Even If 93% of Our Worries Never Come True, I Still Worry About the Other 7%
“Ninety percent of the things we worry about never actually happen.”
You often see this line in self-help books and psychology articles.
In the study behind the claim, most of the things people worried about did not happen. Even among those that did, some turned out to be less severe than expected. When those cases were included, about 93% did not end badly.
This usually leads to a reassuring conclusion:
“Ninety-three percent of those worries turned out fine, so there is no need to worry so much.”
That makes sense.
But as a lifelong worrier, I immediately do the calculation in reverse.
“So that means something genuinely bad happened in the other 7%, right?”
While everyone else looks at the 93% and feels relieved, I keep staring at the remaining 7%.
I know. I am difficult that way.
The 7% Bothers Me More Than the Reassuring 93%
Do you see it as “only 7%” or “as much as 7%”?
A worrier sees the latter.
Spending many years as an engineer only reinforces that habit.
“It should be fine in almost every case.”
Few statements are more frightening than that one.
What percentage does “almost” mean? What happens if it does fail? Can we undo the damage?
In software development, we do not say, “There is a 99% chance everything will be fine, so there is nothing to worry about.” If the remaining 1% could erase all the data, that 1% is exactly what we need to address.
Risk is not determined by probability alone.
We think of it as:
Probability of occurrence × impact if it occurs
Seen that way, worrying about what remains after being told that 90% will not happen is not entirely irrational.
Being a Worrier Has Been Surprisingly Useful in Engineering
I have always been a serious worrier, but that trait has helped me a great deal at work.
Whenever I release a system, I think only about unpleasant possibilities:
“What if it crashes here?”
“Can we recover if the data is corrupted?”
“What if an external service goes down?”
Then I make a backup. I retain the logs. I run tests. I prepare a rollback procedure.
It is a thoroughly negative way of thinking.
Yet in system operations, negative thinkers can be surprisingly useful.
Backups, redundancy, and monitoring all share the same basic philosophy:
Assume from the beginning that something will break.
You could almost describe IT infrastructure as human anxiety transformed into an enormous industry.
Accidents Still Happen
The problem is that no amount of worrying can reduce risk to zero.
That is even more true in life. Work, relationships, and changes in society do not come with complete backup environments.
Lately, I have started to think that instead of trying to eliminate anxiety, I should decide when to use it.
Before something happens, worry as thoroughly as possible.
Identify the risks you can imagine and take every practical precaution.
But if the problem still happens, say:
“Well, it could not be helped.”
Continuing to ask yourself why you did not worry more will not restore a failed system.
Find the cause. Recover the system. Put measures in place to prevent it from happening again.
Perhaps life can work much the same way.
Life Has No git revert
Some people feel reassured when they hear that 90% of worries never come true.
People like me ask:
“What about the rest?”
If that is how your mind works, there is no need to force yourself to become an optimist.
Worry before the event. Take every precaution you can. If it still happens, accept it and begin the recovery.
For an engineer, that is simply normal incident response.
With a system, you can restore a backup. With code, you can return to an earlier version.
Unfortunately, life has no git revert.
That is why I will keep worrying—at least about the things I can still do something about.