As Tolkien tells the world through the voice of Gandalf to Frodo, “it’s a dangerous thing stepping out of your door,” so the modern equivalent is found when one logs into LinkedIn after a long weekend. A world where it is normal to be ‘delighted to announce’ that they are doing the same job with a new title and broetry about a pretend trial that turns out they had a big tidy and thought they’d lost their pencil sharpener. We are presented with an even more grating message: be productive. Productivity and efficiency at all costs. It is not uncommon to be put into direct competition with those who are claiming to be 1% better every day. Anyone standing still is on a downward escalator into failure. This is a simple statement that sounds so plausible. It is, however, mathematically irresponsible. A bit like oil prices. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. I was first met with this unusual sentiment when a bio of a new senior leader made the throwaway statement “I aim to be a little bit better every day” in their introduction to the department, hiding it amongst their other general interests, pointing ultimately to a health obsession that suggests they haven’t felt a processed carb since 2019 and is very pleased with their Peloton membership. This is a person based in America, so maybe there is a belief that one cannot have a bad day. Maybe, due to the lack of national public transport, they have never been met with a delayed train or a bus. Any bus. Maybe, due to the limited history, they don’t realise that historical ruins are real, rather than manufactured for a theme park. Maybe, every visit to a downtown high street, the continuous change of retail establishments is seen as “a little bit better every day.” I’ve lived in London for a decade and a half and can tell you that the “engineering works” that shut down the underground services every weekend are evidence of one thing. The underground continues to run as usual. It has not improved even marginally. The Central Line is the defining experience that keeps you from believing in progress. Treasure it. Without this, you will be disappointed every time you try to justify why you had a day off. Improvement in London is a zero-sum game. If I get 1% better at my job, the Universe immediately compensates by making the guy next to me on the bus eat a tuna sandwich with his mouth wide open. If life were a spreadsheet, then, perhaps, this new VP would be happily on row 17000 of their days alive, ticking off another 1% improvement. Yes, there are certainly growth spurts in your life, and sudden gains when, in a sudden moment, you can ride a bike. But to put this in perspective, let me introduce you to (1.01)^365 The 1% Better Club operates without acknowledging that this means that their annual members have to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that they are 37.78 times better than they were at their last membership anniversary. Otherwise, they will be expelled into the dark of reality. ‘Incremental gains’ has a ring to it that is hard to challenge. Maybe this 1% is spread over many, many personal traits that could equate to something, but you tell me one person who is even 10 times better than when you last saw them, and I will bring out my spreadsheet asking for the evidence to be entered in columns B-K. By age 18, you have lived 6574 days. Your improvement at this rate would result in you being 2.56 x 10^28 (quintillion billion) times better. In the Western world, you may be aspiring to become an entry-level graduate in the next 3 years. But your sights are simply too low. You will actually be an interstellar object with enough force to destroy a moon or small planet. By age 30, you have lived 10,957 days and have improved 2.23 x 10^47 (quatuordicillion) times. Some would be impressed if you made it to middle management, but you are actually a sentient being with the brain the size of a planet. By age 50, you might have made it to being a member of a board somewhere, but being 18,262 days of 1% improvement and a multiple of your beginning being 8.25 x 10^78 (trevigintillion), you are now as good as matching the atomic count of the observable universe. You have transcended all existence, far beyond any deity, maybe you can finally look down upon the hustle and grind of the city. But will you betray this 1% club of which you have become so loyal? Is there anywhere else to go from here? Just don’t forget to pay your council tax. As with all things, words sound great. If something rhymes, we like it and believe it. ‘Better every day’ is a lovely mantra. 1% doesn’t sound like much. Maybe we have forgotten how much we already are. But let’s be honest, human performance is not exponential. This is, perhaps, why we are constantly baffled by HR processes and their ‘performance reviews’ that are systematically document how we continue to do our jobs just fine, as we were hired to do, and make that sound like a fireable offence. There are clear moments where we hit ceilings. We bang our heads on exposed beams. We get tired. We forget our keys. Productivity culture has weaponised mathematics against the average person. The inverse statement being, “your current self is 99% an anticlimax.” But the ‘inspiring podcasts’ section was where I was made more aware of something I had merely actively ignored the months prior. The Diary of a CEO podcast was front and centre. Dear Mr. Bartlett, your 1% better goal is functionally impossible. He has over 50 million subscribers, and this is seen as some kind of great success. An online community, numbering not far off the population of England, is watching this guy who is just really good at marketing, interviewing other people who are classified as ‘successful’ by some arbitrary metrics that boil down to bank balance. 50 million people thinking that listening to voices will somehow make them join the ranks of the super wealthy. No one has cottoned on to the mystery that comes with it. These people he’s shoved a microphone in front of do not share any special secrets to success. Each one is an outlier. Not one has achieved success. They have merely found themselves to be successful. This is a podcast that praises confirmation bias. This worked, therefore I must have been clever enough to have known what to do to make it work in my favour. He’s like the Jordan Peterson of capitalism. To avoid any doubt, this is meant as an insult. Steven Bartlett has convinced us, like a used car dealer for the soul, that life is a code to be cracked with ice baths, cold showers, and refusing to understand what a metaphor is. Rather than what life actually is, a series of varied frustrations that usually involve needing to have a good plumber. The message reaching 100 million ears is one that makes the person who is having a relaxing break in the Cotswolds feel, not simply guilty for lacking any kind of hustle or drive, but an outright failure and deserving of becoming the next victim of an ITV serial murder drama. One of the guests, in trying to refute the idea that people can experience burnout, claims that she was told she couldn’t experience burnout because “she is not a candle.” Later in the same interview, she criticises some business leaders as being a bottleneck. If we are not candles, we are also not bottles. Her use of the “candle” retort suggests she misunderstands (or chooses to ignore) that metaphors are figurative tools, not literal classifications. By saying “You are not a candle,” she is making a literal correction to a figurative concept. However, her reliance on being “rewired”, acting as a “bottleneck”, or undergoing “metamorphosis” proves she relies on the very linguistic device she attempts to discredit. If she truly adhered to the logic of her “candle” remark, she would be forced to abandon her own vocabulary, as she is neither a computer, a bottle, nor a butterfly. Maybe you should check yourself before displaying to the world that you don’t understand metaphor. This is a bigger problem because much of the advice given is to glamourously overwork, relentlessly doing activities for the sake of I don’t know what, criticise anyone who occasionally sits down for a wee, and ensure that the board of their start up is made up of only those people who have been diagnosed with chronic stress and anxiety; something that they can quickly dismiss thanks to Bartlett’s entertaining of the pseudo scientists who claim that this is all an imagination and they just need to eat more mushroom based products. After reviewing much of the content, I really felt like having a nap. Then I realised one of his guests is a sleep expert. I was even doing that wrong. All of this floods my senses as I reflect on my years of trying to live like a normal person in London. Only to realise that most people in London aren’t actually living in London. I do. I have been living in Zone 1 for a decade and a half and have an internal clock that creates an expectation that if my order in a tea shop isn’t taken within the first 200 seconds, I am immediately on TripAdvisor writing my 2-star review in anticipation of the rest. I have been coached by the lunch chains that have a production line that gives the illusion that I’m not having to wait for my order because I can see them making it. I then, to save time, eat my burrito over a bin because I have six minutes before a meeting. I have bitten my lip. I am now 4% worse than if I hadn’t decided to have lunch. I might cry. This isn’t really me. I have been asked why I arrive at 9 am and leave the office at 5 pm. My confused answer was to refer to my employment contract that laid this 35-hour week (lunch unpaid) before me as part of the agreement between me and company we work for. They didn’t seem to like this answer. Maybe I was pointing out thei
