challenges — Secrets of the Sages

Who knows where this legend comes from, but it almost always starts with an unassuming traveler and the thug looking to start trouble. As he strides up, he notices the traveler picking black flecks off his rice (or catching them out of the air) with his chopsticks. The thug retreats in terror—the black flecks are live flies! If this mystical warrior can catch flies mid-flight with his chopsticks, what do you think he’d do to you?

It’s oft-repeated martial arts tale attributed to numerous people, among them Japan’s greatest swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi and Hollywood’s favorite magical Asian, Mr. Miyagi.

Now imagine if this traveler took on students, but because the path to learning what techniques truly work is so long, painful and even dangerous he decided just to teach the chopstick and fly trick instead.

In his book on irrational problem solving, Alchemy, Rory Sutherland mentions in passing the oddity of bicycles.

Scientists can’t agree on how exactly a bike functions, they came into their current form factor through trial and error, and they are objects that, as Rory put it, “work but don’t make sense.”

As much as the bicycle’s form and function defy reason, what’s even more curious is the fact that someone as uncoordinated as me can ride one—requiring as it does a level of balance and coordination that I lack in most other areas of life. I have no jump shot to speak of, made Jiu Jitsu my fighting style because I lack the balance for striking, and can’t do a handstand unless it’s in a hallway where the walls are really close together. But somehow, like the equally logic-defying act known as ‘being creative’, I can ride a bike almost effortlessly.

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