I’ve been developing a thought process recently that has led me to accomplish daunting tasks with ease and to eschew the worry associated with pending crises of variable alarm. Those with a propensity for idle worry will find themselves in despair over looming, unwanted events, whereas I can simply pass these events off as complete before they have been born. To attack such a paradox, I examine the event from the future: by X time, it will have been done. While I may not have started a term paper due a week later, I can avoid stress (which of course releases cortisone into the brain, inhibiting intelligent thought) by treating the paper as complete, by picturing myself one week later with several neat pages stapled together. I call such perspective the Future Perfect Ideal, which derives its name from the grammatical aspect of the thought process it defines.
In the name of fair judgment, I looked at my philosophy from the standpoint of the opposition. Time is an invented concept, and therefore there is no time but the present. ‘Past’ and ‘Future’ do not and cannot exist, as they are merely concepts laid out on a time line invented by humans, who chose arbitrarily to make it linear. (After all, who says time is not a cycle? Hundreds of cultures treat it that way, and some even have a mobile week focusing on ‘today.’) Because the future does not exist, ulterior events cannot logically be ‘complete.’ The only certainty about the future is that it can’t be predicted: so there is no way to know whether my term paper will actually be finished in the next seven days.
A fair argument. But assuming that I am still alive in seven days, and that I am duly compelled to complete college assignments on or before their deadlines, it is virtually certain that I will have completed my paper next week. The Future Perfect Ideal is by nature a conditional argument. But, ceteris parabus, it makes for sound logic.
What makes the Future Perfect Ideal adoptable is the notion that worry accomplishes nothing, and therefore it is useless to lament something that has yet to be undertaken. More preferable are the early congratulations borne by its acceptance. A recent example of the success of my philosophy was its application to three actual term papers assigned and due at generally the same times. Rather than fret over my personal, upcoming apocalypse, I simply told myself that at a certain point in time — namely, the end of the semester — I will have had three excellent term papers iced with shiny staples. Such was the case: while I worked methodically and kept the present in my peripheral vision, I focused on the future, on the date of completion for each paper. Two papers received A’s and one an A+.
I taught myself long ago not to worry — though we’re all human, and can’t help but indulge once in a while — but the addition of the Future Perfect Ideal to my mental repertoire of weapons against deadlines has proven to be a great asset.
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