GQ How to Win at Life Read online

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  CHAPTER 1

  FOOD & DRINK

  Cook the perfect steak

  Use a Boston shaker like a pro

  Master sushi etiquette

  Barbecue perfectly using science

  Chop as fast as a chef

  Serve coffee that’s a work of art

  Deal with a broken wine cork

  Crack an egg one-handed

  Mix a Martini like the world’s best bartender

  CHAPTER 2

  FRIENDS & LOVERS

  Buy a diamond like a diamond dealer

  Dance without looking like your dad

  Give a killer foot massage

  Find out if someone’s lying to you

  Finesse your flirting

  Throw a formal dinner party

  Buy flowers for your lover

  Win an argument like a lawyer

  Break up with someone the right way

  CHAPTER 3

  STYLE SECRETS

  Define your personal style

  Hang your trousers using the Savile Row fold

  Spot a fake Rolex

  Tie your scarf in a gilet knot

  Speed-fold with the Tokyo T-shirt technique

  Keep your sneakers icy-white

  Deploy the military tuck

  Shave with next-level razor skills

  Dodge the watch dial con

  Tie a first-class bow-tie

  Step up your shoeshine technique

  Fasten a NATO watch strap

  CHAPTER 4

  GAMES & WELLBEING

  Run like an elite athlete

  Upgrade your workout routine

  Hit an evil squash serve

  Swim faster, easier front crawl

  Power-throw an American football

  Freedive like a merman

  Win big at the casino

  Bowl a strike every time

  De-stress with mindful meditation

  CHAPTER 5

  ON THE MOVE

  Optimize your hotel experience

  Track stand like a champion cyclist

  Start a fire in the rain

  Fold a suit for crease-free travel

  Get quality sleep on a night flight

  Drive like a “heel-and-toe” pro

  Speed-learn any language

  Navigate using nature’s compass

  Take a “wow” holiday photo

  CHAPTER 6

  SHOWING OFF

  Perform mind-blowing magic like Dynamo

  Dive into a pool gracefully

  Psych out your poker opponent

  Execute the Zippo snap

  Sabre a champagne bottle

  Turbo-charge your memory

  Win at kick-ups

  Sing like a star

  Hang art on your walls like an artist

  CHAPTER 7

  WORK & CAREER

  Start a billion-dollar company

  Work a room like a master connector

  Ask for a pay rise – and get it

  Give a speech that they’ll remember

  Ace the job interview

  Write a bestselling novel

  Handshake your way to success

  Conquer your to-do list

  Neutralize a crisis the Alastair Campbell way

  CHAPTER 8

  THE UNEXPECTED

  Survive a kidnapping

  Escape from a sinking car

  Save yourself from choking

  Evade pursuers using parkour

  Fend off a dog attack

  Survive a tsunami

  Find out if you’re being followed

  Land a plane with engine failure

  Make it through the apocalypse

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  PREFACE

  In 1859, the Scottish author Samuel Smiles published a book that spawned a genre. It offered its readers advice on everything from confidence building to money management, all illustrated by inspiring tales from great lives. Want to improve your business? Learn from the way Napoleon organized his military operations. Struggling with a setback? Consider how Sir Walter Scott used his time recovering from an injury to embark on writing a great poem. Entitled Self-Help , Smiles’s work was to become a runaway success; by the time he died, in 1904, it had sold more than 250,000 copies.

  The genre has since evolved in ways that probably would have left Smiles aghast. The demeanour of self-improvement books tends to reflect that of the time in which they are produced. In recent years, one trend has exploded on the personal development bookshelf that seems to have especially captured the zeitgeist: the “believe it and it will come true” phenomenon. Looking inward rather than outward, it champions emotions over authorities. Is it a coincidence that it has blossomed in the same era in which the British politician Michael Gove felt confident claiming that people had “had enough of experts”?

  This book has not had enough of experts. Its origins stretch back to a GQ column called “Bring Your ‘A’ Game”. The idea was to take something that a man might reasonably want to do, and present a five-step guide to doing it really well. It would have been hubris to think we had all the answers, so we often found ourselves consulting specialists. Soon we realized we were amassing more insider knowledge than we could fit on the page. The consequence is the book you’re holding in your hands; inside, you will find more detailed versions of those magazine pieces alongside a whole host of brand-new entries. This collection is not meant to offer a grand system or philosophy. Think of it instead as a volume more in the mode of Smiles’s: an instant set of mentors to whom you can turn when you want to step up your game in everything from work to sport, travel to romance, food to fashion and much more.

  In certain areas, GQ will be your mentor. Since 1988, the magazine has been the leading monthly chronicle of men’s fashion and lifestyle. So when it comes to tying a scarf, defining your signature look, getting to grips with a bow tie – or something else that falls in our wheelhouse – you’re going to hear from us directly.

  For most of this book, however, you’ll be referred to a league of external experts, 63 in all. Naturally, some of them will be familiar names. I visited Jamie Oliver for a guide to cooking the perfect steak, for instance, and interviewed Tracey Emin about how to hang a picture like an artist. To find out how to dive gracefully into a pool, I went to Tom Daley; to learn how to start a successful business, I phoned Sir Richard Branson and he dispensed advice from a hammock on Necker Island (now there really is someone who’s winning at life). On these pages you’ll also encounter wisdom from the likes of William Hague, Dynamo, Alastair Campbell, Andy McNab and Jorja Smith.

  Alongside the celebrities, I consulted people with whom you may not yet be acquainted but who are the undisputed authorities in their fields. People such as Jon Kabat-Zinn. In 1979, Kabat-Zinn set up the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Its purpose was to use meditation to help chronically ill patients who were not responding well to conventional treatment.

  At a time when the practice was associated with flaky, New Age mysticism, Kabat-Zinn, with his Ph.D in molecular biology, took a scientific approach to meditation. Slowly, what he dubbed “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction” went mainstream. If you’ve ever wondered where the current mindfulness boom came from – well, he’
s its founding father. Who better to ask for pointers on how to meditate?

  It was also fascinating to speak to Joe Navarro. When he was a special agent at the FBI, he caught spies by analysing body language. His most famous case began during a routine interview with a US soldier who had become a person of interest. Every time he mentioned the name of a recently arrested traitor, the soldier’s cigarette would tremor in his hand. “Everybody kept saying: ‘That’s nonsense, you can’t base an investigation on a shaking cigarette,’” Navarro told me. “Eventually I got him to admit that there was a larger conspiracy – and that the nuclear ‘go’ codes had been compromised.” Navarro subsequently became a consultant on nonverbal communication, and in the chapter Work & Career you’ll find his guide to the psychology behind a successful handshake.

  Putting this book together was an education. Along the way, I learned why sugar can help you make a brilliant speech, the one word to use if you want to win an argument, and how a chair can save your life. A memorable tip came courtesy of Oli Barrett, “the most connected man in Britain”, according to Wired magazine. During our interview about networking, he referenced a contact who had recently sold a company for more than a billion dollars. “The secret of their success,” he said, “was sending handwritten notes to investors they met along the way.” You only have to look at my out-tray to see how I’ve taken that to heart.

  Occasionally, I came to rethink my entire approach to something altogether. Take cooking a rib-eye steak. I thought I had that largely figured out – a steak’s a steak, right? When I met Jamie Oliver in his test kitchen, however, it was fast apparent that I was going to learn a considerably more sophisticated technique than my own. “With a steak, you are in the realm of the most expensive, longest-living beast in the common food chain,” he explained. “Therefore, to treat it like chicken means you’re a mug, to treat it like a pig means you’re a mug.” His favoured method is packed with clever twists; it has swiftly become my favoured method, too.

  Since childhood, I have always enjoyed teaching myself skills from books. The sense that something extraordinary is achievable, if you simply follow the steps, has led me to pore over volumes on guitar playing, kung fu, card magic, poker, bartending, even (and I’m not proud of this) harmonica playing. Sometimes I learned things that I really had no use for at all. On my bookshelf you’ll find a tome on stage hypnotism, for instance, and another on lock picking. But there’s something intriguing about understanding how people do things, even if you never plan on doing them yourself. Hence the final chapter of this book, which is about dealing with the unexpected. I hope that neither you nor I will ever need to survive a kidnapping, save ourselves from choking or land a plane with engine failure.

  But if you do, good luck.

  FOOD & DRINK

  “Cooking is an art,” the food science maven Nathan Myhrvold once observed. “But all art requires knowing something about the techniques.” That’s where this chapter comes in. The closest you’re going to find to a recipe in here is our guide to cooking the perfect steak – a technical feat more than anything else. The rest are all hands-on skills; some of them are tune-ups (improve your knife work, deal with a broken wine cork) but some of them will ask you to relearn something entirely. Thought you knew how to barbecue? Think again…

  COOK THE PERFECT STEAK

  Steak deserves to be treated with respect. Rearing beef uses significantly more resources than poultry or pork, so buy it for a special occasion and make sure you get the good stuff. “Dry aging for 20 to 40 days on the bone is essential,” says Jamie Oliver. The celebrity chef-cum-restaurateur advises buying from a butcher rather than a supermarket, and considers grass-fed rib-eye to be the ultimate cut. Buy a 4-cm- (1½-in-) thick portion to share. “Never, ever do a steak per person,” he says. “If you’ve got something thick, you can have a bit more time to cook it and develop bark – that really gnarly, sumptuous outside.” After you get it home, wrap it in parchment paper and stash it in the fridge with a view to eating it within two days. Here’s Oliver’s favourite method…

  1: RENDER THE FAT

  Take the steak out of the fridge at least an hour before cooking. Contrary to what you may have been told, oiling and seasoning the raw steak is unnecessary. The animal’s fat alone should provide all the oil and flavour you need. “The fat is where you taste the terroir,” notes Oliver. To that end, trim off some fat, throw it into a cold pan and put it on to a medium-high heat. Next, add the steak, and hold it fatty-edge down. “You’ll see it start to melt like a candle.” Wait until the fatty edge has gone crispy and caramel-coloured before turning the steak on its side.

  2: PREP THE PEPPER

  Flip the steak once every minute. If you don’t keep up this frequency, the moisture will rise up through the meat rather than staying in the centre. Between flips, take some peppercorns, crush them with a pestle and mortar, then sieve them. “There is a difference in flavour between the outside and the inside of the peppercorn. Sieving means you can grade out the outer dry husk and just have the essence of pepper.” Put this sieved pepper to one side for later.

  3: ENHANCE THE TASTE

  “If you want to introduce some flavours, probably one that could be written into English and Italian religion would be rosemary.” Grab a bunch of rosemary sprigs and use them like a paintbrush, dabbing them in the oil of the pan and then on the meat. “Use the rosemary to love the steak.” Another great addition is garlic. Oliver likes to slice a whole bulb in half, rub it all over the meat and then drop the garlic into the pan to cook with the steak. After ten minutes, a steak this thick should, roughly speaking, be medium-rare.

  4: WIELD THE KNIFE

  Take the steak off the heat and place it in a china dish with the rosemary on top. Let it rest for 5 to 7 minutes before transferring it to a thick, wooden chopping board. Examine the steak: it comprises three separate muscles. Each has a different texture so should be prepared differently. The main eye (b) should be cut into 1cm- (⅓in-) thick slices, the top cap (c) should be diced into rough chunks and the bottom cap (a) sliced thinly, almost like sashimi. Remove any big bits of fat.

  5: SEASON AND SERVE

  Sprinkle over some flaky salt from a height, and then do the same with the sieved pepper. “Everyone thinks it’s cheffy nonsense, but doing it from a height means it disperses.” Next, drizzle the meat with extra virgin olive oil and serve it on the board accompanied by steamed greens and squashed roast potatoes. If you’re eating with friends, why not get them involved? “Steaks happen at special times, it’s got to be a ceremony,” says Oliver. “If you concentrate on the steak, someone musters up a salad and someone else brings a good bottle of wine – then it starts to feel like a thing.”

  USE A BOSTON SHAKER LIKE A PRO

  In 1806, Frederic Tudor, an enterprising Bostonite, began harvesting ice from the ponds of Massachusetts and shipping it for sale in warmer climes. His idea was met with scorn. “No joke,” exclaimed the Boston Gazette in February of that year. “A vessel with a cargo of ice has cleared out from this port for Martinique. We hope this will not prove to be a slippery speculation.” While the papers scoffed, Tudor had correctly recognized that, in many places outside New England, ice was a sought-after luxury. Over the coming decades, operations such as Tudor’s flourished, and ice caught imaginations around the world. In 1840s London, a block of ice was put on display in a shop window on the Strand. “The Londoners look upon it with amazement,” a New Englander wrote to a friend back home. As ice became more commonplace, mixed drinks would change forever.

  Until then, cocktail recipes had been simple affairs: some spirits, a dash of sugar, perhaps some water and bitters, all stirred together. After bartenders discovered ice, “things started to become more refined,” says Agostino Perrone, master mixologist at London’s award-winning Connaught Bar. “The function of the ice is not only to chill, but also to allow the mixing process to be more efficient.” As cocktails became more complex with ingredients suc
h as eggs and fruit juice, it became necessary to shake rather than simply stir. Hence, the cocktail shaker was born. Its earliest form, which emerged during the mid-nineteenth century, involved two vessels jammed together – a setup that would become known as the Boston. Today, it is the shaker of choice for making long drinks. Here’s Perrone’s technique…

  1: GET THE RIGHT KIT

  Buy a Boston shaker comprising two metal tins, rather than a glass-and-tin version. The former is better for several reasons. “I used to work a lot with the glass shaker,” recalls Perrone, “but with metal and metal, you chill the drink better and you also don’t have the risk of breakages.” Put all the ingredients into the smaller tin and fill the larger tin two-thirds of the way up with ice cubes.

  2: MAKE IT SECURE

  In one motion, pour the liquid over the ice and fit the smaller tin inside the rim of the larger tin. Angle it so that the two tins line up completely straight on one side. On the other side, the tins will form a crescent-moon-shaped cavity.

  3: GET A GRIP

  Slap the top to make sure it is sealed and pick the whole thing up. Then grip the bottom half in your left hand, with the index and middle fingers on the base, the thumb at the side and the other fingers supporting. The top half should be in your right hand, with the thumb on top and the other fingers supporting.

  4: SHAKE IT UP

  Hold the shaker on its side, straight edge down. Shake it in a figure-of-eight motion. This will ensure you don’t smash the ice, which would dilute the drink too much. Note: “If someone is in front of you, always shake away from them in case something… happens.” Keep going until the metal feels almost painfully cold, then return it to the bar top. “To open, the secret is to bang it where the crescent-moon gap (see step 2 ) starts.” Always keep the index finger on the other side of the upper tin during opening to prevent it flying off.