Here is an excerpt from an article written by Thomas J. DeLong for the Harvard Business Review blog’s “The Conversation” series. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.

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I come from a family of worriers. We sometimes joke that at the next family reunion we should organize the seating chart according to which anti-anxiety or antidepressant medication each person is currently taking. There would, of course, also be a table for people who are self-medicating with substances not prescribed by a doctor.

What are we all worrying about? Perhaps the more accurate question is: What aren’t we worrying about?

We live and work in an age when there is plenty to fret about for professionals in every field and at every level. This worrying becomes a trap, however, when we start seeing doom and gloom everywhere, when it colors our decision-making and behaviors, when it causes us to go into a shell or always respond in the same tried-and-true ways to avoid catalyzing our worst fears. We all worry. But we often worry needlessly, excessively, and counterproductively. While a moderate amount of worry may focus the mind, too much diminishes effectiveness and robs us of our ability to move outside our comfort zone (because there is even more to worry about outside of that zone!).

Someone once said that there are no small worries for people with big ambition, since every obstacle on the road to goals looms large. Driven professionals often struggle to differentiate small worries from big ones, because every problem is given equal, exaggerated weight. Think about what work worries assault you in the middle of the night and prevent you from going back to sleep. There are three things that you can do to keep yourself from falling into the worry trap:

[Here’s the first. To read the complete article, please click here.

Evaluate the relative significance of the things you’re worrying about. Don’t give a disproportionate amount of worry to small problems. “Box up” your small worries so that they don’t spread. Make a conscious effort to confine your fears and anxieties to the subject at hand. Keep reminding yourself that a problem in one area does not necessarily mean that there’s a problem in another area. Stay focused on the specific issue.

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Thomas J. DeLong is the Philip J. Stomberg Professor of Management Practice in the Organizational Behavior area at Harvard Business School and the author of Flying Without a Net. His research focuses on the challenges facing individuals and organizations in the process of change.