Eric Tian

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: ???

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.

Birds sitting on a tree aren’t worried about a branch breaking.

If it breaks, they just fly away.

Their trust is not on the branch, but in their own wings.

In anything with inherent risk – investing, starting a company or asking someone out – paralysis analysis can run rampant. It can be easy to envision possible doom-and-gloom scenarios which halt one from starting at all.

But on closer inspection, the root problem isn’t that the risk is dangerous, but more that we don’t trust ourselves to survive if all hell breaks loose.

We have all overcome hardships. You being alive today and understanding this sentence is a biological miracle. Your lived experience has made you into an intelligent, adaptable force. Your sufferings have strengthened you in unimaginable ways.

Why not trust the wings that have sprouted from them, as birds trust in theirs?

Avocadoes are tricky things.

Sometimes, they’re too hard. Yet, leave them out for a little too long and suddenly, they’re rotten.

But every once in a while, you’ll cut into an avocado and it’ll be perfect.

When you encounter the perfect avocado, you certainly aren’t going to waste it. You’ll turn it into the most delightful avo-toast sandwich, eat it straight out with a spoon or do whatever you enjoy the most.

Recently, I’ve been musing about timing. As a baby, reading the Vampire Academy series would have been beyond me. The task would be premature; too hard. But if now I were to go back and read it, I’d probably cringe after every chapter. The task would be overdue; too rotten.

The perfect time to read Vampire Academy was in my teens. And when I did, it was great.

What opportunities are ripe for picking right now? Things that seemed far-fetched a few years ago, and might seem childish in a few years: where are they?

Because we only really have the present moment. If we continue doing what we’ve always done in the past, we might find a rotten avocado. Yet, if we look too far forward, we might begin an endeavour we’re not ready for. The perfect adventure for us exists right now but is on an expiry date.

Are we not ever-changing, both gradually and per situation?

The perfect avocado is waiting.

It took me three weeks to write my first ever article.

Along the way, I gave up multiple times. The reasons to stop were deafening. It’s not worth your time. People will judge your work. You have nothing to share.

The loudest one was: You can’t write.

I had never taken a writing class and had no writing style to draw upon. Ideas in my head constantly failed to materialise into words. Imagine trying to tell a story but having no voice. Utterly paralysing.

One day, I decided to try something new. I pretended that I knew how to write and invented a story for myself that I was a writer; that people were interested in what I had to say and would enjoy my prose. All completely unproven and probably not true.

But it worked. My first article was posted exactly two years ago: 02 March, 2019. It was a terrible piece of writing and is one of my least read posts, but it got this train started. And now, after 130 posts, I finally feel like I’m finding my voice.

You might feel like you’re not capable enough. Quite frankly, you might not be. But if you tell yourself a good enough story, you just might rise to the occasion. And if you do it long enough, the fiction might just become a reality.

In his commencement speech at the University of the Arts, Neil Gaiman gently urged:
So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom, and if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.

Just pretend.

One of my most surreal memories came from the age of 15. It was a cold and quiet Friday night. The street lights were off and the neighbourhood was painted pitch black. I was chatting on the driveway with a few friends and a mentor of ours – six in total. Suddenly, our mentor told us to stop.

Look up, he said.

We didn’t hear him at first. A few of us were laughing at how we couldn’t see each other. A little boy was complaining at how he was cold. Yet, our mentor insisted.

Look up.

When we craned our necks to look upward, all six voices fell silent. The sky was breathtaking. It was one of the most spectacular starry nights I had ever seen. Millions and millions of stars lit up the dark canvas like candles in the dark. The night, which seemed so dark and mysterious, was graced with pockets of light from thousands of light years away. We stood there enchanted for a good 10 seconds or so.

What my mentor said next I’ll never forget.

The world can be incredibly dark. This darkness can be scary; at times it might even be suffocating. It might threaten to engulf you whole.

But look at the stars. Just one star produces enough light to vanquish all the darkness. And if you have many stars, suddenly the world looks dazzling. But it all starts with that one star.

We are all stars. Whenever the darkness feels like too much, remember that you can do something about it. If you see no light in your world, be the light yourself. Shine.

Yet, it’s not so easy to shine. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate; our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. Us being small does not serve the world. There is nothing impressive in shrinking into insignificance.

To shine is a challenge to be different. To be a light in times where darkness prevails. And who knows? Perhaps liberating our own fear gives permission for others to do the same.

“For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.” –
– Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb

Yes and no are often thought of as being two sides of the same coin.

But in reality, the difference between these two is enormous. Let me explain.

Yes is saying no to everything else; whereas no is saying yes to anything else.

If you say yes to a 15-minute call at 2:00pm, you devote that 15 minutes to that call and nothing else. You’re not eating, brushing your teeth, or moving your attention. Nothing else goes into that scheduled time. When you say yes, you say no to everything else.

More still, this 15-minute block affects more than the scheduled time. You know what it feels like: one appointment causes the day to shift and swing towards this event’s centre of gravity. 12:00 isn’t 12:00, but 2-hours-until-that-appointment o’clock. The day which was once free for anything, now rotates around this 15-minute call.

On the other hand, no is one of the most liberating things out there. When you say no to an offer, you free up that time to do anything you want. You could read a book, take a nap, call a loved one or watch a movie. The possibilities for that 15 minute block are endless. When you say no, you say yes to anything else.

This isn’t to start a war against scheduling time and saying yes. Having a weekly timetable and embracing new challenges are two practices that I firmly stand by.

But for the ones who value freedom and autonomy, the reminder here is to be careful of what we say yes to. Often, the hidden dangers of a “yes” far outweigh the FOMO of saying “no”.

Here are five ideas that I’m currently warming to, plus five rebuttals from a disgusted, younger me.

1. You don’t need to be the top of your class. Just being average is fine, so long as you know the fundamentals. Only this person has enough time to pursue other skills and hobbies.

Previous me: Excelling academically is one of the highest priorities one can hold, for this will unlock opportunities later on to enjoy life (related: The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman).

2. There is nothing but the present moment. This moment in time and space is perfectly unique and impossible to grasp.

Previous me: Having a vision to work towards is one of the greatest ideals one can have.

3. Nothing has intrinsic meaning. Everything – place, person, or song – is a blank canvas; you can project whatever meaning you want onto it.

Previous me: The most meaningful thing one can do is figure out why they were placed on this world and to live it.

4. If someone ignores my invitation or message, following up with them is a sign of respect – they may have just been busy or forgot to reply.

Previous me: If someone ignores my invitation or message, I should just let them be. They clearly don’t want to deal with me.

5. People are really interesting. The threads that intermix and weave together to form a person are enchantingly beautiful. Yet, cultivating lasting friendships can be difficult.

Previous me: People are all the same. Making friends is easy: just don’t judge others.

In 1923, Walt Disney’s first studio went bankrupt. Its cartoons were ridiculously expensive and lost a fortune. While Steamboat Willie made Disney a credible animator, business success was an entirely different story.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs changed everything.

The $8 million it earned in its first six months of 1938 was the most a film ever made in that time. Walt Disney Studios was transformed. All debts were paid off. Employees got retention bonuses. The company purchased a state-of-the-art studio in Burbank, where it remains today.

An Oscar turned Walt from an established animator to an overnight celebrity. By 1938, he had produced several hundreds of hours of film. But business wise, the 83 minutes of Snow White were all that mattered.

Everyone understands 80/20 rule: that roughly 80% of outcomes come from 20% of the causes. The law of the vital few. In Walt Disney’s case, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was more like 99/1. This one outlier transformed his life.

One of my favourite pastimes is experimenting with habits. Once, I meditated every day for two months straight. Another time, I woke up at 6:30am for a whole semester. Right now, I’m trying to read 30 minutes before I go to bed.

Yet, the vast majority of these habits don’t last. Some of them I can’t control, like injury preventing me from running. Others, like meditating or waking early, I just fell out of since it wasn’t worth it anymore.

Only two habits have stuck with me: reading and writing. And these two outliers have easily shaped over 90% of the person I am today.

Furthermore, I can count on two hands the books that have shaped me the most. In my journaling, a select few entries contain the most powerful lessons. On this site, a handful of posts drive the majority of views: Agnosthesia: The Curse of Uncertainty, Monologue of an Introvert and Minimum Viable Happiness amongst others. Ironically, the posts I expected to do the best got no attention at all. But that’s a story for another time.

One lesson from all this is to wildly experiment. Walt Disney would have never created Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs if he didn’t move out from cartoon shorts to a full-length cartoon. Similarly, I would’ve never gotten into reading if I maintained my pessimism towards literature from high school.

If you’re looking for practices that will change your life, throw as much as you can against a wall and see what sticks. Only God knows what outliers lie in store.

Credits to The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed and Happiness for the above story – an amazing book, deserving of its title (and thank you Lynn for the recommendation).