Eric Tian

I find it profoundly interesting when one reaches a destination in an unexpected way. For example:

• As a tutor, my favourite moments are when a student reaches the answer in an unconventional way.
• As a student, my favourite moments are when someone with an unorthodox path to medical school teaches me something random.
• As an explorer, my favourite moments are when I marry together two completely unrelated ideas.

When we have our eyes on a goal, it’s easy to think of any deviations from it as being failures. Perhaps you didn’t get that score you wanted. Perhaps a lifelong friend disappointed you. Perhaps a dream you’ve been working for, at the final step, crumbled right before your eyes.

It’s okay! Straight paths are kind of boring. As long as you know what your key back in is, enjoy the temporary tangent. It’s way more interesting to treat each day as a new experience and go in whatever direction you want.

The best way to remain mediocre is to follow the status quo.

A parable from the priest and psychotherapist Anthony de Mello, on the stories we tell ourselves:

“A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chickens and grew up with them.

All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.

Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.

The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked.

“That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth—we’re chickens.”

So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.”

We’ve all heard of the “classics”; works like Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird; Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby; Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and more. Finishing a classic is often associated with an internal badge of honour for completing a book regarded by so many as important. But the question must be asked: what makes a book a “classic” and what is so important about reading them?

The Italian writer Italo Calvino addresses these questions in his 1991 book Why Read the Classics? – perhaps a classic in its own right.

Within this collection of essays, Calvino proposes these 14 definitions that make a classic:

1. The classics are those books about which you usually hear people saying: ‘I’m rereading…’, never ‘I’m reading….’

2. The Classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them; but they remain just as rich an experience for those who reserve the chance to read them for when they are in the best condition to enjoy them.

3. The classics are books which exercise a particular influence, both when they imprint themselves on our imagination as unforgettable, and when they hide in the layers of memory disguised as the individual’s or the collective unconscious.

4. A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.

5. A classic is a book which even when we read it for the first time gives the sense of rereading something we have read before.

6. A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers.

7. The classics are those books which come to us bearing the aura of previous interpretations, and trailing behind them the traces they have left in the culture or cultures (or just in the languages and customs) through which they have passed.

8. A classic is a work which constantly generates a pulviscular cloud of critical discourse around it, but which always shakes the particles off.

9. Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them.

10. A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.

11. ‘Your’ classic is a book to which you cannot remain indifferent, and which helps you define yourself in relation or even in opposition to it.

12. A classic is a work that comes before other classics; but those who have read other classics first immediately recognize its place in the genealogy of classic works.

13. A classic is a work which relegates the noise of the present to a background hum, which at the same time the classics cannot exist without.

14. A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.

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What should be noted from Calvino’s definitions, especially #11, is that classics are often subjective. One person’s classic may do nothing for another.

Right now, I’m reading Graham Greene’s The Power and The Glory. Its reviews are divisive, with most people enjoying it, but a significant amount damning it as a piece of literature. In particular, the novel has been known to offend catholics, given its unusual representation of the church. It’s been claimed that a few years post-publication, the Archbishop of Westminster summoned Greene and read him a letter condemning the novel, claiming it to be paradoxical.

But to me, this book is a classic. It touches upon themes of faith, hope and sin in ways I’ve never seen before. The writing is gorgeous and forces you to chew upon the words rather than inhale it. This is one of the few books I cannot remain indifferent to; it has imprinted an undeniable mark on my unconscious and is something I’ll be re-reading in the years to come – two criteria of a Calvino classic.

The point of a classic isn’t for everybody to enjoy it – that would probably make a very boring piece of literature. As Calvino suggests, A classic is a work which constantly generates a pulviscular cloud of critical discourse around it, but which always shakes the particles off.

Yep

I have a proposal.

We should redefine hard work as hard thinking. We often love to fetishise “hard grinders” but the person who outperforms you generally isn’t spending a copious amount of effort doing so. They’re outworking you in the form of better strategy, finding shortcuts and focusing on only the necessities.

Typically, the hardest work is finding a better way to do it. Hard thinking beats hard work.

One example of hard thinking from my life is from playing online chess. This is a summary of how my rating has fluctuated over the past year:

In the middle of 2020, I hit a plateau of around 1300. No matter how many games I played, I couldn’t seem to break past this point. I remember one day I played 20 games and by the end, had exactly the same rating as when I started.

But one day, I decided to try something that led to rapid improvement: I began to study. It sounds super basic, but from watching tutorials, I learnt basic opening principles, tactics and traps. I began to analyse all my games for mistakes and learnt from them. The growth from these simple changes was amazing. I shot up from 1300 to 1450 in less than two weeks.

I didn’t work any harder, per se. I was probably spending less energy watching tutorials compared to playing 10 games a day. The gains came from better planning.

Hard thinking can be applied everywhere. In academics, the best students have more efficient study habits than the rest. In sports, the best athletes are more strategic over their workouts, diet and gameplan than the rest. In business, the best start-ups have better ideas, innovate more regularly and use customer feedback better than the rest. Of course, luck is a huge confounding factor for all these examples. But generally, luck finds the prepared.

Conventional, head-banging hard work probably plays much less of a role than which we give it credit for.

Where are some areas where hard work could be replaced with hard thinking for better results?

In 1961, the meterologist Edward Lorenz was creating theoretical models of tornadoes when he discovered something incredulous.

Lorenz found that the factors for a tornado to occur were so specific that any minuscule changes to initial weather conditions would drastically transform a forecast. When he rounded an initial condition from 0.506127 to 0.506, the model transformed into something entirely different.

Soon, he posited that if a butterfly flapped its wings several weeks earlier, the fluctuations in the atmosphere was enough to drastically transform the time, place and path of destruction of a present-day tornado. This finding led to the term the butterfly effect, whereby a sensitive change in the initial conditions of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. In other words, small actions now can have great consequences later.

No matter how minuscule, the effects of doing anything has an infinitely greater force than doing nothing. Our actions create changes in the atmosphere, whether we like it or not.

This means that small acts of kindness can manifest in amazing good. A smile beats cold indifference by a huge margin. Indeed, I’ve had average days brightened up by a small, unexpected smile from a passing stranger, one that says, I don’t know what you’re going through, but I’m cheering you on. The transformation is palpable.

But this also means small acts of spite can manifest in overwhelming destruction. One hateful comment might only take two seconds to utter but can have devastating consequences. It’s well-documented that child abuse increases one’s risk of suicide, substance abuse, aggression, homelessness and developmental problems in their adult lives. And interviews of people with child abuse often reveal a story involving repeated acts of neglect and trauma. One beating or curse may have been harmless in itself, but the cumulative effect is devastating.

Some historians attribute Adolf Hitler’s desire of genocide as stemming from him being rejected from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, twice. How much tragedy could’ve been avoided if Hitler applied himself to watercolors instead of genocide? Perhaps a great deal. That decision from the Academy’s board, while quiet in the moment, could have completely transformed the course of history.

We are all flapping our wings in the breeze. The changes may not be evident now, but tiny decisions can lead to incredible consequences.

From Benjamin Franklin:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For want of a horse the rider was lost,
For want of a rider the battle was lost,
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

I have a theory that you get good at something when you start breaking conventional rules.

In chess, beginners are taught principles such as to 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 a rook lift instead of developing 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, religiously obeying principles can be the wrong move to make.

When you reach a certain level of competency, you realise that some rules are meant to be broken.

In other domains, the moment we start winning is when we begin to innovate; to push and find tactics where traditional 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 a guaranteed measure to remain mediocre.

Pablo Picasso summarised it well when he claimed, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”

A few days ago, I found myself with some time to kill so I decided to browse some psychological effects on Wikipedia. Here’s some interesting ones I found.

The spotlight effect
The phenomenon where people believe they are being noticed more than they really are.

It’s easy to forget that we are the hero of our own stories, yet often simply a side character in others’. Few people think or care about us as much as we think.

The false concensus effect/consensus bias
A bias where people view their own characteristics and beliefs to be relatively widespread throughout the whole population.

We probably underestimate how unique some of our beliefs and values are. On the surface, we might see our friends and family behaving in similar manner to us, so we assume that they share our views. But often, we overestimate the popularity of our beliefs.

This bias is known to increase self-esteem in a social environment because one might subconsciously believe that they are fitting in and being liked by others. If you believe everyone thinks the same way as you, you’ll be more comfortable around them and feel as though you are liked.

Naïve realism
The human tendency to believe that we see the world around us objectively, and that people who disagree with us must be uninformed, irrational, or biased. To be more exact, the social psychologist Lee Ross proposes three tenets that make up naïve realism. People:

1. Believe that they see the world objectively and without bias.
2. Expect that others will come to the same conclusions, so long as they are exposed to the same information and interpret it in a rational manner.
3. Assume that others who do not share the same views must be ignorant, irrational, or biased.

Some of the greatest novels in history such as Les Misérables and War and Peace are compelling for this exact reason. You have characters that inhabit the same world and yet are so fundamentally different from each other. The moral conflicts that arise are fascinating because each individual believes they are doing right in their eyes, but are simultaneously appalling to others.

The best example that comes to mind is from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, where a police officer named Javert is on a ruthless hunt to capture the escaped convict Jean Valjean. Javert believes justice should be primary value in any civil society and that he is the one that must enforce it. On the other hand, Valjean has been converted from a criminal to a Christian and believes in the power of forgiveness and redemption. Both men think the other as mistaken, yet both are right. The struggle to defend one’s own belief is one of the many reasons this story is phenomenal.

We’ve all heard of IQ (a measure of logical intellect) and EQ (a measure of emotional intellect). Yet, in the fast-paced 21st century, perhaps the most important trait to have is neither a high IQ or EQ, but a solid adaptability quotient (AQ).

The future is becoming increasingly uncertain. A global pandemic is tearing apart customs, an artificial intelligence revolution is reshaping work and unprecedented problems like climate change and big data surveillance are changing global priorities every passing moment.

The surest way to be left behind is to learn something once, and not know how adapt. Your knowledge; your job; your expertise might not even be relevant in a few years. To be stuck stagnant in a fast-paced world is akin to moving backwards. It’s all relative.

To thrive, one must be able to adapt by forgetting and relearning. As Epictetus once said: “It’s impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.“

When you need to get something done, having artificial stresses can be hugely helpful.

For example, if you’re out for a run and feel like you can’t run any faster, imagine you’re being chased by a bear. The key word here is imagine: don’t just pretend it’s happening; feel the chase with every single fibre of your being. Picture the biggest, baddest bear you can imagine that will tear you to shreds if it catches you. You’ll find yourself tapping into energy resources you never thought you had. The bear, of course, doesn’t exist. But by creating this artificial stress, your body is forced to perform at a higher standard.

For the last two months, I’ve been doing this screen time challenge with my partner. Every week, we have to average less than two hours per day on our iPhones. You can go over two hours some days, but you just make up for it on other days. It’s to help us spend less time on our devices, which we both agree is a good thing.

If you average over two hours a day for a week, you pay the other person $200.

Of course, this punishment doesn’t really exist. No contract was signed with ANZ and Apple that takes $200 out of our bank accounts if we go over two hours per day, per week. But we both believe the punishment exists and it makes us more conscious about our screen time use.

So what makes a successful artificial stress? I’ve come up with three conditions:

The Three Conditions for Artificial Stress

1. The stress is for something worthwhile;
2. The stress is something real and significant;
3. The consequence is great

Examples:

	Running	Phone addiction
What the stress is for	Running faster	Being less reliant on devices
What the stress is	A bear chasing you	Potential to lose money
What the consequence is	Death	$200

The biggest problem is usually condition #2: the stress is something real and significant. To get pumped up by a stress, you have to first believe it. If you want to wake up earlier and the stress is that your bed will explode if you don’t, that might not be a very good stress. You probably don’t really believe it.

Imagination and accountability are key here. You need a good enough imagination to believe that your stress is real, and will happen if you fail. But if that’s not enough, you also need accountability to remind you that the stress exists. For example, if I ever feel overly addicted to my phone one day, my partner will gently remind me of our challenge. Are you ready to pay me $200? That always snaps me out.

I’m not recommending this for everybody. Some people are happy living quiet, stress-free lives and that’s totally cool. But if there’s a bad practice that needs fixing, having some artificial stresses can be a helpful tool.