I know this looks like some impressive GitHub activity. I wish I was that active on GitHub! This is actually part of a project that I have with some friends, where every month we create a piece of art based on a word or short phrase. This month: DO IT!

This is to show that “it” is not really a single event, but an accumulation of daily change to reach your goal. However, when you zoom in, it’s not always, “Today is better than yesterday and tomorrow will be better than today”. There’s lots of ups and downs, but if you persevere, the general trend will be towards your goal. I’ve been told that ending it in red is misleading, because red signifies danger. But also, it’s WINNING! “We find that wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning.” Hill & Barton (2015) Nature.

This picture is to remind me to keep trying every day. Or at least most days! I have so many goals where my motivation comes and goes in waves. But if I keep putting in the time, it’s guaranteed that I’ll get better and better. So eventually one day I’ll be doing a walking handstand whilst speaking fluent German!

I also want to relate this attitude to a new maths course my mum is taking. She’s dyslexic, and so due to an uninformed education system several decades ago, she gave up on mathematics. But she’s always striving to take on new challenges. Impressive, and I hope I’ve inherited this trait! So in her late 60s she’s started an excellent course offered by the UK government called, Skills For Life. Below is one of the questions she’s got (and our lovely new dog Berry!) which states, Clive plans to walk with a friend along the Cliffs of Moher. Clive wants to carry a total of at least 3 litres of liquid to drink on the walk. He has 2 large bottles of water (750ml each), 2 small bottles of water (500ml each) and 2 cans of soft drink (330ml each). Does Clive have a total of at least 3 litres of liquid?

As someone who grew up with pounds and ounces, this is all foreign to her. However, she always has a fizzy drink in her hand. So I tell her to look at her bottle of Fanta. How many millilitres is it. 500. Right. What about this water bottle I have in my hand. 750. Okay, so if I have two of these water bottles, how many bottles of Fanta would be equivalent. Okay, so now what about this big bottle of water, 1.5 litres. And we do this for a few minutes. I encourage her to look at the weight of everything she eats and drinks to get her head around grammes, kilograms and litres. These simple daily (or mostly daily) checks will make these maths questions more direct to her actual life – skills for life! And so when answering a question about how much liquid Clive, and his mysterious friend, want to carry when walking the Cliffs of Moher, the most intriguing part will be… what are the Cliffs of Moher?

Cliffs of Moher – good choice Clive.