We’re all living double lives right now. On the one hand we’re living like disgraced members of the Saudi royal family - surrounded by lavish niceties but essentially under house arrest. On the other hand, when we do step outside for our daily exercise, we’re greeted with a bizzare utopian version of what our towns and cities could feel like if they weren’t full of roving combustion engines, each with one driver and four empty seats.
Being a healthy young person in a developed nation, I recognize that I’m effectively flying business class through the pandemic. It’s weird. Last time I looked out of the window there were no bombs reigning down from the sky, so comparisons with the so-called blitz spirit of WW2 fall somewhat short. But going forwards we will require a bunker mentality of our own.
The UK, US, and many other countries have unveiled colossal spending plans designed to stop businesses and families from financial collapse as the global economy grinds to a halt. The idea is that doing this will minimize the subsequent recession and allow a quicker recovery.
Here’s a question: who are all the rich countries borrowing these collective trillions of dollars from? Last time I checked we were all still in the red from the 2008 credit crunch. So who’s got the cash to splash? Normally governments borrow by issuing bonds (I.O.Us) to flush big players like banks, pensions funds, insurance firms, and other countries, in exchange for cash. But all of those usual suspects need the cash for themselves right now, as their revenues run dry.
So who are we borrowing from? For the answer of the century folks, go to your bathroom and take a look in the mirror. That’s right, we’re borrowing from ourselves, yay! But wait, I hear you say, I don’t have two trillion dollars in the bank to lend myself, how’s that gonna work?
Time for some classic financial smoke and mirrors. In the case of the UK, the government is on the brink of borrowing money from the Bank of England. Which runs a negative balance sheet. Wait, how can someone with negative money lend someone else money? Don’t worry, we’ve got a cunning plan. With no one else willing to lend us real money, we’re going to owe ourselves money that doesn’t exist. By printing it. Sorry, no, I mean, ‘quantitatively easing’ it. Because they’re totally different things. Uh-huh.
The whole system operates on the premise that those newly magicked-up bonds (baseless I.O.Us) will become worth something in the future. If you take a look at a British ten pound note, there’s an inscription from the Bank of England saying I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of ten pounds. That’s a lovely archaism, which harks back to the days of the gold standard, when a fixed asset underpinned currency.
Quantitative easing is the antithesis of this. Our currency is now underwritten by the promise of future worth. What the bank note is really saying these days is, I promise that everyone will work really hard in the future and the economy generate wealth as a whole. In other words, we don't have a currency. We have a nation-sized start up.
There’s an opportunity here.
Here’s the good news: the scale of government intervention means we, the citizens whose tax funds are being spent, are all effectively becoming shareholders in every industry in our country. So what should we do with our new shareholder rights?
Demand a better future.
The status quo has failed us. Remember the climate emergency? Yeah, it’s still going on. Like Covid-19, it’s an invisible but deadly agent requiring a global response. This is our time. We need to seize this unprecented moment of state intervention to financially support legacy workers into low-carbon jobs. When people deny climate science, it’s usually because either their income (job) or way of life is threatened. As we pump trillions of our own I.O.U.s into propping up a broken system, we should be investing in the greatest transition ever seen, to remove that barrier, and offer people new, better livelihoods.
Simply furloughing workers, especially those in high carbon industries like aviation or off-shore drilling, shows a colossal lack of imagination. This is the perfect opportunity to retrain and upskill people across sectors so that no one is left behind in a green economy. We're all paying for the bailout, so let's get something amazing out of it.
Make no mistake, climate change will kill millions more than covid-19 ever will. But with enough brain power, we can use this moment of financial intervention to solve both crises. It’s that, or we pay everyone to binge watch Netflix for three months, then ask ourselves what the hell we were thinking twenty years from now.
It’s 7.30 AM and you’ve got a slight fever. Your pulse is elevated, your breath is a little short, your brain is fuzzy. But it’s Monday morning and you’re running late for a meeting - this is just regular commuter stress, surely? Your bionic implant tells another story. They’ve detected traces of a foreign agent in your blood stream, and elevated T-cell production. It matches nothing in the global pathogenic database. The system raises a red flag. Your self-driving bubble diverts from your commute and takes you straight to hospital, where you’re placed in isolation. A computer models the perfect antiviral to combat the infection, and a lab synthesises the treatment within minutes. The outbreak is contained before you, Patient Zero, even have time to sneeze. 2100 is going to be a dreamy century.
2020′s off to a less rosy start. Around the world, urgent efforts are underway to contain Covid-19. Within just a few months it’s spread from China to every continent on Earth, save only for Antarctica. And yet the situation is not currently classified as a pandemic. Why not?
The World Health Organisation still believes the outbreak is containable. People are working hard to prove them right, but new cases are emerging daily in countries where health systems are less robust.
What are we dealing with?
Reports from China now suggest some people don’t show symptoms until 27 days. You could unwittingly be going about your regular life, transmitting the disease, before you even realize you’re sick. Worse still, you could emerge from the current recommended 14-day quarantine period and still be a danger to others, but not know it.
It took a mammoth, coordinated international effort to contain the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Africa. That’s a disease with a transmission rate of around 1:1. Covid-19 is much more infectious. Each patient is likely to infect 2.5 others. The upshot is that, while 50% of ebola cases were fatal, the number is nearer 1% for coronavirus. Although, that’s still ten times more deadly than seasonal winter flu…
Goodbye, civil liberties. Hello survival.
The Chinese authorities have taken drastic action to cut the 2.5 transmission figure to as near zero as possible. To do so, they’ve had to enforce a total lockdown on major cities like Wuhan (11 million people). Citizens are confined to their homes. Every three days, one resident is allowed to leave home to collect food. Neighbors who violate the restrictions get reported - and those doing the reporting get financially rewarded by the government. Containing the outbreak is the entire nation’s single greatest focus, and there is little tolerance of behaviour that endangers others.
We in the West often look to China with curiosity - its attitude towards individual freedom is markedly different to ours. But their uniformity, and the extent to which the state’s tentacles reach, has enabled them to enforce quarantine in a way other nations might struggle to replicate.
The Italian government is about to be tested in this regard. One week ago, the country discovered a cluster of 16 cases. They’re now at 650 - but that’s just the reported ones. There are almost certainly thousands of infected individuals incubating the virus, whose symptoms will emerge in the coming weeks. Those unknowns are a huge transmission risk - hence the Italian government scrambling to put its own infected regions in lockdown.
The last truly devastating pandemic was the virulent “Spanish flu” of 1918, which claimed up to 50 million lives worldwide. Happily, compared to the war-ravaged Europe of 1918, the world is in a much more prepared and cohesive position to contain the present outbreak. We’ve got the UN, and the WHO for a start. Not to mention the internet.
In alien invasion movies, external invaders often serve as a catalyst for global unity - all nations come together to fight the common enemy. So it can be with disease outbreaks - something we would do well to remember in the aftermath, when attention will turn to the economic ramifications.
Only through transparency, trust, and cooperation can we win. And the latest figures from China suggest that the approach is starting to work.
So the future of epidemiology is bright. We’ve got the systems, and we’re developing the technology to quash outbreaks. We’ll all be enjoying robot sponge baths in no time. Of course, there’s another scenario: we fail to invest properly in developing a new class of antibiotics, and get wiped out by exactly the sorts of things that were killing people back in 1918. But that’s for another day. Today I’m feeling optimistic. Humanity’s facing a serious threat, and we’re stepping up to the plate as a team. Yay for that.
Nothing cuts the ice like a box full of filthy euphemisms and a deck of cards shaped like Santa. That was the lesson I learned last Friday.
I was a plus one at this party. It was being thrown by my friend’s gym instructor, and I’ve never been one to turn down an obscure invitation. The host was a cheerful powerhouse of a woman who had recently climbed Kilimanjaro for lols. She was extremely welcoming, and only made me do the bleep test once.
Our highly toned host obviously had a dilemma...
How do you get a bunch of people who’ve only spoken to each other in-between squat tracks to loosen up and socialise? It turns out the answer is to seal them in a room with wine and a highly suggestive card game. The effect was intense. After all, these people were used to working up a sheen and breathing heavily around one another. The randy animals.
It transpired that my mate’s parents were also members of this gym, and had been invited to the gathering. After a couple of hours, it was game time. The assembled guests were ushered into the lounge. To my friend’s horror, her mother was tasked with going first. She plucked a winking Santa from the deck and proclaimed its inscription with immaculate Scottish diction.
Suffice to say, what ensued was not the conventional depiction of how an angel arrives on top of your Christmas tree. It certainly drew on some advance bedroom manoeuvres. I’ll leave your mind to wander.
We howled with laughter, and the game proceeded in spectacularly smutty fashion. Soon enough it was my mate’s dad’s turn. He grinned at the card and launched into some unsolicited ad-libbing. His additions left us unnecessarily appraised of the advanced manoeuvres in their marital boudoir. I found this hilarious. My friend obviously curled into a writhing ball of cringe and prayed for a swift death.
Needless to say, the room full of sporty pseudo-strangers were all best friends by the end of the night.
The genius of the “Sinful Santa” game lies in human suggestibility. When primed by the right phrasing or imagery, our minds can be manipulated to fall down paths we wouldn’t normally choose. In this case, it was used with masterful effect to make us laugh, as we struggled to identify Brussel sprouts amidst the depravity of our imaginations. In other scenarios, of course, the same human tendency can be used to condition us. We can be made to believe negative stereotypes about other people, or certain subjects. The exploitation of this tendency is nothing new. But an individual or corporation’s ability to exploit it without culpability is. How many times a day do you click “accept cookies” when browsing the internet? It’s hard not to. But that data goes somewhere. And gets sold somewhere. Because it’s valuable to people you might not have considered.
As the echo chambers of social media continue to reverberate in each of our individual lives, our sense of healthy scepticism has been gently eroded. We’ve been placated by free email servers, free image sharing, and keyboards filled with GIFs. These are all great things. But in exchange we’ve given anonymous bidders unprecedented information about our private selves.
If you were to write a profile of yourself and ask someone to use it to manipulate your views, I doubt you’d come up with anything as comprehensive as can be found in your web footprint from the last ten years.
Almost without fail every site tracks your interests and behaviour. A one-off visit to a website to book a holiday won’t result in a huge Orwellian folder of leverage against you. But cross reference that holiday booking with all the other websites you visit, the location data tracked through your phone, the people you interact with, and what you put in your emails… You’ve got enough information there to make predictions about individuals’ behaviour. And when you can predict behaviour, you can intervene. You can shape it.
Our ostensibly “free-to-surf” internet comes at a price we rarely discuss. You need only look to China, or consider the election controversies in the West, to see that there are serious implications when big data is used in ways that aren’t readily understood by its subjects. Four hundred years ago Francis Bacon proclaimed that “knowledge is power.” That still rings true today. Only, these days, we’re willingly giving both away. Curious, given the struggles people faced in those intervening centuries to achieve democratic freedom.
Big data has the potential to positively transform our lives – but only if we’re clear on how it’s being used. Next time an article pops up in your “News Feed” (I wonder who at FB named it that?), take a beat to think: who is the true author of this article? Why do they want me to read it? What do they stand to gain? Then scroll down and watch cat videos. It’s what Bacon would’ve wanted.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, my tin hat needs polishing.
Picture the scene. A glimmering statue of two clean-shaven, bespectacled men looms over the track. It captures them perfectly in their nineties heyday. Below the statue, eight athletes crouch, then tense. Frictionless bodysuits cling to their sculpted, hyper-lean bodies. The marshal raises a long, metallic arm and fires the tartan starting gun. You feel a blast of haptic feedback as you watch, enraptured, drawing in the stadium through your virtual reality livestream. A neural implant stimulates your olfactory senses with the scent of the stadium. Fans projected around you cheer in hundreds of languages.
In less than 39.8 seconds, all eight super-humans have completed the first 400m lap. You join in keenly as they belt out the chorus of 500 Miles, which is being pumped out across the stadium. At the periphery of the course, a laser car whizzes alongside the runners. It’s beaming an image of two faces onto the track – the same faces as those on the statue.
It's the year 2069, and this is the annual 500 mile ultra-marathon, held in honor of our glorious overlords, the Proclaimers.
Rivers of sweat stream down the athletes’ faces, as they attack lap six. The song is about to end and two runners have fallen behind the laser. Panic is writ large across their faces. You cheer wildly as a gigantic haggis swings from the rafters like a pendulum, striking the laggards with greasy precision.
Anxiously, a swarming hive of technical crews watch on from the oval in the center of the track, where they’re armed with tablets, headsets, and hydrating cocktails which have been tailored to their champion’s genetic profile.
A graph dips. The engineer in charge rushes to the edge of the track, thrusting out a bottle. A lean, sinewy arm snatches it and swigs.
…When I wake up, well I know I’m gonna be…
As the song re-starts, a dancing emoji pops up on your headset, reminding you to wink twice at any time if you want pizza. You wink eight times and pound the armrest like you’ve just hit a home run. You’ve nailed it, like a true hero.
22 hours zoot by. You jolt from your haze. Your headset spritzes eye drops into your bloodshot sockets, while your sofa unwraps an energy bar and places it into your hand. Good sofa.
In the stadium projected around you, supplements are being fired into the crowd by a man dressed as Braveheart. The caffeine-adrenaline-sugar bombs do their job, and within a few minutes, both you and the other exhausted fans are on your feet, howling at the tops of your lungs.
…Just to be the man who walks a thousand-
It’s the final lap. Only four athletes remain. Each desperately swigs from the red bottles handed out by their support team. All have fallen behind the projected pacer-beam, and are on the brink of elimination by sheep entrails.
The foremost athlete crushes their bottle and breaks away from the others with a roar, leaping towards the finish line with supersized strides. But as they raise their arms to celebrate, their arch-rival leaps beyond them, snatching victory in the final breath.
The stadium erupts with joy. It’s the first time the world record’s been beaten in race conditions. Fireworks pour out of the Proclaimers’ marble heads as the winner cruises around the track (at a leisurely 44.2 second split), wearing their national drug agency’s logo like a cape.
Paramedics rush onto the course, interrupting the victory lap. One of other finalists has collapsed, clutching their red bottle. Your VR headset cuts away to a commercial break, where you’re offered a pill that will turn your abs into rocks, and your lips into rainbows.
OK, let’s nip back to reality. The above was, in my mind, the logical outcome of a particular train of thought. Here’s how we got there…
Recently, Eliud Kipchoge became the first known human to run a marathon in under two hours. (I didn’t see what was chasing him, but I can only presume it was an equally fast bear).
Eliud had seven pacemakers at any one time, from a rotating pool of forty one athletes, which included Olympians. They ran in an aerodynamic V-shape formation in front of him, shielding him from the wind like some flock of spandex-loving Spartans. The world’s sweatiest bartender rode beside them, supplying sugary sports drinks on demand. A pacer car drove ahead of the pack, projecting a laser marker which showed the blistering two hour pace they had to beat. Oh, and Eliud wore fancy energy-transferring shoes, and the weather was perfect.
Watching him gave me a sudden empathy for people who’ve been mis-sold package holidays (there’s always a catch when someone offers you all-inclusive drinks).
Eliud’s achievement was an amazing and commendable first for our species – but what does it mean for the rest of us? And what’s it got to do with the Proclaimers?
As spectators, we kid ourselves that competitions reward effort. That’s true – to a point. Ultimately, though, victory boils down to the hidden, unseen genetic advantages between the athletes. Take the doping scandal in cycling – a bunch of pro racers had realized that no matter how hard they trained, they would never make the podium. The reason was simple, and demonstrable: they were genetically incapable of producing as much hemoglobin as their rivals.
The alternative, of course, is to let people biohack their way to a more ‘even’ playing field. This would at least make some of the variables behind success more explicit. Plus, victory would be more about rewarding innovation than blind genetic luck. Biohacked sports would spark demand for bigger, bolder, and more arbitrary challenges - like 500 mile ultra-marathons based on outrageously catchy songs. Unfortunately, it would probably also result in a large pile of athletes with rainbow lips and early graves.
So we’re stuck with luck. Fine by me. It’s beneficial for all of us if sport remains a lottery, where the winning numbers lie hidden in our DNA, giving us all the titillating illusion that anything could happen. We slap a ceremony at the end not to add significance to the athletic accomplishment, but rather to legitimize the people watching – otherwise you’re just a total rando standing in the rain watching people sweat. Which is obviously weird. If the sweaty person gets a medal, though, it’s no longer weird and you can call yourself a ‘fan’, rather than a pervert. That, my friends, is the hallmark of a civilized society.
Hats off to Kipchoge and his team – they took their luck and ran with it. Whatever your luck may be, I hope you find good running mates in life. Kipchoge’s accomplishment was a wonderful testament to what can be achieved when people work together.
And let’s not forget, it was a great day for lasers, too.
What I've been up to:
Reading/Listening
A Game of Birds and Wolves by Simon Parkin (amazing true story, was lucky enough to get a preview)
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (classic)
Petroplague by Amy Rogers (not the ending I was hoping for)
Watching
The Capture (can you trust your eyes in a world of deep fakes?)
Living with Yourself (Paul Rudd does sci-fi. The dream.)
Dark (German time travel drama, beautifully shot)
Writing
Convulsive Part 5 is nearly complete! It’s got the editorial green light, and I’m just working through the last tweaks. The final installment hits Amazon on 1 December, pre-order your copy here: US | UK)
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I met a chap called Kenneth this weekend, at an alumni event for writers. It's an old school name, for an old school bloke. Kenneth was an interesting fellow, with wild scraggy white hair protruding outwards from the equator of his skull - sort of like a boiled egg wearing a tutu. He was, I think, in his seventies, and had a wonderfully engaging manner about him. He wore a stripy old boat club blazer, and an extremely trendy pair of hipster glasses with wide square frames. Kenneth had played the long game there, by buying a pair in the seventies, and wearing them ever since. Fifty years on and he's back in vogue. What a great day to be Kenneth.
We got onto the subject of mechanical engineering, his former career. I asked if he kept up with the latest publications. Being a sparky guy, he does indeed. But, he declared, much of his focus this year had been dedicated to researching climate change forecasts. He'd heard rumours in the media of an impending human extinction event, and wasn't overly keen on the idea. So he dutifully swatted up on the published research, and came to his own striking conclusion: 'if we keep doing what we're doing, we'll be fine'.
I was intrigued.
Kenneth is a Cambridge-educated engineer, with an active mind. Somehow, he's drawn the conclusion that everything on planet Earth is A-OK.
His rosy outlook seemed at odds with, well, the research I'd done, and that of several thousand scientists, and the likes of the UN. So I probed him a little further.
"Kenneth," I asked him, "when you say, 'we'll be fine,' what exactly do you mean?"
Kenneth elaborated. In a nutshell, he reckons we'll have around 1.6 degrees of warming and one meter of global sea level rise by 2100, assuming we don't increase current levels of emissions.
In between spoonfuls of mashed potato (it was lunchtime), I figured we should explore that a little further. Like, maybe a one meter sea level rise ain't great if you live in Bangladesh? And sure, 1.6 degrees doesn't sound like much, but that's a global average - it's masking much more extreme regional variations, rather like the ones on our plates (the thieving bastards on the table next to us had 'borrowed' the gravy boat. The boat came back. The gravy did not.). I also felt Kenneth hadn't quite addressed the impacts of things like mass coral bleaching, which threatens near-total habitat loss for 80% of the planet's ocean life. I mentioned these things because, if nothing else, I know how to party.
I asked him again, 'Given these factors, Kenneth, what do you mean 'we'll be fine'?'
'Well,' said Kenneth, simply, 'I live on a hill.'
Yup. That's the hot take on climate change from one of the most educated people on the planet. The problem is not Kenneth's method of scientific enquiry; I'm sure his meta analysis was credible. The problem is that Kenneth's metric for success (in answering the question of 'will mankind go extinct') amounted to: 'will Kenneth go extinct.'
Kenneth was greatly heartened that climate change is unlikely to be what wipes him out in the next 40 years. He was also keen to reassure me and the biochemist beside me (a fascinating doctor of fluid dynamics - she studies how bacteria use flagella to travel through liquid in the body*), that we too, would be fine. Our respective grandchildren, not so much, he conceded - but he considered that to be their problem.
What I learned in that conversation was: Kenneth's sphere of concern amounts to one being, from one species, in one locale: Kenneth himself.
Alas, I think Kenneth might share a gene or two with the Daleks. But what do I know? I'm 50% banana.
What I've been up to:
Writing
I'm over half way through my write up of Proxy, the 5th and final part of the Convulsive series, exciting! (It's coming out on Dec 1st - you can pre-order a copy here: US | UK)
Watching
Earth from Space (Amazing documentary series)
Stranger Things 3 (Loved it. Best season yet?)
Happy! 2 (Provocative, semi-familiar world, distinctive characters, strong cast. It's weird AF, but fun)
Listening
The Infinite Monkey Cage (Check out the episode on animal intelligence)
The Testaments (Like I need to explain this one...)
BBC Science hour: embryoids from stem cells (Yup, they're a thing).
Reading
Follow my Facebook page for the latest articles I've been swatting up on. New sci-fi themes each week.
That's it from me for now, I'll be in touch again soon. As always, do drop me a line anytime with your thoughts and recommendations, I love hearing from my readers.
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Cheers,
Marcus
*P.S. Flagella. Wondering what they are? They're kinda like tails, which bacteria use to swim. If we can better understand how microbes are able to move around the human body, we may be able to modify them someday and use this for more efficient drug delivery. Nifty, hey?
I was visiting a mate’s office the other day (I was visiting the mate, too, to be clear. Not just his office. That would’ve been weird). He met me at reception, then called an elevator. We hopped in, and travelled up - wait for it - one floor. Yup. We took the lift for a single storey.
This struck me as exorbitantly lazy - which is not in keeping with my friend’s character. So I had to ask. I was like, “Fred*, what’s the deal? You’re gonna die young, fat, and alone.” OK, I didn’t say the last bit, but it was exactly what sprang to mind. I may have made a few leaps in my head - but those are more leaps than we took travelling up the building. We took zero leaps. And I was immediately worried about Fred’s physical health and future marital prospects.
Fred shrugged at me. “What difference would it make? It’s only one storey, it’s not going to change my life.”
A small, overzealous klaxon sounded somewhere in the depths of my temporal lobe. (Or so the internet tells me). It was chiming something to the tune of “Fred, you mad bastard, you couldn’t be more wrong!”
I set out my stall.
“Fred,” I implored, with a piety that would put the Pope to shame, “Don’t you see? It’s part of something bigger. This is about your attitude to life.”
Fred raised an eyebrow in a way that suggested he already regretted inviting me over. Fuck you, Fred, I’m a great friend.
“Firstly, it’s wasteful. Lifts require electricity which contributes to blah blah blah go read the Guardian.” (Fred’s views on the media are actually fascinating. I’ll save them for another time.)
I ditched the environment angle - although Fred was receptive to that. But for once the bee buzzing in my recently-turned vegetarian bonnet was about something else.
Part 2. Marginal gains
“Fred, this is about the micro opportunities we overlook every single day. Think about it: you go down to the lobby all the time. That could be two trips on a flat metal platform that moves your body for you, or you could get a whiff of circulation in your oxygen-starved office brain by trundling up and down using your motherfucking feet.”
(Again, paraphrasing slightly).
Fred’s curious.
“You know the story about British Cycling?” I ask.
He does not. And he still might not, because I didn’t actually reference them at the time, but they were what came to mind.
A few years ago, when Sky decided to become the lead sponsor in the British national cycling team, they took a new approach which, within just a few years, made them the number one team in the world. It can be surmised in two words: marginal gains.
They realised that everyone in the cycling world had already pushed the core methods of progress to the limit - there were no big changes left to make. So how did Team Sky make this breakthrough in performance? By focusing on micro improvements - and lots of them. Kinda like a snowball effect - enough small changes bundled together can create something big.
I see stairs the same way. They’re low hanging fruits.
It’s like when you pass people on the tube, who stand still twice a day, every day, and let a machine drag them up to ground level. I don’t get it. It’s an easy, two minute opportunity to improve your life, why pass that up? Maybe they just really love being underground, and want to eek it out? Or maybe the person standing in front smells of cinnamon and rainbows?
Part 3. Felicity
It reminds me of a former colleague (different office). Let’s call her Felicity. She was undergoing a crash diet to lose a few pounds ahead of a beach holiday - fair play for effort. But for all Felicity’s lamentations about her plain rice and chicken lunch, and abstinence from biscuits, she still couldn’t be arsed to take the stairs. We worked two floors up. It wasn’t exactly scaling Mount Olympus.
Felicity’s approach kinda explains how the weight was gained - I’m gonna call it neglecting the margins. You heard it here first. TM, (R), Copyright, Patent-pending, all that. MY IDEA. Maybe. I dunno, maybe someone else has thought of it too. Who cares, the point stands.
“Oh, but I’m tired!” I hear you whine. Get a grip. Of the handrail. One foot in front of the other. And enjoy being alive.
Whether or not Fred and Felicity have subscribed to my logic remains to be seen. But next time you’re getting off the tube, take a look at the people lining up for the escalator and ask yourself what kind of snowballs they’re rolling - marginal gains or marginal neglect?
Then sprint up the escalator while puffing “Gold” by Spandau Ballet, and take a selfie at the top. You deserve it, champ.
Part 4. Roll the snowball
As I said to Fred, the whole point is that this attitude applies to more than just stairs. Think about friendships - how often do you pass the same people in corridors, but feel too inhibited to say hi or ask their name? Spoilers: say hello. They’re a frickin’ human. So long as you’re not creepy and weird about it, and aren’t talking in a gruff voice in a dark alley, then odds are they’ll respond favourably and say “hello” back. If words are hard, just try cracking a smile. It’s a real evolutionary winner. Think: marginal gains - a few smiles here, a few hellos there, and eventually, “Hey I’m [insert name]”, Now look at you, you’ve darn gone made a friend. (Assuming you correctly insert your name. Don’t fall at the first hurdle).
IT skills are the same.
So many of my peers - we’re talking frigging No-Eexcuse-It-Was-Spoon-Fed-To-You Millennials here - wash their hands of technological competence. For many of them, by the time they hit their late twenties I think it’s like become a wall of the unknown, which seems insurmountable. Sod that - start chipping away. The wall gets higher every time you outsource basic solutions to someone else, so grab a sledge hammer and google “How do I fix this?”. You’ll amaze yourself.
Let’s be honest, not being bothered to google simple solutions is the modern equivalent of not wiping your own arse. Just do it. No one wants to deal with your shit.
So my message is simple: go for the marginal gains in life. Make it routine. And you’ll find you routinely reap the benefits. It’s that simple.
Always take the stairs.
Much love.
*Fred is not his real name, it’s a pseudonym and is short for “Soon-To-Be-Super-Fat-Fred”. Currently, he’s not fat at all - he’s actually outrageously trim. The git. But the nickname amused me. Sure, the humour’s largely lost by just abbreviating it to Fred, but look at it from Soon-To-Be-Super-Fat-Fred’s point of view - you gonna go to Starbucks and order a coffee with that kinda name? Or try and book a flight? You’d need extra leg room just for the hyphens. Madness. So take your grief elsewhere - he’s Fred and that’s the bloody end of it, alright?
