Sometimes, you mind plays exquisite tricks on you: you resort to doing something useful or important, without which (you tell yourself) you can’t really start working. How do you stop procrastinating when you don’t even know you’re doing it?

I chose ‘patience’ because I had a tendency to feel insecure if I didn’t find things easy straight away; my mantra helped me stay with a problem longer.

No-one has ever said ‘fresh as a double espresso’, whereas cucumber is used in spas to reduce under-eye puffiness.