The Art Of The Good Life #4: Black Box Thinking

I have a few students who confided in me that they were apprehensive about their upcoming vacations during the June holidays. You see, they are afraid their flights will end up like MH 370. Four years on, I am surprised of the effect the incident still had on the masses.

Doing the best I could, I tried to reassure them that flights are actually statistically safer than cars. And that’s all because of the near indestructible black box, which records all the data of the flight. “With each crash, future flights become safer”.

This is the chapter that justifies all the somewhat mundane monthly recordings and updates that I do on this blog. But what’s more difficult is radically accepting the reality and then rectifying the problem.

When I tabulated our expenses for 2017, I was quite shocked that we actually spent an average of $900 on food. The reality is we were not that frugal and if there was a drastic need to cut expenses, that’s where we should be looking at.

The past 7 years’ results also seem to point out that like the majority, I am not that great an investor. The decision to sell all my banking shares after Brexit and the dogged inability to cut losses have rendered my returns to be mediocre at best. The evidence seems to suggest that I might be better served by more passive forms of investing.

Some time back, I installed “Moment” to track my handphone usage. I had a growing suspicion that my handphone usage was on the rise, but I was still a long way away from becoming a HP addict.

But boy was I wrong. The data collected showed that I was toggling between Facebook, Safari and stock prices a few times every hour! Basically, whenever I felt “bored” and needed some mental stimulation, I turned to the phone.

Drastic measures have since been taken. With the FB app deleted from the phone, I can now only access social media on my computer.

Now, I no longer feel so sheepish when I nag at my students to put away their phones.

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.” – Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking

Thanks for reading.