Quirkbag Collection #21 – 05.12.25

I am now in a strange period of time before starting university. I have 9 free months in totality – almost a gap year – before school starts. From now, there’s 8 months left. 8 months is a lifetime back in JC or high school. Days felt so long back then. Yet as of late, I find myself thinking: ‘What should I do?’

Nowadays, I am confronted by some of the bigger questions in life, the ones that school only mentions in passing before hustling you to the classroom for more lessons to pass your exams. 

Do these sound familiar?

‘I don’t know what I really want to do.’

‘How will I make money in future?’ 

‘What should I do in this period of free time? I need to spend my time well now.’

‘What if I end up like those people hating their jobs?’ 

ENOUGH! You’re asking the right questions, like I am, but asking them all at once is a successful way to be overwhelmed. The next thing you know, you’ll be crippled in bed by anxiety. 

The To-Not List

If you have things on your mind that you’d like to do, but have not come around to doing them (for all sorts of valid reasons you think you have), try NOT making a To-Do list. Yes, that’s right. Instead, make something like a To-Not list. 

There is a suggestion attributed to Warren Buffett that you make a list of 25 things you would like to do, and circle the top 5. Place those 5 in another list, and instead of just focusing on those 5, you want to IGNORE entirely anything related to the 20 remaining things. 

You might have come across this idea if you read some productivity/self-help book or watched some YouTube video. I learnt about this through “The 5 Types of Wealth” by Sahil Bloom, a book I recommend reading if you have the time to ponder about the bigger life questions. This book cuts through much of the modern BS we are accustomed to living in to unravel what truly matters to us. To you.  

I struggled very much when deciding what to do for this period of time. I desperately wanted to ‘maximise’ this time. If you’re someone who constantly tries to optimise for productivity and performance, you’ll spend much time trying to squeeze in so many things you ‘want to do’ in this time. So much that it only satisfies your mind.

In reality, at the end of the day, you inevitably think ‘I didn’t do as much as I thought I would’. And the cycle goes on. 

An Idea To Try Random Things

So, how do you overcome the “What should I do” obstacle? Well, I first discovered what this period of time is. Well, you can’t solve a problem you can’t define, right?

Ali Abdaal introduced it to me as ‘liminal space’. And so began my marvelous idea of trying random things in exploration. 

Since I did not really anything in mind to do, I decided that regardless of what I did, so long as they are new and different things, I’d always gain something from the experience. Even if it was just the experience itself. Sometimes, the experience and stories are worth the effort.

You might think, “yeah, but I need to make money.” But unless the concern is so desperately urgent for today, consider how you actually have a lifetime to “earn money”; but you don’t have a lifetime of liminal space.

You, and I, will never get this era of life back. Most of the “later” and “someday” never come. And that scares me. Sometimes this is how the ideas become regrets, and the only chance to prevent that is now. 

Failure Is The Bill For Learning

There is no ‘life’ subject in school. You don’t learn how to live a life, because you can do it in so many ways. But growing up Asian, ‘successful life’, ‘good life’, and ‘the-only-acceptable-proper life’ always meant graduating university, getting a job, working at that job for decades and hopefully retiring to ‘enjoy the golden years’.

Experiences and abstract notions like joy and happiness were conveniently omitted (for sound reasons, I am certain). After all, how can anyone define your happiness, right?

You learn as you go, as I am now, through random experiences and actions. Sometimes I just want to stop doing everything and do absolutely nothing. And that’s perfectly fine. You just have to tolerate your brain pestering you endlessly with ‘be productive’ and ‘need to work’ like me.

It’s a cruel mind game. You can’t win.

In fact, you always lose. 

An Excuse To Hide From Life

It’s incredibly comfortable to do only familiar things for a long time. (Maybe that’s how some people work decades at the same job.) But if you are like me, 20, able to do and try anything, this is as much time freedom and empowerment you’ll ever get before the “life overhead” gets to you. 

This is where your story truly begins, where your adventure takes off. Like every hero in the movie, you face a choice: do the hard, crazy and heroic thing or pretend like nothing happened, shy away and wind up living life like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day (another classic by the way). 

Short of throwing caution out the window, just consider doing that one thing you’ve been curious about, or afraid to try. Because if failure is going to hurt you, the time it hurts least will be now, when you have nothing to lose. AT ALL. 

Now, doing anything and failing the first time will suck, believe me because I tried. But you get to choose between giving up and trying again like that hero in the movie.

But this is your movie. 

So if you need a push, as Ali Abdaal says, ‘Do it for the plot.’ 

Just Trying For Fun

Liminal space is liberating. For me, I have never had this much time and freedom to try and learn and explore. Yes, it is fortunate. If this has not been enough to convince you to try something adventurous (and this could be going to the cinema alone, or riding a bicycle all day across town…), if it has not convinced you to do something incredible for yourself, to stack experiences, then maybe nothing will. 

A razor that I heard from Alex Hormozi: “Shame? Shame is your downside? …. You’re gonna die. And so are they.”

So that scary thing at the back of your mind? Try it. Keep that experience. And live to fight another day.

Some day you’ll either forget it ever happened or you’ll share the memories as you tell your stories. Either way, you lose nothing and gain everything. 

“What should I do?”

Why not start with that thing you’ve always wanted to try? You might never stop.

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