Worrying can be a good thing.
Yes, you read that correctly: a good thing.
When you worry, you tend to pay extra attention. You plan more carefully. You double (or even triple) check your work.
In situations that are under your control, all of this extra effort is capable of making the difference between an exceptional outcome and one that is at the edges of what you would consider adequate.
Like many things though, worrying is best utilized in moderation because it requires so much energy.
A valuable skill, therefore, is the ability to discern between what is and isn’t worth worrying about.
There’s no steadfast set of rules for how to decide this — context is everything.
But a good starting point would be to ask yourself the following questions:
Am I able to control this situation at all?
Does this require my immediate attention or are there more important things I should be focusing on?
And finally, given your responses to these two questions, ask yourself: is this really worth spending my limited energy worrying about?