A story on arrogance and the dangers of pity, originally published in the Ming Dynasty’s Oceans Stories of Past and Present (海說古今). One day, King Jian of Zhou was leading a hunting party through Zhongshan (中山) when he happened to come across a wolf. The delighted king frantically took aim with his bow but missed and hit a nearby stone. The wolf, suddenly aware of its situation, desperately fled for its life with the hunting party in pursuit. As the wolf made its way through the forest, it stumbled upon a traveling Mohist scholar named Mr. Dongguo (東郭先生) and his donkey. The wolf begged the scho ..read more

What’s the one thing you mustn’t forget when you leave the house? It’s not your wallet. It’s not your phone. It’s not even your clothes. It’s your key. If you forget everything else but have your key, you can go back in to get whatever else. But if you don’t have your key, you’ll be locked out of your place and everything in it. In anything worth defending – a person, a job, an idea – it’s critical we know what the key is; the thing that will allow us to go back no matter the circumstance. For a person, it might be love. For a job, it might be fulfilment. For an idea, it might be passion. If w ..read more

A few days ago, I realised I’ve accumulated a lot of quotes from my note-taking – whether that be from my Kindle or just on Notion. For the sake of organisation, I’m starting a new series on this blog where I find some common threads between quotes and group them together as food for thought. Today’s theme: happiness. Robin Sharma, The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari “Alright, the secret of happiness is simple: find out what you truly love to do and then direct all of your energy towards doing it. If you study the happiest, healthiest, most satisfied people of our world, you will see that each and e ..read more

It’s easy to let a bad habit slide. One unhealthy meal won’t much the scale much. One late night won’t hurt too much the next day. One cigarette won’t hurt you immediately. A single, poor decision is easy to dismiss. It’s the repeated 1% errors and excuses that compound into toxic results. From Atomic Habits: The impact created by a change in your habits is similar to the effect of shifting the route of an airplane by just a few degrees. Imagine you are flying from Los Angeles to New York City. If a pilot leaving from LAX adjusts the headings just 3.5 degrees south, you will land in Washington ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

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. Comedy and Tragedy – monica-dorkface ..read more

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: Do more stuff Make it public Meet more people 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 ki ..read more

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 ..read more

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 w ..read more