I used to assume that when writers sat down to work, they all knew what they were going to write about. They must have all outlined their ideas, characters and plot twists perfectly in their minds, and all that was left was to transcribe them onto paper.
When I began writing I was terribly annoyed to find out this wasn’t the case. From my own experience, and from reading other authors’ stories, this almost never happens. We might set out to write with a general destination in mind, perhaps a scene or an idea we hope to convey, but we are most of the time half-blind, flailing around, tripping over tree branches, scrambling for a reasonable point. We can only see as far as the next sentence, the next logical thought. There is no master plan.
Thankfully, like driving at night, we can reach our destinations by seeing only as far as our headlights allow. We may make a few wrong turns, swerve suddenly to avoid roadkill and feel quite lost, but with enough time, our headlights will guide us to our destination. Going on wild tangents, creating abysmal roadkills of ideas and feeling overwhelmed are all part of the process. No one has the whole journey mapped out. Besides, it’s more interesting if you figure it out as you go.
The point is to keep moving. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
In many domains, the moment you get good at something is when you start breaking conventional rules.
In chess, beginners are taught principles such as control the centre, develop minor pieces before major pieces, and don’t trade your queen for a pawn.
But in many situations, these rules must be broken. Some positions require an attack on the edge of the board rather than the centre. Some positions require moving a major piece instead of a minor piece. And some of the most spectacular games in history involved queen sacrifices to push for a positional advantage (examples). These defy all the principles taught to newer players but grandmasters recognise that sometimes, obeying general principles is not always the best move.
When you reach a certain level of competency, you realise that some rules are meant to be broken.
The moment we begin to outperform is when we begin to innovate, push and find tactics where general principles don’t apply. The best students study more efficiently than the rest. The best athletes do better workouts than the rest. The best companies are more innovative than the rest. Following the status quo is ironically the best way to remain mediocre.
Pablo Picasso summarised it well when he said, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
“The stories of our lives, far from being fixed narratives, are under constant revision. The slender threads of causality are rewoven and reinterpreted as we attempt to explain to ourselves and others how we became the people we are.” – Gordon Livingston
“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.” – Robert Frost
My biggest lesson from moving out of home: at some stage of our lives, we begin to make the rules. At some stage, nobody will force you to study, sleep, eat or exercise. You get to decide to do whatever you want. You get to define how you spend your days, and consequently how your life will play out.
It means everything we do, good or bad, is our responsibility. Our actions now have serious consequences and we can no longer hide behind others.
This morning, while at a traffic light, I locked eyes with a man across the street. He was middle-aged, in his 30s or 40s, and wore a dark suit with a black overcoat on top. We were separated by about 20 metres, me on my bike on the road, he on the pedestrian crossing on the other side, us both waiting for the light to turn green.
I do not know why we locked eyes. When I stopped at the red light, I glanced up and my eyes just happened to land on him, first his clothes, then his posture, then his face. When I arrived at his face I found that he was already looking at me. I simply stared back. He never dropped his gaze and neither did I. We must’ve held each other’s gaze for at least five seconds, maybe even ten, but it felt like an eternity, for when the lights turned green and the green man yelled PIIIUUUdududududu, I felt as though I was forcefully removed from a reverie. Our gazes dropped at that moment.
I will forever remember his eyes. They were deeply observant. I felt as though he was studying every part of my being, from my clothes to my skin, down to my morals and deepest secrets. His eyes never wavered, but just rested on me, burning a hole through my being, studying me like a scientist studying a bug. His eyes also possessed a deep sadness. It seemed he was mourning over something or carrying a deep burden. Perhaps he was shouldering a responsibility that was on the verge of crushing him. Perhaps he had just lost a friend, a loved one, and was dwelling in regret or depression. I will never know why his eyes were that way, for our paths crossed only for a split second, before diverging off, without a word. Fyodor Dostoyevsky once said, “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.” Maybe, in that moment, I was looking at at someone quite extraordinary.
There is great power in locking eyes with someone. Much can be expressed in complete silence: one’s general mood, honesty, level of presentness, bits of personality, and more. Our hesitancy to do so, whether out of politeness or cowardice, is a bit of a shame. There is much to be found in this organ.
To my friend across the street, I hope you had a wonderful day.
It’s 2am. My circadian rhythm is screaming at me to sleep, but here I am, staring at my blank screen, trying to figure out which idea to write about tonight.
Why not give up? The temptation is very real – I think over the last hour I’ve drifted off into sleep a few times already, only to wake up in a few seconds – and honestly, nobody would really notice if a post was missing. Heck, I don’t think many people even noticed when I didn’t post for two months straight.
But the reason I’m up is simple: I believe in the power of just showing up. I write posts on Sundays, and today is Sunday, so something must be written.
In my experience, 80% of any good habit formation comes from just doing something related to the desired outcome, no matter how small or terrible. Want to exercise more? Just start with a five minute walk. Want to learn a new language? Just revise one word. Want to be a better writer? Just write one short post.
I have a few hypotheses why showing up is so critical, but the one that matters the most is this. In our lives, there is always a gap between the person we say we are, and the things we actually do. And if this gap is too big, like saying you are smart or responsible, when you never actually study or take ownership over your duties, there are consequences. Every missed day is evidence that you aren’t the person you say you are, but instead a liar, quite delusional, and perhaps a bit of a loser. The more times you don’t show up, the more this accumulates. The gap between your image of yourself and reality breeds shame, untrustworthiness and disgust.
But when you show up, even for just a moment, it sends a vote in the other direction. Your body says, yes, I didn’t have to do this today, I sure damn didn’t feel like it, but here I am anyway. And if I can do this enough times, then maybe I do deserve this title I have given myself. You begin to trust yourself more, since you have built a reputation of being quite reliable with your promises, and this serves as confidence for future progress. Every act of showing up pushes you forward. Every act of giving up pushes you back.
There are many times when it is quite appropriate to give up, of course. Maybe you used to be a people-pleaser, or wanted to learn an esoteric hobby, but now find that these aren’t quite a priority anymore. It is fine to let them go, to gently kill off previous and aspirations.
But when you come to the many crossroads in life, where you must decide to either march towards an ideal, knowing that it will be difficult and painful, or fall back in response to this challenge, I pray you remember that giving up will be also painful, in more crushing and gnawing ways, and that one step forward, just one millimetre of progress toward a better future, is infinitely better than nothing at all. We are, after all, not what we think, or what we say, or how we feel. We are what we do.
“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.” – Charles Bukowski
This challenge, this impossible task, this painful endeavour that lies before us – we’ve seen this before. These demons are familiar. These emotions – fear, hesitancy, doubt – are a childhood friend.
Yet, here we stand, still alive. Not necessarily well, but alive. We’ve survived the drowning waters, the burning fires, and the fall from heaven. And if anything, this should give us confidence that we can survive this task ahead as well.
Here’s one of my favourite rules from an amazing blog post called 103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known (would highly recommend reading the whole thing):
“At a restaurant do you order what you know is great, or do you try something new? Do you make what you know will sell or try something new? Do you keep dating new folks or try to commit to someone you already met? The optimal balance for exploring new things vs exploiting them once found is: 1/3. Spend 1/3 of your time on exploring and 2/3 time on deepening. It is harder to devote time to exploring as you age because it seems unproductive, but aim for 1/3.”
I’ve been experimenting with this recently. When buying sushi, I always get two rolls I know I’ll enjoy (salmon avocado and grilled salmon), then experiment with one other I’ve never tried before. Some experiments have been pretty awful – anything with chicken is a nope – but I’ve also discovered some new favourites like tempura salmon or seaweed. Through experiencing different sushis, my world has expanded just a bit.
I think this novelty fraction can be different across different contexts. For high-reward, low-stake activities like food, reading or travelling, I’d push it closer to 1/2 or 2/3. In higher-stake activities like choosing your partner, or giving a talk, however, it may be wise to stick with what you know and have perfected.
Whatever it is, it’s critical some sort of novelty is present somewhere. You won’t remember the 100th tempura salmon sushi you ate. But that amazing seaweed sushi that blew your mind, or that terrible chicken avocado sushi that made you gag, despite it costing $4 and looking spectacular?
One of the fundamental concepts in managing a heart attack is the “door-to-balloon time (DTBT)”. This is the time between a patient’s arrival to hospital, and when a balloon is inflated in the blocked coronary artery, resulting in reperfusion.
Most hospitals have a door-to-balloon protocol of <90 minutes. The shorter the DTBT, the better. Every minute that the occluded artery is not opened is another minute of dying heart tissue (cardiologists have a phrase for this: time is tissue). The consequences are a matter of life and death.
Similar, the “thought-to-note time” is the time between a thought forming in one’s head, and the act of writing it down as a note. Like the DTBT, the shorter the time, the better. Also like the DTBT, the consequences of delay are a matter of life and death – albeit not of heart tissue, but of an idea.
I’ve recently established a thought-to-note time protocol of <5 minutes. The faster, the better, but sometimes you’re in the middle of something and it’s awkward to take your phone out. But when a moment arises, I take out my Notion page, and jot down whatever hit me. These are very rough – just vomit out the idea and worry about structure and grammar later. But once I’ve captured it, I’m happy. The thought will stay forever, and I can re-examine it whenever I like.
Not all days contain ideas that hit me. Some days I feel like a broken antenna: receiving nothing but radio silence. But on others, it feels like I’m discovering something new every few minutes (these usually occur when I’ve been reading a lot). You will never really know when they will come.
In the start-up space, one of the core commandments is to create a MVP: a Minimum Viable Product. This is a version of a product with just the minimum number of features for it to be usable by early customers. It’s not perfect, but it works and gets the job done.
Similarly, the Minimum Viable Happiness (MVH) is the minimum number of features one needs in their life to be happy. It’s the scenario where you think, “even if everything else goes wrong, I’m okay with this right now.”
Everybody has their own MVH. One person might require an en-suite to be fulfilled; another could be content sleeping amidst nature. One person might need to be surrounded by friends and activity; another could find solitude totally blissful.
Recently, I’ve been testing different MVHs for myself. One day I spent totally outdoors and continuously listened to podcasts to see if solitude was necessary for my happiness. That was a really miserable day. Now I know having some quiet is critical for my health.
Another day, I decided to not write anythingto see if writing was important. No notes, journaling or typing. That day was also excruciating. Now I know I need to be able to write to get through the day.
So far, my MVH is pretty low. To be happy, all I really need is some quiet, somewhere to write on, a book to read, a few close friends, plus around $50 a week to cover food and water. Having a comfortable bed, being around nature and living in moderate temperatures are great bonuses, but unnecessary.
Clarifying your MVH does a few things. First, it cultivates gratitude, because if you recognise that your MVH is fulfilled, you are probably less likely to mourn over your misfortunes. Things are pretty good as they are. Second, it helps you focus your attention. If you know already know what will keep you content, you can focus on other priorities like learning new skills or bettering the world, knowing you’ll be happy regardless of what happens.
“Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”
I used to think of our thoughts as a pile of mud: dirty, messy but hiding diamonds underneath. Dig deep enough past the top layers of crap and that’s when you’ll find some interesting stuff.
But the more I live, the more I find this metaphor missing a key component: randomness. Though most of my ideas are found in active reflection, a surprising amount come seemingly out of nowhere. For example, just yesterday, while in my gym’s changeroom, a story hit me: A man dreams of being a high jumper but is bound to his responsibilities as a neurosurgeon. He wrestles with his desire to improve the world (surgery) and his desire to enjoy the world (high jump) but never leaves neurosurgery. When he finally retires at the age of 70, he enters a masters athletics tournament, but trips on his first jump, falls and sustains a brain hematoma. He dies on the way into theatre.
Whoa! Where did that idea come from? No idea. Regardless, it hit me in one second, and I ran to my phone and wrote it all down. If I procrastinated, the idea would have surely vanished. Is it a brilliant plot? Not really. But it’s new, surprising, and might come in handy in a future project.
We hear of amazing discoveries that just hit people. Take these breakthroughs:
Dmitri Mendeleev discovering the periodic table.
Mary Shelley conjuring the plot of Frankenstein.
James Watson discovering the double helix nature of DNA.
These events happened while the person was asleep. How crazy is that? It feels like there’s a force out there randomly shooting off ideas at us – some bad, some good – and it is up to us to catch them, consciously or not.
It is crucial that you recognize these when they arrive. Do not be distracted, mindlessly scrolling on Instagram, and do not think you will remember them later. You will forget. Catch them like a trap, and store them away in your private notebook.
Your job isn’t to find these ideas but recognize them when they show up.
