Run this test on yourself. Think about the last hour of your mental life. Not what you did, what your mind was doing. Where was it?
Possible answers:
- Doom-scrolling the news about something happening on another continent
- Replaying what someone said in a meeting three days ago
- Thinking about what people might think about the thing you’re planning to post
- Reading an argument between two strangers in a comment section
- Worrying about the economy, politics, the weather, interest rates, the next layoff round
- Wondering why that person hasn’t replied
Now compare it to a different possible last-hour:
- Deciding what to work on next
- Writing something, making something, learning something
- Having an actual conversation with someone you actually know
- Doing one small thing you’ve been putting off
- Resting on purpose, not scrolling
Both lists are completely normal. The difference between them is not productivity. It’s which ring your mind was in.
Three rings
+---------------------------------------------+
| CIRCLE OF CONCERN |
| (things you care about, cannot touch) |
| |
| news · politics · the economy |
| celebrities · what strangers think |
| wars · weather · fashion |
| what trended today |
| |
| +----------------------------------+ |
| | CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE | |
| | (things you can nudge, not own) | |
| | | |
| | your relationships | |
| | your reputation | |
| | your team at work | |
| | your kids' choices | |
| | | |
| | +------------------------+ | |
| | | CIRCLE OF CONTROL | | |
| | | (things actually yours)| | |
| | | | | |
| | | your attention | | |
| | | your words | | |
| | | your actions | | |
| | | your beliefs | | |
| | | your boundaries | | |
| | | how you spend today | | |
| | +------------------------+ | |
| +----------------------------------+ |
+---------------------------------------------+
- Concern is huge. It contains everything you care about, including things you have zero power over. The news. The economy. Whether a stranger likes your face. Whether it rains on Saturday.
- Influence is smaller. These are things you can affect but don’t fully own. Your relationships. Your reputation. The culture at your work. The choices your kids make.
- Control is the smallest. These are things that are actually yours, every day. What you pay attention to. What you say. What you do. What you believe. Who you let close. Where you draw lines.
Everyone has a budget of mental energy. Where you spend it is a choice, even when it doesn’t feel like one.
The inverse relationship
Here’s the thing that makes this model actually useful rather than just a nice diagram. The ring you spend your energy in shrinks or grows the other rings.
Spend your day in CONCERN:
energy leaks outward -> inner rings shrink
you feel anxious, powerless, reactive
your actual influence over anything decreases
Spend your day in CONTROL:
energy pools inward -> you get effective
you build things, make real decisions
your influence ring quietly EXPANDS over time
The person who spends two hours a day angry about politics doesn’t change politics. They do, however, lose two hours they could have used to actually move something in their own life. The time doesn’t come back. The politics doesn’t change. The anxiety does accumulate.
The person who spends two hours a day doing their actual work, having real conversations with real people, and setting boundaries where they need setting, finds something quiet and strange happens over a year or two: the circle of influence actually widens. People trust them more. Opportunities arrive. The ring grows because they fed it.
Concern is a sink. Control is a source. The irony is that the people who have the biggest influence in the world are almost always the ones who spend most of their day in the smallest ring.
Rotter’s locus of control
There’s an older academic version of this, from a psychologist called Julian Rotter in 1954. He called it locus of control: where you believe the control over your life actually lives.
- Internal locus: “outcomes mostly come from my choices and effort.” People with a high internal locus tend to be more confident, more driven, more resilient when things go wrong. They look for what they can do.
- External locus: “outcomes mostly come from luck, fate, other people, the system.” People with a high external locus tend to be more passive. When things go well, they credit luck. When things go badly, they blame circumstances. Either way, they’re not the one driving.
Two things worth knowing about this:
- It’s a spectrum, not a binary. Nobody is 100% either. Most people are somewhere in between.
- It shifts by domain. You can have a very internal locus at work (“my results come from my effort”) and a very external locus in relationships (“people just don’t like me”). Or the reverse.
Noticing which domains you’re external in is useful information. Those are often the areas where you’ve quietly handed your agency away without realising it.
This is not toxic positivity
A fair pushback: “Some things really ARE outside your control. Pretending otherwise is denial.”
Correct. And nothing in this model says ignore the outer ring. The news is real. The economy is real. Other people’s behavior is real.
The point isn’t to pretend concern doesn’t exist. The point is to notice that worrying about it is not the same as doing something about it. Worrying lives entirely in your head and changes nothing out there. Action, even small action, lives in the control ring and actually moves something.
- Worry about climate change: concern. Does nothing.
- Change one habit of your own: control. Does something small, but something.
- Worry about the election: concern. Does nothing.
- Vote, talk to one neighbor, give an hour to a thing you care about: control into influence. Does something.
The move isn’t stop caring. The move is route your caring into the ring where it can actually land.
A short self-audit
LAST 24 HOURS
1. Roughly how much time was my mind in CONCERN?
(News, scrolling, worrying about things far away,
rehearsing what strangers might think.)
2. Roughly how much was in CONTROL?
(Making, deciding, doing, resting on purpose,
talking with real people.)
3. What's one 10-minute shift I could make
tomorrow - moving one small block of time
from concern to control?
4. In which area of my life am I currently
operating with an EXTERNAL locus - acting
as if outcomes aren't really mine? Is that
accurate, or is it a story I've been telling?
The 10-minute shift matters more than the big resolution. The ring you’re in is a daily habit, not a personality trait. You move it one small block of time at a time.
The one line
If you keep nothing else from this post, keep this:
You cannot control the ring you care about. You can only control the ring you live in.
Spend today where you can actually move something. Over a year, that ring quietly gets bigger.
The Circle of Concern / Circle of Influence model is from Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People*. The locus of control concept is from Julian Rotter (1954).*
This is not clinical or medical advice. If you are struggling with your mental health, talk to a qualified professional. These are personal notes, worked through in my own words.