Eric Tian

Here are two examples of how luck has played a quiet but enormous role in my success.

1. Studying abroad in London

In the winter of 2019, I applied to do an intensive subject abroad at University College London (UCL). I thought this would be a great way to travel the world and get credits for my degree at the same time. The problem was, studying abroad is expensive. $8000 more expensive than I had in savings.

I expressed my disappointment at being unable to study abroad to my older sister. After she listened for a while, my sister proposed me an offer: if I could earn a bursary for $4000, she would fund the rest of it. I quickly applied to all the scholarships available and began to wait. After a few weeks, I found that I was accepted for one: the Lin Martin Melbourne Global Scholarship. The amount: $3000. I was happy, but my heart still sank. I still needed $1000 to head to London, and I was sure that all of the others had rejected me. I was devastated and quietly resigned that I was going to spend my winter in Melbourne.

But the day before my study abroad application closed, I received an email.

The day before my application closed, I received a $1000 scholarship for a grant I never even knew about. Anyone applying to study abroad is automatically considered for the Melbourne Global Scholars Award and I happened to be a recipient. This last-minute miracle led to one of the best winters of my life where I travelled around London, Amsterdam and Paris.

The experience from this winter secured me a one-year undergraduate internship at CSL, one of the largest biotechnology companies in Australia. Here, I gained research skills and met some incredible teachers. Easily one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. To top it off, I talked about this CSL experience in my interview for Melbourne Medical School, which got me into medicine.

I can’t control who my siblings are and what scholarships exist. But if I didn’t have a great sister and didn’t automatically apply for the Melbourne Global Scholars Award, I wouldn’t have studied abroad in London, wouldn’t have worked at CSL, and might not have gotten into medicine.

Pure luck.

2. Meeting my partner

The first week of medical school, like most new courses, started off with an orientation week. Over these few days there’s a lot of meeting new people, ice-breakers and administrative lectures.

On the fourth day of orientation, I was chatting to one of my new tutorial classmates for the semester when a voice caught my attention.

“Excuse me?”

I turned around to face a well-dressed Asian girl with glasses and the shiniest eyes I’d ever seen. She told me she couldn’t find her group and was wondering if I knew where they were. After some discussion, I realised I knew some students of her group, called them and got their location. As I passed this information to her, she asked for my name.

“I’m Eric.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Lynn.”

We shook hands and I added her on Facebook the next day.

A few weeks later, I decided to post my first YouTube video on Books I’ve Loved. The video is terrible, but Lynn liked it enough to comment on my Facebook post. I thought this was encouraging enough to message her where we started talking about books. Turns out, she’s an avid reader as well. Soon, we met up in person. A few months later, she became my girlfriend.

It was entirely a stroke of luck that Lynn asked directions from me. But if she never did, we wouldn’t be Facebook friends and she never would’ve seen my video, given we had no classes together. And I wouldn’t have met the most extraordinary girl in my life.

Pure luck.

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I read somewhere that all success dialled back enough can be attributed entirely to luck. I’m still wrestling with that idea but in many ways, it’s very true.

If I was born into a different socioeconomic status and culture, I’d be a very different person. If I had a less caring family, I wouldn’t have half the opportunities that I do now. Same goes for anyone I’ve met, really. There’s an infinite number of variables that could’ve completely changed the reality I live in. But it so happens that this is the one that played out.

Luck is a funny thing.

Five tips I wish I knew when I was in high school:

1. Have a strong filter

If you don’t like a book past the first chapter, drop it. If you insist on finishing every book you begin, reading will quickly become a chore. The majority of books are: a) adequately summarised in the first chapter, b) not for you, or c) not for anyone. If you grind your way through a bad book, you won’t be willing to read again in the future.

You would never drag yourself into a relationship with someone you don’t like. Do the same with what you read.

2. Prioritise

If your reason for reading books is because you don’t have time, I wonder if you’d read a book if I paid you $1 million dollars to do it. Most people probably would.

A lack of time means a lack of priorities. If you believe in the transformative power of books, you will make time for it. If you don’t believe in books, I hope you will consider changing your mind. My suggestion for prioritising books is to do it in the moments of the day you can control: before you sleep, and when you wake up. If you like it enough, you’ll begin reading during your busy day too.

3. Be flexible

Reading books doesn’t have to be with a paperback under a lamp. The activity of reading has transformed immensely over the last few years such as audiobooks and the Kindle. Listening to War and Peace on your phone is no inferior to pouring through it with a beautiful hardcopy. The main thing is to start.

I highly recommend listening to audiobooks – Audible is a great way to do that. If there are mindless activities throughout your day, listening to a book can transform your experience. I genuinely look forward to buying groceries, washing the dishes or riding to Uni now because of this. You can easily get through a book a month with this “while-I’m-doing-that” method.

4. Do it with others

It’s amazing to read books with a community, whether that be family, your partner or book clubs. Not only does it hold you accountable to keep reading, you have the opportunity to both clarify your takeaways and hear other people’s lessons. These conversations can utterly transform the way you view your book.

My partner is currently reading War and Peace and it’s great talking to her about it. I find myself seeing scenes and characters in completely new ways which elevates my experience of the book – despite finishing it over a month ago.

5. Be patient

This has two meanings: be patient while reading and be patient while searching.

While reading, don’t rush. What’s the point of saying you read a book a week if you don’t remember or appreciate anything? Be patient; talk to the author in your head and if possible, try and step into their shoes. You will take much more away.

While searching for a new book, have faith. Trust that there is a book out there for you. If you were forced to read books that didn’t resonate with you, I’m sorry. But don’t let that ruin literature as a whole.

There is a book out there, waiting just for you. Be patient.

We all must suffer one of two things: the pain of regret and disappointment or the pain of discipline.

As Oscar Wilde said,
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

One idea I’m fascinated by: you can’t control when you’re lucky, but you can increase your odds of finding luck (luck = success based on chance). Some of these luck-promoting activities include:

1. Do more stuff
2. Make it public
3. Meet more people
4. Obtain more skills

And here’s my hypothesis:

Lucky break = Your surface area (points 1-3) * Intrinsic luckiness (point 4).

Let me explain.

1. Do more stuff

Let’s say you’re lucky 10% of the time. That means if you do one new pursuit a year, there’s only a 10% chance that that annual endeavour will have the benefit of chance on your side. Those odds are kind of low.

But if you try 10 or 20 new things a year, you’re almost certain to have pure chance help you along with at least one of those.

It’s about surface area. If you increase your number of activities done, luck will have more opportunities to find you. Your have a greater area for luck to randomly land on.

2. Make it public

The world is big and a lot of it lives on the internet. One of the easiest ways to get lucky is to put yourself out there online.

As Austin Kleon writes in Show Your Work!,
Online, everyone – the artist and the curator, the master and the apprentice, the expert and the amateur – has the ability to contribute something.

If you are constantly creating but keep it to yourself, you reduce the odds that something extraordinary will happen thanks to luck. If you share it with the world, you’ll increase your surface area of influence. People, and luck, are more likely to find you.

3. Meet more people

In my eyes, there are two main benefits of meeting new people:

1. You can learn something from them
2. They can learn something from you

From them, you might find a new creative idea to do (point 1), some opportunity to share your work (point 2), or some skill that you could steal for yourself (point 4).

On their end, they might discover something from you that leads to a new opportunity.

This is similar to the point above on making it public. If more people know you, there’s a bigger chance that one of them will be the key factor to some lucky break. You might find an opportunity in your career, dating life or financials.

And of course, if you get along well enough, you might even form a friendship.

4. Obtain more skills

So far, we’ve only discussed ways to increase your surface area. This includes do more stuff (point 1), make it public (point 2) and meet more people (point 3). But there’s also another approach to finding luck, which is increasing your intrinsic luckiness. I believe the easiest way to do this is to obtain more skills.

If you learn a new skill like public speaking, coding, economics or psychology, you’ll generally do things better. You’ll be better at talking to people. You’ll find a more creative way of working. You’ll know the ins-and-outs of a new domain. In this way, your intrinsic chance to find luck dramatically increases, because you’re doing better stuff. Your intrinsic luckiness is higher. In his biography, Scott Adams writes,
Every new skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.

Luck favours the prepared.

On top of this, you’ll also probably develop the confidence to do more stuff (point 1), make it public (point 2) and better talk to people (point 3). This ties together everything in the equation.

Summary

The formula to find luck, and how to maximise your odds:

Lucky break = Your surface area * Intrinsic luckiness

Surface area	Intrinsic luckiness
Do more stuff	Obtain more skills
Make it public
Meet more people

Here are five hypotheses of mine on life (will probably change in the future):

1. The point of a good book is to change the way you view the world and other people. If your views stay the same after finishing a book, it wasn’t meant for you.

2. Many of us severely underestimate the role of health on our happiness. If exercise often, eat clean and sleep well, that’s half of the game won. The rest includes moving towards a higher goal and having the freedom to do what you want, when you want (and probably more factors: TBC).

3. Most of the excuses we make: not enough time, not enough money, not enough knowledge, are just ways to avoid the real bottleneck: not enough courage. There is always a small step to be taken – if only we have the guts to do it.

4. Luck plays an enormous role in our successes but we often misattribute this to forward planning or being “excellent”. This is because it’s easier to accept that someone’s success came from something measurable like hard work, rather than something obscure like luck.

But we can often improve our odds for being lucky by increasing the number of ways luck can find us. If you’re 1% lucky and do 100 things, one of those pursuits is bound to have luck on its side. But if you only do one thing, you’ll almost definitely be unlucky.

5. Good intentions are not good enough. It’s not good enough to want to say something nice – you must say it. It’s not good enough to want to be a good student – you must prove it. It’s not good enough to want to stand up against injustice – you must take action. The world doesn’t know your intentions.

My two biggest productivity killers are YouTube and Chess. Once I’m on either of them, it’s hard to get out: YouTube sucks me into a spiral of recommendations and chess baits me into playing too many games. I’ve tried using extensions to block them but it’s too easy to just go on incognito mode to bypass. The problem is, in that moment, there isn’t much willpower to resist.

But a few days ago, I realised BlockSite lets you redirect a blocked website to another page of your choosing. I thought for a while and decided on this:

It’s just a simple Notion page that took one minute to set up. But whenever I land on this, I get a fat dose of momento mori. The urge to waste my time goes away and I look to more productive behaviours like reading or cleaning my room. I’ve wasted barely any time on YouTube and chess since.

Most of us have activities that eat away our soul but for whatever reason, we do them anyway. My hypothesis is that we just need an extra dose of willpower to help us overcome the temptation in that moment. For destructive behaviour on the internet, this landing page seems to work for me.

It’s easy to get caught up in titles.

I’m a high achiever. I’m an athlete. I’m someone who is productive. Although these can be great for self-confidence, nouns can contain hidden dangers. Here’s three:

Firstly, nouns can narrow the boundaries of your self-worth. If you’re an “athlete” but suddenly suffer a traumatic injury, your identity is shattered. You will never again reach the level of excellence you once had; this can be severely disorienting. But if you think of yourself as someone who exercises, you still have scope to do that in your new circumstance. Verbs tend to have a broader scope than nouns, meaning your self-worth isn’t so limited.

Secondly, nouns can be wildly delusional. For example, a Christian is not something you are, it’s something you do. You take the steps to read the Bible; to treat people around you kindly; to let a God shape your life. It is not enough to think, “alas, I am saved! God will save me from all my sins.” Your actions; your decision to submit to a God must reflect your being. If your inner and outer behaviour is no different to an ordinary atheist, you’re probably deluding yourself.

Similarly, if you haven’t written, ran or read anything in years, can you really call yourself a writer, runner or reader? Or are you merely holding onto a past glory?

To get to know people, I used to ask strangers, who are you? I thought this question sounded deep and thought-provoking. But I’ve since found that a better question is, how do you spend your time? This is often closer to the truth in getting to know someone’s priorities.

Lastly, nouns limit the potential of who you can be. If you call yourself an artist, that almost predestines yourself to fulfil that title. Your world is focused around that one identity.

This can be great if you’re determined to succeed in one field alone. But as mentioned earlier, nouns can be volatile depending on changing circumstances. Your level of excellence right now may be your life’s peak. Instead, it’s much easier to not really be tied up to an identity and just be free to do things whenever you choose. We are verbs, not nouns.

From Stephen Fry:

Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it – that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.

A definition I like of sunk costs: a gift from your former self.

If someone gave you a computer that was half broken, you probably wouldn’t accept it – you’d get a proper one. If someone gave you a project you’d hate doing, you probably wouldn’t take it – you’d go and do something you’d like. So, why do we hold onto things like this when our former self gives it to us?

We often hold onto our past accomplishments and hard-earned statuses far longer than we should. The only way to keep growing is to do something new – and the path to something new requires you to leave things behind.

Credits: Seth Godin

The very nature of ‘urgent’ means that it cannot and will not persist.

So if you have a problem that needs solving but you feel too tired to act, make it urgent. Force yourself to take action when you don’t want to. Here are some ways to do that:

1. Make the consequence terrible

If the world explodes if you don’t do 10 push-ups, you’ll probably do some push-ups. Similarly, set yourself a consequence so severe that makes your current excuses pale in comparison. Some ideas for making a task urgent:

• Pay someone a lot of money if you don’t do it
• Have someone slap you if you don’t do it
• Feel ashamed if you don’t do it

Much of this comes from having someone to hold you accountable. It’s important this accountability partner is merciless: the task is either done or it’s not – no exceptions. If it’s not, the punishment is carried out ruthlessly.

Unless you’re high in neuroticism, don’t trust yourself to punish yourself. You run the risk of letting yourself off easy, and then the urgent matter becomes unimportant.

2. Love your work

This is the ideal way to operate. Make your work so enjoyable that it would feel bad to not do it. A day where this task isn’t done is a day wasted in your eyes.

To me, this is writing. A day without journaling is a bad day and so I don’t hesitate when I need to write. I like it enough that it just gets done each day: kind of how we drink when we’re thirsty or eat when hungry. It’d just be weird not to do it.

Maybe we all have something we’d like to do; an idea, a passion, a little firefly at the back of our minds whispering, what if? A force that has been hidden from sight for so long but is still waiting to be acknowledged. If so, one way to pay attention to that light is to force it out into the spotlight until it blinds us.

Make it urgent.

If you were in the US House of Representatives in 1800, there was an important decision to be made. An electoral college tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr has led to the first contingent election in history; who becomes president is in your hands.

The problem is, the Federalists support Burr and the Demographic-Republicans support Jefferson. It looks like we’re in deadlock. Which party will trickle over to the other side first to decide a result?

This is one of the dilemmas told in the hit musical Hamilton, which tells the story of American founding father Alexander Hamilton: his life, death and influence over how American history played out. In this pivotal moment, where the contingent election appears to be in deadlock, Hamilton announces his opinion on which of the two candidates he prefers – a statement which would ultimately decide the election results.

Although Hamilton has always battled Jefferson as a rival whereas Burr was an early friend, Hamilton declares in the musical: when all is said and done / Jefferson has beliefs. Burr has none. Hamilton would rather back somebody with wrong principles than someone devoid of many. This support ultimately leads some Federalists to switch allegiances, voting Jefferson in as the 3rd President of the United States from 1801 to 1809, with Burr serving as vice-president.

Hints for this result can be found earlier in the musical when a younger Hamilton asks Burr, If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for? The young Hamilton is frustrated at Burr’s inability to fully support a cause: revolution or monarchy under King George III? Freedom or consistency? This indecision for action ultimately proves to be Burr’s political downfall.

As someone who is high in openness, it’s easy to have no opinions. You can see both sides of an argument, understand their merits and this leaves you paralysed. Having firm beliefs about anything is difficult because you can see the faults in any singular view and you don’t want to believe in anything shaky. And so, the default solution is just to do nothing. No opinions is safe.

But the problem with having no opinions is that if you stand for nothing, what do you fall for? If you can’t articulate your values to anybody, what will you do when you are forced to confront them for yourself? Compare these two: a man who firmly believes in something wrong and a man who timidly believes in nothing. One is arrogant, the other is a coward. I think deep down I’d respect the arrogant person more. If God were to judge these two men, I think he would reward courage over being safe. The Hamiltons over the Burrs. If you think about it, Jesus Christ is probably one of the most courageous persons in history.

And so this is a dilemma I’ve been wrestling with: to be a safe coward and stay true to openness, or to recklessly adopt an opinion for the sake of courage. Is there a middle ground? I don’t know. Maybe there’s a compromise or a piece of the puzzle I’m missing.

But this I know: standing and falling for nothing seems like a pretty dull way to exist.