in a costume that everyone applauds. Working through the weekend earns a thank-you. Maybe even a promotion. The behavior is rewarded and rarely questioned.
Diligence vs Anxiety
Anxiety and diligence can look alike. Many people spend a lot of time ensuring that their emails are written just right or their presentations are built just so. Some of these individuals engaged in the extra effort to avoid uncomfortable feelings (e.g., dread, worry, fear) that they anticipate will occur if they don’t double-check their work, over-prepare, or say yes to any task they are asked about.
Examining these three behaviors can give us a better understanding of the underlying motivations:
Over-preparing. Preparation itself is not an issue. It becomes something else when stopping a task starts to feel uncomfortable and no amount of effort ever feels like enough. Research on perfectionism suggests that a fear of making mistakes that is often paired with doubt about your own work is most closely tied to persistent worry. The hour that Sasha rehearses her project update isn’t really about the update. It is about the possibility that she leaves something out and someone notices – What if I forget something? What if someone notices I missed a small detail? What if I feel embarrassed?
Double-checking. Checking and double-checking is an attempt to gain a level of control over an uncertain outcome. In small doses and for objectively riskier situations, it makes sense. Uncertainty is uncomfortable for a lot of people. And people with a strong need for certainty tend to work slower and make more errors. Repeated checking also wears down confidence in memory, even when the memory itself is fine. When Sasha returns to check her spreadsheet for the third time that night, she isn’t finding anything new. At this point, she is just tired.
Saying yes to everything. Most people do not like feeling discomfort and go to great lengths to avoid it. Agreeing with someone or to do a task is a quick way out of feeling uncomfortable, whether from someone’s possible displeasure or the guilt of leaving a colleague with more work. Avoiding discomfort works in the short term; however, the extra work it buys you piles up over time. Sasha said yes to the side project before her boss finished the sentence. She will likely feel the effects of the additional work all week.
All three of these behaviors can bring quick relief. And that relief can become the problem, because it reinforces the behavior.
| The behavior | Diligence (goal-directed) | Anxiety (fear-driven) |
|---|---|---|
| Over-preparing | Prepares to a sensible standard, then stops and moves on | Can’t stop, because stopping feels uncomfortable and no amount feels like enough; the hours climb with the worry |
| Double-checking | A quick verification, then done | Repeated checks that each buy a few seconds of relief; past a point it can wear down speed and trust in your own memory |
| Saying yes | A real choice to take something on | An automatic “yes” to get out of discomfort, which clears a small worry now and adds to the load later |
How to tell the difference
A late email on its own isn’t a red flag. Some deadlines really are just that – deadlines. One heavy week doesn’t mean much. It’s worth noticing when several of these show up most weeks.
The relief is temporary. Sasha clicks send and she can feel the relief in her body. And that feeling is the key. The brain reads the relief as proof that answering the emails was necessary, so the next night the pull to do it again is a little stronger. A few moments later Sasha remembers her presentation tomorrow morning and jumps right back into the worry.
Anxious worry does not settle once a task is done. It moves to whatever looks like the next possible problem. Researchers describe a “what if?” style of thinking that chains one concern to another, where the focus of the worry shifts around rather than resolving.
The preparation starts costing more than the consequence you fear. Anxious worry often runs well ahead of how likely or how serious the feared outcome really is. You spend hours guarding against something that might take just minutes to fix. Sasha spends an hour rehearsing in hopes that the extra practice means not stumbling over a sentence. If she did stumble, it would likely only cost her about four seconds of awkwardness.
The worry is hard to control. Most of us can set a task aside when something more important comes up. Anxious worry tends to hang on and is hard to switch off. On your day off, can you actually leave work alone? Or does your mind keep wandering back to the inbox?
Your body feels it. Restlessness, tight shoulders, fatigue, trouble focusing, irritability, and broken sleep tend to come along with anxious worry. This is particularly the case when the worry sticks around after the busy stretch ends. The cost of productivity shouldn’t be a sore, clenched jaw and middle-of-the-night awakenings.
Work-life balance starts to disappear. Giving more to work while rest, hobbies, and relationships quietly shrink is a recognized pattern. The real marker is distress, or life getting harder to manage outside of work. Sasha’s annual review describes her as “dependable” multiple times. Last week, though, her son asked why she keeps checking her phone at dinner, and her partner said they can’t remember the last time the two of them went on a date.
| Signal | Looks like healthy diligence | Anxiety may be running the show |
|---|---|---|
| The relief is temporary | A sense of completion, satisfaction, or quiet pride | A brief “phew,” then the mind jumps to the next worry, so the finish line keeps moving |
| Effort vs. what’s at stake | Time spent roughly matches how much the task actually matters | An hour rehearsing a two-minute update; the effort runs well ahead of the likely outcome |
| The worry is hard to control | Can be set aside when something more pressing comes up | On a day off the mind keeps wandering back to the inbox |
| Your body feels it | Energized, or tired in a normal way | Restlessness, tight shoulders, fatigue, trouble focusing, irritability, broken sleep, waking in the middle of the night |
| Life outside work shrinks | Work sits alongside rest, hobbies, and relationships | Rest, hobbies, and relationships quietly narrow, and the people at home start to notice |
Maybe a few of those sounded familiar. Start by making small changes to get momentum. Sasha has worked this way for years, and the habits will take time to change.
The effort can work against you
Extra effort can make the work itself worse. Anxiety drains working memory and attention, and switching between ideas gets harder too. Studies of people with high anxiety show these slip in measurable ways. Sasha may be putting in more hours with less focus.
Over time, an anxious mind tends to fixate on whatever looks threatening and lose track of the bigger picture. Animal studies link this to reduced activity in the parts of the brain that handle flexible thinking.
Checking follows the same pattern. When perfectionism and a need for certainty drive it, people get slower and make more mistakes.
Forty minutes into her rehearsal, Sasha has stopped improving the update. She keeps going until she feels she’s done enough to close the laptop.
When to take it seriously
Most anxiety passes once a stressful stretch is over. Sometimes it lingers. Clinicians usually ask how long the worry has been around (roughly six months or more) and whether it’s hard to control. They also look at whether it’s getting in the way of daily life.
Some related patterns are worth a professional’s opinion. One example is checking aimed at preventing a specific feared outcome. Another is perfectionism that crowds out flexibility. They overlap, and a clinician can help sort them out.
If fear is driving the effort and it’s affecting your health or relationships, bring it up with a clinician. Sasha could start by describing a typical week of late nights.
What helps
Sasha can keep her standards. Caring less is not a realistic or feasible solution. The steps below are aimed at the fear behind the extra hours.
Notice what’s driving you. Pay attention to when relief is what motivates you to keep working. Therapy for perfectionism looks at the costs and benefits of the pattern.
Run small experiments. Next time an email is fine, hit send. Give one small task twenty minutes, then close it, even if you’re itching to keep tweaking. Some of that work will be a B. Most everyday tasks only need a B, and turning one in says nothing about your character. Then compare what happened with what you expected. It’s usually milder than anticipated. Sasha’s B-level spreadsheet would probably get the same quick nod in the meeting as the one she rebuilt late at night.
Widen where your worth comes from. If your sense of worth rides mostly on work, small tasks can start to feel crucial. Time with friends or an evening with nothing planned can ease some of that pressure.
Be intentional about rest. Effort depletes attention and energy. Rest is productive because it helps rebuild those resources and keeps performance and accuracy from sliding.
Practice saying no. The first few will feel uncomfortable. Like a lot of skills, it gets easier the more you practice. For Sasha, it might start with “Let me check my week and get back to you.”
These patterns respond well to treatment. In studies of therapy for perfectionism, people worry less about making mistakes, and the gains are still there months later. Some of these programs come as self-help books or online courses, so getting started doesn’t have to mean a waiting list.
For Sasha, the changes start small. Next Wednesday she runs through her update once during her lunch break. At 10:30 that night she’s sitting on the edge of her son’s bed, and her laptop is still in her bag.
