Eric Tian

Imagine you’re walking along a street one night and you see a house on fire. The house is lit up in bright-red flames and black smog creep up the sky like a huge cloud. You grab your phone and dial 000, to which the receiver asks you, “police, fire or ambulance?” What do you say first?

You’d probably say fire. While there are likely people with burns that require medical treatment, the main problem is the fire. It doesn’t matter if you bring 50 ambulances – if you don’t put out the flames, they will continue raging on until the whole town evacuates or gets burned down as well.

The root cause of the problem is the fire. The people with burns is the symptom.

The scenario above seems obvious enough. Yet in many cases, it’s tempting to address the symptoms instead of the causes of a problem. Consider these cases:

• Caffeine addresses fatigue (symptom), which is usually due to poor sleep hygiene (cause).
• Medicine addresses disease (symptom), which is usually due to unhealthy lifestyle choices (cause).

These “solutions” are band-aids. We are ignoring the main fire burning away. Only addressing the true causes can lead to the proper resolution of a problem.

The next time a conflict arises, let’s think of ways to solve the root of the problem, not just the symptoms.

I’ve always been skeptical of people who tell me not to regret the past. The argument usually goes something like this:

1. You can’t change the past;
2. You didn’t know any better then;
3. The experience has shaped you into who you are now;
And so, you should be kind to yourself and treat it as a tool for learning.

In most cases, I agree. For example, I’m glad I burnt my hand against a hot stove when I was little, because now I know not to touch boiling stuff. I would never think of belittling younger Eric for this mistake.

But the difference between this and stuff I regret is the magnitude of loss for the mistake. Burning my hand was a valuable lesson but cost very little. My burn recovered the next day. On the other hand, some mistakes can cause unbelievable pain and loss; these should be avoided so as to never happen again.

Some of my biggest regrets include:

• Not spending more time with my dad before he passed, because now he’s gone and I have so many things I wanted to say.
• Gaming instead of reading in my teens, because gaming did nothing good for me and wasted time.
• Neglecting strength training as an athlete, because now I’m injured and can’t run.

Because these mistakes cost so much, they are regrets. I can’t honestly say I’m grateful for any of these experiences because I wish they never happened. But they did, and so now the game is to prevent them from ever happening again.

Sometimes, it’s not enough to smile at the past and thank it for the lessons learnt. In extreme cases, you have to really internalise the pain and fully regret a decision so you don’t mess it up again. The more emotionally charged an experience, the more I learn from it.

It’s easy to get into this state of mind that we have to do things.

We have to get out of bed at a certain time. We have to dress a certain way. We have to be nice to other people.

But let’s hold on for a second. Nobody has to do anything.

You could get up at 11:00am instead of 8:00am tomorrow. When you finally get up, you could then walk outside completely butt-naked. And then, in broad daylight, you could slap the first person you see. The world wouldn’t explode if you did these things. You’d probably live to see another day.

The only consideration is that actions have consequences. If you wake up late, you might miss an important meeting. If you walk around naked, you might be arrested for public indecency. If you slap a stranger, you might get beaten up yourself.

When faced with a dilemma, the key question to ask ourselves is whether a pursuit is worth the consequences. If you care more about sleep than a meeting, you might take the extra three hours sleep. But you might not slap a stranger whilst naked because the risk of being arrested and beaten up outweighs the potential thrill of it.

The important thing to remember is you can still do these things. The world won’t stop you if you do.

So if we ever catch ourselves feeling down because we have to do something we don’t like, let’s remember we have multiple options available, such as:

And the consequences:

We have only one story to tell in this life. Let’s make it a good one.

When does this rule apply?

It doesn’t apply to friends. We all have companions that upset us.

It doesn’t apply to learning a skill. We all understand professionals started somewhere.

It doesn’t apply to anything we’ve ever purchased. We all accept that things will break.

Yet, it’s a rule that fuels our excuses for not starting anything. There are very few cases where perfection is the prerequisite for action. On the other hand, action is often the biggest prerequisite for perfection.

If you are looking for inaction, look for perfect.

Credits to Seth’s blog for this idea.

A few days ago, my friends and I watched the original Step Up movie. It was originally meant to be watched for inspiration, but we quickly found ourselves laughing at the dubious plot lines and dialogues the movie offered. It is hardly a film masterpiece, but it was comedy gold. That night was one of the best nights I’ve had this year.

I’ve typically taken things very seriously. Some examples include:

• Reading: You must read the classics. The bestsellers. The stuff famous people are reading.
• Running: You must follow a training plan. You need a sports watch. The newest running shoes.
• Study: You must maximise your productivity. No distractions. All lectures double speed.

But we can take a lot away from simply enjoying the process of our endeavours. Many of the best books I’ve read I had never heard of before. Many of my most memorable runs were ones where I was just enjoying the scenery instead of fussing about my time. Many of my favourite study sessions were when I was chatting with a friend.

Being serious has its time and place. But most of the time, it’s really fun to relax a little.

Sometimes, I forget why I do things. Why do I work? Study? Exercise? The demands of life can make the goal fuzzy.

The parable below is a great clarifier and is a story I revisit often. Sometimes, everything you want is right in front of you.

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The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman

An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, “only a little while.”

The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish?

The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.

The American then asked, “but what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife, Maria, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life.”

The American scoffed. “I have an MBA from Harvard, and can help you,” he said. “You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, and eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middle-man, you could sell directly to the processor, eventually opening up your own cannery. You could control the product, processing, and distribution,” he said. “Of course, you would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles, and eventually to New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “Oh, 15 to 20 years or so.”

“But what then?” asked the Mexican.

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time was right, you would announce an IPO, and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions!”

“Millions – then what?”

The American said, “Then you could retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you could sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play guitar with your amigos.”

Compare these two sentences:

1. It was indicated to the President by his chief adviser that it should be attempted to formulate a decision to act at the earliest opportunity, in the best interests of circumventing what might otherwise result in the country flowering into embarking on a prolonged, extended and exorbitant military conflagration.

2. The chief adviser urged the President to act quickly to avoid war.

The first is messy, excessive and requires multiple readings to understand. The second is clear and straight to the point.

In many domains, it’s tempting to complicate things. We think what we currently have isn’t enough and look for external improvements. Here are some traps I’ve fallen into:

• To be productive, I need shiny apps.
• To run, I need expensive running shoes, a flipbelt and a Garmin watch.
• To make a sentence better, I need to make it long and use lots of adjectives.

But often, you have what you need to start. All you need to be productive is yourself. All you need to start running are your legs. The most elegant sentences are the simple and clear ones.

Add-ons can certainly help. But they also run the risk of overcomplicating something until either they’re too much of an investment for you to start or are unreadable.

Simplicity is beautiful.

The title sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?

We all have the same 24 hours in a day. One second is 1000 milliseconds whether we like it or not. You can’t slow or speed up time.

But everyone has moments when time goes really fast. Maybe you were absorbed in a book or a puzzle. Maybe you were drunk or lost in social media. Or what about those times when you had a great conversation with a kindred soul and time just disappeared? In times like these, hours can feel like minutes.

And we also know moments when time feels really slow. Maybe you were stuck in an elevator or waiting in line. Maybe you were reading a difficult article or doing a tough workout. And how about those moments when you’re in an environment you detest and are trying to find a way out? In times like these, seconds can feel like an eternity.

We all have the same amount of time. But the way we perceive it is totally different.

Ever since I got over my phone addiction, I’ve noticed how long some days feel. It’s not that I’ve been given two more hours in a day: I still have the 86,400 seconds as everyone else. But it certainly feels like I have more time. And if that’s the case, what’s the difference?

When we comment on how the years seem to fly past, perhaps we should check ourselves. Because a baby has the same amount of time as me and you, and yet they seem content with the time they have.

Maybe it’s not the world that’s getting faster, but just us losing ourselves in it.

1. Midnight starting at 12:00am

Makes sense: We need a Universal system of time for scheduling things like meetings and when planes need to depart.
Not really: Nothing really changed between 11:59pm – 12:00am. A new day starts when we wake up.

2. Joining a running festival

Makes sense: An organised sports event that you’ve paid for gives you greater motivation to train. You also receive a medal to flex on your non-runner friends.
Not really: You can literally run the course for free any other day.

3. Swimming

Makes sense: Earth has so much water. Why not move around in it?
Not really: Why are we trying to be fish?

4. Wearing pants

Makes sense: It protects us from harsh environmental stimuli and serves as a fashion statement.
Not really: Pants give us atrocious tan lines and no other animal wears them.

5. Personality tests

Makes sense: People have personalities. Let’s test them and see where they match compared to others.
Not really: Can you seriously group 7.9 billion people into 16 (MBTI) or 9 (Enneagram) categories?

6. Formal education

Makes sense: You learn to socialise with people at a similar stage in life and make friends. Also, it’s important to be educated so you can enter the professional workforce and earn lots of money.
Not really: You can socialise with similar people through other group activities such as sports, volunteering or music. Furthermore, any school class can only reach a particular level of ability: if you are above the standard, you are held back; if you are below the standard, you are left behind. The abundance of high-quality online courses these days makes self-directed learning much more accessible. Books can teach you more about the world than your lived experience ever could. Lastly, employers don’t care about your degrees and are more interested in what skills you have, particularly soft skills; things schools don’t teach nearly as much as they should.

7. Wave-particle duality

Makes sense: Under experimental observation, quantum entities may be described as either a wave or a particle.
Not really: ???

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The point of all this is that the world is filled with ideas we take for granted but don’t really make sense under closer scrutiny (at least to me). I wonder what other dubious narratives are out there.

Earth is a weird and wonderful place.

Here’s the analysis of a game of chess I played the other day:

With computers surpassing humans in chess, engines are able to analyse a chess game to see how accurate the moves played were.

The better the moves are according to the engine, the more likely you will get a good, excellent or best move by the engine’s standards. On the other hand, moves that the engine deems questionable are labelled inaccuracies, mistakes or blunders, in order of how bad the move was. Blunders are basically the engine’s way of saying what on Earth are you doing?

The accumulation of these moves result in an overall accuracy number, out of 100.

In this game, I played a game with 19.3 accuracy. Which is literally a fail according to the chess engine.

But it’s okay, because only one statistic matters.

I didn’t blunder.

It doesn’t matter that the whole game had eight inaccuracies and nine mistakes. Although many moves played were pretty bad, they were good enough to prevent an immediate win for the other player.

Only one move decided the game: a single blunder on move 22 from my opponent. They resigned the move after.

In many domains, part of the formula of success is knowing which mistakes are fatal and which ones aren’t. Consider these findings:

• The highest performing athletes are the ones who avoid injury;
• The most successful investors are the ones who could lose all their stocks and still survive;
• The person that wins a game of chess is the one who makes the least worst mistakes.

This isn’t to say success means making no mistakes. Athletes make bad plays all the time. All investors choose a wrong stock at some stage. No human chess game is ever played perfectly.

The key is making the least worst mistakes. If you know which decisions are fatal, you will eventually prevail over those who don’t.

Yet, how do we know when a mistake will end us? We can’t know what is fatal unless we experience it ourselves, right? Here are two suggestions:

1. Learn from others

Chances are, you’re not the first person to start a task. People have tried what you’re trying and have made the mistakes for you.

Learn from them.

2. Remember that it is not the end

Let’s say you do make a fatal mistake. You get injured. You lose all your money on stocks. You lose a close game of chess.

Is your life over?

No! Mistakes are a natural part of life. You will grow and learn from this mistake and do better in the next battle. None of us are beyond encounters with total stupidity.

Indeed, if we never made some huge blunders from time to time, life would be pretty boring.