Eric Tian

Some personal highlights from 100 Tips For A Better Life:

Reward yourself after completing challenges, even badly.

Cultivate a reputation for being dependable. Good reputations are valuable because they’re rare (easily destroyed and hard to rebuild). You don’t have to brew the most amazing coffee if your customers know the coffee will always be hot.

How you spend every day is how you spend your life.

Selfish people should listen to advice to be more selfless, selfless people should listen to advice to be more selfish. This applies to many things. Whenever you receive advice, consider its opposite as well. You might be filtering out the advice you need most.

Defining yourself by your suffering is an effective way to keep suffering forever (ex. incels, trauma).

To start defining your problems, say (out loud) “everything in my life is completely fine.” Notice what objections arise.

If other people having it worse than you means you can’t be sad, then other people having it better than you would mean you can’t be happy. Feel what you feel.

I picked up an unknown phone number today. She sounded young with a soft Indian accent and began with: “Terribly sorry to bother you sir, but are you busy? This is important.”

Interesting way to start a phone call.

I asked what the matter was. She explained her name was Isha and was calling from my internet provider. There had been some data leaks in the previous hour and the company was calling individual customers to explain the situation. Isha appeared genuine in her explanation, repeating “sorry” multiple times as though it were her own fault and changing her tone to reflect her remorse at the situation. Though the context was vague (why couldn’t this be an email?), I was impressed and moved by her performance.

I asked a few more questions. What would happen now? What is the company doing in response? Her replies were professional and polite. We recommend you secure all your online data. We are doing everything we can and bolstering our defence systems. We are terribly sorry for the inconvenience. I was sold and said thank you.

Then a pause.

“However… we are offering a deal. As part of our compensation are offering an unprecedented opportunity. For just $5 we can help secure your information…”

I burst out laughing. She totally had me! I was ready to message and update my housemate about the situation. In fact, if she had just waited a few more minutes and engaged in normal conversation, her amazing offer might have worked. I hung up and reported the number, shaking my head in disbelief.

‘Isha’ possessed a quality rare in scammers: charisma. Throughout the five minute conversation, she made herself sound remorseful, professional, and responsive. She was patient with my questions and a terrific listener, even using active listening techniques like mirroring. Her superb communication skills were able to break down my defences far more effectively than any discount she could offer.

Scammers are evolving.

If you read the biographies of remarkable people or attend the funerals of loved ones, the normal rational behaviour is rarely mentioned.

Instead, we hear the stories that made the individual unique. A strange obsession, a path less travelled, a unique talent they had to better the world. It’s all the times they broke out of the median distribution of human behaviour.

If we want to create experiences that tell stories for us in the future, we have to pay the price of appearing weird in the present moment. Our personal brand is defined by our weirdness, eccentricities, and irrational tendencies. Not the times we played safe and did what was expected of us.

Being normal in order to fit in with the tribe guarantees removing all future stories and memories that tribe will tell about you.

A doctor once told me something I’ll never forget.

“The secret to being a good doctor,” he explained, “is the right combination of three things: clinical knowledge (CK), work ethic (WE), and communication skills (CS).”

“Most medical students think the formula is: CK + WE + CS. If you have enough of the first two, you can get away with poor communication skills. But in reality, the formula is:

Doctor ability = (CK + WE)^CS.”

If your CK and WE are 1000 but CS is 0, you get a score of 1. But if CK and WE are 10 and your CS is 50, your score becomes 1.1 * 10^65. That’s a huge difference. Good communication skills trump everything else.

Clearly you still need some level of clinical knowledge and work ethic. 1^100 is still 1. But a strong CS will take an average CK and WE much further than the inverse.

It makes complete sense. Clear communication is crucial for ensuring plans are understood, questions are answered, and building rapport between teams. If you fail to achieve these things, it doesn’t matter how strong your clinical knowledge or work ethic is: your potential to treat a patient is diminished.

I think this idea applies outside of medicine as well. Knowing what to say is often less important than how and when it is said. We’ve all seen instances where a quiet team member fails to make their brilliant idea heard, advice that is given too readily or aggressively, and jokes which only work because of the delivery. The problem is rarely in the content but rather how it is communicated.

Every two years, I tune into one of the biggest chess tournaments in the world: the Candidates. Eight of the best players in the world are invited, with the winner playing the World Chess Championship (WCC) the following year against the current chess champion. The winner of the WCC is then crowned world chess champion for the following two years: the most prestigious title in chess.

Double round robin, 14 rounds of classical chess. The highest scorer after 14 rounds has the chance to become world champion. We are currently eight rounds into it, and there have been some spectacular games played.

But the reason I find this tournament so fascinating is because of the players. Here are eight of the best chess players in the planet, who have devoted their lives to mastering this game and are competing against each other for the highest award known to chess. Every game is tense, with standings fluctuating constantly and any loss devastating. After a certain amount of losses, it will be impossible to win the tournament. One’s chances of becoming world champion are shattered.

One particular heartbreaking game I witnessed yesterday was between India’s Gukesh Dommaraju and France’s Alireza Firouzja. Gukesh is in second place at round seven, just 0.5 points behind the leader (win = 1 point, draw = 0.5 points, loss = 0 points). He is controlling the game with the black pieces until move 30, when Alireza begins finding brilliant moves. The game becomes very complicated, the nerves increase, and Gukesh’s time is ticking down. This results in a small but fatal inaccuracy, and the Indian grandmaster walks into a checkmate right before move 40. As Gukesh realises his loss, he immediately buries his face in his hands in anguish. Commentators, players, and the chess community all unite in their sympathy for the young Indian prodigy. Gukesh is only 17 years old, but has the maturity of a much older man. His family is not rich, with him occasionally sleeping at airports during tournaments to save money. Chess means the world to him and has transformed his life. With this loss, a first place finish is slowly slipping away. Commentators begin to doubt if he is up for the challenge.

But today in round 8 a miracle happens. Gukesh plays another Indian grandmaster with the black pieces – and wins in a spectacular game. And now, despite his brutal loss the previous round, is tied for first place. His doubters are silenced. He is back in the running to play the WCC.

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In an interview, the current world chess champion Ding Liren was asked what the meaning of life was. His response:

“The meaning of life should be in those special, those sparkling moments, not in the daily life, those ordinary days, but in living for those unique moments.”

In the last few days, we have witnessed sparkling moments – both devastating and triumphant. I wonder if Gukesh would agree with Ding’s statement.

Last night, I watched Road House with a close friend. I had few expectations, but when Amazon Prime showed that it was its #1 most watched show, I couldn’t help but feel excited. We dimmed the lights, prepared food and drinks and pressed play.

Excitement soon gave way to bewilderment, then to utter confusion. From the outset the movie was not good. The female casts made no sense, the plot was nowhere to be found, and so many lines were plain awful. The only thing keeping the show afloat past 30 minutes was Jake Gyllenhaal’s acting and physique.

And that’s when I realised. Why was I taking this so seriously?

Here I was, sitting in a quiet apartment, enjoying a show with a friend undisturbed. It didn’t matter if Road House was utter trash. This moment in itself was something to be treasured, not scoured by bad accents and nonsensical dialogue.

I began watching the show as a comedy instead of an action/thriller. And it was so much more enjoyable. We cracked jokes at terrible lines, hooted at pointless scenes and cheered for the fight sequences later on. When it finished, my ribs and jaw were sore from laughter. What started out as a complete disappointment turned out to be a lot of fun.

“We suffer more in imagination than in reality,” Seneca once wrote. Had I continued in my critical pessimism, I would have hated Road House. But with a quick mindset shift, the evening became a memorable one. Part of the road to happiness, I think, lies in knowing when to relax and view surprising situations as a comedy. You never know how much enjoyment could result.

I pulled up next to to him on my bike. It was a cold, drizzly afternoon and both of us were wet: him with his headphones, me with my helmet. Oblivious to my presence, he was furiously typing something on his phone, which was getting wetter every passing second. So when the lights turned green, off he went, still on his phone: right into an electric scooterist.

The collision knocked him on his back and his headphones flew onto the other side of the street. The oncoming traffic ran them over in a brutal, coordinated effort: the first car crushed one side, while the second finished off the other. Later, it was impossible to tell what they had been before.

A few of us rushed to his aid. A young Asian man, a middle-aged Indian man, and myself. I instinctively got out my phone to call 000.

Miraculously, he was fine. His backpack had cushioned the fall, such that his head and hands didn’t touch the pavement.

The most striking thing about all this was his reaction. “That was close!” he yelled, watching his headphones get crushed. “I’m lucky that’s not my arm.” For a few seconds, we stood there under the rain, watching the cars drive by and gradually crush his headphones more and more. It was almost meditative: the consistent rhythm of them being run over, like bolts of orchestrated lightning.

After a while, he thanked us, brushed himself off, and ran across the light before it turned red. All this happened in less than 20 seconds.

He could have responded so differently. He could have cursed the reckless scooterist, the loss of his headphones, the incessant rain, the near miss of a serious injury. But he did none of this. Instead, he chose gratitude, laughing in the face of adversity, acknowledging that things could have been far worse. Writing this, his laughter still lingers in my mind, a reminder that silver linings are always present, and that the most chaotic moments can provide the strangest lessons.

This morning, I got ready to go to the gym and released, to my horror, that both my phone and apple watch were out of battery. I had forgotten to charge them the night prior. For a moment, I considered plugging them in and pushing my schedule back 30 minutes, but since I had plans soon afterwards, I decided to just go without my usual devices.

Here are some observations from the subsequent gym session:

1. I am uncomfortably attached to devices. I wake and sleep with my phone near me, I do nearly all my work on a laptop, and listen to audiobooks and podcasts on the fly. The apple watch I wear constantly tracks my steps, heart rate and activity levels without me even knowing. Even in the hospital, notes are typed on a computer and it is common to use your phone to quickly look up a drug dose. So this hour in the gym, with no screen or book to listen to, was mildly uncomfortable.

2. Nearly everyone else appears to be the same. I counted 9 people in the gym while I was there, and every single one either had headphones in or were on their phones in between sets. Only one person aside from me did not have headphones in, and only two aside from me did not wear a smartwatch. It seems this device abundance is universal.

3. The session became far more enjoyable. I began noticing little things in the gym: the dusty smell mixed with sweat, the lack of wet wipes, the strange angle on one of the machines, a unique haircut. To my surprise, memories from a long time ago began seeping in as well. Some I hadn’t thought of in many years. I think they were lingering in my subconscious for some time, waiting for a moment where I wasn’t occupied.

4. My workout was much more effective. With no distractions, I was able to focus intently on the exercises I was doing. As a result, I felt that I was giving them more effort and hitting unexpected personal bests. I think my usual routine of listening to audiobooks spreads my focus out too thin and leads me to lift less than I could.

Overall, this technical blunder turned out to be an illuminating experience on my dependence on devices, and what magic can transpire in the absence of them. I’m not quite ready to eliminate them as a whole (à la Cal Newport) but will actively seek out more moments of solitude in the future.

There are some things I would hate to be an expert on.

Take magic, for instance. Witnessing live magic shows used to blow my mind. I would replay tricks in my mind days after, searching for an explanation, before shaking my head in childlike wonder. Magic truly existed. The day I found out most magic tricks were some combination of misdirection, props, or sleight of hand, I was disappointed. The world became slightly less bewildering; less vibrant. The magic I once believed in had vanished.

Love presents a similar paradox. One of the saddest professions in the world is a pick-up artist, I think. Love’s beauty lies in its unpredictable, awkward nature. Being an expert in this field, knowing precisely what to say or do to elicit a response, removes its charm.

There are other examples I could list – food, movies, music, to name a few.

I do strive for excellence in certain areas. But for others, overanalysing and understanding too deeply strips away their intrinsic mystery. In these cases, I prefer the blissful ignorance of childhood.

This past week has been exhausting.

I was placed at a hospital that specialises in cancer care. Brilliant, hardworking staff work here, yet given the terminal nature of the conditions, there are very few wins to be had. This is to be expected, I guess. But there is something about rocking up every day, rounding for hours, doing all you can, knowing that most of these people don’t have much time left. Some are younger than 40.

On the last day, we wrote two death summaries. The families told us they were good deaths, and I think I understood. A single room with a large window, surrounded by loved ones, with morphine flowing through the veins. Could be far worse. But still, deaths are deaths. I had talked to one of them the previous day. It’s hard to enjoy the weekend after that.

As a result, I have had no energy to write. This morning, I woke to find I had missed three consecutive posts. What alarmed me was that I hadn’t even realised.

They say the first step to getting out of a rut is to stop digging. Only then can you change directions, and move towards a more ideal path.

Let this be a step.