Fitness-Display Theory

The Fitness-Display theory will not change your day, but it may change what your day means. That is not nothing.

The theory's gift is vocabulary. Once you have the word, you can see the thing — in your office, in your family, in the news. Before the word, it was only a vague discomfort after dinner.

The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.

Every January, the gym fills; by March, the regulars have the place to themselves again. The calendar changed nothing. The people who stayed simply stopped asking the calendar for permission.

Time is the one currency the Reserve Bank does not print more of. Keep the name. Use the pause it gives you. That is the entire homework.