The most difficult type of optimism I’ve employed this week has had to do with my career. In six months I’ll be on tour (this sounds like an advert, but it’s not, except in the sense that everything I do is a plea for popularity I suppose). Six months sounds like a long time, but it’s a worryingly short time to sell a lot of tickets. Some shows are selling well; some, to be fair, aren’t. If we don’t sell enough tickets, there are two main consequences. The first, obviously, is that I don’t make as much money, which is a bit of shame with the increased financial pressure of ’supporting a family’; but the second – and more serious – is that I do a series of shows in half-full theatres, get a bit depressed (it’s almost impossible to feel like a show’s going well if there’s only half a crowd) and lose faith in my abilities. This has happened before but it can’t really be allowed to happen again.

As I mentioned when the Ten-Year Self-Improvement Challenge got underway, one of my aims in setting it up was to replicate, in a different, less sleep-deprived form, the communal atmosphere of the 24-hour shows. These celebrated and unpleasant events worked by setting up an enormous number of challenges, games, running jokes and stupid activities, and then sustaining them over a day-long period until everyone’s resistance had been worn down. The number of people signing up to the Challenge has been heartening, and by Thursday, we should have collected in reports on their success (or otherwise) in taking first steps this week. But in the meantime, I’d like to explore some other ways in which this 10-year blog can keep alive the traditions of the long show. Here are a few.

Firstly, GAMES. I began one on Saturday, by offering to give a free iPod to the person who made the best appeal for it, in mitigation of my slightly controversial remarks about the death of music radio. There have been quite a few moving appeals already. If you haven’t already, and you want to win an iPod, you have until this coming Saturday to post a suitably beseeching comment on that blog. I’ll reveal the winner the Monday after. And then, in suitably 24-hour-fashion, we are going to try to convey the iPod from me to the winner, by means of a human chain involving other readers of the blog. Fun!

Every week there will be a similar game or competition.

Secondly, ADMIN. Pointless admin, keeping tabs on the audience members coming and going, was always an enjoyable feature of the 24-hour shows. So: first of all, has anyone read the blog every day so far? These people are the equivalent of the ‘lifers’ who stuck out the whole of the marathon shows. I’d like to determine how many, if any, there are. Then we can keep track of them over the next ten years and see how many stay the course, and again, build up a community between them. When the TYSIC branch of the Fans’ Forum is set up, this will be even easier, but for now, feel free to register in the Comments section if you’ve been here for the whole time so far.

Then, CREATIVE PROJECTS. During the long shows there were often large-scale collaborative projects, like making a quilt with a patch for each country in the world, making a tapestry of history, writing a song to attract a celebrity to our clutches, sending someone to Paris and back, and so on. With so many people’s TYSICs being concerned with writing, music or arts of other kinds, it feels like we ought to have some enormous collective hobby to go back to now and again over the next 10 years: some huge piece of work that involves as many of us as possible. I’ve not thought of anything yet, but I thought I’d ‘put it out there’.

There are other aspects of the 24-hour show which are harder to translate to a virtual community, such as phoning radio stations to persuade them to send us breakfast. But I’m open to any ideas. A lot of today’s entry has been me thinking out loud, as they say, about ways to keep this blog interesting and collaborative. If there’s anything you would like the TYSIC community to tackle, do suggest it. Tomorrow I’ll try to assess the results of my first week as an official optimist. It’s going to be one hell of a blog.

Most of pop culture, obviously, has a kind of built-in naffness to it purely because it’s so much about the here and now. If you go out on a limb with massively over-stylised costumes and design like Cheryl Cole or Lady Gaga – let alone Jedward – you’re kind of acknowledging that you’re only likely to be relevant for a very short while, and thereafter you will always look a bit silly. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that – the Sex Pistols, the Kinks and the Manics all look pretty odd to today’s observer, but it doesn’t diminish the music; if anything their willingness to go to extremes makes them all the cooler in posterity’s eyes.

But what’s more interesting and odder is trying to work out what features of everyday life, away from the excesses of pop, are going to look comically outdated in twenty years’ time, or even ten years when this blog ends. Here are a few which occur to me but do feel free to add your own. I hope by bracing ourselves now, we’ll be less disconcerted when a young person in 2023 says ‘did you seriously do that?’ Or communicates it by whatever method’s replaced speaking by that point. SpaceSpeaking.

-Landlines. Not long ago I used to have to ask my dad if I could call my girlfriend, and then wait till after 6pm or until the weekend, and then stand in the hall trying to say things like ‘I love you too’ quietly enough for the family not to hear. Life-or-death situations, if they arose at breakfast, couldn’t be dealt with for nine hours until the cheaper rate kicked in. Now, it’s already coming to seem strange that we used to call buildings and hope someone was in there, rather than just call the person. Despite BT’s brave ‘if a conversation’s worth having, use the landline’ campaign, I doubt they’ll survive another couple of decades.

-Video tapes, obviously. ‘Wearing out the tape’. Taping over things. Your teacher not being able to ’work the video’ and having to call Mr Collins in. And so on.

-Encyclopaedias in book form. It used to be that a good middle-class family would invariably have a 67-volume encyclopaedia on their shelves, occupying an area the size of Dorset. Nobody ever looked anything up.

-Blackboards and chalk. Already it seems dated if, in a TV show, a teacher taps on the blackboard with chalk, instead of writing on a nice clean whiteboard. And thank God. I used to hate that screechy sound.

-Dare I say it, print newspapers. Well, not all of them. But in twenty years’ time I can’t imagine there will be as many of them around. Local papers, if they survive, will have to become free newsletters.

-Cash, eventually. I reckon within our lifetimes, we’ll be paying for even small things by scanning a card. Maybe we’ll have small change for emergencies, but the amount of money in circulation will be greatly reduced. Making and exchanging coins is one of these traditions which make sense to us, but will seem weirdly literal-minded to people of another generation. Likewise…

-…passports. Our kids will surely laugh at the idea of having a little maroon book to verify that you’re allowed to travel abroad. People mount strong opposition to the introduction of electronic cards instead of paper ID, but it’s an inevitable process, long-term. Surely.

-Someone tried to convince me the other day that dry toilet paper was unhygienic and everyone one day would use water or at least wet wipes. Not sure about this. This could be the area of life where people are most resistant to change. But you read it here first. 

-And, of course, blogging. What’s the point? Eh? All these bloody words! Dear me.

Remember to keep posting your progress on the TYSIC challenges. The time for our first weekly report is fast approaching…

Thanks to everyone who read my ‘secret’, i.e. non-Tweeted-about, blog yesterday. Many disagreed with me, but that is more than fine. I continue to be amazed by how many people can be bothered to listen to and even reply to my often ill-thought-out remarks. It’s doing my optimism campaign the world of good.

Since I began (admittedly only three weeks ago) I’ve succeeded in maintaining this blog on a daily basis despite the baby and so on, but today I’m going to give myself something akin to a ‘Sunday rest’. I’m old enough to remember (I hate starting sentences like that, but a lot of people who read this are about 18) when basically bugger-all happened on a Sunday. Pubs were, without exception, shut. Most shops were shut. There was, at most, one game of football on TV in the afternoon, and something like Ballykissangel in the evening. If people went and did stuff, someone from an older generation would raise an eyebrow in faint disapproval and say ‘and it was open on a Sunday, was it?’

Like many advances in society, the near-abolition of the Sunday rest-day was pretty sensible, but ever so slightly regrettable. So I’m going to take it easy today and I encourage you to do the same, or do something else that people used to do on Sundays, like believe in God or have some lamb. 

Quickly, though: a new feature called Gig Report. Aside from other things, I am, in fact, a comedian, and after the baby’s birth I’m slowly getting back into working. I thought it might be vaguely interesting for others, and for me in ten years, if I publish a little report on my efforts now and again. So – on Thursday I did a corporate gig, which went as follows. I’m laying it out like a real conversation to make it more homely.

GIG REPORT

What sort of gig was it, Mark? – I was hosting an award ceremony for marketing people. There were categories like Best Campaign Featuring Online Or Interactive Contact. In total I had to present 26 awards and do a bit of stand-up at the start. 

What were the audience like, Mark? – Jolly, slightly drunk people with quite big salaries. The men were clean-shaven and confident. The women, in a minority, were glammed up and focused-looking.

Were you good. Mark? – I wasn’t bad. I handled the arcane categories quite well and took the piss out of the event slightly without rubbishing people’s jobs and lives too rudely. 7/10.

See you next time, introspection fans!

Now it should go without saying that I’m opposed to closing 6Music, like almost everyone I know who’s ever listened to it, but - crucially – unlike the Director-General. The reasons have been well covered by other people: it’s the BBC’s best, most interesting music radio station, representing cutting-edge music where the likes of Radio 1 suck up to the Saturdays; it’s not right to close a station because it offers unacceptable competition to commerical channels, as has been absurdly claimed; its entire budget is the same as the BBC pisses away on people to write Jonathan Ross’s monologues, or wax Graham Norton’s face. And so on. And more worryingly still it’s a slippery slope: if the BBC sets this precedent, what other assets will it sell off or throw away once the Tories come to power? As I say, I’m in agreement with all these arguments and I would strongly recommend adding your voice to the dissent, writing to the BBC Trust, pretending you also care about the Asian Network, whatever it takes to at least make sure this isn’t done lightly.

But.

It does seem to me that the whole idea of ‘music radio’ is something of an anachronism in a world where we can all download any song in the known Universe, in a matter of seconds, for about 70p (and I’m aware that certain individuals also do it for free, but I can’t sanction that on this blog or we’ll slide into anarchy). 6Music was better than most because of people like Adam and Joe, Jon Richardson, and recently even the great Jarvis Cocker. But when I hear people saying ‘how am I going to hear good music now?’, I have this urge to go and buy them an MP3 player.

Nobody in this day and age needs to rely on radio for new music. You can go online and find out what’s good. You can download it in less time than it takes to go for a wee. Then you can set up your music player to play it, and everything else you like, forever. No adverts. No ‘you’re listening to…’ No chatter about current affairs. No news and sport every hour. Just music, the way it was meant to be listened to, for as long as you want.

Yes, I know people listen to things like 6Music for more than just the music; they like the badinage. But you can buy DVDs and CDs if you want to listen to comedians. You can get podcasts. You can watch the telly, even. There are more ways than ever, these days, of listening to funny people talking. What the world needs more of is people, quite frankly, shutting the fuck up and putting a record on. That’s something which even the best radio has struggled to provide consistently. But it’s something we can do all, in the comfort of our own homes, without producers’ playlists, without commercial interests playing a part in what we hear.

The evolution of music into digital forms has alarmed many traditionalists – and I’m pretty much a traditionalist myself – but all it really means is more power to the individual. Each of us is his or her own radio station now: that’s what the MP3 generation has inherited. And of course it has its pitfalls. If you choose unwisely you might be a bad radio station, like Heart. But get it right, and you can have 24-hour-7-days-a-week music that you, yourself, individually, want to listen to. And that’s even better than 6Music. If it makes you feel better, you can always say ‘you’re listening to Mark’s iPod’ between each track. Works wonders for me.

I’ve just read back through this and I realise it sounds a bit snooty saying ‘I have this urge to buy them an MP3 player’, because even shitty ones cost a bit of money, and not everyone has any money. So to pilot this blog back towards ‘fun’ than ‘preaching’, I’m going to buy one person an MP3 player. Just a cheap one, like an iPod Touch or something. To win it, you have to convince me you’re in the greatest need of it – i.e. you won’t be able to listen to decent music any more. The only catch is you might have to come to one of my shows to collect it, but you’d still be well in profit.

You have a week to leave the most deserving comment. Hehe. This is fun. I’d better hope no-one’s reading, with it being the weekend.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eleven-Mark-Watson/dp/1847379680/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267696844&sr=8-1

…so as a compromise I’m trying every week to tell people a little bit about the book. Also, it’s emerged from the Ten-Year Self-Improvement Challenge that a surprising number of people who read this blog are keen to write themselves – I would say ‘budding writers’ except I find that a horribly patronising term. And some have vowed to pursue this ambition as part of the TYSIC. So I’m hopeful those people might be interested to hear a bit about how I came to write this book, how you get a book published, how you avoid enormous fits of depression at the futility of your efforts, and so on.

Firstly, there is actually a bit of news about the book. It was going to be published in Australia some time around March 2011, a few months after the release here. However, quite a few Aussies have been kind enough to order it in advance, and as a result, the Aus publishers are going to bring it out at the same time as the British edition – that is, August this year. I’ll be coming over to Australia in September in all likelihood, and doing some sort of official book launch in Melbourne and hopefully a couple of other places too. So as well as buying the book online, Aussies will be able to get it in local bookshops from late summer (or, as you call it, late winter) onwards. This is very pleasing and special thanks go to anyone in the Antipodes who’s made the effort to place an order. The central character is Australian and some of the action takes place in Melbourne, so you can’t say I haven’t tried.

And now a bit more information about the novel itself. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s the culmination for me of a quite rocky couple of years in the ‘writing’ part of my career. I’d been with my publishers since I was 22, and written two novels, both of which were quite well reviewed, but sold pretty averagely. I wrote a new novel over the course of 2008 which I was very proud of. My publishers, though, thought it was too ambitious and had no chance of selling, so they dropped me. No-one else would pick up the book, as I now had the unfortunate reputation of having been ‘let go’. I was fairly screwed.

This precipitated a dark period for me, during which I had to face the prospect I might not be able to publish any more books in the foreseeable future and would have to relinquish the most dearly-held part of my ambitions for life, professionally speaking at least. The only possible solutions were to give up, or to write another novel. After flirting with the first option, I took the second. I wrote the new book, ‘Eleven’, in a frenzied period between April and October last year. It was a hard thing to do, because there seemed every chance I’d fail all over again and would have pissed away another six months; and, more to the point, this time it would be nearly impossible to come back again.

However, this time my luck turned; I’ve now got a much better publisher than the previous ones, and even if this book doesn’t sell all that well, at least I will have got it out there. The moral of this little story is the only important tip I can give anyone considering being a writer, which is that you really do have to be hell-bent on it, and keep coming back again and again from rejections. My first novel, Bullet Points, was turned down by 15 out of 17 publishers; the 2008 novel was turned down by everyone; and only this one publisher (Simon and Schuster) were prepared to gamble on the new book, Eleven. These are pretty miserable percentages, but they’re all you need to make headway. You only have to find a very small number of people who believe in what you’re trying to do: that’s one of key lessons I’ve learned from my career so far. But even to get to that stage, you either need elephant-thick skin, or – more likely – you need to be able to fake it.

Enough rattling on from me, I think. This new feature, ‘Poorly-Organised Thoughts About Writing’, returns next week. If you go to the new forum (www.markwatsonfans.com) over the next couple of days, I’ll be posting details of how you can get advance copies of the novel well before it comes out. And keep going with the challenges: whether you’re writing, beekeeping, or travelling to the Gobi Desert I shall expect news by Thursday 11^th.

 Today we begin the Ten Year Self-Improvement Challenge (TYSIC), with more than 200 people – in theory, at least – taking on a personal goal, bound by the cast-iron commitment of an impulsive comment scribbled on a blog. The sheer number of comments and the enthusiasm shown made me tremendously pleased with life. Of course, when we get to 2020 we’ll see how many of these noble pledges have been met; how many fallen by the website. But it’s a good start.

There were a few obvious patterns to the resolutions. An intriguing number of people are keen to get into either writing or stand-up comedy. These are fields where I can offer a tiny amount of guidance, so for these people, I’m going to do occasional blogs focused on them. Then, there are challengers with all sorts of other career aspirations, which include darts pro, librarian, cake-maker, underwear designer, actor, BBC commissioner, and a lot of vaguer promises to get a better job.

Quite a few people are looking for romance, or hoping to progress from romance to marriage and kids. Several want to travel to specific places, including at least two who plan to set foot in every continent, and should surely team up and go together. A number have vowed to learn an instrument, or write songs. And then there are some delightfully bizarre challenges which don’t fit into any category. 

On a more philosophical note, a significant number of people followed my ‘optimism’ lead and are setting out to become more confident, less scared of conversation, less self-critical, happier with themselves, and so on. I wish these people even more success than everyone else. And kudos to the two or three who said that even writing a comment on the blog represented the first step towards that.

The whole idea of this venture – as with the 24-hour shows – is that by mutual encouragement we proceed towards these aims together, a bit like an Online Weight Watchers without the sinister advertising, and with me. So, soon there will be an online community (currently being designed by the web-wizard Linzy) where you can log in and describe your progress as often as possible. For now, I hope people will keep writing comments on their own and each other’s efforts.

So: it begins. This week, i.e. before next Thursday, I challenge everyone to take one step towards their TYSIC. It could be a bold, reckless gesture; it could be something tiny. It could take you most of the way to your ultimate aim, or just be a tip-toe in its vague direction. But do something. And comment about it. And we’ll see where we are a week from now.

Good luck everyone. Below, I’ve picked out some of the many challenges people have set. This is only a small sample, designed to give a sense of the varied nature of the goals (and a few which just made me laugh). It’s enough to whet anyone’s appetite, I think. I think this could be quite cool.

Go!!

Catherine I will be 63 in ten years. I am a divorced mother of three. I am back in college (again). I am majoring in Spanish. My goal is to be finished before the alimony runs out, start a career that will support me in the manner I’ve always dreamed of, and to live in another country (Europe or South America). This is what I want to do when I grow up.

Alice The hardest acrobatic move I could ever do was a full twisting straight front somersault. Last time I did it was 6 years ago. Gave up for no reason other than cowardice. Must perform it one more time before I really am too old to do it.

Jenny I will write a song and it will be a good song. You’ll like it. And I won’t let it be used in a car advert. Or have the introduction played over and over again on Countryfile so that you can’t bear to listen to it anymore.

Sharee To remarry my longsuffering hubby in a skinny frock on a beach in Raro (which was my goal for my upcoming 10th anniversary FAIL)

Jamie I would like to meet ten people who have inspired me most in my life so far. To make it more doable (Challenge like) I’ll set up a points system e.g. 5 points if I meet them briefly, 10 if I have a conversation with them, and 20 if I spend more than fifteen minutes talking to them. I need to work on the actual list of people, but there are a few people I know I could probably learn a lot from talking to. The point thing is also good if I were to die in the middle of the challenge…

Kai      Last October my Aunt died of Necrotizing Fasciitis (a flesh-eating virus) and she really shouldn’t have when she’d seen the doctor twice in perfectly adequate time for them to have treated it. Since then I’ve been trying to do something about raising awareness of the disease. Here’s to spreading the word and, hopefully, forcing Doctors to pay some attention when the symptoms are presented to them!

Toni    Run three marathons (Dublin, London, San Francisco). Get a tattoo. See a Shakespeare play in the Globe Theatre. Build a skyscraper. Study at Harvard Business School.

Rachael I also want to own 3 goats, which I plan to name Tilly, Tom and Tiny.

Louise Visit Tokyo and Rome. Learn to drive. Stop being so nervous around boys.

Jenny Oh, and to have worked in the Dungeons at some point (not some dodgy sexy dungeons thing, just like the ones in York where they all dress as centurions)

Dan Newman Record 1,000 songs in the decade.

Georgina  Design, make and sell my own underwear. (IMPORTANT.)

Steph Oh and I also want to be able to appreciate Hazel Irvine. At the moment it’s pretty grim, I genuinely dislike her.

Emilee Do something mental that I never thought I could ever do in a million years. This is going to require some thought.

Anna Lowman I want to go to the Ashes with my Dad, watch some basketball with my big bro and take in, well, the entire London Olympics with my mum.

Madnad I have been promising myself that I will learn Welsh. I even downloaded all the lessons and put them on my iPod. I did nothing with them after the first lesson.

Anna My goal, silly as it sounds, is to learn and make and decorate cakes, with a view to setting up my own business. As extra motivation to succeed- Mark, I promise that, if you want, I will make Baby Watson’s first birthday cake for you. So that gives me, what, 363 days to become proficient? I can do that!

Megan To get on Radio 4 in any way (except maybe in some scandalous news story involving a murderous rampage or horrifying affair with John Prescott).

BeckyMarsh My main goal is to become a politician and change lives…

Toni I also think I’m too old to have never been abroad (apart from a package holiday when I was too young to remember) so I’m going to do that too! I don’t know where but I’ll take suggestions  

Max I want to circle Iceland with my bike.

sharanBEANS In 10 years I will be living in Paris, married to a French man with one adorable bi-lingual baby.

Dunc Venture, on foot, to the river at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, AZ (in case there is any confusion over which one I mean); drive from Mongolia to Britain in the Mongol Rally; watch Back To The Future 2 on the day it is set.

Sheri I will begin the extreme challenge of becoming a librarian. This forum is just the place to push me into it.

Simon Run the entire length of the Central Line; grow some facial hair.

Jackie My aim is not to lose weight, eat less or exercise more. It is to accept me as I am.

Misha As it stands I can’t make phonecalls unless I’m in a very specifically ballsy frame of mind. I’m going to become more outgoing.

Richard There are loads of things I’d like to achieve in the next ten years but I think the best way of summing them up would be to able to pour olive oil made from olives that I’ve grown myself over a salad. This will mean that I’ll have jacked in my current, soul-destroying office job, moved overseas to sunnier climes, and enjoyed a simpler life working in the outdoors.

Erin I’d like to be less reserved. Leaving this comment is my big first step.

Cat I’d love to eventually work with birds/

Georgina PS Not sell my OWN underwear. Make underwear and sell it. Obviously.

Bill Okay. Over the next ten years, regardless of life circumstances, I am going to release six albums of original music which I will write and record and each will be at least one hour long.

Kate And a thought for everyone, courtesy of Samuel Beckett: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” I’m assuming I’ll fail in the process of doing this, but I’d like to fail better, then try again.

So. Tomorrow, the Ten-Year Self-Improvement Challenge, or TYSIC, officially begins, on the auspicious date of March 4^th 2010. So this is your last chance to declare your goal – joining the ranks of more than 25,000 other challengers, and by more than 25,000 I mean around 200. Which is still pretty good. (Of course, it’s not really your last chance; you could quite easily join any time before March 2020. But give yourself as much time as you can, that’s my advice.)

As I explained in the other day’s blog, my goal is to be more optimistic. I’m going to do this in small ways, but with the overall aim of overhauling the more defeatist aspects of my personality over the years to come. However, I did mention I was going to set some miscellaneous goals as well. Here they are:

-         Have more courage; specifically, conquer my phobia of lightning. This is a near-lifelong problem. Obviously, it only affects me about four days a year, but on those occasions it reduces me to a hopeless wreck. I need to deal with this before my son is old enough to realise that his dad is scared of electricity in the sky. I want to be more courageous across the board, but if I can crack this, I can brave anything.

-         I’ve played drums on and off to a very low standard since I was a teenager. By the end of the decade I’d like to have played either in a live gig, or a record of any kind. Maybe on one of the records various people have pledged to make as part of the TYSIC. Wouldn’t that be cool? Yes.

-         Cut down booze until, by the age of forty, I’m drinking 50 percent or less of what I currently consume. Alcoholism is made easy by my career, my general stress levels, and my fondness for, er, alcohol. Or more specifically, wine. But apparently scientists have started to unearth evidence that alcohol can be bad for you.

-         Stop comparing myself with others – either professionally or personally. This was a challenge someone else put down the other day and I would do well to emulate it. Far too much of my twenties (and teenage, for that matter) was dogged by pointless competitiveness. Actually, it’s not entirely pointless – the competitive impulse is one of the main reasons I’ve ever achieved anything at all – but it is dangerous, and it ought to be something I can leave behind in my thirties.

-         Lastly, I might as well attempt something really outlandish, so: I vow by 2020 either to meet Barack Obama, cause a change to the laws of this country, or take significant steps towards getting into Outer Space.

Tomorrow, I will be posting some highlights of the many outstanding comments people left on the original blog, and we’ll kick the whole thing off…

A little bit of admin, finally. Just to say, I do read all the comments people write, but there’s not much time to reply to them, what with this baby and all, so I tend to err on the side of replying to none of them. What I do try to do is incorporate comments into future blogs and reply to them there. And also, if your comment has mysteriously not appeared, it’s because it’s being ‘moderated’. It normally takes a day or so.

The software we use to monitor the site shows that a handful of people have been logging on from, among others, Kyrgyzstan, Norway, Indonesia, Japan and Norway. If you are one of these people or someone from anywhere else far-flung, I’d like to hear from you. Just because it’s fun. Kryzygstan!

And finally, in answer to a question posed by four people, yes, the title of Sunday’s blog was a homage to the funny bit at the end of Ben Folds Five’s seminal second album. Quite often I will name blogs with song lyrics. We don’t want to create a culture of geeky smugness where we all congratulate ourselves for spotting them, and I lay claim to some sort of cool chic merely for having mentioned them. But if you DO spot them, you are definitely free to feel geeky and smug in your spare time.

Because of the 24-hour shows, ‘not sleeping’ is one of the main things I’m renowned for being able to achieve, and people are constantly asking me how I’ve managed it in the past. Quite a lot of the people I correspond with on Twitter, or on the internet in general, are insomniacs who ask me the secret of not being exhausted. Even people who are pretty happy with their sleep routines sometimes solicit my advice.

There’s a good chance that before long, the ultimate sleep-deprivation challenge of a baby will bring even me to my weary knees, and I will lose my reputation for stamina. So while it still endures, here are a few tips on keeping awake for ages without either dying, or wishing to.

-         CON YOURSELF. The key to 24-hour shows for me was always basically convincing my body I hadn’t been up that long. At regular intervals I would pretend it was a normal-length day, even literally lying to myself about the time. A big part of not succumbing to the fatigue of a very long day is simply refusing to acknowledge that it has been a long day. You can, as it were, keep yourself in the dark about this for quite some time.

-         ENERGY DRINKS ARE A FALSE FRIEND. Red Bull and its taurine-laden copycats are a bad way to stay awake in my experience. You’re buzzing with fake energy for about 90 minutes, then drained afterwards. So I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are looking to get through a football match and you don’t think you will be substituted. Likewise, coffee, although very handy for short-term lifts, shouldn’t be trusted as the solution to all tiredness problems. Stamina is about maintaining an even keel rather than shooting yourself up with adrenalin. My favourite aids are sugary tea and bananas. And chocolate biscuits.

-         GO OUT IN THE FRESH AIR. A few minutes of night air can give you as much as a couple of hours’ recharge. This works best in countries other than England where you cannot survive outside at night for more than half the year.

-         GET OVER THE EIGHT. Last week in a blog, I breezily claimed – without any scientific evidence – that the body doesn’t really need eight hours sleep. It could well be that I’m dangerously wrong; certainly, I wouldn’t like to take on an actual scientist on this point. But I’ve known quite a few people who obsess over ‘the eight hours’ (‘if I don’t get eight hours I’ll be shattered in the morning’, etc) and it does them no favours at all. Once you’ve set a norm which you feel you have to live up to, you’ll quickly start to feel alarmed if you go even marginally under it. And that alarm will translate into fatigue. And the prophecy of being shattered will fulfil itself. The fact is people have managed with three or four hours a night and not just avoided being ill, but been enormously successful. Both Margaret Thatcher and Alex Ferguson are noted for their three-hour-a-night record. Admittedly one is awfully grumpy in interviews and the other tried to unravel the welfare state, but still.

-         DON’T PANIC! On the same note: the main lesson of all is simply, don’t panic. Insomnia only gets worse and worse the more you acknowledge it, like nausea or being very red in the face. The fact is, some nights in life you’ll sleep well, some nights you won’t. It’s fine. You’ll be fine. No-one will die. Unless you’re flying a plane or something. Sweet dreams.

Pessimism is my natural mindset, and in a lot of ways, it has served me pretty well. I used to/still do have a joke in my standup set about your Dad cushioning the blow of Father Christmas not existing by first floating the possibility of your mum being dead indeed. (I say ‘used to/still do’ because I like to try and phase jokes out as I go along, but in a gig where I’m less confident or more desperate to please, I tend to fall back on old favourites. Not sure you needed that insight.) I do think there is a lot to be said for bracing yourself for the worst outcome possible, in order to react with more dignity when it does indeed happen. If I’m ringing up to book a hotel room, for instance, and the receptionist says ‘I’ll just check if we have anything…’, I sort of automatically conjure up her voice saying ‘sorry, no’ so that when she does say that, it’s somehow less of a blow. This is a sort of watered-down Buddhist idea – everything will be broken eventually, so see it as already broken and you’ll relax – and it has certainly cushioned me against some of life’s disappointments.

And more than that, once you’re mentally kitted out for things to go to shit, you’re all the more delighted when they work out fine. On this basis I would say that most of my life has been a pleasant surprise. Things have panned out better than I would ever have hoped… but about as well as an optimist might have hoped, and considerably less well than a massive optimist would have. So you can see why, on paper, setting your sights low equals higher spirits in the end. And this is before we even start considering how useful cynicism and misery have been as career tools for me as a comedian. Not many comics have killer routines that start ‘So, the other day I was thinking about how fucking great every aspect of my life is’. Some, but not many.

However.

As I look at my (tiny, sleeping baby) son and try to imagine how he’d like his dad to be, it occurs to me that pessimism, while comforting to oneself, is quite draining for other people to be around. My own dad never gave notice that he was expecting things to go badly, or that he was gloomy about anything. I remember him taking me to one of many rugby games when I was about eight (Bath v Llanelli). It pissed it down all afternoon and we were standing right out in the open, as we always did, to get as close as possible to the game. Every few minutes my dad would glance up at a tiny, almost invisible sliver of slightly lighter grey in the dark grey of the sky and say: ‘Clearing up, over there. Yep. Brightening up, over there.’ And so on. It never did brighten up, it shat it down so much that we could have swum home to Bristol. But I now think this was excellent parenting. If he’d done what I would probably do, and said ‘we could well die if this continues’, I don’t think I would have enjoyed my day. I think, in short, as a father you have a certain moral responsibility to be hopeful, which wasn’t there when you were on your own.

And the other thing is, I’ve come to think that positivity does actually influence events in a limited way. For a long time I resented it when people talked about the power of positive belief, and all that. Indeed I still don’t have much time for the enormous reach-for-the-stars-think-yourself-thin-believe-in-your-destiny industry. But I’ve come to realise that if you assume failure and disappointment are waiting for you, they very often will be. If you bulldoze fearlessly towards success and happiness, they might just meet you halfway. This has nothing to do with mysticism or pop psychology. It’s just that on the whole, confident people do better. Simple and true. I’ll never be an instinctively confident person, but I’m going to do my damnedest to act like one. By the age of 40 I want to be engaging with life as if it’s a huge, short-lived opportunity, which it is, to be fair, rather than some sort of trap, or a problem that’s too difficult to tackle.

So that is my main aim over these ten years. I’m going to name some smaller TYSIC goals over the next few days. Why not set a self-improvement challenge yourself. In theory, you can do it any time before 2020. But if you leave it that long, I’d be pretty pessimistic about your chances. Or I would be if I were allowed.