I don’t know about you but court days were always stressful for me. No matter how good the case or simple the appearance, I always felt something I didn’t feel on other days.

No doubt a good part of it was anticipating freeway traffic and getting nervous about being late for court.

I just read about a study that shows that how you think about your day is pretty much how it will turn out. If you think your day will be stressful, “you’re going to feel those effects even if nothing stressful ends up happening.”

Poop.

Not only that, the study shows that when you anticipate having a stressful day, your memory, focus, and productivity also suffer.

More poop. Streets-of-San-Francisco-level poop.

Anyway, what can we do about this?

Settle more cases? Send someone else to make the appearance?

Eliminate the cause of the stress and, voila, less stress.

For everything you can’t eliminate, exercise helps. And so does distracting yourself from whatever it is that’s got your panties in a knot.

It seems that this is supported by the study: “Results showed that those who worried about stress in the morning performed worse on [tests they gave the subjects]. The effect wasn’t the same, however, for people who anticipated stress the previous night, but woke up feeling more optimistic.”

So we’re supposed to do our worrying the night before? How does one do that, pray tell?

Here’s what I do:

I plan my day the night before. That way, when I wake up, I don’t have to think about what to do, I just do it.

That and not having to go to court anymore mean I’m usually a happy camper.

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