Jonathan Lemon Feels Stress from Imaginary Deadlines

Jonathan Lemon’s Monkey Strikes Again

I feel stress this morning. My boss gave me an indefinite deadline to get a post up of at least 500 words. I don’t know when the actual deadline is but I know it’s needs to be SOONER rather than LATER! The boss demands two substantive posts a week and if he doesn’t get what he wants he…he…

Hey wait a minute, I’m the boss! I decide what, when, and how much to post. I have no deadlines and no quality standards to meet (clearly).

So why am I feeling like I’m behind schedule?

Worst Superhero Power

I am amazed at my capacity to work myself up over nothing. There’s a quote floating around out there, apocryphally attributed to Mark Twain: “I’m an old man and have known a great many troubles in my life. Most of which never happened.”

I remember reading that quote one morning and almost spitting out my coffee. (I almost spit out the coffee because the quote described me perfectly, not because I thought the coffee was Kopi Luwak.)

Some people have a useful capacity to imagine what isn’t there. They can see sculptures in blocks of marble, or symphonies from ethereal notes.

I can see imaginary consequences. My superhero name would be Stress Man. I don’t think Marvel will be interested in picking up the movie option.

Nemesis: Dr. Perfecto

All superheroes need a nemesis. Stress Man’s is Dr. Perfecto, an evil medical school graduate. Dr. Perfecto implants perfectionist thoughts into Stress Man’s brain, making him think he needs to do everything perfectly.

Paradoxically, Dr. Perfecto also has the Procrastination Ray that he shoots at Stress Man. Stress Man knows how much work it takes to do things perfectly, and uses procrastination to postpone the pain of perfection.

Add to the troubling mix is Stress Man’s predilection for productivity, and you have a perfect storm.

Every effort must be perfect. Perfection takes a lot of work, and probably won’t be reached anyway, so there’s incentive to postpone the project or cancel it altogether. When things are postponed, it feels like productivity is down and things are behind schedule, leading to stress and wanting to cut out other efforts to get back on track.

Talk about a dastardly and diabolical doctor! Duh duh duh!

All is Not Lost!

So what’s Stress Man to do? He needs to call his sidekick Isaac Newton. Yes, that Newton, of Newton’s Laws of Motion.

Newton’s First Law is helpful to keep in mind in the current perfection predicament: an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion.

When Stress Man is stuck in mental miasma, the answer is not to keep thinking about it. (Easier said than done.) The answer is stop, drop, and roll!

Or any combination of action. Any movement takes advantage of Newton’s First Law. The situation transforms from wanting to stay at rest to wanting to keep moving towards completion.

Climactic Showdown

Circling back to my deadline problem, I needed to take action. Any action. So I opened up my dashboard, clicked “New Post” and started typing. I eventually produced a semi-coherent narrative and fulfilled my merciless boss’s demand for 500 words.

But dang if it isn’t hard to remember to take action. Especially with a monkey screaming in my ear, and trying to dodge Dr. Perfecto shooting at me, and keeping track of all these mixed metaphors…the list goes on and on.

And the fight goes on and on. I get an opportunity to win the showdown every day. I don’t win them all…but I haven’t quit yet!