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Overcoming the Tendency to Rehash Past Work or Worry About Future Work · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  We spend a considerable amount of our time rehashing events and
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  actions that are passed, analysing them, worrying about
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  whether we have done things correctly or not, and reflecting
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  on how we might deal with similar events in the future in
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  a better way. We recount what happened during
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  our day to our close companions. If we reflect for a moment on
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  how much time, energy and focus is spent in looking back at what
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  we have recently done, not to speak of circumstances long in
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  our past, we can easily understand the amount of time
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  and energy spent is enormous. Could we find a better way to
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  deploy that time and energy? Similarly, we tend to make what
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  if scenarios about possible future actions and events.
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  We worry about how we are going to deal with some situation that
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  we anticipate in our work. It may be a concern about an
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  issue we are having with a Co worker or there may be a
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  particularly difficult problem we are trying to solve.
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  Whatever the case may be, we are putting substantial energy and
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  time into future circumstances that may or may not actually
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  occur. There are, of course, times to
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  reflect on the past events if we are using that time to
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  understand and illuminate our nature, our reactions, and our
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  habitual patterns of action, and thereby are using the review as
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  a means of progress. Most of the time, however, this
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  is not actually what we are doing.
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  It is also worth noting that such things really only have
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  significance as long as we are still locked into the ego
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  standpoint. Similarly, reflection on
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  possible future actions may be useful in terms of both guiding
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  the being into new attitudes and in aiding the realization of a
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  specific goal or result. Yet most of the time our focus
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  on the future is not shaped in this type of positive way, but
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  is a form of anxiety or worry sapping energy rather than
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  creating new directions and avenues of development.
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  Again, this is the ego standpoint in action.
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  The practice of mindfulness works to bring our attention
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  entirely into the present. This practice is useful when it
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  can help break the habits of time and energy being dissipated
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  through rehashing the past or worrying about the future.
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  Triorbindo provides a succinct description of such a practice
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  to discipline the being and move it away from the ego
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  personality's fixation with its own past and its own future.
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  The spiritual seeker, as he shifts the standpoint away from
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  the ego, becomes receptive to a higher force that orders,
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  organizes and manages the work effort and thus the individual
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  fixation on past and future is no longer useful.
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  As the seeker relies more and more on the Divine rather than
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  on his own individual personality and capacities, he
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  can gain a measure of peace and calm as he carries out the work
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  to be done and not disperse his energy and focus on the past or
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  the future, Sri Robindo notes quote Think of your work only
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  when it is being done, not before and not after.
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  Do not let your mind go back on a work that is finished.
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  It belongs to the past, and all rehandling of it is a waste of
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  power. Do not let your mind labor in
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  anticipation on a work that has yet to be done.
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  The power that acts in you will see to it at its own time if you
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  can. Remember to let your mind work
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  only when its action is needed. The strain will lessen and
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  disappear. End Quote Reference Srioro Bindo
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  and the Mother Looking from Within, Chapter 3.
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  Actioned and Work, page 67.