A microlife is thirty minutes of your life expectancy. You can use it up by chilling for 30 minutes or you could start to speed through them by smoking a few cigarettes or having a few drinks. A simple way to bring difficult to grasp long-term, slow burn risks into a unit that can motivate you now and a handy way to compare risks. Even better, you gain a microlife with 2-3 cups of coffee. Win!

Interesting? See Microlives: A lesson in risk taking, by Cambridge University Professor of risk David Spiegelhalter. Or see his 15 min TED talk: Motorbikes, Terrorism, Heart Attacks, Sausages: Professor David Spiegelhalter at TEDxOxbridge, or the full paper.

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