Welcome to Anxiety Corp.

Recently I’ve been noticing something in my LinkedIn and X feeds.

A steady stream of posts about collapse, disruption, uncertainty. The end of jobs, industries, and entire ways of working. AI confusion, wars, and scarcity.

Morning coffee has never been so downbeat. ☕

Some of it reflects real changes in the world. I get that. We are living through a period of genuine transformation, and with that comes fear of the unknown.

But the tone often feels different in a lot of these posts. More dramatic. More absolute. Almost engineered to trigger anxiety and, in consequence, dependence. Dependenace to an author who claims to have all the insights and a better take on things than the others. 

That isn’t entirely surprising. Uncertainty attracts attention, and fear spreads quickly in algorithmic systems. The attention economy has always rewarded bad news. I remember the tabloids of 30 years ago. Social media simply accelerates the mechanism. 

For leaders and founders, the danger is subtle. A regular diet of anxiety-inducing information changes how we think. When every signal looks like a crisis, the mind shifts into a reactive state. 

And reactive is not the place to be when making important decisions.

Leadership requires judgment. Judgment requires distance. Distance requires a filter.

Serious leaders learn to manage their information diet the same way they manage risk or capital.

So remember this:

Filter: Not every alarm deserves attention.

Be Skeptical: Not every prediction deserves belief.

Choose your sources: Not every loud voice deserves authority.

The discipline is simple, but not easy. 

Good strategy is ultimately about choosing what battles to fight, what to prioritize, and knowing that trying to juggle every ball, at every moment, will burn you out. So pick your battles, pick your problems, and zone out the rest.

Filter the noise.

Stay calm.

Take the time throughout the day to take a distance from the noise. 

Don’t hesitate to find out more about the work I’m doing at Vortolo here:

www.vortolocoaching.com