A zoom lens makes far things look closer together than they are. So does worrying about next year.

Distance flattens. Through a long lens, two things miles apart look stacked on top of each other, and worry does the same trick with the future: next year’s decisions crowd into one urgent heap you are supposed to solve tonight. In real time they arrive one at a time, with weeks of ordinary life between them.

Take the thing you are dreading about next year and write down when it actually happens. Under it, write the single next step and nothing further. Work on the near thing and let the rest stay at its real distance.