Psychologists coined the phrase word leap to describe how we solve a puzzle by a shift of mind, such as the experience of seeing two faces instead of that picture of a vase.
When I observed two big carton boxes of milk powder in my wife's car, I was thinking of my sister-in-law who has recently moved in with her twin babies (when her helper is on leave). Clearly this is just common sense; I'd been enjoying the babysitting those two little boys.
But hang on. The carton boxes were empty.
The carton boxes didn't have milk powder. Not any more. Instead of throwing away the used boxes at her clinic, my wife brought them home. They were meant for our daughter, not Gabriel and Joshua. The idea is for Jasmine to build whatever she likes. This appears counterintuitive to me just because I have to stop seeing the milk powder boxes as a thing other than its original purpose. This is exactly what daddies were challenged to do at my daughter's school last Friday; we were to create a slide tunnel (or whatsoever treadmill for a marble to run) out of paper, straws, dried spaghetti, scissors and tapes. Some dads had trouble with this - some kids, too.
Which reminds me a similar scenario known as the Box Problem. Imagine being supplied a candle, a book of matches and a box of tacks, and you're alone in a room with a wooden door. How can you attach the candle to the door so that you can light it, have it burn normally, and create light to read by?
You've got a lot of choices when you're facing this difficult puzzle. Melt part of the candle and use the melted wax to fix the candle to the door. Or else, tack the candle to the door. But does it work? Yes and no. They won't work too well.
It would have been better solved by emptying out the tack box, tack that to the wall, and use it to hold the candle. And then the penny dropped. Like many good ideas, it's so simple you wonder why nobody had thought of it before. Not every psychology expert agrees that it is simply a shift, or a leap, of mind to solve the problem. And, in a way, it doesn't matter very much how we arrive at the solution as long as we can think outside the (tack) box.
A postscript to the story: my daughter and her buddy constructed a hotel, train station and her primary school out of the carton boxes yesterday, and for that, I am proud of the two innovative kids.
Monday, June 15, 2015
Friday, June 12, 2015
Challenge
It's one thing to look darn cool to solve a intellectually challenging case like Sherlock Holmes, and quite another to meet a mysterious patient when you have only half day to sort out the riddle.
When my registrar told me the story of a young chap who had dizzy spell and blackout after climbing four flights, I knew this is tricky. I quickly brought my students to see him, only to find my patient having a seizure in front of us.
This is a good example to tell my students tests don't make a diagnosis - thinking does. After an hour or so, we were pretty sure where the problem is: blood vessels in his lungs got stuck with blood clots. Let me put it this way: If you saw this condition in a 19-year-old, it'd be as rare as having traffic jam in countryside. Oh, my goodness. I knew I didn't have time to figure out why; I'd promised to take half day off to meet my daughter at her school. I looked at my watch.
Still. The urgent and important issue was sizing up the option of open surgery or delivering medicine to dissolve the clots (thrombolysis). After that had been ironed out, I headed for my daughter's school where they are celebrating the important role that fathers play in raising children. I know, because I have a daughter. As the school principal felicitously put it, "While the traditional father's role is different to that of a mother, it is no less important in the growth and development of a child."
Few things are more rewarding than healing as a doctor and teaching as a father. Fortunately, I can be both.
When my registrar told me the story of a young chap who had dizzy spell and blackout after climbing four flights, I knew this is tricky. I quickly brought my students to see him, only to find my patient having a seizure in front of us.
This is a good example to tell my students tests don't make a diagnosis - thinking does. After an hour or so, we were pretty sure where the problem is: blood vessels in his lungs got stuck with blood clots. Let me put it this way: If you saw this condition in a 19-year-old, it'd be as rare as having traffic jam in countryside. Oh, my goodness. I knew I didn't have time to figure out why; I'd promised to take half day off to meet my daughter at her school. I looked at my watch.
Still. The urgent and important issue was sizing up the option of open surgery or delivering medicine to dissolve the clots (thrombolysis). After that had been ironed out, I headed for my daughter's school where they are celebrating the important role that fathers play in raising children. I know, because I have a daughter. As the school principal felicitously put it, "While the traditional father's role is different to that of a mother, it is no less important in the growth and development of a child."
Few things are more rewarding than healing as a doctor and teaching as a father. Fortunately, I can be both.
Monday, June 1, 2015
London
I'm sure there are times when we do something for the very first time, and that something seems familiar to most people around.
Well, I'm not sure how many times you have set foot in London. This is my first time.
After going to Edinburgh for my postgraduate examination almost twenty years ago, I still kept some of those United Kingdom bank notes and now found out they're outdated when I arrived in London to attend a medical conference this week. Although I had no time to shop at Harrods or see those not-to-be-missed highlights like the Tower of London or St Paul's Cathedral, I considered myself lucky to get mostly (and let me emphasize the word mostly) good weather and long daylight during London's summer.
It's hard to overstate the basic rule of travel, and the rule is: Be happy no matter what. It's that simple. The easiest way to truly enjoy a trip is get plenty of psychological sunshine. Now, what is psychological sunshine? Ponder on that. This is the last day of the conference when its program ends earlier than usual. Being able to spend time around the capital without hurrying is good news. I headed to Trafalgar Square. Somehow the National Gallery was not open today (for reason I don't really know), whereas London's biggest Waterstone's bookshop nearby closes at six (because it's Sunday). And the weather, it turned out, was the cloudiest in the week. Those are the kind of moments when you look up at the sky, or just down at your shoes, and say, jeez, I've gotta look for my DIY sunshine and move on.
I changed my plan and visited the National Portrait Galley. In a few minutes, surprising as it might seem considering the overcast day, the sun came out briefly. The sunlight was short-lived, but that's good enough for me to capture the fascinating lighting that outlines the iconic National Gallery. I must say I'm most pleased with that photograph today.
Well, I'm not sure how many times you have set foot in London. This is my first time.
After going to Edinburgh for my postgraduate examination almost twenty years ago, I still kept some of those United Kingdom bank notes and now found out they're outdated when I arrived in London to attend a medical conference this week. Although I had no time to shop at Harrods or see those not-to-be-missed highlights like the Tower of London or St Paul's Cathedral, I considered myself lucky to get mostly (and let me emphasize the word mostly) good weather and long daylight during London's summer.
It's hard to overstate the basic rule of travel, and the rule is: Be happy no matter what. It's that simple. The easiest way to truly enjoy a trip is get plenty of psychological sunshine. Now, what is psychological sunshine? Ponder on that. This is the last day of the conference when its program ends earlier than usual. Being able to spend time around the capital without hurrying is good news. I headed to Trafalgar Square. Somehow the National Gallery was not open today (for reason I don't really know), whereas London's biggest Waterstone's bookshop nearby closes at six (because it's Sunday). And the weather, it turned out, was the cloudiest in the week. Those are the kind of moments when you look up at the sky, or just down at your shoes, and say, jeez, I've gotta look for my DIY sunshine and move on.
I changed my plan and visited the National Portrait Galley. In a few minutes, surprising as it might seem considering the overcast day, the sun came out briefly. The sunlight was short-lived, but that's good enough for me to capture the fascinating lighting that outlines the iconic National Gallery. I must say I'm most pleased with that photograph today.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Big
Read the opening page of David Schwartz's The Magic of Thinking Big and the story of his six-year-old son's ambition to become a Professor of Happiness will leave you energetic.
Now that I've brought with me this self-help classic on my conference leave, I'm halfway through the book. If there was one lesson learned from this book, it was this: think big, smile big, and grow big.
Let's see an example put up by the author and see what you think: How many times have you been summoned by your boss to accomplish a special task when your timetable has already been darn full?
Think for a minute about the best reply.
Yes, we can give our boss three reasons we should take the task but hundred more justifications why we're simply too busy to handle. But please, I'm told, find ways to believe you can.
The following advice by David Schwartz is important enough to quote at length: Where there's a will, there is a way. And I am growing more and more convinced that I should stick to my habit of never turning down the boss.
Now that I've brought with me this self-help classic on my conference leave, I'm halfway through the book. If there was one lesson learned from this book, it was this: think big, smile big, and grow big.
Let's see an example put up by the author and see what you think: How many times have you been summoned by your boss to accomplish a special task when your timetable has already been darn full?
Think for a minute about the best reply.
Yes, we can give our boss three reasons we should take the task but hundred more justifications why we're simply too busy to handle. But please, I'm told, find ways to believe you can.
The following advice by David Schwartz is important enough to quote at length: Where there's a will, there is a way. And I am growing more and more convinced that I should stick to my habit of never turning down the boss.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Right
Never in the history of our country has any illegal immigrant made the headlines more than a 12-year-old boy who has lived in Hong Kong with his grandma since the age of three.
When I picked up a copy of South China Morning Post on my flight to London, I noticed that his story appeared at least twice in the news today.
But the distance between this mainland boy and me, ultimately, can be measured in light-years. I'd be more interested in the education of our local children. I skipped that boy's story, but found much more interesting feature articles. One of them is about local children's writers who named their favourite picture books for youngsters. I know some of the recommendations (like The Gruffalo); some others I had to jot down in my bucket list.
Another opinion article on the second page of the newspaper drew my attention. It's about the twisted education race, the tutoring centres that rob our toddlers of their childhood by training them how to handle interviews for kindergartens and primary schools. Remember the tagline in the education centre's poster, "You don't like competition? But competition will find you?"
Say those last two sentences out loud and wonder at them. There's never a shortage of places to keep the local kids busy, dizzy or, at best, crazy. Who knows how far that cutthroat game could go?
Terrible, yes.
But it's not one-tenth as thrilling as watching a local documentary of kids' after-school work. I watched a replay of it on the plane. Be grateful you (or your primary school kid) never had to keep track with the incredibly packed timetable of ten homework assignments, as what the poor kid did in the documentary. Yes, ten assignments. By his mum's account the boy is talented enough to finish each item within ten, maybe fifteen, minutes, setting time aside, around 2 minutes between each, for play. That doesn't make sense to me.
There is, of course, an escape hatch. Its name is Plan B. The boy asked his mum, "May I be excused, just for a short while, to go poo-poo?"
Yes, that's allowed. But I tell you, the Plan B is to swap the play time with poo-poo time. All his mum can do is, quite literally, hold her breath and wait for the poo-poo time to finish as quickly as possible.
I have no interest in defending a child's poo-poo time. That's as basic as a human right, and definitely much less controversial than the right of abode for an illegal immigrant. As a parent, I just want to remind myself the 10-minute rule: We should expect all homework assignments together to last as long as 10 minutes multiplied by the student's grade level (or perhaps 15 minutes if required reading time is included). If you don't believe in this rule, go and ask the National Parent-Teacher Association in the United States.
When I picked up a copy of South China Morning Post on my flight to London, I noticed that his story appeared at least twice in the news today.
But the distance between this mainland boy and me, ultimately, can be measured in light-years. I'd be more interested in the education of our local children. I skipped that boy's story, but found much more interesting feature articles. One of them is about local children's writers who named their favourite picture books for youngsters. I know some of the recommendations (like The Gruffalo); some others I had to jot down in my bucket list.
Another opinion article on the second page of the newspaper drew my attention. It's about the twisted education race, the tutoring centres that rob our toddlers of their childhood by training them how to handle interviews for kindergartens and primary schools. Remember the tagline in the education centre's poster, "You don't like competition? But competition will find you?"
Say those last two sentences out loud and wonder at them. There's never a shortage of places to keep the local kids busy, dizzy or, at best, crazy. Who knows how far that cutthroat game could go?
Terrible, yes.
But it's not one-tenth as thrilling as watching a local documentary of kids' after-school work. I watched a replay of it on the plane. Be grateful you (or your primary school kid) never had to keep track with the incredibly packed timetable of ten homework assignments, as what the poor kid did in the documentary. Yes, ten assignments. By his mum's account the boy is talented enough to finish each item within ten, maybe fifteen, minutes, setting time aside, around 2 minutes between each, for play. That doesn't make sense to me.
There is, of course, an escape hatch. Its name is Plan B. The boy asked his mum, "May I be excused, just for a short while, to go poo-poo?"
Yes, that's allowed. But I tell you, the Plan B is to swap the play time with poo-poo time. All his mum can do is, quite literally, hold her breath and wait for the poo-poo time to finish as quickly as possible.
I have no interest in defending a child's poo-poo time. That's as basic as a human right, and definitely much less controversial than the right of abode for an illegal immigrant. As a parent, I just want to remind myself the 10-minute rule: We should expect all homework assignments together to last as long as 10 minutes multiplied by the student's grade level (or perhaps 15 minutes if required reading time is included). If you don't believe in this rule, go and ask the National Parent-Teacher Association in the United States.
Friday, May 15, 2015
Loss
Everyone fears the ideas of losing. Students fear it. Gamblers fear it. Investors fear it. As long as we own something, we fear the chance of losing it.
The psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky coined the phrase loss aversion to describe how we feel the pain of loss more intensely than we feel the pleasure of gain.
What are the differences between losing a deposit of $150 and not getting a reward of $150? What are the differences between a 5-cent levy on the use of a plastic shopping bag and a 5-cent bonus for bringing your own grocery bag? Simple: we dislike the former (losses) more than we like the corresponding gains.
Have we proven this loss aversion in a scientific way? Not by a long shot, I must say, until I read a research paper on smoking cessation program in the New England Journal of Medicine this week.
Pretend for a moment (if necessary) that you're a chain-smoking guy who can't give up cigarettes, and then receive an invitation to enroll in a randomized, controlled trial for smoking cessation. The idea is simple: you'll be assigned (as randomly as tossing a coin) either to a deposit program or a reward program. In the deposit program, you deposit $150 at the beginning and will get back the money if you kick the habit of puffing, along with $650 extra. In the reward program, on the other hand, there is no deposit to make; you'll be eligible to receive $800 if you stop smoking.
Anyone with an ounce of loss aversion psychology would immediately tell you the deposit program is the least attractive. In the end, it is a simple truth: the least attractive program gives the most impetus to quit smoking. That sounds nuts. And it is! The researchers reported that 52.3 percent of those recruited in the deposit program had sustained smoking abstinence for 6 months, as compared with just 17.1 percent of those in the reward program.
The power of loss aversion is overwhelming.
The psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky coined the phrase loss aversion to describe how we feel the pain of loss more intensely than we feel the pleasure of gain.
What are the differences between losing a deposit of $150 and not getting a reward of $150? What are the differences between a 5-cent levy on the use of a plastic shopping bag and a 5-cent bonus for bringing your own grocery bag? Simple: we dislike the former (losses) more than we like the corresponding gains.
Have we proven this loss aversion in a scientific way? Not by a long shot, I must say, until I read a research paper on smoking cessation program in the New England Journal of Medicine this week.
Pretend for a moment (if necessary) that you're a chain-smoking guy who can't give up cigarettes, and then receive an invitation to enroll in a randomized, controlled trial for smoking cessation. The idea is simple: you'll be assigned (as randomly as tossing a coin) either to a deposit program or a reward program. In the deposit program, you deposit $150 at the beginning and will get back the money if you kick the habit of puffing, along with $650 extra. In the reward program, on the other hand, there is no deposit to make; you'll be eligible to receive $800 if you stop smoking.
Anyone with an ounce of loss aversion psychology would immediately tell you the deposit program is the least attractive. In the end, it is a simple truth: the least attractive program gives the most impetus to quit smoking. That sounds nuts. And it is! The researchers reported that 52.3 percent of those recruited in the deposit program had sustained smoking abstinence for 6 months, as compared with just 17.1 percent of those in the reward program.
The power of loss aversion is overwhelming.
Saturday, May 9, 2015
Showstoppers
Child's growth, like weather, can be hard to predict. But you know it when you see it.
All I need is seeing how Jasmine is determined to prepare gifts for her mum's birthday and Mother's Day this week. Never mind her grammar mistake. Not that she writes perfect sentences. Far from it. But she rehearsed before writing the birthday card. And yes, for the tote bag she designed and painted, my wife loves it with every inch of her soul.
But perhaps the best example of my daughter's readiness is how we celebrated my wife's birthday together. My wife had suggested to buy tickets of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical. The first time we talked about this idea, it took me a while to realise she means three tickets - including that for our daughter. That's a work of surreal genius, I know. And yet. Can a five-year-old appreciate a bunch of professional performers who create musical impromptu based on audience suggestions?
We bought three tickets, anyway. And, of course, our daughter turned out to be the youngest in the audience. The single hardest thing for us is we couldn't check the subject of the show beforehand. We had to wait for whatever crazy ideas that came up on the spot. A fantastical reverie of what-ifs and why-nots. It was our first view of such unique off-the-cuff show; nothing was the same as the previous show. What did we get in the end? A story of rewriting Shakespeare's works, Romeo and Juliet, space station, superpower of ultra-sensitive toes, radioactive kitten, and many many funny ideas.
Incredibly crazy and magical, yes. My daughter loves it a lot. Unbelievable.
All I need is seeing how Jasmine is determined to prepare gifts for her mum's birthday and Mother's Day this week. Never mind her grammar mistake. Not that she writes perfect sentences. Far from it. But she rehearsed before writing the birthday card. And yes, for the tote bag she designed and painted, my wife loves it with every inch of her soul.
But perhaps the best example of my daughter's readiness is how we celebrated my wife's birthday together. My wife had suggested to buy tickets of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical. The first time we talked about this idea, it took me a while to realise she means three tickets - including that for our daughter. That's a work of surreal genius, I know. And yet. Can a five-year-old appreciate a bunch of professional performers who create musical impromptu based on audience suggestions?
We bought three tickets, anyway. And, of course, our daughter turned out to be the youngest in the audience. The single hardest thing for us is we couldn't check the subject of the show beforehand. We had to wait for whatever crazy ideas that came up on the spot. A fantastical reverie of what-ifs and why-nots. It was our first view of such unique off-the-cuff show; nothing was the same as the previous show. What did we get in the end? A story of rewriting Shakespeare's works, Romeo and Juliet, space station, superpower of ultra-sensitive toes, radioactive kitten, and many many funny ideas.
Incredibly crazy and magical, yes. My daughter loves it a lot. Unbelievable.
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