The Gesture

Three a week. And you cannot do it alone.

The PEP-3™ is a handshake that only exists on contact. One second, two people, and something moves between them. That is Positive Energy Proliferation™ — not a slogan, a hand movement.

Two hands meeting, three fingers each, at a burst of light.

How To Give One

You already know how. Nobody has told you yet.

ONE

Extend Middle Three

Middle three fingers out. Thumb and little finger tucked, roughly. Precision is not the point.

TWO

Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle

Like you mean it. The wiggle is what turns a hand signal into an offer, and it is what makes the whole thing impossible to do seriously.

THREE

Tap Their Three

Their three are wiggling too — nothing stops for the contact. That is why nobody has ever managed a PEP-3 with a straight face.

What Is Handed Over

Three fingers, three things.

The same three the season is built on. You are not wishing them well — you are handing over a piece of your own protection.

Energy

The thing you have been carefully keeping. You have enough to give one second of it away.

Positivity

Not cheerfulness. The decision to send something outward on a day that could have gone the other way.

Freedom

The freedom to laugh, and the freedom to smile. They will almost certainly do both — and that is the mechanism working.

The PEP-3 Origin Story

A coach who had no idea what to do with his hands.

I myself was not a witness, but rather one of the first to hear of the handshake my father fumbled following one of my little league playoff games. We had just won the game and were going through the postgame handshake ritual. After shaking the hands of the other team’s players and coaches, one of the coaches on my team approached my father and, instead of offering an open hand to shake, presented his hand with his middle three fingers extended and wiggled his fingers, expecting my father to do the same and tap his middle three fingers to this coach’s. Instead, my father, having never encountered this gesture before, extended his hand and awkwardly grabbed the coach’s fingers, giving them a light squeeze.

I do not recall what was said about the immediate aftermath of the fumbled exchange, but I have to imagine it was a smile and laughter, as it was for me when I heard about it for the first time, and continues to be my reaction when I think about or discuss the encounter with those who heard about it nearly 30 years later.

A simple, fun and creative gesture; a fumbled exchange; and countless smiles and laughs as a result. I’ve since extended the same three wiggly fingers to friends, family, and even strangers, never failing to generate a smile and laughter from the other party. And the best part: there’s no wrong way to respond to the gesture. Whether you tap three wiggling fingers, give them a light squeeze, tickle the palm of the giver, or however else your instinct leads you to respond, the result is the same: Positive Energy Proliferation.

The Cadence

Three a week. Not five, not daily.

Five was the old number and it quietly rewarded volume, which is the one thing this app refuses to reward anywhere else. Three is achievable on a bad week, and three is the number that runs through everything here.

3Fingers

3A week

3Check-ins a day

3Yards a protector

The week's third PEP-3 is the only thing in PEP that celebrates.

Too Far To Tap

Then send it, and it counts the same.

Find something that added to your day — a song, a film, a mural, a meal — and tell whoever made it. Not a review, not a rating. A message to a person who will not be expecting it.

The app keeps the count and nothing else. The message is the exercise; logging it is not. This is the only table in PEP that measures energy leaving you rather than accruing to you, and that is deliberate.

One rule on every picture we make. A PEP-3 is always shown as two hands meeting — never one hand raised. Three fingers raised alone already belongs to other people: it is the Hunger Games salute in Western pop culture and, far more seriously, the pro-democracy sign in Thailand and Myanmar, where people have been arrested for making it.

The tap is what makes ours ours. Every icon, sticker, animation and piece of merchandise shows contact.

Go On Then

The first one is the hardest, and it lasts one second.

Somebody near you is having a week. Three fingers, wiggle, tap.

Open the Playbook What PEP Playbook™ is