From Worry to Action: A Crisis Survival Guide

| In General
| 11 minute read |by Constantin Gonzalez
A lone figure walks through a minimalist architectural space with illuminated vertical golden panels and columns, their silhouette reflected on the polished white floor, creating a sense of scale and ethereal atmosphere with warm backlighting.

A few days ago, I had a conversation with a former colleague who interviewed for a new job because she couldn’t stand her current one. Getting a new offer made her feel relieved and optimistic again: She had escaped.

Many others may not be so lucky this year.

Tech layoffs are accelerating. The economy—if we’re honest and look past the AI boom—looks shaky. Gold prices are spiking, which historically signals uncertainty ahead. And if you’re reading this feeling worried about your job, your future, or the general state of things, I know well how you feel.

Over 27 years and five major crises, I’ve learned one thing: the difference between thriving and drowning isn’t luck—it’s knowing what you can change and what you can’t.

History rhymes

This isn’t the first time things have felt scary.

In 2020, the Corona crisis shut down the world. We didn’t know how bad it would get or how long it would last. In 2011, Oracle acquired Sun, the company I’d loved for over a decade, and everything changed overnight. In 2008, the subprime crisis destroyed “too big to fail” financial institutions and millions of jobs. In 2000, the dot-com crash took the NASDAQ down 78% from its peak.

I’ve lived through all of them. Sometimes as a junior employee who lucked out of layoffs. Sometimes as someone who had to make difficult choices about my career. Sometimes just trying to keep my sanity.

Here’s what I experienced: after every bust comes a boom. After every period of darkness comes light. It’s a pendulum, a set of cycles. As I write this, both the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ 100 are near their all-time highs.

Yet, I get it: knowing this intellectually doesn’t make it less scary when you’re facing it right now.

Why we freeze when we should move

Here’s something we don’t talk about enough: worrying is easy. Taking action is hard.

Worry feels productive. It signals to others that we care. It earns us compassion and comfort. Our brains are wired for it—that’s the ancient fight-or-flight response that kept our ancestors alive when they encountered sabertooth tigers.

The problem is: that lizard brain governing our feelings doesn’t understand jobs, economic cycles, or geopolitical events. It treats your boss yelling at you the same way it treats mortal danger. It makes you freeze or panic when you need to think clearly and act strategically.

Worry is also socially acceptable. Nobody judges you for being worried. In fact, people comfort you, which creates a subtle reinforcement loop: worry → comfort → more worry.

The uncomfortable truth remains: worry doesn’t create options. Action does.

When we worry without acting, we’re waiting until there’s no choice left—which is often too late. We’ve given up options and opportunities because taking action felt awkward, risky, or uncomfortable.

I’m not saying those feelings aren’t valid. They are. But once you recognize that you are in worry mode, you can avoid it becoming a trap, and instead turn it into something useful. Which is the goal of any negative feeling: to make you change your situation for the better.

The ancient framework that works

The best mental model I’ve found for breaking out of this trap is as old as written language itself. It’s called the Serenity Prayer, and while there are many versions across many cultures, here’s the gist:

Give me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept what I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I’m not religious—Not at all. But you don’t need to be—this is a pattern that shows up everywhere from Stoicism to Buddhism to modern psychology. It’s a clear, simple (but not easy!) recipe for navigating difficult times.

This is why it works: it transforms passive worry into active choice.

When you’re worrying, ask yourself: Can I change this?

If yes, then great! Stop worrying and start doing. Find a better job (like my former colleague). Learn skills that make you more valuable. Update your resume. Reach out to your network. Work with AI every day to amplify your capabilities. Start a pet project. Move to a different city. Write blog posts. The list is endless once you shift from “what might happen” to “what can I do.”

Doing is always better than worrying. Always.

If no, then here’s a plot twist: this is great too! If you genuinely cannot change something, why worry about it? By definition, worrying doesn’t change the unchangeable—it just causes more suffering. Once you accept what you can’t control, you free up mental energy to focus on what you can control.

The hard part, of course, is knowing the difference.

How to gain the wisdom to know the difference

“Sure, Constantin, that’s easy to say. But how do I know if something is truly unchangeable or if I’m just giving up too soon?”

Glad you asked! This is where most people get stuck trying to apply the Serenity Prayer. They either keep trying to change the unchangeable (burning out), or they accept the changeable too quickly (giving up).

The answer I found is simple: Run experiments.

I learned this from Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s book Tiny Experiments: you can figure out almost anything about yourself, your abilities, and your life through small, controlled experiments. It’s simple:

  1. Make a hypothesis (“Can I get that better job?” “Should I learn AI?” “Could I move to a different city?”)
  2. Design a time-bound, measurable experiment (“Apply to 5 jobs and see what happens” “Spend 30 minutes daily with Claude for 2 weeks” “Visit that city for an extended vacation, live like a local”)
  3. Review, adjust, repeat

The key thing is: action over analysis paralysis.

You don’t need to have everything figured out. You just need to take the next small step and learn from it.

Here are some examples from my own life:

What action looks like (even when it feels awkward)

April 2020: Sewing masks

On April 16, 2020, I changed my internal company’s profile picture to a photo of myself wearing a homemade mask. This was before official mask mandates, before FFP2 masks were sold out everywhere, when most of the world was still in denial about COVID-19’s severity.

I’d found instructions that a nurse had written up and got to work with my wife’s sewing machine. Was I overreacting? Maybe. But I knew I could do something to protect my family, so I did. The act of sewing and wearing a home-made mask wasn’t heroic. It felt awkward. But doing something calmed the worry in my head and gave me a sense of agency.

Could I change the global pandemic? No. Could I change my family’s level of protection? Yes.

2008: Choosing to learn about cloud

When Tim Bray wrote his famous “On Tough Times” series during the 2008 financial crisis, I paid attention. His advice wasn’t to panic or to hunker down—it was to position yourself for what comes next.

I couldn’t control the recession. But I could control what I learned. So I started experimenting with early cloud providers. I set up my AWS account in February 2009. I organized Munich’s first CloudCamp in 2010. I didn’t know if cloud computing would work out—that’s why these were experiments.

By 2012, when I made the leap from Oracle to AWS, I had four years of experimentation behind me. I knew this was the right move because I’d tested it in small, incremental ways.

Could I predict the future? No. Could I run experiments to learn what might work? Absolutely.

200x: Walking up to my manager’s manager

Earlier in my career at Sun Microsystems, during a reorganization, my new leader placed me in the “Desktop” group based on my existing reputation. But I knew that path would lead to career death from boredom. What I really wanted was to join the new core technology team.

I hate office politics. The thought of going around my direct manager to ask someone two levels above me felt dirty, uncomfortable, like I was playing games instead of just doing good work.

But I also knew this was something I could change. So I walked up to that senior leader and said, “I’d like to join the core technology team instead.”

“Sure,” he said.

That was it. One awkward conversation. One uncomfortable moment. My entire career trajectory changed because of that one action.

That’s when I learned: most people worry about what others think of them. The reality? They don’t care nearly as much as you fear. That manager wasn’t offended by my request. He wasn’t thinking about office politics. He just said yes and moved on.

We waste enormous energy worrying about what people will think, when the truth is: everyone else is too busy with their own worries to judge us as harshly as we judge ourselves.

However, the difference between knowing and living it comes down to what you do next:

Your action plan for tonight and tomorrow

Enough philosophy. Let’s get practical. Here are specific actions you can take, organized by the Serenity Prayer framework:

Things you CAN control (choose 1-3 and start today):

Protect your foundation:

  • Update your resume and LinkedIn profile this week
  • Reach out to three people in your network you haven’t talked to in a year
  • Review your personal finances, cut unnecessary expenses, and build 3-6 months of emergency savings if possible

Increase your capabilities:

  • Work with AI every day—not just “use” it, but integrate it deeply into your work and personal challenges
  • Learn one new skill that makes you more valuable (the books in this post can help develop strategic thinking)
  • Develop into an Expert Generalist by building bridges between your different skills

Increase your visibility:

  • Learn in public—write blog posts, give talks, teach others
  • Contribute to open source projects in your spare time
  • Start that side project you’ve been thinking about

Increase your options:

  • Explore freelancing or consulting while you still have a job
  • Research what it would take to work in a different city or country
  • Investigate adjacent career paths that use your existing skills differently

Things you likely CANNOT control (avoid, unless you’re in a position of power):

  • Macro layoff trends and economic cycles
  • Your company’s quarterly results or strategic pivots
  • The overall political situation
  • Wars and geopolitical events on the other side of the world
  • The 24/7 media doom cycle (consider a news diet)
  • What other people think about your choices

EXPERIMENTS you can run:

  • Hypothesis: “I could get a job in [different field/company/role]”<\br> Experiment: Apply to 5 positions and see what feedback you get

  • Hypothesis: “AI could help me be more productive” Experiment: Work with Claude on one challenging problem for 30 minutes daily

  • Hypothesis: “I could build an audience by sharing what I learn” Experiment: Write 1-2 posts per week for a month on LinkedIn or your blog

  • Hypothesis: “I’d be happier living in [different city]” Experiment: Spend two weeks there on extended vacation, live like a local

The pattern is simple: small action → learn from results → adjust → repeat.

What happens when you choose action over worry

Here’s what I’ve observed in myself and in the dozens of people I’ve mentored through difficult times:

In the short term, taking action feels awkward and uncomfortable. Worry feels easier and socially acceptable. This is the moment when most people quit.

But if you push through, something shifts. The act of doing something—even if it’s imperfect—calms the anxiety. You remember that you have agency. You’re no longer passive, waiting for the world to happen to you.

Over time, those small actions compound. The experiments teach you what works and what doesn’t. Your network grows. Your skills improve. Your options multiply.

Most importantly, you build evidence that you can handle hard things. Remember: you already survived 100% of your worst days so far.

Every crisis you’ve lived through—the 2000 dot-com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, the 2020 pandemic, whatever personal challenges you’ve faced—you made it through. You’re still here. You adapted, you learned, you moved forward.

This time won’t be different.

The choice is yours

The world can feel scary right now. Hey, it’s always been scary—just watch any historical drama. But after 27 years in tech and five major crises, I can tell you:

Worry is comfortable but not helpful. Action feels awkward but creates possibilities.

You can’t control the economy, the layoff trends, or the geopolitical situation. You can control what you learn, who you connect with, and what experiments you run this week.

You can’t make everything certain. You can make yourself antifragile.

You can’t eliminate all risk. You can increase your options so dramatically that no single outcome can trap you.

The Serenity Prayer isn’t about resignation or toxic positivity. It’s about honest assessment: “What can I actually change?” Then focus your finite energy there.

So tonight, pick one thing from the “can control” list. Tomorrow, do it. Next week, run one experiment.

The ground might be shifting beneath all of us. But you’re not helpless. You never were.

Resources and Further Reading

Book recommendations:

  • Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff—how to figure out anything through small experiments
  • The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek—about understanding the game you’re in, and what the rules really are
  • Grit by Angela Duckworth—a guide to persevering on those things you can change, even if they’re hard
  • Quit by Annie Duke—avoid burnout by recognizing what you can’t change

More wisdom from great people:

Related posts:

What’s your next move? I’d love to hear what action you’re taking this week. Share this post on your favourite social media site and comment below it! Or tell me on LinkedIn, Bluesky, or Mastodon. You can also join one of my upcoming free office hours and talk to me.