Meng To  

• Originally posted on July 3, 2014

My older brother told me about Meng To. A designer, author, entrepreneur and more, Meng doesn’t fit under one label. In exploring my interest in design, I’ve come across works of art. What captivated me about Meng was his story. I got a glimpse of who Meng is on a sunny afternoon, as we conversed, sipping on Green Ecstasy tea at Samovar Tea Lounge.

I walked up and greeted him, sweating under my skin as I was seven minutes late. He sat collected at a wooden table, dressed in a v-neck and jacket, lavish in design, modest in color. Conversation had a natural flow, with silence making its visit at the right moments. We broke through surface-level small talk quickly. I was curious to know how Meng produced volumes of quality work in a short time period. As I listened to him, one of the quotes I read in his book chimed in, summing up his response nicely:

“Things are only scary the first 10 hours. Once you get past that, you start getting obsessed. With obsession, you can learn anything.”

I asked him to talk about his mentality before taking a deep dive into an endeavor. I asked him if he had second thoughts while writing his book. “Of course,” he said. He then thought patiently before answering the first part of the question.

“If there was a person having a seizure in front of you, are you going to think about how you have never performed a CPR before? Are you going to think about how difficult it will be to save this person? No. You would just do it. You would not give it a second thought. You would understand that you must simply do this.”

Have a similar approach to your pursuits, he said. Ignore thoughts about how difficult a venture might be; just tell yourself that you must do it.

How do you block out the second thoughts, the doubts and excuses? How do you prevent over-analysis before you commit? Discipline. Develop the discipline to block out everything but your vision of what you want to build. I have overestimated my mind’s capacity to focus on multiple things.

I was also curious as to hearing what Meng was like when he was my age.

“What did you want to do when you were 20 years old?”

“I have always wanted to change the world…”

“Do you think you’re changing the world through design?”

“You have to start somewhere”

His answer reminded me of one red paperclip. A guy named Kyle made a continuous chain of “up trades” until he ultimately got a house from one red paperclip he started out with. However exaggerated it may be, the story concept is rich. We all start out with one red paperclip. That red paperclip is our ability to learn. Our ability to learn, enhanced by our ability to obsess.

Thanks again to Meng for taking time to meet. Check out Meng’s book. It is beautiful.