2013-01-13
Original: 2013-01-13 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Title: HOW STRESS WORKS
The comic is a single image split diagonally into two halves by a large curved arrow forming a cycle between the two states.
Left side (red background), a smiling blue character:
Character: "AGH! I'm too stressed. I should try to relax by taking on less work."
Right side (blue background), the same blue character now with a mustache, frowning and clutching its head with one hand in distress:
Character: "Oh god I'm doing nothing with my life I've got to do more"
The arrow loops from the right (do more) state back up and around to the left (relax/less work) state, showing the two attitudes endlessly cycling into each other.
Votey:
A hand-drawn line graph. The vertical axis is unlabeled; the horizontal axis is labeled "AGE."
A solid curve labeled "OPTIMUM AMOUNT OF WORK" rises gently, peaks early-to-middle, and slowly declines.
A dashed curve labeled "ACTUAL AMOUNT DONE" stays low at first, then spikes much higher than the optimum curve in the middle of life before dropping off steeply.
The two curves cross, showing the actual amount of work done overshoots the optimum during the middle years and undershoots it otherwise.
The comic is a single image split diagonally into two halves by a large curved arrow forming a cycle between the two states.
Left side (red background), a smiling blue character:
Character: "AGH! I'm too stressed. I should try to relax by taking on less work."
Right side (blue background), the same blue character now with a mustache, frowning and clutching its head with one hand in distress:
Character: "Oh god I'm doing nothing with my life I've got to do more"
The arrow loops from the right (do more) state back up and around to the left (relax/less work) state, showing the two attitudes endlessly cycling into each other.
Votey:
A hand-drawn line graph. The vertical axis is unlabeled; the horizontal axis is labeled "AGE."
A solid curve labeled "OPTIMUM AMOUNT OF WORK" rises gently, peaks early-to-middle, and slowly declines.
A dashed curve labeled "ACTUAL AMOUNT DONE" stays low at first, then spikes much higher than the optimum curve in the middle of life before dropping off steeply.
The two curves cross, showing the actual amount of work done overshoots the optimum during the middle years and undershoots it otherwise.
Alt text
A SMBC comic titled "HOW STRESS WORKS." A single panel is split diagonally by a big curved arrow forming an endless loop between two moods of the same blue character. On the red left side, the character smiles and says, "AGH! I'm too stressed. I should try to relax by taking on less work." On the blue right side, the same character (now with a mustache) frowns, clutches its head, and says, "Oh god I'm doing nothing with my life I've got to do more." The looping arrow shows these two opposite reactions feeding into each other forever. Votey: a hand-drawn line graph with the horizontal axis labeled "AGE." A solid curve labeled "OPTIMUM AMOUNT OF WORK" rises gently and slowly declines; a dashed curve labeled "ACTUAL AMOUNT DONE" spikes far above the optimum in the middle of life before crashing, illustrating that the stress cycle makes you overwork well past the healthy amount.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.