The book The Four Principles: Multiply Your Impact in Life and Leadership covers disciplined optimism, focused urgency, declared goals and the Pareto tail. Gore says they remedy human 'miscoding' in attitude, use of time, motivation, and how we make decisions and take action, which matter more than IQ, education or privilege.

It is not naive happiness but the discipline of seeking positive signals. Research Gore cites shows that, faced with 50 threats and 50 opportunities, people see all 50 threats but only about 25 opportunities. Since impact is about spotting and executing on opportunities, you must ask in every situation where the opportunities are.

Seeing potholes as a physical sign of decline in a city of five to six million, Discovery's team asked what if they fixed all of them. They invested in trucks, teams and pothole technology and have fixed close to 380,000 potholes, which Gore says created hope and a feeling of nation building.

Perceived time is a function of how long you have lived: a year is 100% of a one-year-old's life but about 2% at 48. On this logarithmic scale you burn about 70% of perceived life by the end of education, leaving a roughly 20% 'impact zone', the rule of 20.

New insurance laws threatened Discovery's medical savings account model and risked a 'death spiral'. The day after listing, headlines said government warned Discovery, and the team had about two weeks to respond. By looking for opportunity, they used the regulation to create a structure that gave a competitive advantage and won market share.

Discovery runs short 90-day challenges on a rolling cycle instead of business plans that never manifest. It also uses annual launches, as Apple does, including countrywide launches and in Vitality UK. Gore says that once there is a deadline things change, and without one, in his experience, things do not happen.

Declaring a goal evokes loss aversion: once it is visible you have something to lose, whereas without it there is only potential gain. Gore says a great goal is just outside your ability, unlike corporate goals set for remuneration that people know they will hit.

At 58 he publicly declared he would run a mile in five minutes, trained with a coach from 5am, reached about 5:35 in Johannesburg and tore a calf muscle. He never achieved it, but says his running was never the same and he later ran the Boston Marathon in about 3:30.

A study of PGA golfers found they putt statistically better for par than for birdie, because missing par feels like a loss while a birdie is a potential gain. Gore concludes that even elite athletes cannot cheat loss aversion, so something must be at stake to rise to that level.

Members paid for the watch over two years, about 24 a month, but paid nothing in months they met physical activity goals. This loss-framed structure made people about 30% or 34% more physically active, and the effect was sustained, which Gore attributes to loss aversion.