A Practice That Made My Life Good

Seneca, a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, wrote a letter to his young friend, Lucilius, outlining the formula for a good life.

The message seemed to be a premonition, a warning of sort, to the struggles the young man would eventually face.

“Each day,” Seneca wrote, “acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes, as well and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.”

One principle, one piece of wisdom, one insight, every day.

That’s all you need to navigate your way to a good life.

I mean, Seneca knew. Given Lucilius' position as a public official in the political-social entanglements of Roman society, he knew the young man was going to be a victim of collateral damage—power struggles, conspiracies, volatile shifts in fortune—that would prove too perilous even for people in positions of influence. Seneca knew that misfortunes were inevitable, that the toughest battles were still to come.

But if you could focus on just one principle, one insight each day, and to absorb its meaning deeply and practically, that would be the antidote to life’s unpredictabilities.

Warren Buffett emphasizes how wealth is not built overnight but over time. The sooner you start investing, the sooner it will begin to snowball. That one piece of knowledge you've learned on the job? That one window of experience that hurt your soul? That nugget of wisdom you gained from being in the council of older, wiser people? Build them up, day by day, month by month, collect them like bricks as you lay them in your soul.

Each holds a meaning, a purpose that would succumb to the power of compounding—if you choose to see it that way.

And as parents, we must see it that way.

I have this maniacal habit of taking interesting ideas and insights I encountered and onboarding them into a "notecard system"—a systematized, methodical practice used primarily by authors and researchers who gather large volumes of data for their work.

Those who have been to my home or caught a glimpse of my social media might have noticed I have, tucked in the corner, stacks of four-by-six notecards with scribblings on them. These aren't random, psychedelic musings. They are quotes, paragraphs, short stories, one-liners, ideas that stemmed from the books I read, the podcasts I listen to, the videos I watch, and the random episodic thoughts that intrude on my mind while I'm in the shower. I set aside an hour a day to read and write and gather at least ten cards. After a year and a half of doing this, I have about three thousand cards and growing.

I didn’t invent this. I stole it from the pros and developed my own version. Numerous authors and famous people—Ronald Reagan, Ryan Holiday, Robert Greene, Niklas Luhmann, Tiago Forte, Dustin Lance Black, Vladimir Nabokov, George Carlin—are known to known proponents of this system. Be it books, research papers, or speeches, the outcome was channelled through this filtration system.

For me, this practice serves the purpose of feeding content into this newsletter. I would search through the stacks and pick out five to ten cards that could supplement the theme I'm bringing across. It also forms the hallmark of the lessons and feedback I give at college (I am a part-time faculty teacher at a local university in Singapore), and my students are often on the receiving end of what I've learned. Faith-related content is also gathered and dispersed within my local ministry. And, in case you didn't know, I write for my own online publication, Five For Your Hive, focusing on five insights related to creativity, education, business, strategy, parenting and general wisdom that help us all become better people (you can subscribe to it here for free).

Almost every professional-personal endeavour in my life is complemented by these notecards.

I run a small education business. I teach at a local university. I coach and play rugby competitively, which means I have to set aside time in the mornings and evenings for practice. I volunteer at the local children's ministry, and, not to mention, I'm a dad and husband trying his best to keep the home in humble order.

Point is, I don't have time to be writing flashcards.

Yet here I am, investing my most important resource into this seemingly pointless task.

Why?

Because life's unpredictabilities will come—as they have throughout all of human history—and they will hit me hard if I'm not ready for them.

Winston Churchill, with the bloodshed of WWI etched vividly in his memory, said that avoiding war should be the aim of any government. Of course, avoiding unnecessary conflict is the priority, but it's the unpreparedness for it that would bring ultimate devastation.

"There is no merit in putting off a war for a year," Churchill said, "if when it comes, it is twice as hard to fight and three times as bad in its effects."

This was especially clear in his warnings about Nazi Germany's growing power in the 1930s, where he criticized the British government for failing to adequately rearm. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy when, among others, the desperate withdrawal from Dunkirk resulted in the loss of a great deal of equipment and was seen as both a tactical and symbolic setback.

A wise and prudent government, to Churchill, must aim for peace through strength, where readiness is key to preventing war or, if necessary, facing it with a better chance of survival.

When conflict and misfortunes happen, do we have what it takes to tackle them?

Are we strong enough to survive?

In sports, we like to say defense wins games. While scoring as many points is essential for victory, it's ultimately the defensive pressure that often shapes the outcome by stopping opponents in their tracks and forcing them to fumble. Whenever I jot down a quote or story, it feels like I'm adding another layer of concrete to the foundations of my stronghold—why fight when you can just stay put?

It's absurd to say that these notecards have changed my life, but they did—indirectly.

I discovered over time that this tedious, analog practice was transforming me from the inside out, and I became the very thing I reflected upon.

It was a symbolic act of writing to myself: This is who I can be. This is who I want to be. This is what I must be.

A note from "Outdoor Kids in an Inside World" by Steve Rinella

Of course, it would have been more convenient if I had software to streamline the process, but some things are meant to be difficult in order to extract their intricate value. This is why the physical process matters so much. Each card holds meaning because I painstakingly created and positioned it by hand, and it's the very reason why I would rather, in the event of a house fire, save my boxes of notecards than my phone!

Weirdly, I don't even remember what I write. I mean, I do—but not off the top of my head.

Once I'm done with a card, I file it into a mini shoebox and come back to it only when I'm looking for inspiration or when writing. So after writing, say, two hundred cards and then going back to finding one card for a given context is like finding a ten-dollar bill in my pocket: the surprise brings much-needed joy to a miserable day.

That's the dopamine I want to chase after.

Obviously, the goal of all this is not to be perfect. Neither is it just about knowing what to avoid or what to take on in life. It's not even just to feel smart.

The goal is to navigate towards a good life.

To be clear, I'm not saying that you must adopt this notecard system in order to lead a good life—although I would certainly guarantee that it would. What I'm saying is, whether it's through this or a physical exercise, a sport, a hobby, or a community, develop a reliable avenue that enables you to reflect upon what you have experienced and go back to it. I must emphasize the latter. I'm using the notecard system as the ideal example because not only does it work for me, it brings me back to the core memories of why I wrote it in the first place.

Take this card, for instance. It's one of my favorites. I come back to it every now and then to have my mind blown. Whenever I'm lacking inspiration or start to doubt myself, which is quite often, these words transport me back to the core of my mission—why we started Gosh! Kids, why I'm devoting every inch of my mind and resources into empowering children and families to unleash their creativity, why I'm doing what I'm doing.

And that is a very important aspect we must never forget—the why.

You want to cast it into the stone of your soul, one chisel a day, because they add up. The good, and the bad. The edifying, and the soul-sucking.

Your first line of defense is your mind.

A good life isn't built by grand gestures or vast accumulations of knowledge in the quickest manner which modern culture tends to incentivize, but by slow, deliberate reflection that turns lessons into lasting principles. Parenting holds the same strategy: that is how we teach our kids, day by day, one bite-size at a time, and repeating it to them—even if it takes a thousand times—so that it would be inscribed in their hearts.

Just start with one, and let the discipline of your life be your guide. Let the faith in consistency take you far.

Paul Graham said writing is thinking. He's right—"There's a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing," he observed, aptly, in a time when the world is shifting towards a particular dystopia led by AI. There's a rising perversion that we don't need to write anymore. Is this a problem? Absolutely, because as we offload this art to technology we also lose our ability to think clearly. Leslie Lamport sums it up best: If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking.

Collect anything you may want to revisit in the future. Create an external storehouse—a collection of thoughts and components that you can reshape and reassemble to fit your needs. You’re bringing ideas into reality. Your mind works to reshape and reimagine the resources at hand to make something new.

This is my way of telling myself good stories, for the stories I tell myself will shape the reality of my life.

This practice made my life good.

What you use it for is up to you. The question is—what will yours be, and how will you use it?

Our families are relying on us, but they can only go as far as we can take them.

Meanwhile, take in all you can, while you can.

When the time is right, you'll be ready for war.

Written by Mathieu Beth Tan