Eric Tian

Sunk costs are a gift from the past.

In the past you spent some resource, usually time or money, on something that cannot be refunded. Now, in the future, you must decide whether to accept this gift from your former self.

A few years ago I was trying to sell my bookshelf on Facebook marketplace. It was my bookshelf for the last two years and I had become quite fond of it. That day I spent over two hours packing the books into boxes, wiping the shelf down, taking multiple photos, writing up an ad then posting it. I listed it as $50.

Within a few days it was clear that nobody was willing to pay that much for a second-hand bookshelf and thus I grudgingly reduced the price to $20. After a week, still no responses. Then $10. Then $5.

The first inquiry I finally got was one month after the initial listing. It was from a lady who wanted to come inspect it at a time I would be in class. I asked my housemate if he would be home at that time to let her in. He said no – he was working. I began to panic at how to manage this situation.

My housemate, noticing my distress, asked how much I was selling it for. $5, I said. He laughed for a long time. And that’s when I realised the ridiculousness of my situation.

If somebody rocked up at my door and told me to sell a second-hand bookshelf for $5 I would say no. $5 is not worth the time and effort. I could try and get creative – sell it at a higher price or build something new perhaps – but the easiest option is just to get rid of it. The best form of productivity is elimination.

But because I had invested all the time and effort into the bookshelf I convinced myself that it had to sell. That somehow, my efforts of cleaning, photo-taking and ad-writing and its sentimental value over the last few years suddenly made it more valuable. This was, of course, delusional.

The problem with sunk costs is that situations and values evolve over time. Maybe a month ago, $50 for the bookshelf was worth the effort of advertising, but not $5. The situation evolved. And maybe a month ago, there was nothing much going on, but now exams are coming up and time is more precious. The values evolved.

Sometimes sunk costs are a gift. Having written 350+ blog posts is a pretty good incentive to keep going: it would be a shame to lose it now. This is where tracking habits and accountability partners can shine. Past investment is a motivator for future effort.

But evaluating sunk costs requires a constant erasing of the past and analysis of the present. If one day I don’t find writing valuable anymore, I would stop writing, regardless of all I had written previously. The same goes for toxic friendships, boring jobs or destructive habits. Holding onto gifts just because of guilt is a tragic irony: you waste even more time by not letting them go. And time, being the only finite resource we have, is the worst thing to waste.

Evaluate your gifts carefully.

One of the most alluring parts of human nature is the spectrum of good and evil, order and chaos, sainthood and the devil. Upon greeting a friend, he or she has the ability to build me up or tear me to shreds and I the same to them. And this ability resets every moment: one day we may have a tendency towards honesty and kindness, another we may be filled with vengeance and spite. It is a miracle that most of us manage to hold it together most of the time, that not all of us break down in the middle of work or a tram or a restaurant possessed by madness.

A few years ago one of my friends asked my group, Do you think people are good or evil? A few of us seemed adamant we were fundamentally good but were tainted by the world, others cheerfully announced we were damned from birth and a few, including me, thought somewhere in between.

But upon reflection, I think the question is not whether people are good or evil, but how far along the spectrum you currently are, because your circumstances may change and send you flying down the other way without your permission. You may think you are evil, but look where Jean Valjean ended up in Les Miserables – redeemed. Or you may think you are good, but was Satan not once an angel of God? Are not the gentlest, kindest people still capable of deceit, torture and rape?

We are simultaneously monsters and angels and sometimes one emerges victorious over the other. And yet we still remain the same being – a beautiful, terrifying enigma.

From The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

“But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn’t change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.”

An old high school friend recently asked me who my closest friends were. I thought for a moment, thinking of who I spend the most time with, who I trust the most and who I have learnt the most from, and I realised that most of my best friends are dead. In fact, most of them don’t even know I exist.

Books, blogs and podcasts give unprecedented access to people and ideas. Through writings and recordings we can learn from the greatest, most influential minds in the world and bear witness to the most amazing literary novels in history. This is why I get so emotional when exploring a bookstore – I sense the legacy and wisdom behind these mountains of pages but lack the time and energy to read them all.

I am fortunate to have some close human connections who I can live life alongside. But alongside my living friends are Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Bukowski, Malcolm Gladwell and dozens other literary and podcast giants, people who are mostly dead and have surely never heard of me, yet still guide and teach me day after day.

It is the greatest privilege.

In statistics, expected values (EVs) are the product of each of the possible outcomes by the probability that each outcome will occur and then summing those numbers.

For example, say that each time you flip a coin, heads gets you $10 and tails gets you $0. Your EV would be $5 since there’s a 50% chance you will earn either $10 or $0, and $10 * 0.5 + $0 * 0.5 = $5.

All of our daily decisions have EVs. If we spend 10 minutes going for a run, there are many possible outcomes, including soreness, enjoyment, euphoria, getting injured and getting fitter. Importantly, the likelihood and the desirability of each individual outcome is on a case-by-case basis. A child just learning to walk may have vastly different EVs compared to a seasoned marathoner. The child may be likely to hurt themselves and cry if they attempt to run whereas the marathoner may enjoy it since they have developed it as an expertise and it is part of their lifestyle.

It’s fun to think about the different things we do and the EVs we can hope to get from each. For example, writing is one of my activities with the highest EV. There are very little outcomes that are bad but many that are amazing, such as developing clarity of thought and connecting with readers. Even though the likelihood of the amazing is fairly low, all things considered writing ends up having a high EV.

Being considerate of people is another activity with a high EV. If you like to treat others with respect, smile regularly and remember details, the likelihood of a bad outcome is low. You will probably get better outcomes than if you were an asshole. And over time, the accumulation of these acts may reward you.

How would our lives change if we strived towards high EVs, activities that would challenge us and push us towards positive change, and dumped our low EVs, activities that keep us dormant and perhaps even make us regress a little?

I think it would be quite the experiment.

I have a love-hate relationship with cycling up hills.

I hate it because it hurts. Your legs are on fire because every pedal is a single legged squat. As well as the physical strain, you are moving at a snail’s pace and the disconnect between effort and result is discouraging.

I love it because of the top. You reach the top and you think, Finally, the pain is over, and my body can relax, and when gravity takes over and you begin flying down the hill the freedom makes the suffering all worth it.

Today I rode up the west gate bridge in Melbourne as part of a 50km bike race. I was not prepared for how steep it was. When I saw it from a distance, cyclists looked like ants climbing a wall of concrete and many were walking their bikes along the side. The first 100m was already tough and as I hit the steepest section, my legs were already burning. My gears shifted to the lowest setting and I pedalled as fast as I could but barely moved faster than walking speed. It was painful and disheartening.

But after what felt like an eternity, I reached the top. And oh god, when I reached the top I felt like crying. My legs were spent, my arms were shaking and my lungs were on the verge of collapse. But as I tipped past the summit and let gravity carry me down, it felt like heaven.

Would I have finished the race faster if there was no bridge to cross? Probably. But that race would also have been boring. The hills, the annoying traffic lights, the weird bumps in the road, these are what make races interesting. Suffering up the bridge and its thrilling descent was the highlight of the whole 50km.

Sometimes the funnest parts of life aren’t the easiest or the happiest or the most successful, but the ones that involved declaring a challenge, a challenge that secretly scared you and gave you doubts about your competency, and finding a way to emerge past it, even if it killed parts of you in the process.

The hills are what make the race.

Not every good thing needs to be difficult.

Studying doesn’t need to be difficult. Just do one Anki card, watch five minutes of a lecture, review one set of notes.

Exercise doesn’t need to be difficult. Just walk for ten minutes, do one push-up, hold one stretch.

Reading doesn’t need to be difficult. Just read one chapter, one news article, one blog post.

Assuming that tasks are difficult creates unnecessary friction to get started; a shame, since getting started is often the most important thing.

Today while in a bedside tutorial a neurologist told our group of medical students, “When you are talking to a patient, you need to go back to when you were three. What did you always ask?” None of us answered.

“Why? Why? Why?”

Always keep digging, he explained. There is more to one’s medical history, social history and history of presenting complaint than what is initially revealed. There are more stories longing to be told, more emotions to uncover, more meaning behind this conversation. If you are impatient or take someone at their word, you will miss a whole lot. And with enough time and listening, you might even begin to understand them.

I’ve noticed that a common feature of my lowest, most depressive moods is a profound lack of curiosity. When life and nature and people are no longer interesting, depression is at your doorstep. The world turns lifeless, smells disappear and nothing surprises you. When I attempted suicide many years ago I wrote in my journal, “The world looks grey. I cannot see colours. My world once full of beauty is now meaningless.”

One of the reasons I decided to live was because of a garden bush near my apartment. It belonged to a house a few doors down, one I had walked past many times but never noticed, and what struck me was its colour. The bush was by no means impressive – it was disorderly and unkempt – but amidst the pitch black sky and the grey filter it threw over everything, this bush seemed to defy all odds and shine bright green. The vividness of its shade was extraordinary.

And then I turned my attention to the house the bush belonged to. I saw there were engravings on the ceiling and that it was shaped like a palace. The design was actually quite lovely. On the front wall was a sculpture of a Greek-looking face with curly hair. “I wonder who that is?” I thought. And suddenly my world became more interesting, less unmanageable.

They say that curiosity killed the cat, but I suspect that far more lives, conversations and beauty have been lost by a lack of wonder than too much.

“The most important thing is to never stop questioning.” Albert Einstein wrote. “Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

Team sports are a funny thing.

Compared with individual sports, the lows are lower. If one person makes a mistake, the whole team suffers. One mispass, one slip, one lapse of attention results in not just one person’s demise but that of the whole group. You are only as strong as your weakest link.

Yet compared with individual sports, the highs are also higher. One person’s victory is the whole team’s victory. When you rely on other people, as you must in team sports, you achieve greater things than if there were just multiple copies of yourself. Your teammates can amplify your strengths and cover your weaknesses. And in this process, you forge new friendships and a bond that runs deeper than most acquaintances.

Even though I’ve competed for many years in table tennis and distance running, my most memorable sporting experiences were in volleyball, a sport I only played seriously for one year in high school. I remember being terrible when our team first came together – forgetting positions, fumbling passes, missing serves, and the frustration that came with miscommunication. I hated that the whole team lost a point off of one person’s mistake. But I also remember the exhilaration we felt when we pulled off a rehearsed play, began to serve, receive and spike more consistently and having our team progress as a unit, beating teams we previously lost to. I cried more in that year of teamwork than all my years of individual sports, tears of both pain and joy.

The losses hurt more when you had six on a court. The wins also felt more glorious. The whole experience was more exhilarating, more addicting.

Not far from the hospital is a vietnamese cafe that makes amazing banh mis for $8-9. I discovered it thanks to my partner’s recommendation and have visited it regularly these last few weeks.

All the banh mis are delicious but my favourite order is the crispy pork. I rarely eat pork but the one here is my guilty exception. I have ordered it twice this week and have been very happy both times.

Today I went in for a late lunch, ready to play the dance of scanning the menu when I already know what I want, when the shop owner looked at me, smiled and said, Crispy pork? At first I thought I misheard him since he said it so casually, like him saying, Good day, or How are you, but then I saw he had already put the price on the counter machine. He had remembered my order.

This is the first time any store has remembered my order. I’ve never particularly cared about this since the food is the same regardless, but this small acknowledgement was very touching. I suddenly felt that my previous visits were meaningful, that the store owner didn’t take me for granted, but remembered my face and made the effort to associate my order with it. He must have over 100 customers a day and the thought that he was able to remember me out of all of them was comforting.

Too touched and shocked for words, I nodded and paid on my phone.

One of the best ways you can appreciate someone is to remember the things they have told you. In this era of digital dementia, memory is a scarce resource. So if someone knows that they occupy just a little bit of your storage space, it can be a big deal. And maybe, this comfort will unlock more trust and openness in the future.

Here’s to more crispy pork orders.

When we read a novel, we expect characters to change. If a character at the end of a journey is the same as when they started then it was a pretty lousy journey. Every good story has change and conflict scattered throughout to test the characters and build them into people worth reading about. These stages of growth are signalled through chapters.

There is a book written in reality too: the story of our lives, and we are writing it every day. To make this book into an interesting story, it helps to think what chapter we are living in and let that guide our focus. Here are three ways to do this.

First, remember that we cannot stay in this chapter forever. There are more hurdles to overcome, more giants to battle and more riches to discover. We were not supposed to stay stagnant here. You will eventually graduate, drift away from friends and live independently. And indeed, despite the uncertainty, you will need to.

Second, remember that this chapter exists for a reason. Whatever lesson this chapter is supposed to teach us – love, learning, suffering, discipline – it plays a role in the larger story. This chapter might be entirely different to a previous chapter. It might even feel you are writing a tangent, a dumb side plot or ruining the progress you’ve made earlier. No matter. Good journeys are rarely linear but often messy and random. Change course if you so desire but keep on writing.

And lastly, recognise when a chapter is coming to an end. A graduation, a promotion, a new job, a marriage, a death – these are all daunting but necessary transitions. No interesting character can come about in safe seclusion. Step forthrightly into your new adventure.

And maybe, at the end, we will have something worth reading about.