It’s easy to think “it’s just a few minutes.” But as the number of people that you hold up increases, the true cost of being late scales rapidly. Being 10 mins late to a meeting with 10 others is 100 minutes. Holding the door for 20s on a train of 600 people is over 3 hours of time collectively. Unless your time is worth a lot more than everyone else’s it’s worth thinking twice before holding the door to a train or not taking the start of a meeting seriously. I think, at the end of the day, it’s really about respect.

The cost of being late

So we all know the magical green chlorophyll, but leaves also contain carotenoids. As chlorophyll fades the golden oranges of carotenoids start to shine through. You may recognise one carotenoid, beta-carotene, from carrots. Another carotenoid, xanthophyll, is responsible for the beautiful bright yellows. The leaves of some trees also produce anthocyanin as Autumn begins that gives beautiful deep reds.

Autumn leaves and the compounds that cause their colours

You might think that adding more of a good thing would make things better? And, yes, that’s often true, up to a point. Beyond it, however, you may see the law of diminishing returns where adding progressively more of a single factor yields progressively lower benefits.

And we should also never forget that “more is different”.

The sketchplanation is a homage to perhaps my favourite comedy sketch with an early-career Simon Pegg in the series Big Train: the cake factory (video). Well worth two and a half minutes.

Law of diminishing returns