I was in Heathrow airport a few weeks ago waiting for a flight. A strange thought entered my head: why not do some push-ups? You’ll think the idea ridiculous, but it’s an interesting thought experiment. If you’re not into sport, then you could substitute the idea with: ‘why not talk to a random person or complement someone on something they’re wearing?’ Doing a little exercise before going in the plane would do me good – the long-term benefits would be useful. There would be no cost, especially as we all had plenty of time on our hands waiting 30 minutes to board the plane. Sometimes you’ve run out of podcasts and you’re too tired to read. Often we find ourselves in situations where the preferred option (though almost certainly the least beneficial) is to do nothing with a part of our oh so precious lives.

The fair answer I think is that we all carry around unwritten rules in our head about how to behave. It’s like we impose rules on our lives which have the same force as if something was actually illegal. Second to that, we care that people might think we’re doing something ridiculous even though we don’t know anyone around us and no-one knows us, and we’ll never see them ever again.

I’m not quite prepared to do such things, but as a related theme, I do hope to find little 1-2 minute gaps in my day where you can do a few of these good habits. And then of course, if you’re a writer, you can be a little more outrageous and get good material.