Volume 4 · The Ledger and the Loom · Essay 17

Back Pocket Three

You may not know the name Back Pocket Three, but you know the thing. This page only introduces the two of you formally.

What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.

Watch two shopkeepers in the same lane during a lean month. One cuts quality, the other cuts margin. In a year, one has customers and the other has stock.

Money is a good clerk and a terrible master; the arrangement is entirely up to us. Keep the name. Use the pause it gives you. That is the entire homework.