Warren Buffett’s “2 List” Strategy: How to Maximize Your Focus and Master Your Priorities

    |    Decision Making, Productivity, Simplicity

With well over 50 billion dollars to his name, Warren Buffett is consistently ranked among the wealthiest people in the world. Out of all the investors in the 20th century, Buffett was the most successful.
Given his success, it stands to reason that Buffett has an excellent understanding of how to spend his time each day. From a monetary perspective, you could say that he manages his time better than anyone else.
And that’s why the story below, which was shared directly from Buffett’s employee to my good friend Scott Dinsmore, caught my attention.
Let’s talk about the simple 3-step productivity strategy that Warren Buffett uses to help his employees determine their priorities and actions.

The Story of Mike Flint

Mike Flint was Buffett’s personal airplane pilot for 10 years. (Flint has also flown four US Presidents, so I think we can safely say he is good at his job.) According to Flint, he was talking about his career priorities with Buffett when his boss asked the pilot to go through a 3-step exercise.
Here’s how it works…
STEP 1: Buffett started by asking Flint to write down his top 25 career goals. So, Flint took some time and wrote them down. (Note: you could also complete this exercise with goals for a shorter timeline. For example, write down the top 25 things you want to accomplish this week.)
STEP 2: Then, Buffett asked Flint to review his list and circle his top 5 goals. Again, Flint took some time, made his way through the list, and eventually decided on his 5 most important goals.
Note: If you’re following along at home, pause right now and do these first two steps before moving on to Step 3.
STEP 3: At this point, Flint had two lists. The 5 items he had circled were List A and the 20 items he had not circled were List B.
Flint confirmed that he would start working on his top 5 goals right away. And that’s when Buffett asked him about the second list, “And what about the ones you didn’t circle?”
Flint replied, “Well, the top 5 are my primary focus, but the other 20 come in a close second. They are still important so I’ll work on those intermittently as I see fit. They are not as urgent, but I still plan to give them a dedicated effort.”
To which Buffett replied, “No. You’ve got it wrong, Mike. Everything you didn’t circle just became your Avoid-At-All-Cost list. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve succeeded with your top 5.”

The Power of Elimination

I believe in minimalism and simplicity. I like getting rid of waste. I think that eliminating the inessential is one of the best ways to make life easier, make good habits more automatic, and make you grateful for what you do have.
That said, getting rid of wasteful items and decisions is relatively easy. It’s eliminating things you care about that is difficult. It is hard to prevent using your time on things that are easy to rationalize, but that have little payoff. The tasks that have the greatest likelihood of derailing your progress are the ones you care about, but that aren’t truly important.
Every behavior has a cost. Even neutral behaviors aren’t really neutral. They take up time, energy, and space that could be put toward better behaviors or more important tasks. We are often spinning in motion instead of taking action.
This is why Buffett’s strategy is particularly brilliant. Items 6 through 25 on your list are things you care about. They are important to you. It is very easy to justify spending your time on them. But when you compare them to your top 5 goals, these items are distractions. Spending time on secondary priorities is the reason you have 20 half-finished projects instead of 5 completed ones.
Eliminate ruthlessly. Force yourself to focus. Complete a task or kill it.
The most dangerous distractions are the ones you love, but that don’t love you back.

Thanks to my man Scott Dinsmore for sharing this story with me. His original post on Buffett’s strategy is here.

How Long Does it Actually Take to Form a New Habit? (Backed by Science)

   |    Behavioral Psychology, Habits

Maxwell Maltz was a plastic surgeon in the 1950s when he began noticing a strange pattern among his patients.
When Dr. Maltz would perform an operation — like a nose job, for example — he found that it would take the patient about 21 days to get used to seeing their new face. Similarly, when a patient had an arm or a leg amputated, Maltz noticed that the patient would sense a phantom limb for about 21 days before adjusting to the new situation.
These experiences prompted Maltz to think about his own adjustment period to changes and new behaviors, and he noticed that it also took himself about 21 days to form a new habit. Maltz wrote about these experiences and said, “These, and many other commonly observed phenomena tend to show that it requires a minimum of about 21 days for an old mental image to dissolve and a new one to jell.”
In 1960, Maltz published that quote and his other thoughts on behavior change in a book called Psycho-Cybernetics (audiobook). The book went on to become an blockbuster hit, selling more than 30 million copies.
And that’s when the problem started.
You see, in the decades that followed, Maltz’s work influenced nearly every major “self-help” professional from Zig Ziglar to Brian Tracy to Tony Robbins. And as more people recited Maltz’s story — like a very long game of “Telephone” — people began to forget that he said “a minimum of about 21 days” and shortened it to, “It takes 21 days to form a new habit.”
And that’s how society started spreading the common myth that it takes 21 days to form a new habit (or 30 days or some other magic number). It’s remarkable how often these timelines are quoted as statistical facts. Dangerous lesson: If enough people say something enough times, then everyone else starts to believe it.
It makes sense why the “21 Days” Myth would spread. It’s easy to understand. The time frame is short enough to be inspiring, but long enough to be believable. And who wouldn’t like the idea of changing your life in just three weeks?
But the problem is that Maltz was simply observing what was going on around him and wasn’t making a statement of fact. Furthermore, he made sure to say that this was the minimum amount of time needed to adapt to a new change.
So what’s the real answer? How long does it actually take to form a new habit? Is there any science to back this up? And what does all of this mean for you and me?

How Long it Really Takes to Build a New Habit

Phillippa Lally is a health psychology researcher at University College London. In a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Lally and her research team decided to figure out just how long it actually takes to form a habit.
The study examined the habits of 96 people over a 12-week period. Each person chose one new habit for the 12 weeks and reported each day on whether or not they did the behavior and how automatic the behavior felt.
Some people chose simple habits like “drinking a bottle of water with lunch.” Others chose more difficult tasks like “running for 15 minutes before dinner.” At the end of the 12 weeks, the researchers analyzed the data to determine how long it took each person to go from starting a new behavior to automatically doing it.
The answer?
On average, it takes more than 2 months before a new behavior becomes automatic — 66 days to be exact. And how long it takes a new habit to form can vary widely depending on the behavior, the person, and the circumstances. In Lally’s study, it took anywhere from 18 days to 254 days for people to form a new habit. [1]
In other words, if you want to set your expectations appropriately, the truth is that it will probably take you anywhere from two months to eight months to build a new behavior into your life — not 21 days.
Interestingly, the researchers also found that “missing one opportunity to perform the behavior did not materially affect the habit formation process.” In other words, it doesn’t matter if you mess up every now and then. Building better habits is not an all-or-nothing process.

Finding Inspiration in the Long Road

Before you let this dishearten you, let’s talk about three reasons why this research is actually inspiring.
First, there is no reason to get down on yourself if you try something for a few weeks and it doesn’t become a habit. It’s supposed to take longer than that! There is no need to judge yourself if you can’t master a behavior in 21 short days. Learn to love your 10 Years of Silence. Embrace the long, slow walk to greatness and focus on putting in your reps.
Second, you don’t have to be perfect. Making a mistake once or twice has no measurable impact on your long-term habits. This is why you should treat failure like a scientist, give yourself permission to make mistakes, and develop strategies for getting back on track quickly.
And third, embracing longer timelines can help us realize that habits are a process and not an event. All of the “21 Days” hype can make it really easy to think, “Oh, I’ll just do this and it’ll be done.” But habits never work that way. You have to embrace the process. You have to commit to the system.
Understanding this from the beginning makes it easier to manage your expectations and commit to making small, incremental improvements — rather than pressuring yourself into thinking that you have to do it all at once.

Where to Go From Here

At the end of the day, how long it takes to form a particular habit doesn’t really matter that much. Whether it takes 50 days or 500 days, you have to put in the work either way.
The only way to get to Day 500 is to start with Day 1. So forget about the number and focus on doing the work.

Sources

1. Even though the study only ran for 12 weeks, the researchers were able to use the data to estimate the longer timelines (like 254 days) to form habits. Again, the exact time depends on a variety of factors and isn’t nearly as important as the overall message: habits can take a long time to form.

The Theory of Cumulative Stress: How to Recover When Stress Builds Up

    |    Healthy Habits, Strength Training

It was my first year of graduate school and my professor was standing at the front of the room. He was telling our class about a mistake he made years before.
About a decade earlier, my professor had been one of the senior executives at Sears, Roebuck & Company, the large department store chain. They were in the middle of a massive national campaign and preparing for a major brand launch. My professor was leading the operation.
For almost two months prior to the launch day, he was flying all over the country to strike up buzz with major partners and media companies. While criss-crossing the country on flight after flight, he was also trying to run his department from the road. For weeks on end he would meet with the media and business partners all day, answer emails and phone calls all night, squeeze in 3 or 4 hours of sleep, and wake up to do it all over again.
The week before the big launch day, his body gave out on him. He had to be rushed to the hospital. Major organs had started to fail from the chronic stress. He spent the next eight days lying in a hospital bed, unable to do anything as the launch day came and went.

Your Bucket of Health and Energy

Imagine that your health and energy are a bucket of water.
In your day-to-day life, there are things that fill your bucket up. These are inputs like sleep, nutrition, meditation, stretching, laughter, and other forms of recovery.
There are also forces that drain the water from your bucket. These are outputs like lifting weights or running, stress from work or school, relationship problems, or other forms of stress and anxiety. [1]

The forces that drain your bucket aren’t all negative, of course. To live a productive life, it can be important to have some of things flowing out of your bucket. Working hard in the gym, at school, or at the office allows you to produce something of value. But even positive outputs are still outputs and they drain your energy accordingly.
These outputs are cumulative. Even a little leak can result in significant water loss over time.

The Theory of Cumulative Stress

I usually lift heavy three days per week. For a long time, I thought I should be able to handle four days per week. However, every time I added the extra workout in, I would be just fine for a few weeks and then end up exhausted or slightly injured about a month into the program.
This was frustrating. Why could I handle it for four or five weeks, but not longer than that?
Eventually I realized the issue: stress is cumulative. Three days per week was a pace I could sustain. When I added that fourth day in, the additional stress started to build and accumulate. At some point, the burden became too big and I would get exhausted or injured.
In extreme cases, like that of my professor, this snowball of stress can start to roll so fast that it pushes you to the brink of death. But it’s important to realize that cumulative stress is something that you’re dealing with even when it isn’t a matter of life or death. The stress of extra workouts or additional mileage. The stress of building a business or finishing an important project. The stress of parenting your young children or dealing with a bad boss or caring for your aging parents. It all adds up.

Keeping Your Bucket Full

If you want to keep your bucket full, you have two options.

1. Refill your bucket on a regular basis. That means catching up on sleep, making time for laughter and fun, eating enough to maintain solid energy levels, and otherwise making time for recovery.
2. Let the stressors in your life accumulate and drain your bucket. Once you hit empty, your body will force you to rest through injury and illness. Just like it did with my professor.

Recovery is Not Negotiable

I’m in the middle of a very heavy squat program right now. (It’s called the Smolov squat program. If you’re interested, I put the spreadsheet up here.)
I’ve spent the last two years training with really easy weights and gradually working my way up to heavier loads. I’ve built a solid foundation of strength. But even with that foundation, the weights on this program are heavy and the intensity is high.
Because of this, I’m taking special care to allow myself additional recovery. I’m allowed to sleep longer than usual. If I need to eat more, so be it. Usually, I’m lazy about stretching and foam rolling, but I have been rolling my little heart out every day for the last few weeks. I’m doing whatever I can do to balance the stress and recovery deficit that this squat program is placing on me.
Why?
Because recovery is not negotiable. You can either make time to rest and rejuvenate now or make time to be sick and injured later. Keep your bucket full.

Sources

1. My image of the bucket was inspired by the original idea of the stress and recovery bucket mentioned in Paul Chek’s book, How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy!

Thanks to Mark Watts for originally sharing with me the idea that stress is cumulative.

The Physics of Productivity: Newton’s Laws of Getting Stuff Done

    |    Procrastination, Productivity

In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton published his groundbreaking book, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, which described his three laws of motion. In the process, Newton laid the foundation for classical mechanics and redefined the way the world looked at physics and science.
What most people don’t know, however, is that Newton’s three laws of motion can be used as an interesting analogy for increasing your productivity, simplifying your work, and improving your life.
Allow me to present this analogy as Newton’s Laws of Productivity.

Newton’s First Law of Productivity

First Law of Motion: An object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force. (i.e. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.)

In many ways procrastination is a fundamental law of the universe. It’s Newton’s first law applied to productivity. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.
The good news? It works the other way too. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. When it comes to being productive, this means one thing: the most important thing is to find a way to get started. Once you get started, it is much easier to stay in motion. [1, 2]

So, what’s the best way to get started when you are stuck procrastinating?
In my experience, the best rule of thumb for getting started is the 2-Minute Rule. [3]
Here’s the 2-Minute Rule adjusted for productivity: To overcome procrastination, find a way to start your task in less than two minutes.
Notice that you don’t have to finish your task. In fact, you don’t even have to work on the primary task. However, thanks to Newton’s first law, you’ll often find that once you start this little 2-minute task, it is much easier to keep moving.
Here are some examples…

• Right now, you may not feel like going for a run. But if you put your running shoes on and fill up your water bottle that small start might be enough to get you out the door.
• Right now, you might be staring at a blank screen and struggling to write your report. But if you write random sentences for just two minutes, then you may find that useful sentences start to roll off your fingers.
• Right now, you might have a creative block and be struggling to draw something. But if you draw a random line on a sheet of paper and turn it into a dog, then you might get your creative juices flowing.

Motivation often comes after starting. Find a way to start small. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

Newton’s Second Law of Productivity

Second Law of Motion: F=ma. The vector sum of the forces on an object is equal to the mass of that object multiplied by the acceleration vector of the object. (i.e. Force equals mass times acceleration.)

Let’s break down this equation, F=ma, and how it can apply to productivity.
There is one important thing to note in this equation. The force, F, is a vector. Vectors involve both magnitude (how much work you are putting in) and direction (where that work is focused). In other words, if you want to get an object accelerating in a particular direction, then the size of the force you apply and the direction of that force will both make a difference.
Guess what? It’s the same story for getting things done in your life.
If you want to be productive, it’s not merely about how hard you work (magnitude), it’s also about where that work is applied (direction). This is true of big life decisions and small daily decisions.
For example, you could apply the same skill set in different directions and get very different results.

Note: the idea for this image came from artwork created by my friend, Oliver Emberton, in his wonderful post titled, “Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.” Thanks Oliver!

To put it simply, you only have a certain amount of force to provide to your work and where you place that force is just as important as how hard you work.

Newton’s Third Law of Productivity

Third Law of Motion: When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body. (i.e. Equal and opposite forces.)

We all have an average speed that we tend to perform at in life. Your typical levels of productivity and efficiency are often a balance of the productive and unproductive forces in your life — a lot like Newton’s equal and opposite forces.
There are productive forces in our lives like focus, positivity, and motivation. There are also unproductive forces like stress, lack of sleep, and trying to juggle too many tasks at once.

If we want to become more effective and more productive, then we have two choices.
The first option is to add more productive force. This is the “power through it” option. We gut it out, drink another cup of coffee, and work harder. This is why people take drugs that help them focus or watch a motivational video to pump themselves up. It’s all an effort to increase your productive force and overpower the unproductive forces we face.

Obviously, you can only do this for so long before you burn out, but for a brief moment the “power through it” strategy can work well.
The second option is to eliminate the opposing forces. Simplify your life, learn how to say no, change your environment, reduce the number of responsibilities that you take on, and otherwise eliminate the forces that are holding you back.

If you reduce the unproductive forces in your life, your productivity will glide forward naturally. It’s like you magically remove the hand that has been holding you back. (As I like to say, if you eliminated all of the things distracting you from being productive, you wouldn’t need tips on how to become more productive.) [4]
Most people try to power through and hammer their way past the barriers. The problem with this strategy is that you’re still dealing with the other force. I find it to be much less stressful to cut out the opposing forces and let your productivity naturally flow forward.

Newton’s Laws of Productivity

Newton’s laws of motion reveal insights that tell you pretty much everything you need to know about how to be productive.

1. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Find a way to get started in less than 2 minutes.
2. It’s not just about working hard, it’s also about working on the right things. You have a limited amount of force and where you apply it matters.
3. Your productivity is a balance of opposing forces. If you want to be more productive, you can either power through the barriers or remove the opposing forces. The second option seems to be less stressful.

James Clear writes a weekly newsletter about the science of habit formation and how to use behavioral science to improve your health, creativity, and productivity.

Sources

1. Psychology studies have also revealed that it is easier for us to stay in motion once we have started. Actually, what the studies show is that our human brains have a strong urge to finish tasks that we start. We don’t like leaving things unfinished or partially done. This is a widely research phenomenon known as the Ziegarnik Effect, named after the Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik.
2. After writing this post, I found out that Stephen Guise has also written about the idea of “objects in motion, stay in motion” in his book, Mini-Habits.
3. The 2-Minute Rule originally comes from David Allen’s best-selling book, Getting Things Done.
4. This idea of analyzing supporting and opposing forces, which is sometimes referred to as a Force Field Analysis, was first thought up by Kurt Lewin. This is the same man who is responsible for Lewin’s Equation.

Thanks to Rob Norback for sharing the idea behind the “third law of productivity”, which sparked this post. And to Sir Isaac Newton for being a man ahead of his time and for being a bold mofo who owned his rockstar hair.

Martha Graham on the Hidden Danger of Comparing Yourself to Others

   |    Creativity, Life Lessons, Motivation

Agnes de Mille had just achieved the greatest success of her career, but right now the only thing she felt was confusion.
She was a dancer and a choreographer. Early in her career, de Mille had created the choreography for a ballet called Three Virgins and a Devil. She thought it was good work, but nobody made much of it.
A few years later, de Mille choreographed a ballet named Rodeo. Again, she thought her work was solid, but it resulted in little commercial fame.

Agnes de Mille in her outfit for Rodeo. (Photograph by Maurice Seymour. Courtesy of Ronald Seymour/Maurice Seymour Archive.)

Then, in 1943, de Mille choreographed Oklahoma!, a musical show from Rodgers and Hammerstein that enjoyed nearly instant success. In the coming years, Oklahoma! would run for an incredible 2,212 performances, both around the nation and abroad. In 1955, the film version won an Academy Award.
But the success of Oklahoma! confused her. She thought that her work on Oklahoma! was only average compared to some of her other creations. She later said, “After the opening of Oklahoma!, I suddenly had unexpected, flamboyant success for a work I thought was only fairly good, after years of neglect for work I thought was fine. I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. I talked to Martha.”
Martha was Martha Graham, perhaps the most influential dance choreographer of the 20th century. (Although not as well-known by the general public, Graham has been compared to other creative geniuses like Picasso or Frank Lloyd Wright.)
During their conversation, de Mille told Martha Graham about her frustration. “I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be.” [1]
Graham responded by saying,

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

The Uselessness of Judging Yourself

For nearly two years, I have been publishing articles every Monday and Thursday on JamesClear.com. Some days the words come easier than others, and there have been plenty of times when I have felt a smaller version of what Agnes de Mille felt.
“I thought this was a good article. Why don’t people seem to enjoy it?” Or, I’ll feel like I mailed it in on a piece only to see it become the most popular post of the month. Regardless of the outcome, I’ve realized one thing: we are often terrible judges of our own work.
Martha Graham’s advice takes this concept a step further by explaining that not only are you a bad judge of your own work, it is not your job to judge your own work. It is not your place to compare it to others. It is not your responsibility to figure out how valuable it is or how useful it can be. It is not your job to tell yourself, “No.”
Instead, your responsibility is to create. Your job is share what you have to offer from where you are right now. To quote Pema Chodron, the Buddhist teacher, your job is to “come as you are.” (And then find your inner Sisu and keep coming.)
There are people in nearly every field of work who make each day a work of art by the way they do their craft. In other words, nearly everyone is an artist in one way or another. And every artist will judge their work. The key is to not let your self-judgment keep you from doing your thing. Professionals produce, even when it isn’t easy.

Keep Your Eyes on Your Own Paper

In grade school, I remember my teacher passing out an assignment and telling each student to “keep your eyes on your own paper.”
Perhaps she was simply trying to teach 8-year-olds to not cheat, but hidden within that phrase is also a deeper message about what really matters. It doesn’t make a difference what the person next to you writes down for his answer. This is your race to run. It’s your assignment to complete. It’s your answer to create. How your paper compares to someone else’s is not the point. The point is to fill the paper with your work.
The same can be said of your work today. No matter what you spend your days doing, every morning you wake up and have a blank piece of paper to work with. You get to put your name at the top and fill it with your work.
If what you write on your paper doesn’t meet someone else’s expectations … it is no concern of yours. The way someone else perceives what you do is a result of their own experiences (which you can’t control), their own tastes and preferences (which you can’t predict), and their own expectations (which you don’t set). If your choices don’t match their expectations that is their concern, not yours.
Your concern is to do the work, not to judge it. Your concern is to fall in love with the process, not to grade the outcome. Keep your eyes on your own paper.

Sources

1. Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham by Agnes De Mille. pg. 264.

Thanks to Paul Jun for pointing me to the story of Agnes de Mille and Martha Graham.

This Coach Improved Every Tiny Thing by 1 Percent and Here’s What Happened

    |    Continuous Improvement, Goal Setting, Self-Improvement, Success

In 2010, Dave Brailsford faced a tough job.
No British cyclist had ever won the Tour de France, but as the new General Manager and Performance Director for Team Sky (Great Britain’s professional cycling team), Brailsford was asked to change that.
His approach was simple.
Brailsford believed in a concept that he referred to as the “aggregation of marginal gains.” He explained it as “the 1 percent margin for improvement in everything you do.” His belief was that if you improved every area related to cycling by just 1 percent, then those small gains would add up to remarkable improvement.
They started by optimizing the things you might expect: the nutrition of riders, their weekly training program, the ergonomics of the bike seat, and the weight of the tires.
But Brailsford and his team didn’t stop there. They searched for 1 percent improvements in tiny areas that were overlooked by almost everyone else: discovering the pillow that offered the best sleep and taking it with them to hotels, testing for the most effective type of massage gel, and teaching riders the best way to wash their hands to avoid infection. They searched for 1 percent improvements everywhere.
Brailsford believed that if they could successfully execute this strategy, then Team Sky would be in a position to win the Tour de France in five years time.
He was wrong. They won it in three years.
In 2012, Team Sky rider Sir Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France. That same year, Brailsford coached the British cycling team at the 2012 Olympic Games and dominated the competition by winning 70 percent of the gold medals available.
In 2013, Team Sky repeated their feat by winning the Tour de France again, this time with rider Chris Froome. Many have referred to the British cycling feats in the Olympics and the Tour de France over the past 10 years as the most successful run in modern cycling history.
And now for the important question: what can we learn from Brailsford’s approach?

The Aggregation of Marginal Gains

It’s so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making better decisions on a daily basis.
Almost every habit that you have — good or bad — is the result of many small decisions over time.
And yet, how easily we forget this when we want to make a change.
So often we convince ourselves that change is only meaningful if there is some large, visible outcome associated with it. Whether it is losing weight, building a business, traveling the world or any other goal, we often put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about.
Meanwhile, improving by just 1 percent isn’t notable (and sometimes it isn’t even noticeable). But it can be just as meaningful, especially in the long run.
And from what I can tell, this pattern works the same way in reverse. (An aggregation of marginal losses, in other words.) If you find yourself stuck with bad habits or poor results, it’s usually not because something happened overnight. It’s the sum of many small choices — a 1 percent decline here and there — that eventually leads to a problem.

Inspiration for this image came from a graphic in The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson.

In the beginning, there is basically no difference between making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse. (In other words, it won’t impact you very much today.) But as time goes on, these small improvements or declines compound and you suddenly find a very big gap between people who make slightly better decisions on a daily basis and those who don’t. This is why small choices don’t make much of a difference at the time, but add up over the long-term.
On a related note, this is why I love setting a schedule for important things, planning for failure, and using the “never miss twice” rule. I know that it’s not a big deal if I make a mistake or slip up on a habit every now and then. It’s the compound effect of never getting back on track that causes problems. By setting a schedule to never miss twice, you can prevent simple errors from snowballing out of control.

The Bottom Line

Success is a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.
—Jim Rohn

You probably won’t find yourself in the Tour de France anytime soon, but the concept of aggregating marginal gains can be useful all the same.
Most people love to talk about success (and life in general) as an event. We talk about losing 50 pounds or building a successful business or winning the Tour de France as if they are events. But the truth is that most of the significant things in life aren’t stand-alone events, but rather the sum of all the moments when we chose to do things 1 percent better or 1 percent worse. Aggregating these marginal gains makes a difference.
There is power in small wins and slow gains. This is why average speed yields above average results. This is why the system is greater than the goal. This is why mastering your habits is more important than achieving a certain outcome.
Where are the 1 percent improvements in your life?

How paisley left Persia to become the most cherished fashion of musicians from The Beatles to Prince. Lindsay Baker reports.

21 november 2015

“One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art,” said the famously flamboyant Oscar Wilde, who loved nothing more than to lounge foppishly in a silk paisley smoking jacket and cravat. That Wilde and his demi-monde friends loved paisley – the painterly textile pattern that resembles a teardrop or seed-shaped vegetable – is no surprise. More surprising is how paisley has endured, and how the apparently immortal print has been enjoying yet another peak of fashionability – the catwalks of London, New York, Milan and Paris have all seen a flutter or flash of it in recent seasons.
“Paisley has been a popular motif in fashion for centuries,” Jeremy Langmead, of luxury menswear e-tailer Mr Porter , tells  Culture. “And especially in the West following the hippie-inspired styles of the 1960s and 1970s, which have been having a resurgence of late with brands such as Saint Laurent, Burberry and Gucci adopting paisley. Etro, the Italian brand, has also long-used the design in its menswear, especially in suit and jacket linings.” In womenswear, too, designers from Dolce & Gabbana and JW Anderson to Raf Simons at Jil Sander have incorporated paisley in recent years.

The iconic motif has had quite a journey

From its ancient Persian and Indian origins with its hidden messages and mysterious symbolism, the iconic motif has had quite a journey. The paisley pattern has travelled the silk routes from East to West, adorned the bandanas of cowboys and bikers, been adopted by the 19th Century boho set, been popularised by The Beatles, ushered in the hippy era and become an emblem of rock ‘n’ roll swagger and swank.

Arthur Lasenby Liberty was an early enthusiast of paisley in the UK (Credit: From the book Liberty of London Treasures: Colour, Design, Print by Carlton)

Now various paisley designs are among the many beautiful prints and garments showcased at Liberty of London, an exhibition this autumn at the Fashion and Textile Museum that showcases the textiles of the influential design company and store. Liberty’s archivist Anna Buruma explains: “Liberty has been associated with paisley style from the beginning when they sold fabrics, porcelain, rugs and shawls from the East. Paisley-style shawls are shown in the early catalogues and when they started printing their own fabrics in the 1880s, paisley designs are very much in evidence.”
From East to West
So what is behind paisley’s incredible longevity? Its symbolic power has probably played a part. The original Persian droplet-like motif – the boteh or buta – is thought to have been a representation of a floral spray combined with a cypress tree, a Zoroastrian symbol of life and eternity. The seed-like shape is also thought to represent fertility, has connections with Hinduism, and also bears an intriguing resemblance to the famous yin-yang symbol. It is still a hugely popular motif in Iran and South and Central Asian countries and is woven using silver and gold threads on to silks and fine wools for weddings and other celebrations.

It became… shorthand for sophisticated, arty bohemianism

Imports from the East India Company via the ‘silk routes’ brought the textile pattern to Europe in the 18th and 19th Centuries, and following the arrival of luxurious Kashmir shawls (some of which cost the price of a small house), the pattern took the continent by storm. The shawls were soon imitated throughout Europe, notably in Wales and the town of Paisley in Renfrewshire, Scotland. From that point onwards the English term for the motif was ‘paisley’, though it is also known in the United States among quilt-makers as ‘Persian pickles’ or in the Welsh textile industry as ‘Welsh pears’.

British artists of the late 19th Century were great admirers of the pattern, including William Holman Hunt, who painted his paisley-adorned wife Fanny (Credit: William Holman Hunt)

It was in the 19th Century that the paisley pattern first attracted a rebellious, progressive following. Its story was part of a wider “dialogue” between eastern and western cultures at the time, says Dennis Nothdruft, the curator of the Liberty in Fashion exhibition. “It was a cultural exchange, and also an industry.” In the Victorian era, trade between Britain and India was buoyant, and Liberty’s forward-thinking founder Arthur Lasenby Liberty, a friend of Oscar Wilde “who had real flair and exquisite taste”, as Nothdruft tells BBC Culture, quickly expanded thanks largely to a paisley-orientated collection. William Morris and the Arts-and-Crafts movement adapted the print, with William Holman Hunt and other Pre-Raphaelites depicting sumptuous paisley textiles in their paintings. It became an integral part of the Aesthetic Movement and the Art Nouveau Movement – and shorthand for sophisticated, arty bohemianism.
Far-out fashion
The next surge in paisley’s fashionability came in the 1960s, helped along by The Beatles – in their Eastern-influenced phase the band were paisley mad, and John Lennon even painted his Rolls-Royce with the pattern. It became emblematic of the ‘summer of love’ and the often eye-watering aesthetic of the psychedelic era, its vertiginous acid-trip patterns and mind-melting colours chiming with the hippy zeitgeist.
“It had a certain mystery and eastern promise about it that suited the times,” says textile designer and artist Sarah Campbell, who during the 1960s and ’70s created some of Liberty’s best-known interpretations of the print with her design partner Susan Collier, including the swirling, intricate Splendide. “Because of paisley’s origins, there has always been a sense of exoticism and luxury about it. It’s an organic motif that is also stylised and has a complexity and depth to it – we called the designs ‘paisloid’ because they were adaptations of traditional paisley.” Liberty ‘paisloids’ were used extensively by some of the top designers of the era including Jean Muir, Bill Gibb, Yves Saint Laurent, Biba and Bill Blass.

It has that flamboyant connotation, it’s a look that says ‘notice me’ – Dennis Nothdruft

Ever since then paisley has been a firm rock ‘n’ roll favourite, resonating with its early Eastern symbolism, its progressive, 19th Century boho aura and its unruly 1960s free-love connotations. It has been sported – with the requisite strut and swagger – by David Bowie, Prince (who named his record label and studio Paisley Park), Paul Weller, Bobby Gillespie, Liam Gallagher and Florence Welch, among many, many others. Gallagher even founded a clothing brand, Pretty Green, that specialises in the print. “It has a certain richness to it, an over-the-top quality,” says curator Nothdruft. “It has that flamboyant connotation, it’s a look that says ‘notice me’. Paisley pushes the envelope.”
Fertility symbol
Mr Porter’s Jeremy Langmead agrees about the print’s subtext: “Throughout the decades, paisley has always been a popular print for men’s ties. I’ve always found it intriguing that a design that is purported to derive from Indian fertility symbols has always been prevalent on an item of clothing that, by its very nature, acts as an arrow pointing down the torso of its wearer to his groin.”

It’s been suggested that the seed-like paisley pattern, like this 1960 design by Ceraggio, was originally a Persian fertility symbol (Credit: Copyright of Liberty Fabric Limited)

There is certainly an arty sensuality about the glamorous Etro brand, the Italian label where paisley’s heritage and currency come together as a signature. Designer Veronica Etro tells  Culture that the paisley print is “central to Etro’s past, present and future.” Her father started the company creating luxury textiles in 1968, and paisley soon became the “symbol” of the brand, she says. “He travelled a lot around the world, and these exotic travels greatly influenced the original designs, bold colour and rich embellishments of the Etro fabrics.

It symbolises the tree of life, the seed palm, thus fertility. – Veronica Etro

“My father’s grandmother used to wear a rich paisley morning coat and the pattern truly caught his eye and attention. Paisley’s journey, over the course of thousands of years, is very inspirational to me. I love symbols that are rich in history... What I love about it is also that it has a deep meaning: it symbolises the tree of life, the seed palm, thus fertility… it always remains appealing, exotic and cool at the same time: think about Janis Joplin, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, wearing this decorative pattern – it has this rock vibe in it.”
The rich symbolism and rebellious aura that surround paisley have kept it alive, it seems. But perhaps the real secret to the print’s immortality is how it combines conformity with unruliness, how it blends its rich historicism with a powerful adaptability, and how it is open to endless and unexpected re-invigoration and re-interpretation. Veronica Etro is keen to break new ground with the pattern, she says. “To develop further its boundaries without really breaking with the past – but looking to the future.” Classics scholar, forward thinker and snappy dresser Oscar Wilde would no doubt have approved.

Long before Lady Gaga, Grace Jones defined the art of the stage costume and the provocative album cover. Katya Foreman salutes a powerful style icon.

Long before Lady Gaga, Grace Jones defined the art of the stage costume and the provocative album cover. Katya Foreman salutes a powerful style icon.

12 november 2015

As the spiritual godmother of Rihanna and Lady Gaga, Grace Jones has rocked a startling stage outfit or two in her time. Take, for instance, the carnival of costumes rolled out for her live show at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom in 2009. Among the show-stoppers was a zebra-like tribal bodysuit, a white headdress, a gold skull mask and a black-and-gold dress dotted with dollar signs, its open skirt spread like beetle wings to display her gold thigh boots.
As her recent topless hula-hooping Afropunk performance of Slave to the Rhythm attests, the wild-at-heart entertainer, now well into her seventh decade, still has those supermodel limbs and angular beauty. But even more intense is the unhinged streak bubbling below the surface. Grace Jones is a genuine force of nature.

Jones wore a zebra-like tribal bodysuit with a white headdress for a show at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom in 2009 (Credit: Rex Features)

Clothes almost seem to get in the way for this superhuman performer, who has never shied away from self-exposure – she reportedly once attended a party with French ministers in the ’70s wearing nothing but a string of bones around her neck. The evergreen provocateur, immortalised in prints and paint by everyone from Pop artists Keith Haring and Andy Warhol to darkroom dons Helmut Newton and Robert Mapplethorpe, has always sought to further enhance her already powerful physicality through carefully chosen accessories, from sculptural corsets to ornate lace eye masks, hoods and capes that frame her face.

A recent topless hula-hooping performance showed that Jones hasn’t lost her supermodel physique – despite approaching 70 (Credit: Rex Features)

Blurred lines
Jones’ raw, prowling grace captivated former partner Jean-Paul Goude, the man behind the most powerful images of the singer. The pair met on New York’s Studio 54-led disco scene in the late ’70s, when Jones was a budding pop star. “I always loved the mixture of threat and beauty, I just thought it was time for Grace to just stretch out,” says a young Goude, in footage featured in the BBC documentary On Queens of Disco. He soon took over as Jones’ image-maker, amplifying her otherworldliness through his computer-generated album covers (more recently he has turned his hand to Kim Kardashian’s assets for her ‘break the internet’ shoot for Paper Magazine).

Former partner Jean-Paul Goude was behind the striking Island Life cover, echoed later in Kim Kardashian’s ‘break the internet’ shoot (Credit: Island)

Take Goude’s iconic album cover for 1985 compilation Island Life, in which an oily-limbed, nigh-on naked Jones pulls an extreme arabesque pose, microphone stretched out in front. The anatomically elongated image was actually a photographic collage, according to reports, and involved a body double, says Jones; in a 1986 Playboy profile she begrudgingly confessed it “was not my ass".

I’m not like a normal woman, that’s for sure – Grace Jones

On the cover of 1981’s Nightclubbing – which captures an androgynous Jones clad in just a men’s Armani tuxedo jacket with an extreme flat-top haircut, unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth – her shoulders have been vastly widened to accentuate the sharp, masculine lines. On these blurred gender boundaries, Jones said simply, “I go feminine, I go masculine – I am both, actually. I think the male side is a bit stronger in me and I have to tone it down sometimes. I’m not like a normal woman, that’s for sure...”
Goude, whose relationship with Jones ended when she became pregnant with their son, Paulo, has confessed that he “was more interested in the virtual character than the real woman – I still am”, while Jones, in an interview with the Daily Mail, confirmed it was ultimately the reason she left him: “I was an object, always.” At that time she was arguably a willing muse, having come to the United States from Jamaica to pursue a modelling career, and let off some steam.

For the cover of Nightclubbing (1981) Jones blurred gender boundaries, of which she’s said, “I go feminine, I go masculine – I am both, actually” (Credit: Island)

Island life
The third of seven children, Beverly Grace Jones was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica. With her parents working in the US for much of her childhood, she was raised by her grandparents and has been vocal about the pressure-cooker effect of her strict religious upbringing. In a ‘90s interview, she told Ruby Wax: “I wasn’t allowed to do anything. I wasn’t allowed to watch TV, I wasn’t allowed to wear fingernail polish, I wasn’t allowed to play any games or even listen to the radio, so when I got out and got the States I was like... motorcycle gangs, Hell’s Angels, taking all kinds of stuff and getting totally hallucinating, out there. I was lucky I survived it.”

After a strict religious upbringing in Jamaica, Jones let her theatrical nature run riot when she arrived in New York (Stephane Cardinale/Corbis)

Repression only fed her imagination. Jones arrived in New York making up for lost time, her genes and family background contributing to her theatrical nature (“an explosive mixture of politics, religion and music – no wonder I turned out how I did”, she told the Daily Mail) while Goude’s guidance proved a crucial catalyst. In the aforementioned BBC documentary make-up artist Rudy Calvy, one of Jones’ clubbing peers, recalls one of her shows.

I’m not there to validate anyone – validate yourself – Grace Jones

“She came into the club on a motorcycle, she had a black hood on, she walked over to the bar and she knocked all the glasses off the bar and then she proceeded to lay back on the bar, putting her high-heel shoe on top of the cash register, and sang La Vie en Rose. One hell, hell of a show.” Another clubber, Roger McFarlane, said Jones’ “powerful, strong attitude defined glamour and androgynous style and in-your-face sexuality, an unapologetic expression of who you are regardless of where you came from.”

Jones’ love of hats is well documented, which she says comes from her church days; her favourite milliner is Phillip Treacy (Stephane Cardinale/Corbis)

Sunday best
Yet where she came from has strongly influenced Jones’ style and attitude. During an interview conducted at Britain’s posh Royal Ascot horse race in 2010 – where she was seated between her mother, seamstress Majorie, and her favourite milliner Philip Treacy, while wearing a swooping monochrome hat with a pair of dice earrings – she revealed her penchant for headgear harks back to Sunday best. “My mum will tell you, we come from a church and everyone dresses up in hats. We weren’t even allowed to go into church without a hat, it was absolutely mandatory to wear a hat to church, so we feel naked without a hat. Thank God for that!”

I’m not fashion, I’m style – Grace Jones

But Ms Jones is not so keen on sharing her star quality. Of repeated requests from Lady Gaga, she told the Evening Standard in 2010, “I don’t collaborate. You’re born alone, you die alone, you get on stage alone. I’m better as a loner... I collaborated with Pavarotti [at a charity concert in 2002] because I love him and I could stretch myself and do opera. It’s going to add another thing to me. Lady Gaga isn’t going to do anything for me; it’ll do everything for her. I’m not there to validate anyone – validate yourself.”
Through carefully manipulating and maintaining her image (not to mention her age-defying skin), Jones has done just that. It helps that, rather than chasing trends, she’s always presented herself as more of an interpreter, most famously of Issey Miyake’s sculptural designs. “I’m not fashion, I’m style,” she told Vogue Italia’s Cesare Cunaccia. “Creativity makes me want to keep going.” So whether she’s penning a provocatively entitled autobiography (I’ll Never Write My Memoirs, which has just been published), working on a new album or presenting awards in only her underwear (“I didn’t think you wore any!” quipped recipient Tom Jones at the 2012 GQ Awards), the 67-year-old remains a potent creative force. Whatever she is, or isn’t wearing.

Originally designed to protect pilots’ eyes against the elements, Ray-Ban’s classic sunglasses have crossed over from cockpit to catwalk. Katya Foreman looks back.

8 november 2015

Sometimes a name becomes so ubiquitous we forget its original meaning. A case in point is Ray-Ban, which was behind the world’s first aviator sunglasses, conceived in the 1930s to ban rays from the eyes of US Air Force pilots. Though marketed under the Ray-Ban banner, it was the brand’s parent company, Bausch & Lomb – a US firm specialising in eye health products – that came up with the invention. Developed as an alternative to the fur-lined goggles worn by pilots in the early 20th-Century – which simply didn’t perform technically – aviator sunglasses became the perfect solution to protect a pilot’s eyes against the elements, help to avoid headaches and to combat decreased visibility caused by the blinding glare of the sun at high altitude.
According to The New York Times, the true force behind the aviator’s invention was American pilot John Macready, who is said to have been motivated by an incident involving a fellow test-pilot, Shorty Schroeder. During a test flight in 1920, in which he broke the 33,000-ft barrier in his biplane, Schroeder had ripped off his fogged-up goggles, causing his eyes to freeze over. On helping to pull him out of the plane, so shocked was Macready by Schroeder’s state, he set out to find a solution, making contact with Bausch & Lomb. “My dad gave Bausch & Lomb the original shape, tint and fit,” his daughter, Sally Macready Wallace, told the newspaper’s weekend magazine.

Aviator sunglasses became the perfect solution to protect a pilot's eyes against the elements

The aviator was not to remain confined to the cockpit, however. Fitted with green lenses that could cut out the glare without obscuring vision, the first examples, which went on sale to the public in 1937, featured a plastic frame in the now-classic teardrop shape (echoing the form of pilot’s goggles), but was remodelled with a metal frame the following year and rebranded as the Ray-Ban Aviator.
War games 
With their anti-glare lenses, the Ray-Ban Aviator shades became popular with outdoor pursuits enthusiasts from fishermen to golfers, leading to the introduction of new models. The Ray-Ban Shooter – released in 1938 – boasted green or pale yellow Kalichrome lenses designed to sharpen details and minimise haze by filtering out blue light, making them ideal for misty conditions. The model’s signature feature was its so-called ‘cigarette-holder’ middle circle, designed to free the hands of the shooter. The Ray-Ban Outdoorsman, issued the next year, targeted hunting, shooting and fishing enthusiasts.

In WWII, General Douglas MacArthur was photographed landing on a beach in the Philippines wearing a pair of Ray-Ban Aviators (Credit: PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

In the 1940s, World War Two saw American Air Force pilots continue to rely on the Ray-Ban Aviator, with the introduction of a gradient mirror lens with a special coating on the upper part for enhanced protection, but an uncoated lower lens for a clear view of the plane’s instrument panel. The most iconic shots of military in Ray-Ban Aviators during WWII include those of General Douglas MacArthur landing on a beach in the Philippines wearing a pair.
Military style influenced fashion trends and the shades took off with civilians, gaining momentum in the 1950s with the launch of the Ray-Ban Caravan (1957), a squarer version later worn by Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver (1976). Thus begun their transition from a functional to an aspirational fashion accessory. “In the 1950s, Ray-Ban started to run advertising campaigns and you started to see them on all the major Hollywood celebrities,” says Sara Beneventi, brand director at Ray-Ban.

Robert De Niro wore Ray-Ban Caravans, a squarer version of the aviator, in Taxi Driver (Credit: AF archive / Alamy)

Shady people
Other Ray-Ban styles have entered the market but the original aviators – whose shape was adopted as a generic style by other eyewear brands like Polo, Maui Jim, Serengeti, Persol and top fashion brands such as Gucci, Burberry, Dolce and Gabbana – have always maintained their momentum, according to Beneventi, though certain powerful pop culture moments have contributed to peaks in popularity. Take for example Michael Jackson’s appearance at the 1984 Grammys in a pair of black Ray-Ban Aviators, while Tom Cruise in Top Gun (1986) took the shades back to their fighter pilot roots, boosting sales of the Ray-Ban original.
“In general you can see two key Ray-Ban styles in any decade, from the 1940s to today, so the role of Ray-Ban, both in the past and today, has always been to play a part in the pop culture of the specific period,” says Beneventi, noting that the music scene has also contributed to the aviator’s myth. “Ray-Ban have always been very much part of the scene from rock culture in the 1970s to the indie culture today. In the 1970s it became totally normal to see rock stars like Iggy Pop in Ray-Ban Aviators.”

Powerful pop culture moments – such as Michael Jackson at the 1984 Grammys – have contributed to peaks in the shades’ popularity (Credit: REX)

By the 1970s, aviators already asserted themselves as the ultimate fashion accessory for many cultural icons, but up to this point they had largely been considered a men’s style. However, with an element of colour and femininity now being introduced to both frames and lenses by way of delicate rhinestone details and softer lens colours such as browns and pinks, the glasses started to grace the catwalks and red carpets, becoming synonymous with the glitterati.

After the 1970s, aviators were adopted by women and have since become popular with female celebrities (Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

If back in the 1950s the market focus was on one aviator style in one lens colour, today Ray-Ban markets a family of products ranging from functional and classic to fashion-forward styles with new colours and materials. The focus, says Beneventi, is always on innovation. “The evolution of the aviator in any decade has focused on the continued innovation that we apply to this product, such as special materials coming from the aerospace industry.” This autumn will see a new take on the ‘37 Ray-Ban Aviator frames, sporting a distressed effect as if worn through time. With this type of dedication to design and evolution, the timeless aviator, now more a staple of people’s cabin luggage than the cockpit, is certain to continue its journey into the future.

Skinny jeans have been given a health warning, after an Australian woman had to be cut out of a pair. BBC Culture looks at five of the worst fashion disasters.

24 november 2015

Giving new meaning to the phrase ‘fashion victim’, a 35-year-old Australian woman had to be cut out of a pair of skinny jeans after developing a condition called compartment syndrome. It’s not the first time someone has succumbed to a dangerous style trend: “They’ve always been around, since the Stone Ages,” says Summer Strevens, the author of Fashionably Fatal. “It’s when fashion is taken to an extreme; I call it vanity insanity.” Here are five of the deadliest fads in history.
Corsets
The undergarment that shrank waistlines long before Spanx had an influence on language as much as women’s bodies: it spawned the term ‘strait-laced’, lending a Victorian respectability to its wearer, as well as ‘loose women’ – implying that those who were corset-less had morals as free as their lacing. In her book, Strevens says that “corsets caused indigestion, constipation, frequent fainting from difficulty in breathing and even internal bleeding… inhibited breathing, giving rise to the Victorian ‘heaving bosom’, was indicative of pressure upon the lungs, while the other internal organs, forced to shift from their natural position to accommodate the new skeletal shape, were subject to damage.” In 1874, a list was published attributing 97 diseases to corset wearing, including heightened hysteria and melancholy; between the late 1860s and the early 1890s, Strevens says, the medical journal The Lancet published at least an article a year on the medical dangers of tight lacing. And it didn’t end with breathing difficulties or organ damage: in 1903, 42-year-old mother-of-six Mary Halliday died abruptly after a seizure. The New York Times reported that during her autopsy, “two pieces of corset steel were found in her heart, their total length being eight and three-quarter inches. Where they rubbed together the ends were worn to a razor edge by the movement of her body.”

Crinoline fires were common in the 19th Century (Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy)

Crinoline fires
The structured petticoat did more than just enhance a silhouette. During the 19th Century, at the peak of the crinoline’s popularity, there were several high-profile deaths by skirt fire. In July 1861, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow rushed to help his wife after her dress caught fire. According to the Boston Daily Advertiser, “While seated at her library table, making seals for the entertainment of her two youngest children, a match or piece of lighted paper caught her dress, and she was in a moment enveloped in flames.” She died the following day. Oscar Wilde’s two half-sisters also died of burns after they went too close to an open fire in ball gowns. One case, in 1858, prompted the New York Times to proclaim that “an average of three deaths per week from crinolines in conflagration, ought to startle the most thoughtless of the privileged sex; and to make them, at least, extraordinarily careful in their movements and behaviour, if it fails… to deter them from adopting a fashion so fraught with peril”.
Stiff collars
Invented in the 19th Century, the detachable collar meant men didn’t have to change their shirt every day. It was also starched to a stiffness that proved lethal. “They were called ‘father killer’, or ‘Vatermörder’ in German,” says Strevens. “They could cut off the blood supply to the carotid artery. Edwardian men would wear them as a fashion accessory – they’d go to their gentleman’s club, have a few glasses of port and nod off in a winged armchair, with their heads tilted forward. They actually suffocated.” One 1888 obituary in The New York Times was headlined ‘Choked by his collar’: a man called John Cruetzi had been found dead in a park, and “the Coroner thought the man had been drinking, seated himself on a bench, and fell asleep. His head dropped over on his chest and then his stiff collar stopped the windpipe and checked the flow of blood through the already contracted veins, causing the death to ensue from asphyxia and apoplexy.”

The Mad Hatter (Credit: Alamy)

Mad hatters
The expression ‘mad as a hatter’ was in use 30 years before Lewis Carroll popularised it with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Mercury poisoning was an occupational hazard for hat makers in the 18th and 19th Centuries: the chemical was used in the production of felt, and prolonged exposure led to what was termed the ‘mad hatter disease’. Symptoms included tremors and pathological shyness and irritability – leading to doubts that Carroll’s eccentric milliner was a sufferer, with an article in the British Medical Journal suggesting “it could scarcely be said that the Mad Hatter suffered to any great extent from the desire to go unnoticed”.
Killer heels
Said to have been inspired by a 10th Century court dancer who wrapped her feet in silk to perform for the Emperor, Chinese foot-binding was officially banned in 1912. Yet some continued the practice – a means of displaying status, revealing that a woman didn’t need her feet to work – in secret. The British photographer Jo Farrell has documented the last surviving women with bound feet for her Living History project. She told the BBC: “I feel so many people talk about how barbaric the tradition was, but it was also a tradition that empowered women. It gave them a better life… one of the most important things that came across was that they have a pride in what happened to them.” Reshaping feet is not restricted to China, however – according to Strevens, “in earlier centuries, ladies of fashion were known to have had their ‘little’ toes amputated, slipping their feet into ever-more-pointed fashionable footwear”. She argues that while historic practices might sound barbaric, women today are still enduring pain for fashion, referencing “the contemporary vogue for the surgical shortening, even amputation of healthy toes, in order to fit into today's sky-high stilettos”. There are still plenty of fashion victims in the 21st Century. “Although we haven’t got corsets or crinolines any more, there are now people having their ribs removed to get a smaller waist.”