8/29/2026
In Chinese, you will also hear:
不要把所有鸡蛋放在一个篮子里 (Bù yào bǎ suǒyǒu jīdàn fàng zài yí ge lánzi lǐ), meaning “Don't put all your eggs in one basket.”
It is essentially the Chinese version of the English proverb. The idea is simple: don't concentrate all your resources, risks, or hopes in one place. If that one thing fails, you could lose everything.
The underlying idea is much older and broader than the modern investment cliché.
Historically, merchants transporting valuable goods by sea had a practical reason not to put everything on a single ship. Storms, piracy, shipwrecks, war, or navigational accidents could wipe out an entire cargo. Splitting the cargo among several ships meant that losing one ship would not necessarily mean losing everything.
Today, the saying is commonly used in the context of investment and risk diversification, but the principle can be applied much more broadly:
Don't depend on a single source of income.
Don't put all your savings into one investment.
Don't rely on only one career path.
Don't put all your emotional or social needs into one relationship.
Don't build a business that depends entirely on one customer.
Don't make your entire future depend on one uncertain outcome.
But I think we should apply this principle to something even more precious than money: our time and energy.
A liberal arts education follows a similar logic. Rather than asking students to specialize in one narrow field too early, it exposes them to different disciplines and cultivates a broader range of intellectual abilities.
This strategy of diversifying our investment of time and energy is particularly valuable in the early stages of life.
When we are still uncertain about our strengths and interests, it can be risky to commit ourselves entirely to one path before we have had the opportunity to explore others. By spreading our efforts across different experiences, we can discover where our abilities and interests produce the greatest returns. As we learn more about ourselves, we can gradually shift more of our time and energy toward the areas where we have the greatest potential.
Viewed over a lifetime, this is essentially a form of risk management.
There is, however, an important principle behind effective diversification: when adding a new asset to a portfolio, it is most valuable when it is substantially different from the assets we already own. Diversification works because different assets don't all fail at the same time.
The same principle applies to our social networks.
After we enter the workforce, many of the people we become friends with tend to work in the same industry or belong to the same social circles. This is natural. We interact with these people more often, share similar experiences, and have more in common.
But from the perspective of diversification, it is also valuable to develop relationships with people from different industries, backgrounds, social circles, and ways of thinking.
In fact, we may need to consciously devote extra time and energy to nurturing these weak ties—relationships that are not part of our immediate social circle.
Conversations with people who see the world differently can broaden our horizons, challenge our assumptions, and sometimes open doors to opportunities we would never have encountered otherwise.
There is another Chinese saying:
多个朋友多条路 (Duō gè péngyou duō tiáo lù): “The more friends you have, the more paths you have.”
If our relationships span different walks of life, industries, and social circles, our network becomes a richer and more interconnected map of possibilities. When one path closes, another may remain open.
We don't know which investment will succeed, which career will work out, which relationship will endure, or which opportunity will change our lives. So rather than betting everything on a single path, we can keep several paths open until we learn enough to know where to place our biggest bet.
Diversification means giving ourselves the freedom to adapt when life does not go according to plan.
Perhaps the ultimate goal is not to make sure that every basket survives, but to make sure that when one basket breaks, we still have something left—and another path forward.
