Stuff We Rike #8 Repetitive Activities

Throughout the course of time, Asians have developed a reputation for excellence in certain endeavors and have even been coined, "model minorities," earning their white stamps of approval. If you were to explore the activities that Asians excel at in greater detail you will soon come to realize that these activities all have one thing in common, they require an immense amount of repetition. In fact Asians love repeating things. There is a magnetic pull that draws Asians to things that require countless hours of tedious repetition. We are serious believers in if you ever fail, try, try again until you succeed; otherwise you are just an Asian failure.

There is an unfair assumption that claims that Asians are really bland. I have to wholeheartedly disagree with that notion. Asians just really like to do stuff over and over and over again. They choose to engage in activities that can be mastered through the rinse and repeat method and will practice this activity until they reach a level of accomplishment they deem to be sufficient; which for most Asians means better than most people. Before Malcolm Gladwell popularized the 10,000 hour rule, in his book "Outliers," which states that : in order to become an expert in your field you must practice that activity for a minimum of 10,000 hours, Asians had another term for the rule; having Asian parents.

The variety of activities that Asians choose to practice over and over again cover a huge gamut of disciplines including athletics, music, academics and video games just to name a few. When choosing which activities to partake in, Asians traditionally steer themselves and their children towards activities that require the greatest amounts of focused repetition and the least amount of free thinking improvisation and creativity. The 456,237 to 1 Asian piano player to Asian saxophonist ratio clearly highlights the Asian desire to practice repetition over improvisation.

Even when you venture into the world of sports and the vast number of sports available for people to participate in you can see the concentration of Asian athletes are clustered towards sports that indeed require tons of repetition. Asians do not excel at sports such as basketball and soccer that require plenty of improvisation and on the fly decision making. Instead Asians are masters of synchronized diving, ping-pong, gymnastics and figure skating. I mean did you not see the introduction to the Beijing Olympics? Try getting that many people who are not Asian to do the same thing for three hours. Asians do not like to leave things to chance, when they can instead practice the tiniest of details over and over again and excel. The more variables involved in a sport, the less likely an Asian will participate. Think about it, that's probably why you've never seen an Asian freestyle wrestler. There are way too many possible holds, submissions and angles in freestyle wrestling. That's why Asians have sumo wrestling where you just push the other dude out of a circle over and over again.

Do not get me wrong though. Although Asians choose to choose simple repetitive sports to participate in, Asians are not only drawn to simple activities. This is simply not true. In fact Asians take even GREATER pride in mastering complex repetitive activities. Why do you think that Asians love to be good at math, Dance Dance Revolution and World of Warcraft? Do not be fooled. Asians are not inherently good at any of those previous three things. They just practice these activities with such zeal and secretiveness that it creates the illusion of being a character trait of Asians. Asians aren't better than anybody else at math or rhythmic dancing games, they are just better at repeating things and staying the course until they get it. So when the Asian kid who's been using his abacus since age two is better at the multiplication table than you or when the Asian gamer gets his World of Warcraft character to level 60 before you do, just know that it's not your fault, Asians are really good at repeating things.

Asians don't believe in practice make perfect. There would be nothing left to practice if perfect were ever reached. They do believe in practice makes you better than other people and to most Asians, that's all that matters.