How to Add Three Years to Your Life (Without Really Trying)

If I could genuinely add three years to your life, would you read the next 700 words?

Of course you would. And that’s the power of So What.

One of the things I goon about in my presentation workshops is that before you think about confidence, storytelling, slides or body language, you need to answer one simple question:

So what?

Why should your audience care? What’s in it for them?

Get that right and you can get away with an awful lot. In fact, I often tell delegates that if your So What is powerful enough, you can present quite badly and still make a huge impact.

I once worked with a speaker who earned well over £1 million a year giving just two 45-minute talks a week. His delivery wasn’t brilliant. Quite monotone, if I’m honest. But buried inside every talk was about twenty minutes that was absolute gold. 

So… back to those three extra years.

And what does a famous London hater, doom-scrolling and presentation skills possibly have in common?

The catalyst happened at about eleven o’clock Friday night. I’d been doom-scrolling again, wandered onto Facebook and ended up replying to a very wealthy American's latest posts suggesting London had become some sort of dystopian nightmare. Normally I try to inject a bit of humour. Friday night I just ranted for a couple of sentences. Not the sort of stuff I would be proud of. But it was one of those  – "Ha ha  - that told you!" moments - which irritates a couple of folk in Iowa and a bot in Vladivostok but is otherwise quickly forgotten in the ether of social media nonsense.

But next morning I woke up a bit embarrassed and  thought enough was enough.

No more endlessly checking the BBC News website. No more drifting into the sport pages “just for five minutes.” And... no more Facebook.

Well… at least until New Year’s Eve.

If I want the news, I’ll watch the lunchtime bulletin. Twenty minutes is enough. After all, how much news does one person actually need?

Then I did the maths. I reckon I spend somewhere between ten and twenty hours a week doom-scrolling and on Facebook. Let’s call it fifteen, although that’s probably a bit like when the doctor asks how many units you drink each week and you suddenly become remarkably optimistic about what counts as a unit.

Fifteen hours is basically a waking day every week.

That’s fifty days every year. Now let’s optimistically assume I’ve got another twenty-one years (it's easy for the maths) before my memory starts confusing people’s names, where I’ve left my glasses and why am I in the attic (which of course is something I don't do at all the moment).

One seventh of twenty-one years… is three years.

Three whole years that I’m voluntarily swapping for arguments I’ll never win and headlines I’ll have forgotten by the next time I've wandered into the attic.

I mentioned this over breakfast to my daughter while indulging in what all fathers enjoy: a little virtue signalling. She quickly worked out that, at her age, she’d save nearer ten years. Mind you, her weakness isn’t Facebook. It’s Instagram. Then again, she’s heading into the film industry, where Instagram is almost compulsory, so who am I to judge?

What surprised me wasn’t really the maths. It was how the morning felt.

I’d had breakfast with my daughter without looking at my phone. I’d proudly announced my new philosophy to my wife (who wasn't as impressed as I was). Then I’d wandered down to the shoe repair shop and got my lawnmower blade sharpened, which is just the sort of thing a middle-aged men should be doing on a Saturday morning. But I’d tidied my office, written this blog, done some more virtue signalling to a couple of mates I met in the town...

Then I did something I almost never do.

I had an afternoon nap.

Normally I’d have felt guilty. I was spending this extra time like a millionaire. 

Will this last?

Who knows.

My first target is simply to make it to New Year’s Eve.

Which brings me back to where we started.

Whether you’re writing a presentation, pitching an idea, leading a meeting or trying to persuade people to read a blog called How to Add Three Years to Your Life, the same principle applies. Before you worry about being funny, polished or memorable, ask yourself one question:

So what?

Why should anyone care? 

There’s a wonderful exercise called Why x 7. Keep asking why somebody should care - but 7 times over. Eventually you stop talking about your subject and start talking about your audience.

As for the three extra years, I’m not pretending the maths is scientifically rigorous. I’ll almost certainly fall off the wagon - although not yet. But that morning felt different – as though somebody had quietly handed me back part of a Saturday that I’d been giving away for years without even noticing.

And perhaps that’s the real So What. It’s not that we live longer. It’s that we spend a little more time living the life we’ve already got - and get that lawn mower blade sharpened.

Ciao for now.