Summarize the following:
If you are a chronic worrier, you may find that no matter what you do to distract yourself or relax, specific worries come back again and again. Taking action can help you feel less helpless. Get a notebook and pen and write down your worries. After you have listed each one, go through and judge each concern as either productive or unproductive. Productive worries are those you can take action against, such as a broken down car. Unproductive worries are those for which you have no control, such as a major hurricane moving into your area. Handle productive worries by immediately brainstorming solutions to overcome them. For example, if your car is broken down, you may need to call and consult with mechanics, buy a part, or go rent a temporary replacement. Unproductive worries are generally those for which there is no obvious or feasible solution. Overcoming such worries requires that you learn to accept uncertainty. The best way to embrace uncertainty is to recognize that not knowing what's going to happen does not automatically mean something bad will happen. Uncertainty is not negative, it is neutral. For example, you are meeting with a friend with whom you lost touch. You worry that things will be awkward. Consider this: if this person is your friend, odds are, you had similar worldviews and interests. Those things may continue to connect you even though time and/or distance separated you. Things could be awkward, but they could also go fabulously. What's more, even if they are awkward at first, they could improve as to two of you warm up to each other. An effective method to reduce the time you spend worrying about something is to schedule a "worry-time". Also known as stimulus control training, this technique involves you writing down or pushing away worries to attend to at a later time. This way you have more time to spend on positive and productive thoughts and activities. Decide on a time in the morning or afternoon to attend to your worries. Limit this to a 15 to 30-minute period. During your worry time, either write down or think over all the things that are worrying you right now or at some point during your day. You do not have to problem-solve these worries, but doing so may help you feel more accomplished. Outside of your worry-time, when you notice yourself worrying, push away these concerns by telling yourself you will spend time thinking about them later. Another way to get control over worrying is to challenge anxious self-talk. The first step to challenging anxious thoughts is identifying them. These are thoughts that frighten you or stimulate a fight-or-flight response. After you become aware of these thoughts, test how realistic they are. The goal is to recognize that these thoughts are usually irrational and unrealistic, thereby, reducing their effect on you. Challenge negative or anxious self-talk by asking yourself these questions: Am I 100% sure that this will happen? Have I mistaken a thought with a fact? What evidence do I have that this is true? What evidence do I have that it is not true? Am I confusing "possibility" with "certainty"? It may be possible, but is it likely?

summary: Write down and judge your worries. Recognize that uncertainties are unavoidable. Designate a "worry-time". Put anxious thoughts to the test.

Summarize the following:
This is an opportunity to learn the nuanced opinions of clients, potential customers, staff members or a community. Ideally, you'll only be talking to one of these groups per focus group. They'll be expressing opinions on one topic, which should be kept to a single product or issue. There's a reason it's called a focus group. Are you researching how your product is received among adolescents? What age range specifically? Do they have specific interests, hobbies, or spending habits? The more specific you can get this, the better you'll be able to guide your recruitment and find useful opinions. If your target audience includes members of a specialized profession, such as doctors, don't try to combine them with other demographics. They will be most likely to speak freely around people from the same background. If you are concerned with workplace satisfaction, consider targeting certain job positions at which employees seem to be particularly discontent. If you have the resources to run two focus groups, consider running one focus group with participants from your target demographic, and one audience from the broader pool of potential customers or community members. This second "control group" helps you separate the unique opinions of the target demographic from opinions that are more widely shared. Focus groups are less effective when the facilitators or clients try to move beyond the original scope of the project. You may need to correct the participants in your focus group about some of their misapprehensions about the purposes of focus groups. A focus group is not a meeting. You are not trying to achieve consensus or come up with a solution. A focus group is not a public relations opportunity. Don't go out of your way to present your organization in a good light. A focus group is not a way to collect statistical data; the sample size is too small and the data is qualitative. An assistant can take notes and handle the recorder, so that you can focus on facilitating the discussion. The assistant should not participate in the discussion, else the facilitators dominate the discussion and the authority of the lead moderator be undermined The assistant should, however, introduce themselves prior to the beginning of the focus group. This is important for making participants feel comfortable with an additional person in the room. No one else should be present unless they have a clear role, such as managing snacks and sign-in sheets. Unnecessary spectators can make participants nervous. Find a private area where participants will feel relaxed and comfortable. Video cameras or one-way observation mirrors are often used for market research, but they are not appropriate for focus groups covering sensitive or stigmatized topics. Use an audio recorder instead if you are concerned about the effect of observation on participant comfort. Organizing seats into a circle will make all participants feel more equal and comfortable participating than if, for example, they are sitting at a rectangular table with one person at the head. Design the questions to encourage participants to open up and talk about their opinions in depth. Avoid yes-or-no questions, since people are more likely to respond "yes" to please you. Instead, use open-ended questions like "What do you think of this product?" or questions that describe both choices, such as "Do you think the color of this product should be changed, or kept the same?" Avoid technical terms and jargon. Keep sentences short and focus so that they do not confuse participants. Avoid questions that might embarrass participants or intimidate them into silence. Begin with questions that encourage participants to talk generally about the subject to make them comfortable and familiar with the topic of conversation. For example, "How do you like to use your smart phones?" Move on to questions that get to the substance of the discussion: "How likely would you be to use a thesaurus app?" Before concluding, ask if anyone has something else to say that did not come up earlier in the discussion. Ask positive questions to establish comfort, before moving on to more negative questions. Ask: "what do you like about this product" before asking "what do you dislike about this product?" Before you begin acquiring data, you will want to consider how you will store it. That means not only getting a tape recorder, but also thinking about a format in which you can organize and sort through your data. For example, an excel spreadsheet can be used to record responses and label them according to common themes. This database will ultimately be used to account for how many of a particular type of response you received and serve as an ease go to source for particularly impactful quotes on any given subject. Remember to keep data in a password protected location, especially if you are working in a university system that requires strict privacy measures. If the data needs to be shared with multiple researchers, use a password protected online database like Dropbox.
summary: Pick a single, clear purpose. Narrow down your target audience. Consider organizing a control group. Refrain from using the focus group for ulterior motives. Find a second facilitator. Choose a comfortable venue and recording method. Prepare questions. Plan out how you will record data.