1 in 8 men in the UK get prostate cancer, according to the charity Prostate Cancer UK, and the risk of prostate cancer doubles if you're black. It's also the second most common cause of death from cancer for men in the UK, after lung cancer.

Prostate cancer is not always life-threatening, but an early diagnosis can be life-saving. So, for Men's Health Week 2024, I worked with experts at Prostate Cancer UK to visualise how screening for and diagnosing prostate cancer has changed. In short, it's more accurate and safer than before and needn't rely on a chance conversation to trigger a discussion—you can do a 30s online check for your prostate cancer risk on the Prostate Cancer UK website right now.

The new way has reduced reliance on the imperfect DRE (digital rectal examination—the test that might come to mind for many). After a suspicious PSA blood test result, you can be referred for a pre-biopsy MRI scan. Clinical trials show that pre-biopsy MRI triage can rule out 27% of men from having an unnecessary biopsy (a biopsy is when a doctor removes some cells for analysis).

Biopsies have also improved and can now be guided by imaging, allowing doctors to identify the areas of the prostate they need to biopsy. It makes it safer and has fewer side effects.

These changes, together, mean fewer unnecessary biopsies and diagnoses that find a higher proportion of clinically significant cancers over clinically insignificant cancers (which may not require treatment), meaning fewer men are at risk of harm from the screening.

Rob Bell, host of the Sketchplanations podcast among many other talents, is an ambassador for Prostate Cancer UK, which supports our "dads, brothers, partners and friends by raising awareness, funding life-changing research, campaigning for change and providing much-needed support." Rob made the connection (this isn't a paid promotion), and you'll hear our discussion with Amy Rylance, Assistant Director of Health Improvement, on how screening has changed in this week's podcast.

Medical research and knowledge is always changing. This sketch has been checked by the team at Prostate Cancer UK based on research. See, for example, the article Fewer Men Face Harm in Prostate Cancer Diagnosis. It's intended to raise awareness, help early diagnosis now or in the future for men reading this, and maybe even save a life. If you have feedback or comments on it, please do write to me: jono.hey@gmail.com

Didn't know when Men's Health Week was? I learned that International Men's Health Week is the week preceding and including Father's Day.

Don't forget, you (or someone you know or love) can do a 30s online prostate cancer risk check online now.

Aside from helping your father avoid prostate cancer, he might like a copy of Big Ideas Little Pictures.

Reference: Most common causes of cancer death

Detecting prostate cancer: old way, new way

Cake Wrecks is the blog and book of when professional cakes go hilariously wrong, by Jen Yates. But a cake wreck is also a useful metaphor for how easy it can be to misinterpret instructions—often by simply taking something literally when it was expected to be interpreted. Examples from Jen's collection include a smart-looking cake with "Nothing" written across the front, a graduation cake with "I want sprinkles" next to a graduation cap, or a cake sporting a full "Happy birthday on a gluten-free cake." If you haven't seen them, you could do much worse than look some up now. It's easy to laugh at these examples, but it's also easy to find real examples in day-to-day work.

I learned about cake wrecks from Jeff Patton's excellent book User Story Mapping. He gives cake wrecks as an all too common example of communication in software development. For example, a user story or specification for a feature is written and passed on to developers who, in the absence of other communication and with perhaps cultural or status barriers, may carefully build exactly what is written rather than what the writer intended. Cake wrecks are funny and silly—except if it was for your special occasion—but mistakes in projects are expensive in time, money and relationships and are worth avoiding.

The recipe for avoiding a cake wreck is, in principle, simple:

Don't assume that what you see is what someone else will see

Use stories and specifications as tools for talking about what's needed and not as equivalents of it

Create a safe space for everyone to question what they don't understand or don't agree with

Give everyone the 'why' behind a project and autonomy and flexibility to suggest other ways to meet the goal

Check in during a project and adjust as needed

Cake wreck

What does biweekly mean to you? How about bimonthly or biannually?

While each of us will have our own, perhaps unambiguous, reaction to it, the word biweekly is interpreted as "twice a week" or "once every two weeks." I know this from personal experience of confusing people en-masse. The dictionary even carefully, if unhelpfully, defines it as meaning either. It's a strange quirk of the English language. But it's so handy, what to do? An excellent, concise solution is the word fortnightly.

Fortnightly has the helpful unambiguous quality that it means "once every fortnight," so "once every two weeks." And it's also just one word. If something happens "two times a week," I think you need to spell it out or use "twice a week" or perhaps "every Monday and Thursday." Or perhaps semi-weekly might give you some mileage.

The same source of confusion applies to the words bimonthly and biannually—to be sure of being understood correctly, it's best to avoid them. Phrases like "every second month," "every two months," "twice a month," or "two times each year" are helpful here.

Ambiguity in how we talk about time is also illustrated in some of my favourite research done by Lera Boroditsky. For example, if I say, "The meeting on Wednesday has been moved forward by two days," when is the meeting now? It turns out that people are split on whether the meeting is now on Monday or on Friday. And I remember a fascinating example of the Kuuk Thayore aboriginal people in Australia who don't use words like left and right, and instead, always use the cardinal directions like north, south, east and west—"Oh, there's an ant on your southwest leg". There's a taster in her talk, How Language Shapes the Way we Think.

Fortnightly

A Pyrrhic victory is one where your own losses or damage make it nearly as costly as defeat.

Perhaps that business rival finally went out of business after you lowered prices so much that you can now barely get by. Maybe you managed to prove you were right at the cost of ruining a relationship. Or it could be that the kids did in fact get in the car and go out on that blasted walk only for everyone to have a miserable time, angry at each other for the rest of the day.

Or maybe, as King Pyrrhus of Epirus found in 279 BCE, you won several battles against the Romans while losing so many of your best warriors as to make you wonder at the worth of the whole campaign.

Pyrrhic victory

Optimism bias is believing things will turn out well despite past evidence or circumstances.

It can be extremely helpful. It allows us to attempt things that many may deem impossible. It probably helps motivate entrepreneurs even when everyone doubts them. Optimists are often healthier and happier.

We might overestimate our chances of success because of what we want to happen rather than what's likely to happen.

We may feel pressure from others to give a rosier outlook — like when you might underestimate a timeline when speaking with your boss.

We might want others to succeed, or they may be paying us money and hoping for good news.

We probably think we'll get more done next week. 

We probably think we'll be more disciplined than we will be.

We might think that this time it'll be different or that everyone can't be wrong.

Or we may be just discounting evidence without realising it.

Optimism bias

How do you avoid confusion when spelling things out verbally, particularly when the sound isn't clear or there may be background noise? So, for example, something like Y I V B D T doesn't unintentionally get heard as Y Y B P D D. Or perhaps as I Y P V T D. A lot of letters sound similar.

A phonetic alphabet, or spelling alphabet, is a way to ensure all letters are unambiguously heard correctly by using words starting with each letter. The set of words was chosen from 1,000s of tests, including real-life ones, to maximise clarity and avoid overlapping sounds with other letters that might cause mix-ups. When written out they include deliberate misspellings Alfa and Juliett to avoid misinterpretation.

The NATO phonetic alphabet is a standard one, but there are other variations.

Phonetic alphabet

Phubbing is snubbing people for your phone.

We've probably all experienced it—heck, we've probably all done it at one point or another—or at least it's likely familiar. It could involve someone in a restaurant waiting for their friends to put their phones down, a family gathering where people are no longer talking to each other, a teacher without the attention of their students, or a child failing to get the attention of an adult who's trying to process some messages on their phone.

Research on phubbing, mostly since the word was coined, says it largely has the effects you'd think it would. The effects vary with who's being phubbed and who's doing the phubbing: bosses and employees, family members, parents and kids, or partners. Whoever's phubbing who, snubbing is a suitable root word for it — it's not so nice to feel snubbed.

I learned about phubbing from the Mind over Tech community, which also publishes a newsletter on forming better digital habits.

The word phubbing has the unusual distinction of being created for an advertising campaign to sell a dictionary.

See, for example, Knausenberger, J. et al. (2022). Feeling Ostracized by Others’ Smartphone Use: The Effect of Phubbing on Fundamental Needs, Mood, and Trust. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.883901

For more phone annoyance, see Halfalogue.

Phubbing, you may have spotted, is a portmanteau

Phubbing

Sharpen the saw is a metaphor and story to remind us to refresh and recharge ourselves.

When you're deep in, it may feel like you have no time to pause. No time to take a break, there's too much to get done. Perhaps no time to stop and think about how you're working. No time to step back and improve your processes or work on your tools. Maybe even no time to look after yourself, to recharge, to reflect, to take a walk.

As the metaphor goes, you may feel you have no time to stop and sharpen the saw. Until you do it, and then you may realise you have no time to not stop and sharpen the saw.

Sharpen the saw is habit 7 of Stephen Covey's classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Sharpen the saw

Groupthink arises from the desire of a group to maintain harmony and consensus. Groupthink can reduce the diversity of ideas and opinions — people can seek to avoid conflict, or avoid expressing unpopular views, and end up thinking down the same path. When psychological safety is low and people feel they may experience disapproval, particularly from people with higher ranking or status within the group, groupthink can get worse.

It can be uncomfortable to express opinions different from a group. Perhaps you remember that feeling when a teacher asked a question in class and if everyone raised their hand to one answer it wasn't always easy to be the only hand up for a different one.

Fortunately, there are some solid ways to minimise the tendency to groupthink. These include:

Generating ideas separately before coming together — can be effective remotely too

Increasing psychological safety so everyone feels comfortable expressing contrarian views

Establishing the norm of a shared work product rather than individual credit/blame

Groupthink

A pleonasm is using redundant words, often in established phrases or idioms.

I tried to write something to explain it, but it's hard to beat this excellent excerpt by the comedian George Carlin from When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops — spot the pleonasms:

"My fellow countrymen, I speak to you as coequals, knowing you are deserving of the honest truth. And let me warn you in advance, my subject matter concerns a serious crisis caused by an event in my past history...At that particular point in time, I found myself in a deep depression, making mental errors which seemed as though they might threaten my future plans. I am not over-exaggerating.

I needed a new beginning, so I decided to pay a social visit to a personal friend with whom I share the same mutual objectives and who is one of the most unique individuals I have ever personally met. The end result was an un­expected surprise. When I reiterated again to her the fact that I needed a fresh start, she said I was exactly right; and, as an added plus, she came up with a fi­nal solution that was absolutely perfect.

Based on her past experience, she felt we needed to join together in a com­mon bond for a combined total of twenty-four hours a day, in order to find some new initiatives. What a novel innovation! And, as an extra bonus, she presented me with the free gift of a tuna fish. Right away, I noticed an immedi­ate positive improvement. And although my recovery is not totally complete, the sum total is I feel much better now knowing I am not uniquely alone.”

Other examples people have shared with me include one-year anniversary and revert back. The other day, I wrote "new discoveries", which Grammarly helpfully suggested shortening to "discoveries." I also wrote "we haven't met before" before deleting "before" along with a face-palm.

Pleonasm

Fungible goods are mutually interchangeable in that, in principle, you could swap in any unit for any other unit of the same type or kind, and it would be equivalent.

Money is a classic fungible good. A $10 bill is equivalent to any other $10 bill, so if you were to borrow $10 from someone, they wouldn't care or expect to get the same $10 bill back.

Non-fungible goods are unique and not mutually interchangeable. Each house, even cookie-cutter houses, is in a unique location with different neighbours, quirks, and histories.

A print of the Mona Lisa on your wall is not the same as having the original from the Louvre. Swapping people between work teams, even people with similar experience, will still result in different outcomes.

Distinguishing Fungible from Non-Fungible Goods

A nice thought experiment to distinguish fungible and non-fungible goods is to ask if, if you were to borrow one, it would make a difference if you returned a different one.

For example, if you were to borrow my car, you could return it to me with a different tank of fuel (a fungible good), and it wouldn't make any difference to me. But if you were to return a different used car (a non-fungible good), that would be rather odd.

If you've heard of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and would like to understand their flaws and promise better, I recommend the NFT Freakonomics episode of the 3-part series What can Blockchain do for you?

Related Ideas to Fungible and Non-fungible Goods

Fungible - non-fungible

Heat islands are urban areas that can have higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas with more greenery.

Heat islands are caused by several factors, including:

the types of materials we use in cities for buildings, pavement, and roads that can absorb more heat than natural surfaces such as leaves or grass

human additions to the sun's heat, such as air conditioning, vehicles, cooking, or machinery

the shapes of our cities that may restrict airflow to carry heat away

the mass of our buildings that can absorb heat and release it gradually, even through the night

More natural, often rural areas with greenery may reflect more light, release moisture and provide shade.

There are ways to help reduce the effect of heat islands, such as planting more urban trees or using green roofs.

Deciduous trees have the handy feature of providing shade for a house in the summer while letting light through in the winter when the leaves fall.

A study using 2015 data found that "doubling tree cover in European cities could cut the number of heat-related deaths during summer months by nearly 40 per cent." In Columbia's Medellín, creating 30 Green Corridors helped to reduce temperatures by 2°C in the first three years of the program.

Learn more about the heat island effect on the EPA site.

Heat islands

Only dead fish go with the flow. To me, this is a nice reminder to swim your path in life and be true to yourself.

I heard about this from Patricia Ryan Madson in her book Improv Wisdom, and she, in turn, saw it in a Welsh pub.

"To reach a port we must sail. Sail, not tie at anchor. Sail, not drift."

Only dead fish go with the flow

There's an old story about the statistician who drowned after seeing that the average depth was 3ft. Averages, or in this case the mean, necessarily hide some data, but very often they also hide what's really going on.

Let's say you run a delivery service and have an average delivery time of one day, it could be that most deliveries are actually a few hours while a few particular ones have people waiting for a week. Or a figure of average incomes might hide that most people have low salaries and a few are millionaires. But just looking at the average you can't tell. Sometimes a different measure of central tendency, like the median, can provide a clearer picture.

Sheldon Zedeck, a UC Berkeley psychology professor who taught me about the design of experiments, gave wise advice: spend time with your data. Sometimes it's the only way to know what's happening for sure.

Sneaky averages

It's easy to want to fill an awkward silence. However, a pause in conversation is often a time for reflection. When conducting research, and maybe even in normal conversations, try to trust your questions and avoid filling the silence after asking a question. Just wait and listen.

My experience is that it's very easy to follow a nice open-ended question such as "How do you feel about it now?" with all sorts of qualifications or assumptions because silence feels uncomfortable.

It can quickly become, "How do you feel about it now?... I guess it must have been hard for you, right?" And instead of giving someone space to share a thoughtful answer of your open-ended question all you might get is a "Yes" and perhaps your chance of finding out what they really thought has gone.

Instead, have faith in what you ask and stick out the silence.

Don't fill the silence

I'd never heard the words flotsam and jetsam used in any way but together so had always assumed it was a term to mean general debris floating in the water or washed up. It turns out they have distinct meanings that also affect how they're treated by law.

Flotsam, from flotter to float, refers to debris accidentally lost or washed overboard, often from a shipwreck or accident.

Jetsam is debris that was deliberately jettisoned by a boat in distress, likely to try and lighten the load.

Being that flotsam was lost accidentally, under maritime law, it can be claimed by the original owner, but jetsam can be claimed by the person who found it.

The rubber duck in the sketch refers to the story of the thousands of rubber ducks that washed overboard (flotsam) in the Pacific ocean in 1992. Over the next 25 years, the ducks found themselves washed ashore all across the world revealing much of the ocean's currents as one giant connected system.

Flotsam and jetsam

Most of us behave differently in a flashy restaurant than we do in a job interview or at a funeral. We naturally tune our behaviour to our audience and environment.

As part of the metaphor of Life As Theatre with Social Life As a Performance, the famous sociologist Erving Goffman called this front stage behaviour — how we behave when people are watching. In contrast, we may only let our guard down and fully relax when we're by ourselves — here we're back stage.

In a flashy restaurant, wait staff will behave differently in their interactions with guests than they will out back in their break time, and you may find yourself saying a wine you've just tasted is lovely even when you don't think it is. Once you start thinking about front stage and back stage behaviour you'll spot the "performance" of social life throughout almost every daily interaction.

In his classic sociology book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman explains the front stage, the back stage, and more.

Front stage, back stage

Yak shaving describes how when setting out to do something, you found you had to first do something else, which needed you to finish this other thing, and so on until you found yourself shaving a yak, or equally unrelated activity, to do the first thing you set out to do.

It's pretty frequent in life — tidying your room? — and particularly resonates in software development, where when tackling one thing, you often find yourself fixing something else, which needs you to fix something else, and so on. Here's the ever brilliant xkcd on fixing problems.

Yak shaving features, lovingly polished, in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures.

Here's a brilliant 40s clip of Hal changing a lightbulb from Malcolm in the Middle, classic yak shaving

Early yak shaving features in the song There's a Hole in My Bucket in which fixing a bucket requires straw, which requires a knife to cut it, but the knife needs sharpening, which needs a stone, which is too dry and needs wetting with water, which needs fetching...with a bucket

The first I found of yak shaving was a short article on productivity in the first issue of Make magazine by Danny O'Brien and Merlin Mann.

Yak in the style of Alison Green and Adam Stower's excellent children's book, What can you Stack on the Back of a Yak?

Yak shaving

We all know that racing drivers overtake on the inside — it's the shorter, faster route. It was only relatively recently that I found how useful it can be on a long drive, too, not for racing but for using the bend on a multilane road for easier, safer overtaking.

Perhaps this scenario will resonate: after cruising at a steady speed for miles of a long journey you slowly catch up with a car traveling just a few miles an hour slower. You're not driving fast enough to zip by them, but the difference is enough to slow your steady progress on a long journey, and if you're driving near the speed limit anyway you probably don't want to accelerate much to overtake.

On a multi-lane road like a motorway or freeway — not a single lane road where you'd be overtaking with reduced visibility on the corner in the opposing lane — timing your overtaking so you're on the inside of a bend and the slower car is on the outside allows you to get round the slower driver in a shorter time and without needing to travel nearly as fast.

And the converse is also true: if you've timed your overtaking when approaching a bend where you'll be on the outside you'll find that you'll have to go a lot faster to get round or perhaps that your intended overtaking is actually not getting you past at all.

Passing on an inside bend

The essence of the bystander effect is that in a situation where someone needs help, if others are around who could help then it discourages us as individuals from stepping in.

While there may be many reasons for this, and it has been replicated in lots of different contexts, a recent study of CCTV footage paints a more optimistic picture. In the study they saw that although the likelihood of any individual intervening may be reduced with other bystanders present, the chances of someone coming to help increases the more people are around. In 9 out of 10 public conflicts they studied at least one person and often several came to help. So the lady in the sketch would probably be OK.

Given the bystander effect I remember being taught that if you are in a motor vehicle accident don't assume that someone has called for help already: it could help to choose someone directly and ask them to call for help to avoid everyone thinking everyone else will do it.

It reminds me of the story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody (also known as the responsibility poem):

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have.

The paper referenced is: Philpot, Richard & Liebst, Lasse & Levine, Mark & Bernasco, Wim & Lindegaard, Marie. (2019). Would I be helped? Cross-national CCTV footage shows that intervention is the norm in public conflicts. The American psychologist. 75. 10.1037/amp0000469. (pdf)

The Bystander Effect

Not all of us can ditch jobs, families and responsibilities and choose to spend the next few months trekking across some tundra or cycling to China. Those are adventures sure, but, argues Alastair Humphreys, we don't need something of that scale to get a perspective-shifting snap out of the daily grind and connection with nature — we can try a microadventure instead.

A microadventure might be as simple as camping in the garden with your family, paddling down a local river and camping on the bank, or staying the night on a nearby hilltop under the stars, catching the sunrise with a wild swim to wake up and being back in time for breakfast.

The essence is that they are short, simple, local, and cheap. No fancy gear, complex planning, big budgets or long travel. An achievable adventure for normal people without giving up the rest of our lives to do it.

In this time when bigger trips are difficult it seems that people have been spending more time exploring locally and finding out the richness of the natural spots that are nearby. We could all use a microadventure from time-to-time. 

Microadventure

An average car, sat idling, can produce exhaust emissions to fill 150 balloons. That's a lot of balloons to imagine puffing away out of the cars idling outside a school for a pickup, say. Other tests have found (pdf) that for any time over 10s fuel use and emissions are always greater when idling than turning off the engine and restarting. Spread the word.

Of course, if you have an electric car this won't apply.

I did draw 150 balloons, but a few of them didn't fit on the page.

Idling

In some forests where the trees grow tall and straight, like those in the US Pacific Northwest, when a giant tree falls, it creates an opening in the forest canopy that lets in light for new growth to take foot. The mighty fallen tree trunks themselves provide a new surface for seedlings to take root, away from the competition of the forest floor. When this happens, the fallen tree becomes an integral part of a new ecosystem.

Such fallen trees are known as nurse logs. Sometimes, a nurse log is so successful as a nursery for the young trees that they will grow along the full length of the fallen trunk. When the original trunk finally decays, it leaves behind it a remarkable, straight line of trees.

Nurse log

That satisfying, superior, and slightly sinful feeling you get when you see the police pull over the aggressive driver who just sped past you? That’s Schadenfreude.

Schadenfreude is the pleasure we take in someone else's misfortune. The word is a loanword from German, combining Schaden (damage, harm, or hurt) and Freude (joy or happiness).

Schadenfreude follows the same linguistic pattern as Vorfreude, which means anticipatory joy—the excitement we feel in anticipation of something positive.

At first glance, taking pleasure in someone else's hardship might seem unkind or even morally dubious. Is it a character flaw? Am I an evil person? Yet, on a little more reflection, we discover that Schadenfreude escapes few of us and is both commonplace and revealing about ourselves.

I hadn't thought much of Schadenfreude before reading some excerpts from Tiffany Watt Smith's book Schadenfreude. She makes a compelling case for examining the moments when we feel superior at another's expense as a small window into ourselves.

The moments we feel Schadenfreude—whether small or significant—often reflect our personal insecurities, values, or sense of justice. As Nietzsche described, Schadenfreude can be "the revenge of the impotent," emerging from feelings of powerlessness or envy.

A boost to self-esteem: When a colleague doesn't get a promotion, a little twinge of joy might reveal your jealousy of their situation or a deep-down resentment of unfairness.

Justice served: If the person who pushed in front of you in line drops their ice cream right after buying it, your satisfaction might be a sense of justice and equity for obeying the rules when they didn't.

A window into our values: Schadenfreude can highlight what matters to us, whether it's fairness, competition, or maintaining a sense of order.

Understanding these moments doesn't make the feeling disappear, but it can help us use Schadenfreude as an opportunity for self-reflection.

Schadenfreude in Films and Stories: The Villain's Comeuppance

At first, I thought that, like a Buddhist monk, I might rise above Schadenfreude and not let my weakness affect me. Yet, as we discussed it in our podcast on Schadenfreude, we realised that it's a common theme through so many Western stories and films.

An almost universal theme for films involving good guys and bad guys is the eventual comeuppance, or reckoning, for the evil protagonist. In other words, the bad guys tend to lose and suffer in a nasty way. You know, things like getting pushed out of an airlock, having to walk the plank themselves, or being bitten by their deadly pets. Consider James Bond saying "shocking" as the villain he's been battling falls onto electric lines.

Much the same as a mob may have felt when bringing a criminal to justice, typically, we don't pity the bad guy. Often, the writer intends the bad guy's nasty end and the good guy's triumph against adversity to be the most satisfying part of the film—Schadenfreude at work.

Schadenfreude is alive and well, in fact, practically encouraged in sports. In some ways, Schadenfreude is what many sports fans enjoy about sports.

Imagine if the winning fans always shook hands with the losing fans, saying, "Jolly well played, you were very unlucky," and the losers said, "You were just too good for us today; good luck to you." Much of the rivalry that so many enjoy in sports would be lost.

I know I've felt Schadenfreude when a player I dislike misses a penalty they didn't deserve—even when they're not playing against my team. It feels right, and it's hard not to feel satisfied. In fact, it feels good.

I also learned that football fans can feel greater joy when their biggest rivals lose than when their teams win.

Now, perhaps the world of sport would be a better place schadenfreude-free, but I can't see it happening any time soon.

While I can't wholly evade Schadenfreude, I aim to avoid its strong feelings. It makes no difference to me if a rude person later has a bad day. I should focus on what I can control and how I react to situations.

When someone is mean, it's better if they come to understand a little how their actions impact others than if they have a terrible time. Having a miserable time may cause them to reflect on their actions and be more considerate in future. Or, more likely, it will cause them to be bitter and have no change at all.

But when Schadenfreude strikes me, it's now an interesting opportunity for reflection. What does this feeling reveal about my values, and how can I use this insight to improve myself? Perhaps give it a try.

For a mini-intro to the intrigues of Schadenfreude, try Tiffany Watt Smith's TED Ideas article: Do you secretly feel good when others stumble? 5 ways to make peace with this very human emotion.

I revised this sketch for the book Big Ideas Little Pictures.

If you found Schadenfreude intriguing, you might enjoy these related concepts:

Vorfreude: The pleasure of anticipation—like the joy of looking forward to a holiday.

Fading Affect Bias: Why we tend to remember negative experiences less vividly than positive ones.

Emotional Hot Potato: How negative emotions can spread like a game of hot potato.

Fact Tennis: The competitive back-and-forth exchange of facts in conversations.

Self-serving Bias: Our tendency to attribute successes to our character and failures to external factors.

Schadenfreude

“Just remember that finishing lines are good, but their most important role is to get you over the start line in the first place.”

This little piece of wisdom is from Stevie Smith (not the poet). Stevie embarked on a human-powered journey around the world—Expedition 360—and reached Hawaii under pedal power*. I learned about him from a little chapter in One Man and His Bike by Mike Carter. As soon as I finished the chapter where he speaks with Stevie I immediately reread it.

Mike also shared this deeper and more poetic version of the same insight:

“Happiness is the acceptance of the journey as it is now, not the promise of the other shore”

*Stevie’s companion Jason Lewis completed the circumnavigation of the world 13 years after they began.

This quote, modified to a lovely two-page spread, features with a number of others in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures.

You can also listen to us discuss this sketch with the brilliant Brendan Leonard in the Sketchplanations podcast episode on Finishing lines

Finishing lines

The Peter Principle is that “every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

The logic of the Peter Principle of management

Someone good at their job is likely to get promoted. However, the promoted position will likely require different skills. If they’re good, they may get promoted again, but if not, they will stay. At some point, each employee in an organisation will be incompetent in their position.

The Peter Principle was an observation originally meant as satire. Laurence Peter later wrote a book called The Peter Principle: Why things always go wrong.

I like this short take on the Peter Principle by Tim Harford.

We discussed the Peter Principle in the Sketchplanations podcast. During the podcast, I learned about a counterpoint to the Peter Principle called the Paula Principle.

In his book, The Paula Principle: why women lose out at work ― and what needs to be done about it, Tom Shuller explains that the Paula Principle is "most women work below their level of competence."

Tom explains that the Paula Principle is caused by at least five factors: Discrimination, Caring responsibilities, Self-confidence, Lack of vertical networks, and what Tom calls Positive choice. Read more about the Gender, competence and the Paula Principle in the workplace.

The Peter Principle is a specific case, the case of people, of the Generalised Peter Principle which states that "Anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging situations until it fails." See rule number 1 of indoor games.

Keeping the Peter Principle in mind might help be more tolerant of mistakes from higher-ups—they may be out of their depth.

The Peter Principle is different from the Peter Parker Principle, which is: "With great power comes great responsibility." Though Spider-Man popularized this wise proverb, many precursors of the sentiment exist.

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