On the first day of the holiday, did you actually get to take the day off? Are you stuck in traffic on the highway, or did you finally manage to sleep in until you woke up naturally?

I have experienced neither the misery nor the pleasure of either, because I am working overtime. Remote, yes, but it still means working from a different location. While others are on vacation, you are staring at your computer feeling anxious.

Don't laugh at me just yet. The project you were negotiating before the holiday has been stalled with no progress, and your boss pushed you off for more than ten days with a single "let's talk about it after the holiday."

Rumors had already been circulating before the break that the company structure was going to be adjusted. Gossip was quietly making the rounds. Nobody would say whether your name was on the list. You smiled as you clocked out, but the entire holiday that followed was anything but relaxing.

So, between working overtime during the holiday like me and the kind of "not knowing what tomorrow will bring" that you are dealing with, which one is more maddening?

Let me start with an observation that many people understand in their hearts but rarely say out loud: what truly keeps us awake at night are the possibilities that haven't happened yet but have been hanging in midair all along.

Overtime has boundaries. The work is right there in front of you, and every task you finish is one less to deal with. Tiring as it may be, at least you know where the bottom line is. But "not knowing what tomorrow will bring" is a fog with no edges.

A clear to-do list, or anxiety in an unknown fog?

I have tasted that feeling too. On days when there is actual work to be done, people actually feel more grounded. The hardest part is that "pending" state: you have submitted a revision and are waiting for editor feedback, or you have turned in a grant application and are waiting for review results.

The most terrifying thing is not death — it's "4:30 tomorrow afternoon."

There is a comedy bit by Guo Degang that goes something like this: death itself is certainly frightening, but what is even more frightening is being notified that you will be executed at 4:30 tomorrow afternoon. Think about it carefully. Those dozen-plus hours of waiting before the execution are the real torment.

Of course, that is a joke, but research in management psychology on job insecurity has reached almost exactly the same conclusion.

The feeling of "It's almost time" is even more agonizing...

Social psychologists Burgard, Brand, and House analyzed tracking data from a group of American workers in 2009 and found that people who lived long-term in a state of "worrying they might lose their jobs" had significantly higher risks of depressive symptoms and damaged physical health. A similar review by psychologist Sweeny makes the point clear right from its title: Waiting is the Hardest Part.

This kind of chronic, ongoing insecurity can, on some measures, cause even more damage to mental health than actually losing a job. The moment you are told you have been "let go," negative emotions do spike to their peak, but from that very moment onward, unemployment actually stops haunting you: you start updating your resume, asking around for opportunities, and planning your next job. Doesn't that actually make you more motivated? Some people are still anxious, while others have already started taking action.

Imagine a university announcing: "Professors and associate professors no longer have iron rice bowls. If they fail evaluation, they may be transferred or even dismissed." And then... nothing else. No list, no timeline. You only know that job loss is a possibility, but you don't know whether you are one of the people it will happen to. For the next six months, going to work every day feels like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

More uncertainty and a lack of control

Why is waiting so torturous? From the perspective of classical emotion psychology, anxiety is closely related to uncertainty and sense of control.

First, uncertainty. The brain is essentially a "prediction machine." Based on past experience, it constantly predicts what will happen next so it can prepare the body and attention in advance. When predictions are accurate, we feel grounded. When they are not, it sounds the alarm.

Grillon's team designed a classic experiment called the NPU threat task. The logic is simple and blunt: participants were placed into three conditions. The first was certain safety, with no electric shocks. The second was predictable threat, with a clear warning before a shock. The third was unpredictable threat, with shocks arriving randomly and without any warning.

The results were highly consistent: predictable shocks triggered brief fear — once the cue sounded, the heart rate sped up, and once the shock ended, it was over. Unpredictable shocks triggered sustained anxiety, because you did not know when danger would come, so you had to stay tense the entire time, without even a gap to relax.

Follow-up research further found that what makes people most anxious is precisely this: knowing that something bad is highly likely to happen, but not knowing when it will happen.

Now, sense of control. On top of uncertainty, a lack of control pours fuel on the fire. In psychology, the sense of control is not the illusion that "everything is under my control," but rather the feeling that "my actions can influence the outcome at least somewhat."

Why are middle-class people so anxious about their children's futures? Because that is exactly what the middle class is most powerless to control: the social status you worked so hard to earn truly cannot be inherited.

Uncertainty and a lack of control make people anxious.

Is anxiety necessarily a bad thing? Not necessarily.

So is anxiety purely a negative emotion that is best eliminated completely? Actually, no. There is an old Chinese saying: "If a person does not think about the distant future, they will soon have troubles close at hand." Modern psychology's view is highly consistent with this old saying: no emotion arises without reason, and every basic emotion carries a function given to it by evolution. Anger protects boundaries, fear makes you flee, and disgust keeps you away from rotting food.

Anxiety's function lies in its time orientation — it faces the future, and its role is to prepare for the future. On the ancient savannah, ancestors who felt no anxiety at all were probably quickly eliminated by lions. Those who worried about the dry season, stockpiled food in advance, and repeatedly checked the rocks at the cave entrance before sleeping survived and became our ancestors.

The same applies today: moderately anxious people start reviewing earlier, go for physical exams on time, insure their cars, and leave buffer in their plans. The classic Yerkes-Dodson law in psychology points out that the relationship between arousal level and performance is an inverted U: with no tension at all, performance is poor; with overwhelming tension, performance also collapses; the best performance comes from a moderate level of anxiety.

Excessive anxiety is definitely harmful.

When facing excessive anxiety, what should we do?

First, we need to be clear: uncertainty cannot be eliminated. Tomorrow is unknowable by nature. That is the world's "factory setting," not a bug unique to you. The truly mature response is not to try to buy a "sense of certainty" — fortune-telling, constantly refreshing news, and over-planning all belong to this category — but to learn to coexist with uncertainty while shifting your attention back to what you can truly control.

Accept, rather than fight anxiety

In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), there is a famous "white bear effect," derived from psychologist Wegner's experiment: the more you command yourself, "Don't think about a white bear," the clearer the white bear in your mind becomes.

Emotions work the same way. "Why am I anxious again?" "I can't be nervous anymore" often becomes anxiety squared: being anxious about anxiety.

Acceptance is not lying flat, and it is certainly not admitting defeat. Its full meaning is: I acknowledge that I am worried right now, and I also acknowledge that the outcome is not entirely up to me. Then, carrying that worry, I go do what I believe is valuable.

The real meaning of embracing uncertainty is this: no longer treating a "sense of certainty" as a prerequisite for action. You do not need to see tomorrow clearly before you are willing to live today well. Tomorrow's terror and tomorrow's charm are actually the same thing: it has not arrived yet.

What we can grasp has never been predicting tomorrow, but living today's version well.

Accept anxiety, seize the present.