You’re stuck. You know you need to move. You’ve been stationary too long, but you’re not moving. What you need is leverage. Archimedes, the ancient Greek mathematician, is supposed to have said something that’s stuck with me throughout my career: give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum to place it on, and I…
Most achievements happen one unremarkable step at a time. Not dramatic. Not inspiring. Not worthy of a motivational poster. Just you, showing up, doing the same thing, and repeating. Small steps every day in the right direction. Building momentum. Keeping going. And eventually, if you stay on track and keep moving, you get to where…
For nine years, nobody could do it. For decades before that, people had been getting closer. And then the record just stopped, like it had hit an invisible wall. The four-minute mile. 240 seconds. A barrier that scientists, doctors, and athletes believed was close to the absolute limit of human capability. It’s a story about…
Have you ever known something before you could explain why? A decision that felt obviously right, or obviously wrong, before you’d worked out the reasons? That’s intuition. And you’ve got it too, even if you don’t trust it. In a new situation, intuition can feel absent, or you can mistake a rushed decision for a…
You’re doing what everyone else is doing. Even when it’s wrong. Perhaps you look around before you act. Maybe you check what others think before you speak. You follow the crowd because the crowd must know something you don’t. That’s social proof tendency, and it’s running your life more than you realise. It’s not always…
You only see the winners. That’s the problem. You see Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs. All dropped out of university, all became billionaires. So you conclude that dropping out leads to success. You don’t see the thousands who dropped out and failed. That’s survivor bias. You’re only seeing the survivors, only seeing the winners,…
You overvalue things simply because they’re yours. I’ve got a wardrobe full of clothes I haven’t worn in years. Won’t wear this year. Probably won’t wear next year either. But I can’t throw them away. Why? Because they’re mine, and I like to hang onto stuff. That’s the endowment effect in action. You hang onto…
Your life × doing zero = zero progress. That’s the Zero Law. Simple mathematics with profound implications for your life. I’m not a mathematician. I’m a GP. But I remember enough from school to know that any number multiplied by zero equals zero. n × 0 = 0. Always. No exceptions. And this basic mathematical…
You’re driving forward whilst staring backwards. That’s the problem. People often tell me they want to change their life, lose weight, quit smoking, sort out their anxiety. Great. Brilliant. Let’s do it. We make a plan, and weeks later I ask them what they’ve been doing since we last spoke. They look sheepish, because they…
I had my foot down on the accelerator. Engine revving. Going nowhere. Not a metaphor. Actually happened one morning. Driving to work, engine screaming, but the car wasn’t moving. Or rather, it was moving, but painfully slowly. Like pushing through mud. Then I realised. Schoolboy error. The handbrake was still on. That’s the feeling I…