Some problems are best solved with cake.

Around three in the afternoon, concentration fades on every project. Emails get shorter, meetings get longer, and sooner or later someone asks whether there are any biscuits left. It isn’t a character flaw but a well-known pattern, and it affects agencies, building sites and boardrooms alike. Ignoring it doesn’t help. Neither does coffee on its own.

We tackle the problem with a tried and tested method: cake. It starts with the selection. Whether it’s cheesecake, crumble or strawberry gateau is not left to chance but decided by the occasion, the number of guests and the question of who chose last time. Then it is unpacked, cut properly and served on plates that have been washed beforehand.

Coffee is handled in parallel. The water is freshly boiled, the pot warmed, the milk taken out of the fridge in good time. Anyone who would rather have tea is not looked at funny. Coffee and cake must arrive at the table together; everything else is a matter of planning, and planning is our job.

Then we eat. No laptop, no phone, ideally by the window. In our experience this takes twenty minutes, during which more problems get solved than in the meeting before. At the end, everyone is full, content and remarkably cheerful for the rest of the day.

Artificial intelligence, incidentally, plays no part in this. Some things are better done yourself.