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Watch The Episode

Synopsis

We Didn’t Plan This started because Faith and Isaac have a lot of feelings about life not going according to plan. This episode is probably the most honest that’s looked so far. The topic: optimism bias — that very human tendency to believe we’ll be the exception, that this time we can handle it, that the numbers will somehow stay good if we just quietly stop taking the meds. It sounds like a psychology lecture. It isn’t. It’s two doctors sitting across from each other asking: on a scale of one to ten, how much of a sucker for suffering are you, really?

The conversation takes a few unexpected turns. Isaac talks about the period during med school where he was simultaneously doing weekend relief teaching, one-to-one tutoring, and working as an overnight caregiver through a home care app — wiping floors at strangers’ houses at 2am and heading back to hospital the next morning. Faith talks about starting her blog not out of optimism, but almost the opposite: a need to warn people what they were getting into. And then how, slowly, writing about hard things in a hopeful tone actually rewired the way she processed them.

They banter about on-call stress eating (including carbonara for supper in hospital), and the witching hour between 4 and 5am where all bets are off. But the thread running through all of it is the same question: is optimism something that happens to you, or something you choose? And if you could calibrate yours up or down — would you?

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Episode Transcript

Isaac
Hi, I’m Isaac.

Faith
And I’m Faith, and welcome to the We Didn’t Plan This Podcast.

Isaac
So today we are talking about something a bit more existential. We’re talking about optimism bias. So I think now we really wanted to delve into the psychology of optimism and what makes us feel like we can always do more or what stops us from doing more when we can. So I guess personality question on a scale of 1 to 10. Like, you know, the pain scale. Yes, the bigger pain scale, the face smiling.

Faith
How much of a sucker for suffering are we?

Isaac
Exactly. How optimistic are you as a person? 1 to 10.

Faith
Okay, so is 1 being a pessimist and then 10 being an optimist?

Isaac
Yes, you can rate it like that.

Faith
I think I’m like maybe a 5 or 6. I wouldn’t say I’m strongly either way. I’m not a pessimist because I believe that I have a certain level of competence knowledge of myself to not take on something that I know I’m 100% going to fail in, like skydiving or whatnot. But at the same time, I’m also cautiously optimistic, perhaps. I’m not blindly optimistic.

Isaac
So what makes you think you’ll fail at skydiving?

Faith
Oh, I’m scared of heights and I do not believe in jumping out of planes. I feel like my disco splat or the parachute might fail. So there are things that I’m pessimistic towards, but it’s by choice. And everything else that could go well, I mean, you don’t want to set your hopes up too high, right? Because you’d be super disappointed. So I have to set myself at a five or six. Solidly in the middle.

Isaac
Solidly in the middle. As we are taught in our medical training, you must always ask why five and not four. Why five, but not six or seven, right? So I like something you said just now, which is about believing that you have a minimum level of competence. I was wondering, you know, when you think about competence, do you feel like it is competence when it comes to specific skills and then therefore it allows you to you know do things that further tap on that skill set for example practicing medicine going you know advancing your medical career further or is it more personal so thinking about the fact that oh you know maybe you’ve achieved certain things you trust in your ability to build relationships try new things go into new environments. I’m really curious what does that mean for you?

Faith
I think it’s a bit of both. So like you must have like enough hard skills to be sure that you can do something competently. So I mean I cannot go in and say I’m gonna be a lawyer, I’m gonna I don’t know be an engineer and dig a MRT tunnel today because I don’t have the skills for that but knowing that I have skills in like medicine I can be like okay I can probably stitch this thing fairly nicely or I can probably do this medical adjacent thing with like decent competence and in terms of soft skills also it’s about knowing your limits. So I feel like if I if I know I thrive this kind of environment if I add this circumstance to a new scenario it’s like okay there’s a decent chance of success but if you put me into a different scenario like for example I really suck when I’m I cannot survive when I’m sleep deprived my functions and my like emotional regulation and fatigue just I just crash so if you put me in a scenario that’s like that I’ll be like okay the chances of me succeeding are like not high because I’m very pragmatic about like what my limitations are. So how is it for you though? On a scale of 1 to 10?

Isaac
So my non-serious answer to this is that I’m an 8 out of 10 optimist in the day and 2 out of 10 optimist at night.

Faith
Okay, so 8 plus 2 equals 10, so you’re a 10 out of 10 optimist I suppose.

Isaac
I would say I average out to a similar level because it’s a weird mix for me where I feel like overall about things, I get to, I worry a lot about how, you know, each individual task goes or with each individual endeavor, let’s say I’m working on a two-month-long project or business endeavor or something like that, I’m always thinking about whether every single thing that happens is like a symptom of potential failure. But then when I think back on the more macro level, you know, every time I dive into something, generally those don’t seem to be things that someone who is overall pessimistic would do. Like, I’ve tried to cast my name into the mix in things that I feel are, feel difficult, but I suppose somewhere inside me, I feel like I can do any way. I guess when you’re talking about sleep deprived, I think we all have, have been there. I don’t know if we need to make a public apology to all the people who have talked to us at five, between the four to five a.m.

Faith
I’m sorry. Four to five a.m., if it’s zero hours of sleep, I’m just like, couldn’t this have been a text? like why did you wake me up to order this. I mean when you say you’re throwing your name into things how much of it do you think is like ambition versus optimism or is it a mix of both?

Isaac
I feel like we all thrive on a mix of ambition, optimism, but also a bit of need sometimes i think the time where I felt this the most was uh sometime in med school where I decided I wanted to start renting a place by myself outside. And then it was this whole very existential need of like, I need money, I need it now. They’re not cheap by the way.

Faith
Yeah, the financial pressure, and you weren’t really earning, right?

Isaac
I wasn’t. I did some very part-time one-off, hourly education stuff, but that wasn’t by any means that income. So I think at that point, I dived into it with that same mix that you’re talking about, right? Like, I thought that everything that could go wrong could go wrong. I sent out my CV and cover letter to a million different people. I was like, weekend rules, nighttime rules. I was literally sitting at Novena, this cafe, and I was scrolling through, like, what are some nighttime jobs I can get? I was like, can I be an ambulance driver?

Faith
You’re juggling everything. That’s crazy.

Isaac
I was looking like, yeah, can you be an overnight, like, something, something, right?

Faith
And then the next day, you just go back to work.

Isaac
And then at that moment, I decided to, it became this unholy mix of a few different roles. I managed to get this weekend relief teacher gig at one of the more well-known tutoring brands in Singapore. So it was just a Sunday thing, morning to night. But at least that was quite a constant thing every month. And then I put that together with what I was already doing in education. So all those one-off, one-to-one things. And then together with that, I found myself on the, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the HomeAge app.

Faith
Wait, what services were you offering there?

Isaac
I was a basic caregiver, healthcare attendant.

Faith
Wait, you actually chose to do that?

Isaac
I chose to do that because that was like one of the few freelance things I could think of that could fail the rest of the time.

Faith
Wow, so you were really hustling very hard.

Isaac
It was hard. It was a bit painful, but that was the only one I found where I was like, actually, this is something beyond, I suppose, like, okay, I can’t commit to renting a car and being a grad driver, right? That you really need to make up for it. I couldn’t, I wasn’t that, I wanted to do something that was at least skill adjacent, or even if it wasn’t lucrative per se, it could build something.

Faith
It’s just like experience and soft skills and some hard skills too.

Isaac
Exactly. And then I just found myself going to camp at people’s houses overnight to wipe diapers and wipe floors when the diapers fail, if you know what I mean.

Faith
Oh, I think you’ve basically experienced like a nurse’s job.

Isaac
It was. I think it was. But that was a very temporary period. I really respect all my healthcare colleagues who do that on a day-to-day basis.

Faith
If every doctor goes through that, they will be way nicer and more respectful to all the allied health and nursing staff.

Isaac
Yes, absolutely. And it was, I think, like jumping into that, it felt like there was part of me that was very, very fatalistic, thinking about, oh my God, like, am I even going to pass the next year of med school if I have to do this all the time to even pay for my room? But then thinking back, if I didn’t want to, or rather, like if I didn’t think that I had it somewhere in me to do it, I wouldn’t have done it in the first place. So I think there was like part of me that just felt like doing something that felt very impossible, or at least felt very unknown, was, at least in some way possible. And I think having come out on the other side of that, I guess things turn out okay.

Faith
Yeah, it’s like just having the courage to challenge yourself in this way. To know that you won’t break, you gain more confidence for future challenges, right?

Isaac
Exactly. Which is something that we’ll touch on later in another question. I have a very, very set of stories to talk about how we shift the bar from pessimism to optimism.

Faith
Yeah, I’m interested to hear that. I mean, talking about like Madsen, and looking back on our choice to go into medicine, do you think there was some optimism bias there?

Isaac
I think for sure. We always, I guess, hear a lot about what being in this career involves, right? Where I suppose, okay, obviously, you hear from a lot of people like, “Wah, you know, congrats!” Sorry, I sounded more sarcastic actually. Okay, but thank you to everyone who wishes us well. But I think we are all very aware, Especially when you talk to other medical people, they warn you about this and that, the hours, the pay, the commitment and all that. And I suppose you go into that. If you decide that you want to assume responsibility for that, no matter how young or immature you are, I suppose to some extent, you need to believe that you have it in you somewhere. Did you feel like this when the thought of a medical career was in front of you? And where did that come from?

Faith
Yeah, I think there’s so much like youthful idealism. Because at 18, I don’t know, maybe you feel energetic. So when the… I remember when I was doing job shadowing in Tan Tock Seng when I was in JC, all the head shows and MOs, the house officers, medical officers were like, oh, are you sure you want to do medicine? Maybe do nothing, think twice, the hours are horrible. We’re working like so many hours a week. I’m on call. I haven’t gone home in like 30 hours. And then they really tried to scare us off. Like all the med students, they would tell us how bad it is. And then the senior doctors would say, it’s a tough job, but the sacrifice could be worth it. It’s very meaningful. So, I mean, we really did see both sides. So, weighing then, of course, if you’re an optimistic 18-year-old who’s like, I’ve been trying to do this my whole life, of course, you’re going to just tune out the bad stuff. Or tell yourself that this bad stuff is surmountable since these people are alive and talking to you about it. So, you believe you can do it and you go in with that hope until you’re like 20-something, and then you’re put through a 30-hour call, and you’re like, oh crap, my body can’t take this anymore. And you’re like, maybe I should not have been so optimistic, but even then, you just continue being optimistic, because there’s no choice. If you fall into a pessimistic spiral, you’re just going to get more miserable where you are. So I guess we have no choice but to be optimistic.

Isaac
Yeah, I definitely resonate with that, because you know, it’s like especially when you’re doing it, you feel like you have the easiest way through is a little bit of self-guess lighting.

Faith
Yeah, for sure. And Stockholm Syndrome.

Isaac
I think we all get very good at it. And this doesn’t just apply to our career, I think.

Faith
Yeah, I think a lot of other industries too.

Isaac
Yeah, we’ve seen, I know, I think most of my friends are definitely around the same age, which also means that we are all at the same age of our careers, where we are born enough of it to be a little bit tired.

Faith
Yeah, we are.

Isaac
But then the true fruits of it are some way away. But I think somehow, you know, like growing up next to all these good people, you realize that actually everyone is quite good at this. One of my very best friends, he used to be, what I always remember him to be, is like he will always be that guy at class who sleeps on the sofa behind reading his anime. And he’s like, I’ll be studying. Even like when I’m studying, he’ll just be sleeping and then we’ll wake up and then go eat lunch together, right? But then I’m pretty sure he pulls longer hours than me right now. And he has been doing that consistently for the past three years. And then it just like surprises me, the amount of resilience. And I don’t even think it’s like deliberate resilience, you know. It’s like, this is more now. Can we just do it?

Faith
This is fine, the dog meme, right?

Isaac
Exactly. But I think with the idea of optimism, then you hear all these bad things about the career. I suppose mediating optimism and pessimism is also the idea of protective factors right and then you you kind of have to lay them out on the table on display and I suppose some of those things for me were thinking that okay I think I have a decent social support infrastructure to know that there’s someone out there in this world who if I really crash out and need to be on the sofa somewhere to be depressed for a month or two, someone will be there to know that at the end of the day, I can still, or at least I will not mind looking for a bottom of the barrel job, whatever that might be, and just pick up the pieces again. And I suppose those protective factors, as well as the longer term vision that, okay, maybe this career will give me something someday if you just don’t fall out the bottom. I guess some of those things are protective as well. but then it does vary for some people. I don’t know if you’ve met any colleagues or peers who you feel were much less optimistic despite having much more protective factors or were there colleagues who have much higher levels of optimism with much less protective factors? I feel like there’s so much diversity to see along.

Faith
I feel like there’s a lot more of the latter. I would say there’s an even mix but when you mentioned someone who’s really optimistic yeah there was so one of my co-house officers oh my goodness she was an absolute saint like you know you can have nurses texting you and like everyone asking you for so many things at once and you’re like wait stop I need to do this first or like you say pause I need to have lunch but she was always like yes come let me help you and then after she was done accepting all the requests and doing the requests she will go and help other people too like her fellow house officers or she go and talk to the patients I was like oh my gosh is she like mother cheliza or something like and no one had ever seen her like be annoyed or express fatigue or say anything negative about like anyone or about the job i was like oh my gosh we should all strive to be more like her even though it seems like the rest of us are like weak humans and she’s some goddess yeah we were like how is she so optimistic in a system that’s kind of designed to wear us down and break us down then how do we embody more of those positive traits even though like on some days we’re like i don’t want to show up but she was always like i’m still showing up i’m happy and genuinely happy like yeah

Isaac
yeah i think it’s it’s crazy to see the number of external and internal factors that can control this you know i’ve i’ve seen i don’t know um surgical people who are mid-career right and then you know their their schedules are notoriously demanding yeah like stay three days a week in hospital right because they’re on call and then you don’t go home until really late and then you just decide to sleep over in hospital and work somewhere yeah they have like i mean we think 30 hours shifts are bad some of them they do like 70 hours right at least i heard exactly exactly when they’re like you know registrars or whatever right and then you realize that there’s so many factors that come into play you know some of them they might be i don’t know in their early 30s but then if they need to go home their parents fetch them and they wash their clothes for them and then you There are these external things that actually are going on behind the scenes.

Faith
A lot more comfortable in some ways.

Isaac
Correct, correct. And then at the same time, you see people who totally don’t have any of these. Especially people who move from abroad, graduate from other countries, and then they have been doing this entirely by themselves the whole time, navigating a system that is not very friendly, striking out their careers, and somehow they’re fine with it. So it’s so internal as well. It’s like you just never know what drives the optimism.

Faith
Like where is it coming from and are they genuinely happy or is it delusional optimism? But I guess, isn’t all optimism the same after a while as long as it gets you where you need to be?

Isaac
Right, it’s about the functional purpose of optimism.

Faith
Yeah just means to an end

Isaac
I mean I felt a lot of times where you feel like you have no like what you said just now you have no choice but to be optimistic.

Faith
I mean you end up in this really pessimistic spiral, I’m sure you and your fellow house officers have also gone down, right? Like everyone just sits around in a little bitching circle and everyone just is like, oh, this thing is going wrong for me. Oh, this thing is going worse for me. And then you just try and like compare until everyone’s equally depressed.

Isaac
It’s true. I mean, I think the community always really, really helps with that. And it really matters how many people you have to trauma bond or to like overly support you. I mean, I came from a rotation a few months ago had some somewhat negative experiences. And I think one thing that really united us was making hypothetical, formal complaints in our hands. And then I think, okay, let’s diary down all these things that are happening, right? And then, I mean, they never come to fruition because you just move on in life. Time does heal, for lack of a, you know, sometimes you wish it did, sometimes you wish it didn’t. But then time heals and then you move on. But in that moment, that community really, really helps, right? And I think, you know, on the topic of shared experiences, you know a lot about that because you’ve had a bit of a community around you ever since your med school days. This is the, I’m referring to the blog that you’ve been writing all the way since, I don’t know, when was it? First year. First year of medical school. So how was that experience? Like, did you start out hoping that the blog would become something? Or what was that brand of optimism for you when you created that whole thing?

Faith
I don’t know. I never went into it thinking it would actually become anything close to what it has become today. I just wrote it to, you know, let people know what they’re getting themselves into, you know, to like maybe stop them from being so optimistic. Maybe it was part of me that was regretting like, oh, why was I so optimistic when I went in? I need to tell people what’s going on on the inside so that they go in with, you know, a heavy dose of realism and if they do, you know, it’s up to them. And then I guess over the years as I started writing more, Suddenly, things snowballed. People heard about my blog, reached out to me, and then I found external support factors to motivate me to continue writing. I guess if there had been no one reaching out and no response, the blog would have died. But because I still… I mean, even a few days ago, I got a message from a medical officer who was complaining about his department telling me what horrible hours he was working and he was asking about avenues outside. So I was actually really happy that I was able to provide that kind of support and community and be the source of optimism for someone else to tell them that, hey, there’s hope outside. Just stay strong and stay alive. Yeah.

Isaac
And do you feel like that the evolving nature of your optimism has come through in the way that you write and in the messages that you put across? Because I think this has been writing that has seen you through so many years and life stages, right? this is probably if you started in first year medical school that means it’s like what over 10 years?

Faith
2021 I mean I started writing like regular blog posts in 2021. 2016 was when I first started that one was more toned down and then in 2021 it became like a coping mechanism it became a source of optimism in a way like if I could at least write my feelings out and write them out in the world there’s a chance that someone else could be out there and feel validated by it or validate me also by saying that they’ve had the same experience so it’s all about just staying alive and keeping the hope for everyone and myself.

Isaac
So it does feel like when you actually take your experiences and put them on a piece of paper without putting any value judgment on them, that almost always makes you more optimistic rather than less optimistic.

Faith
Yeah, because I mean, if you write all about negative stuff, no one’s going to really want to read it. And I mean, it just doesn’t reflect well on my own mental well-being if I was just complaining or being angry online. Yeah, so I guess writing about things optimistically also just rewires your brain to become happier and to focus on the positives rather than like I mean there could be an equal number of positives and negatives but if you just focus on the negatives then you’re really going to feel shitty like i mean that happened to me for like a couple of months in doing housemanship at first then I was like okay reframe just think about the positive stuff and focus on that and give people strength.

Isaac
And I mean when it comes to fixating right, I think that whole process carries on as you suffer and as you know when things become better then you recalibrate when things become worse you recalibrate at the very start i think it also every time we go into something new right new phase of our career there’s also this process of you at least set expectations for yourself and sometimes you realize you’ve overestimated or underestimated right do you think at any point there’s been things that you’ve really underestimated? And if so, like, in what way, you know, you feel like you underestimated how much time it’ll take? You underestimated the emotional toll it’ll have on you? Or what? Has there been times like that?

Faith
I think for me, my answer for this is probably not as exciting as yours. For me, the thing that comes off the top of my mind is I underestimated my ability to survive for like zero sleep. Turns out I genuinely cannot survive for anything less than maybe seven hours of sleep. I am barely functional. So I guess that’s why I decided that hospital life was not something for me long term. But how is it for you?

Isaac
I feel like the biggest thing I’ve always underestimated is emotional and time bandwidth. Because theoretically, you tell yourself, oh, you can reply messages on the train. You can walk home while reviewing a PDF or something. You can study while you eat. Theoretically, it can all happen. But then when it comes to it, you know, like at the end of a long day, you’re just so exhausted. So, you know, two nights ago, I got home at 7pm. Not too bad, not too bad. It was a Thursday and I took a nap. It was supposed to be a 30-minute nap. I napped for two hours. So I woke up and went straight back to sleep all the way until the next morning. My Whoop band told me it was the best night of sleep I’ve had in the last two months.

Faith
That’s a win in itself.

Isaac
It’s a win. But I think the larger point is that, you know, it feels that every time you take on something, you feel like, okay, theoretically, you can fit it in your schedule. There’s like this meme with that thing and the whole house on fire, right?

Faith
Yes.

Isaac
And I think a lot of times, you know, when I started my business, when I’ve taken on more things, be it even in the volunteering and community space, you always feel like, okay, this excites me. I want to try it out. And then when it comes into the reality of it, you start knowing yourself so much better. You realise that, for myself, I feel, and this is a big apology to everyone who I’ve taken 48 hours to reply, I have this huge amount of inertia when it comes to replying a text. Especially when I’m at the lowest bandwidth. I just am so exhausted by the thought of reply, sending something that another person will see.

Faith
Honestly, relatable. Yes, I have also avoided like replying text on this because I’m just like, oh, it’s too tiring. I’ll do it another day and then another day becomes like a week. And every time it’s too pricey to reply.

Isaac
Exactly, and as you go through life, you kind of realise the different forms it takes. You know, I think when I was much younger, a part of me felt that, okay, last time in school, you do so many things, right? I remember that it used to be like, the routine would be like, okay, you go to school. Before that, you have training. And after you go to school, and then there’s training after school, and then you go home, and then you study for your test, and then sometimes you do stuff for your other CCA,

Faith
And then after that, you somehow juggle it all, right?

Isaac
And then it’s like, fine. So you tell yourself, okay, sure, when I’m an adult, I can proceed. But whether it’s with age, or whether it’s because each of these things now comes with more gravity, right? You can’t just tell your colleagues when you’re on call, like, yeah, go ahead and serve the medicine, without really thinking you can’t exactly do that, reflexively, thank you. So then the fatigue really weighs in. I think that’s something that I’m still slowly coming to terms with myself.

Faith
Like our limitations, right?

Isaac
Yeah, exactly. I mean, outside of sleep and all the other lifestyle factors, after leaving the system, do you feel like you’ve gotten a lot more bandwidth back? And how has that affected your general sense of optimism?

Faith
Oh, ironically, I think I’ve probably become more optimistic because being out of the system means I can fix my schedule however I want to. I can get my eight hours of sleep and I can still make time for friends and families and all the other supportive factors like exercise, travel. And so using all that extra optimism, it makes me want to channel it into new creative projects. So I mean, even this podcast that we came up with, it was because I had the bandwidth and you were willing to let me drag you along into this. And then I’m working on more writing and even YouTube and everything. I feel like it wouldn’t have been possible if I’m, okay, I mean, number one, if I wasn’t some stupid optimist. And number two, if I didn’t have the bandwidth and energy. Yeah, what’s that for you though?

Isaac
I feel like optimism kind of manifests both from difficult and from easy times for me. I think one of the questions we were thinking of answering before this is does going through hard things over and over again, right? Does it mean you’re more or less optimistic or like, what do you come out at the other side of it? I think, I totally agree that when I have seven hours of sleep, I am the biggest optimist in the world. I feel like I can conquer the world with nothing but my…

Faith
Yeah, it’s like this sunshine

Isaac
that you wear, right? Like the minute it hits seven hours, right? It’s like just me and my mocha frappe against the world, you know?

Faith
Yeah, you’re so happy.

Isaac
But then, there’s this weird relationship with hard times as well where, You know, it’s every time I go through something that feels difficult, you manage to delude yourself into feeling like, okay, at the start of this thing, it felt like it was impossible. It was not in fact impossible. And therefore, in future, if I feel like there’s something impossible, I should just do it.

Faith
It’s like resilience, right? We are building resilience and confidence in your own abilities.

Isaac
Yeah, and then you conveniently decide to omit all the actual individual variables and circumstances. just tell yourself that was hard and now it isn’t so therefore anything in future that’s hard should not be hard

Faith
Is it just me or like when you go through something tough you suddenly like after the end after you reach the happy success point you forget all the bad stuff when that happens?

Isaac
Yeah absolutely, it’s okay

Faith
So it’s not just me right because I feel like there’s so many times that we’ve gone through tough like we’ve pushed through tough things and when we were going through it we were like I’m never going to do this again and then suddenly when you’re on the other side you’re like yeah I’m going to do it again yeah okay I mean like honestly people who have like multiple kids like they’re like cursing and swearing in each of our birth like we’ve seen it and then suddenly when they see the baby like oh so cute i want a second one yeah and then a few months later they come back with a second kid and they’re like oh my just a year later

Isaac
I think one of the formative experiences for me was definitely I think sports was like quite a big role played quite a big role for me in that I remember when I was in in CCA in secondary school I suppose we would have to do this. I was in canoeing. So we used to have this thing where you, we would, especially in the holidays, we would get put through a much harder session because you know, you go to sleep after that, right? So the coach will give you something like, okay, like let’s do 60 sets of one minute sprints. Okay. Like imagine kind of like doing that, but then running or like on a bike or something like that. It sounds awful and it was awful. And then you feel like you were just, you have this immense set of dread before the timer goes off, right? And then at some point, somewhere in the middle, you’re just in this weird pain cave where you’re not registering. The number just goes 32, 33, 34.

Faith
Yeah, and then you’re riding on the adrenaline already.

Isaac
Yeah, and then you finish the whole thing and then you go take a nap and you’re like, okay, I’m 15. As we all do, we’re like, okay, come, I go play pool with my friends now. And it’s like that kind of thinking stays with you, I suppose, into adulthood where you feel, okay, there’s this difficult thing. I have another long shift. I have no idea what I’m doing. This is a new posting. But whatever, the sun will rise, right? The sun in fact rises. And then you go on to welcome another difficult, terrible day. I don’t know if that’s relatable.

Faith
No, no. Honestly, it’s true. It’s like we just reset our memories sometimes. And it’s just like, okay, I’ll forget the hard feelings of the past. Just focus on the good things and look forward to the end of the call, maybe. And I mean, it’s optimism in the front and the back, I guess. you look forward and you’re like okay i’ve got maybe a nice brunch or something after finishing this terrible call or like you look back and you’re like okay I’ve got all these protective factors at home that are like constant throughout my life so I’ll be good I’m okay right I can like handle this without crashing out.

Isaac
I’m a really bad like on call stress eater.

Faith
How many kg have you gained?

Isaac
Thankfully it’s net neutral um i do remember one of my one of my coping mechanisms on one of my worst calls was that okay even the I think even on that really bad one you reach this weird witching hour at 4 to 5 where there’s not a lot going on right I think most people have this common experience and then I was like I just want something nice to eat right now so I went on my grab and I found that there’s this stall that sells chicken cutlet carbonara and it was open 24 hours

Faith
It’s incredibly niche, people normally you go to 7-11

Isaac
Yeah I was like it’s time to get ambitious. So this Western Hawker Stall somewhere, God bless you, XR Western, they have salted, everything looks super simple.

Faith
At 5am?

Isaac
I’m going to eat carbonara for breakfast today and I did it and it was the best feeling ever.

Faith
I’m glad that you managed to get to eat it. I was worried there’ll be some proctor’s like, oh, suddenly you got called for emergency or something. You made it to the end of the night.

Isaac
But I guess this brings up one of the more meta questions which is optimism in the medical field because I think we see a lot of literature about how when we see our patients go through certain things and sometimes this is very human. You see that your brother got a heart attack or your sister got a stroke and you’re doing the exact same things as them but it’s just not your turn and somehow there’s always this sense of exceptionalism where you feel like it’s not going to happen to you. Do you feel that do you see that a lot in your work? And the second interesting question is do you ever feel like us as the givers of that advice also sometimes pretend that we are the exceptions to the norm when we eat our carbonara at 5am.

Faith
That’s a good question. I guess optimism bias in healthcare, I mean in terms of our patients would be more of them overestimating their health outcomes I guess based on what we’ve advised them on. So like, for example, sometimes there’s patients who come in for health screenings. So like maybe one year their cholesterol is like really high and then the next year it’s a bit less high. And then they’re like, oh doctor, does this mean I can just take off my meds and not take my meds anymore? So I mean, they get complacent, I suppose. They get overly optimistic. I mean, it’s good that they have hope towards their health and still care about it. But at the same time, I’m like, you can’t have that much hope that your body is going to miraculously not go back to the way it is take yourself off your medicine. Yeah, so most of the time I have to be like, okay, good job, keep it up and continue taking your medicine. Don’t just like stop it because you’re too optimistic right now.

Isaac
And I think this applies to so many other aspects of our life as well, right? Where I think one of my core experiences was when I got my personal trainer cert like many, many years ago and then, you know, we were taught about a bit of exercise planning and then, you know, how do you plan workouts for the clients and then one thing that really stuck was that the the instructor was i asked the instructor so actually like out of these different ways of planning your workouts you know whatever three times four times space in cardio and strength or whatever what is the best routine or like what’s the most optimal one and his answer was the best one is the one that they can follow.

Faith
The one you can stick to.

Isaac
And it doesn’t just apply to medicine it applies to all these other aspects of lifestyle. And having been in the longevity space for a little bit, do you have a silver bullet to our innate inability to stick with things that are good for us?

Faith
Honestly, okay, I guess back to the topic of optimism, you have to have a bit of blind optimism that if you stick to this thing, if you commit to it, you will magically get better. Like if you go to the gym twice a week, your long-term health will get better you can’t actually quantify it for sure. You can’t be sure if you get hit by a car before that or you get a random cancer which you can’t control before that. But I think it’s just the notion of optimism that keeps people motivated to following health plans, taking supplements or going for screenings and stuff. Yeah.

Isaac
And I feel like when you… I guess when you talk to patients, there’s always that sweet spot in the middle, right? You cannot be so fatalistic where a lot of them will feel like everything is pointless. Yeah. So I might as well not try.

Faith
You might as well just eat like…

Isaac
Right, right, right, and coke, and just die or something. And then there’s the other end, which is the blindly optimistic, like, okay, I just had a heart attack. Can I, and there’s a stand, the stand got put in yesterday. Can I go to the smoking corner?

Faith
Can I smoke? Can I not take my medicines for a couple of days on vacation?

Isaac
Exactly. So I guess, you know, like, whether it’s medical or otherwise, it’s this weird balance that we all strike, you know, whether it’s our health, whether it’s our career trajectories or otherwise. So I guess if we draw it back to the present and have a few final questions for us as individuals, is there anything you’re being optimistic about right now, today?

Faith
I guess right now I’m sort of working on my book, which is just an extension of my blog. So I think I’m being a bit optimistic in that it will be well received, that it will be able to touch lives or be relatable to people. But I mean, I guess it’s part of the process. You have to have optimism. It’s not, why are you writing this? Or why are you trying to put this message out into the world? Yeah, but I mean, we’ll see how it goes. But what about you? You’ve got so many side projects going on. What are you being over-optimistic or optimistic about?

Isaac
So one of the things I’m being over-optimistic about, and I get to be over-optimistic because I’m being optimistic on someone else’s behalf, which is that one of our newer business milestones is my partner is going to spend the next month in Shanghai to grow the business over there entirely relying on him for all these reasons and why I have blind optimism is that I know that he’s someone who just breaks down doors and asks questions that you think shouldn’t be asked and talks to people that you think will never get talked to and I suppose that also tells me reflectively that it’s easier to be optimistic when someone else is doing a lot of the work.

Faith
It’s okay, it’s inspiration.

Isaac
It’s inspiration, exactly. But at the same time, you find these things, you go back onto your track records and you feel that, okay, you’ve done it before, so why not you do it again to quote a National Day song from I don’t know how many years ago. Yeah. It was that post-COVID one, right? We’re hard-womping music videos. And I guess, you know, it sounds like we’re both kind of optimistic.

Faith
I think we are.

Isaac
If we could calibrate it up or down, would you? And in which direction?

Faith
I think it would definitely down my optimism up. Because I mean, that’s the way to keep life exciting and fresh, right? Like, if you’re not constantly striving towards something else that’s more ambitious, that requires more hope to execute and push towards, like, what are we living life for? I mean, why stagnate? We’re too young for stagnation. So, yeah, let’s just be hopeless, optimist. D-D-D-L-U is the S-U-D-L-U, right?

Isaac
Yeah, as they say. As they say.

Faith
As the wise ones say.

Isaac
As the wise ones say. What about you? I completely agree. I think I need a bit more blind optimism right now to make up for the lack of hours of sleep and to functionally make me operate more because every time I look at my WhatsApp and I try to drag myself to reply, there’s this sense of fatalism, you know, like it’s not going to matter. Let me just pick it up tomorrow. It’s not urgent. But the optimism serves as a cure. The optimism serves as a driver. The optimism is good for a lot of things, right? And I suppose as long as you rein it in with enough realism, and I would love to bounce this question off someone else who’s maybe too optimistic and see how they might want to rein it in. But yeah, I think it’s just all of our individual journeys to walk. And we see how we can utilize it, weaponize it, eat it for breakfast, just like our chicken cutlets.

Faith
Yep.

Isaac
And wishing everyone an optimistic week and weekend as well.

Faith
Yep, stay alive.

Isaac
So that’s all for today.

Faith
Yeah, thanks for watching and we’ll see you in the next one.

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