You might think that this letter is not for you and that you don’t know me. I need you to trust me on this and continue reading as you will soon realise that both your assumptions are wrong.
I know that you are both a day-dreamer and a highly pragmatic person, you are full of ambitions and dreams you keep wondering whether they will eventually come true or not. I also know that you feel different. You love to bits your origins, your family and your home but there is something inside you that just weighs you down, and you don’t know what it is. Let me tell you that I don’t have all of the answers, but I have some that clearly explain as to why you feel that way. The best part? I can’t spoiler them to you because I am afraid you might miss the point here, and you might not enjoy the journey that will give you all the answers to your questions.
I came across a really interesting fact recently, a fact that forced me to reflect and think about you. I also know for a fact that you often think about me, so here I am writing to you. Aren’t we so romantic? Anyway, the fun fact is this:
A goldfish will grow to a proportional size of their tank. This is because they secrete hormones such as aminobutyric acid and somatostatin, which act as a signal of how many other goldfish are in the tank and how much volume of water they occupy. In nature, this is a survival mechanism so that they all grow with a similar size and they don’t run out of resources. So essentially, if you put a goldfish in a small tank, it will stay relatively small; whereas, if you put it in a big tank, with the right conditions and care it will grow bigger to a proportional size of their tank. I know you love science, and you might not accept my words as an evidence for it, so you can find below some references.
I don’t know about you but this interesting fact reminded me of my little self as being a small goldfish forced to stay small in a narrow tank full of other little fishes. Do you know what is even more interesting? the fact that I didn’t realise I was in a small tank until I accidentally jumped in a bigger tank. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t fun and games! It was scary, challenging and nerve wracking trying to survive in a bigger tank with other fishes, but looking back I have soon realised that the jump made me stronger, bigger and more resilient. Since then, I have jumped in several other larger tanks, which challenged me even further and made me grow more and more. I sometimes try to go back to my original tiny tank, but the truth is that I don’t fit anymore and cannot survive in there.
Still think this letter is not for you? I know you are only small but I am sure you understand very well what I am talking about. The only thing I would like to tell is to DARE! Don’t get intimidated by other people’s perception of reality and don’t be daunted when you fail. There is only one way to succeed and get better, and it is through failure. So, look forward to fail as it is equal to say to look forward to learn, get better, grow and succeed. Yes, it will feel uncomfortable at first but it will help you grow and get you closer to your dreams.
Surround yourself with people who believe in your true potential and can support you throughout the process. The last thing you want is toxic people in your life trying to convince you that you are meant to stay small, just because they have never dared to jump into the bigger tank.
Dear little gold fish, I know you will soon realise that being alive is the greatest gift of all as you only get to live once, even though others might try to convince you that there is an “after-life”! So live your life to the fullest and play it with your rules. And most importantly: enjoy the process!
Humans have a long and complicated relationship with alcohol. Whether it is part of a social moment, relaxing alone, as part of your meal, celebrating for a special achievements and occasion, alcohol is rarely missing and it is very sought after.
It is a psychoactive (mind-altering) substance with depressiveeffects (slows down heart rate, breathing, thoughts and actions). The common denominator of all the alcoholic beverages is a chemical component called ethylic alcohol or ethanol. This is the only type of alcohol we can ingest without being poisoned.
Ethanol is the bio-product of a process called alcoholic fermentation, a process that takes place when certain microorganisms called saccharomyces attack rotten fruits eating their sugar and releasing ethanol and CO2 as a waste product.
When we drink alcohol, it flows from your mouth to your stomach where 20% of it will be absorbed entering into your blood. The rest of it will be absorbed by your small intestine. Once into the blood stream the ethanol will make its way to the liver which will try to get rid of it. To do so, the liver needs to break the ethanol molecules down using an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, which will oxydise ethanol that will then turn into a highly toxic component called acetaldehyde. The latter will then be metabolized by the liver using an enzyme called acetaldehyde dehydrogenase.
If the liver is exposed to more alcohol than its enzymes can handle in order to metabolize it safely, molecules of ethanol and acetaldehyde will continue their journey in the blood stream circulating in your whole body.
The first sign of alcoholic effect is an increased blood flow to the skin, that’s why highly vascularized areas of your body (such as the face) turn red, as well as feeling hot resulting in sweating and stinking of alcohol.
Another effect is the decreased release of the hormone vasopressin, which helps the kidney to regulate the amount of water in your body. This leads to a failure to absorb the amount of water that the kidney receive resulting in an increased urination and contributing to dehydration.
When the alcohol reaches the heart it expands and relaxes blood vessels (a phenomenon called vasodilation), resulting in a drop of blood pressure.
The heart will also pump the alcohol to your lungs, where it will be expelled from your body together with the CO2, giving that lovely, distinct, stinging and appealing smell to your breath.
But the real fun starts when alcohol reaches the brain. As for all the drugs (Yes! Alcohol is a drug), alcohol alters the normal functioning of the neurotransmitters in the brain and this leads to all the classic behaviors of a drunk person.
It increases the production of a neurotransmitter called GABA, which causes sleepiness, slow movements and thoughts, and delayed reaction times.
It decreases the production of the neurotransmitter Glutammate, which is responsible for disinhibition and the exaggerated emotional response. It also decreases our attention and compromises our memory.
It increases the production of Dopamine, which causes a sense of happiness and gratitude, as well as hyperactivity and euphoria.
When you wake up the following morning the real fun starts: headache, dry mouth, clumsiness, upset stomach, nausea, and most importantly a huge sense of regret.
As mentioned before, alcohol diminishes the production of vasopressin, which leads to dehydration. When our body is dehydrated, it tries to take water from whatever source possible, and one of the places where your body will source water is your brain. This leads the brain to shrink in size, creating a lot of tension between the membranes that line your brain and keep them attached to the skull (meninges). The dehydration is also made worse by vomiting, which is extremely common when people go way over the limits.
Also, alcohol il extremely aggressive for you stomach inner lining (mucosa) and can cause irritation. The following morning it is very possible that you wake up with an upset stomach, heartburn, andstomach pain. The intoxicating effects of the acetaldehyde will cause the sense of nausea.
The only remedy out there that is 100% effective against hungover is: TIME. There tons of fake remedies out there that will try to sell the best solution for an hangover: coffee, cold shower, eating, going for a walk, and God knows what else. They certainly help, but the truth is that there is no scientifically proven method that is valid against the hangover. All you can do is to take care of the symptoms: pain killers for headaches, plenty of water, eat something nutritive and not too demanding for your stomach.
The organ that is damaged the most for alcohol is your liver, and this damages can lead to conditions such as hepatic cirrhosis, cancer, or hepatitis. Cancer can also arise in the digestive tract as a result of alcohol consumption.
In the heart, it increases the chances of having hypertension, strokes and heart attack. It also affects the reproductive system with decreased sex drive, infertility and erectile dysfunctions (in men).
Alcohol can lead to addiction too, and it can give rise to mental health problems such as depression, psychosis, and eating disorders.
Red wine, when consumed in moderation, is actually thought to be good for your heart and health in general. This is due to polyphenols, antioxidants present in red wine, specifically Resveratrol, an antioxidant which might help to prevent damage to blood vessels, reduce low-density lipoproteins (LDL) cholesterol and prevents blood clots.
The reason why Resveratrol is more present in red wine is because this antioxidant comes from the skin of grapes used to make wine, and red wine is fermented with grape skin longer than white wine, hence red wine contains more Resveratrol.
The scientific consensus on this is quite mixed and more research is needed to prove or disprove the positive effects of Resveratrol.
Your body generally takes one hour to process one standard drink, or more conveniently one unit, which equals to 10ml or 8g of pure alcohol.
In the table below you can find some references on what 1 standard drink can be equal to.
N. Of Standard Drink
Drink
oz/ounces
ml
% of Alcohol
1
Beer
12oz
340
5
1
Wine
5oz
147
12
1
Liquor
1.5 ounces
42
40
Units
It can be hard to keep track of the alcohol ingested, especially because it comes in different glasses and different servings. A simple way to measure alcohol is through units, which is usually expressed by the standard measure of alcohol by volume (ABV). It indicates the amount of pure alcohol as a percentage of the total volume of liquid in a drink.
It is simple to work out how many units of alcohol are there in a drink. You simply have to multiply the total volume of a drink (in ml) by its ABV (in %) and dividing the result by 1000.
Strength (ABV) x volume (ml) / 1000 = units
For example, if I want to find out how many units of alcohol are contained in my small glass of red wine, knowing that it has a strength of 12% and I am drinking 140ml:
Alcohol stays in your body longer than you think. You can find below how long alcohol can be detectable for with these different tests.
Type of test
Time After Consumption Alcohol is Detected
Urine Test
14-48hr
Breath Test
24hr
Hair Test
90 days
How much alcohol consumption is considered a safe limit?
According to the NHS, to keep health risks from alcohol to a low level if you drink most weeks, men and women are advised not to drink more than 14 units a week on a regular basis.
Parkinson’s law is one of those things that you have been applying over and over again in your life without knowing that it had a fancy name.
Before I go into its nitty gritty, I like to start with some real-life examples.
So, story time: a few years ago I was studying at Uni and it was that dreadful moment when students have to do their dissertation. It is everything but unexpected, in fact it is one of those things that you know is approaching and you tend to prepare or think about it well in advance, even before it is formally communicated that you need to start preparing one. At first the deadline seems to be so far away and you think that it is more than enough to complete it, even though you are aware that there is a lot of work to be done.
Weeks and months, precisely six months, went by and I have gradually got to a fairly satisfying point with it after what I thought it was a lot of work and effort been put into it.
Ten days prior to the submission deadline, my laptop decided to instantly die and that event announced the beginning of a period that could probably justify my receding hairline and my myopia. Long story short: I had no back-up of my work (smart as*); I had to send the laptop off to repair that would have taken up to one month to get it back; asked for an extension of the deadline but the mitigating circumstances form to do that did not have the relevant box to tick saying “due to my dumbas* skills of ruining six months worth of work” – the other available options were “illness”, or “death of a close relative”, both unjustifiable and unethical in my case; I did not want to accept a lower mark for a late submission.
After a quick realization that I had just put myself in a ridiculous situation, I needed to think of a plan straightaway! A late submission was not an option and I was actually wasting more time complaining and self-pitying than taking actions. So I went to the University library and started writing my dissertation again on the public computer. You can only imagine what an emotional trauma it was when opening Microsoft Word and start typing on a blank page is. The first thing I did though is to go on Apple.com and purchased a MacBook Pro with all the best parameters that I could select as well as buying a 1T external memory. That was expensive!! But it also gave me the possibility to work from home. At that point I only had one week to finish my dissertation. I set all the non-important stuff apart and concentrated all my energies in it.
Well, spoiler alert: I just made it in time. And I was very surprised to find out that it received a top mark with a great feedback.
This left me with a double feeling: a boost of self-esteem and being proud of myself for being so productive and disciplined to complete this task in time, and the realization that I had wrongly spent the time I allocated to complete that task with less relevant and time-consuming activities.
This is an extreme example, but I can talk about hundreds of other instances where setting up a deadline for a task led to its completion within that time. And I am sure you can think about some examples too.
Well, this is Parkinson’s law, which states that
A given task will swell to fill the time allocated to it.
It simply means that if you give yourself a month to complete a two hour task, then (psychologically speaking) the task will increase in complexity and become more daunting so as to fill that month. It may not even fill the extra time with more work, but just stress and tension about having to get it done. By assigning the right amount of time to a task, we gain back more time and the task will reduce in complexity to its natural state.
So, for example, if you decide that you have to moan the loan (usually a one-hour job) within the next 3 days, chances are that you will spend the first two days procrastinating, leaving the task on the last available day, or even on the last available hour.
Likewise, if you give yourself one week to write a blog post with the publishing day being on Monday, chances are that you haven’t done anything the whole week, it is Sunday night and you are sat on the sofa writing it – just like me now.
Parkinson’s law helps you manage your time more efficiently in order to be more productive and it will work if there is a perceived importance assigned to that task.
When reading “Mastery” by Robert Greene, I came across an interesting concept when he said :
Edison deliberately talked to the press about an idea before it was ready. This would create some publicity and excitement in the public. If he dropped the ball or let too much time pass, his reputation would suffer. So his mind would spark into high gear and make it happen.
Parkinson’s law might be seen as procrastination, and you might think “Can’t be bothered with this task now, Parkinson’s Law will save my as* as always.” Instead, it has to be seen as a powerful time-management tool to be totally focused in what you do.
So, here are my top 7 tips to implement Parkinson’s Law at your advantage effectively:
Always assign a deadline
Having a list of things to tick off on your list is good, but if you want to take your productivity habit to the next level, start to assign a deadline to each task. Also, sort them by their importance, with the most important ones being on top of the list and the least important being placed at the bottom.
Challenge your time limits
If you know that with no distractions you can clean your house in three hours, try to narrow this deadline down to two hours or less. Try to train your brain to function within clear and set deadline. If you assign a three hours space to clean your house your brain will automatically spread the tasks evenly to fill these three hours, like wise when you shrink it down to two hours the brain will apply the same mechanism.
Be realistic
By now you might think that Parkinson’s Law is pure magic, and that you can be more productive than you have every been my completing 100 tasks a day assigning 5 minutes to each of them.
The truth is that you still have to be realistic when assigning a task. You can’t build a skyscraper in one day, nor cooking Lasagna in 5 minutes. The more you consciously apply Parkinson’s Law, the more you become aware of the realistic time that certain tasks will take, and this will help you to budget your time more efficiently and realistically in the future.
Make it measurable
How do you know when something is done and can be ticked off your list? Well, it is difficult to tell if the task is too vague. For example, if there is a huge difference between “work on web development” and “work on the responsiveness of the website”. The former one is too vague and it is difficult to tell when I would be done with it; the latter instead, allows me to tick the task off once I know that I have made the website responsive and it also helps me to assign a more realistic time frame to it.
What’s next?
Don’t fall into this trap. Once you reach the last task on your list, always set a task to do next.
Even though you have set your last task to take ten minutes, it is very likely that one hour goes by and you still haven’t finished the last task. This is because your brain starts to think that there is nothing else coming next, and that the last task, as simple as it can be, it has no time limit.
Break down big tasks.
If you are at Uni and you are assigned a coursework to be delivered in three months, try to break down this big task in multiple little tasks and assign a deadline to each of them.
So, instead of having “Finish your coursework” on your list with the deadline being in three months, try to write down:
“Research Topic and write down resources – Deadline 3 days”
“Write Introduction Draft- Deadline: 1 Week”
“Write Main Body Draft – Deadline – 3 weeks”
And you can even break it down even further, so for example “write 300 words of the body – Deadline: 30 minutes”.
This will make sure you will be always on it, working with manageable bite sizes mini tasks.
Short time is not equal to less quality.
Sometimes we wrongly think that the shorter the time we have to complete a task the lesser the quality will be. We think that the longer it takes to complete something the more perfect the end result will be. This is not true because if we have more time than we actually need, we will probably fill that extra time with non-related activities, unnecessary anxiety, and unnecessary extra effort.
Tim Ferris in his book “the 4-hour work week” states:
The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to a greater focus.
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