“Cheats” — The Beginning Of The Bitter End

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Dear Readers,

Thank you for coming here!

I have always defended gaming, especially when there are some researches showing that gaming can improve reflexes etc.

But the reason is mostly because I am hooked in gaming. And also I do not observe much negative impact on me.

But recently, I realized that the most significant impact of gaming might be to inject “Cheats habit” into players’ mind.

In games, “Cheats” help us beat the game effortlessly.

And if that becomes a habit, we may transfer that kind of behavior into real life.

And things work differently in reality than in games.

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And it is not only gaming that might do this to us.

In Chinese Kongfu movies/novels, it is far too common that the character falls into a cave or a lake and then discovers some superb marshal arts manual or weapons. And then he emerges as the best Kufu master, takes his revenge, gets the perfect girl and rules the world.

Here, the marshal arts manual and the weapons are the “Cheats”.

In western super hero movies/comics, people get their super power from accidents. For example, Spiderman gets it from a spider bite and Hulk from a failed experiment. And then they rely on that super power to save humanity.

Here, the accidents, the bite or radiation, are the “Cheats”.

…

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Certain things in real life does that to us as well.

So many “career experts” claim that the secret to career success is “Guanxi”.

So many “education experts” claim that the key to good academic results is memory techniques.

So many “corporate experts” claim that the differentiator for great enterprises is innovation.

…

Here, the secret, key and differentiator are the “Cheats”.

And they are probably its most tricky form because they are partly true. They just assign too much weight to the factors they would like to focus on.

“Guanxi” does help career success. There are too many success cases to prove it. But depending on it solely will surely set us up for failure.

Similarly for memory techniques to academic results and innovation to enterprises.

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These very very attractive “Cheats” are shortcuts that do not really exist in reality.

They might seem to exist, but they do not.

Once we fall into the habit of relying on “Cheats”, that is the beginning of the bitter end.

Gradually, we convince ourselves to believe in more and more “cheats” and waste time and money on them, without any sustainable results.

A good example is my investment journey.

I changed my approach from Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) into broad indexes to buying individual stocks, just because my wife’s return surprised me. 

And then I started speculating.

All this while, I never really sat down to research a sector or company.

Even by luck, I had very good returns in the first few months, I was not able to pocket it. 

And now I am sitting at huge losses.

In comparison, to select the DCA approach to kick start my investment journey, I spent months in researching and only after that, I made the decision based on my style and sound logic.

And even if it did not bring me stellar returns, I was seldom in the Red Zone.

The misconception of reality will translate into tangible losses.

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The only way to achieving something in reality is to understand how things work and put solid efforts into it.

“Cheats” simply brings failure.

Till next time!