The Curious Engineer

Herbert Lui

2023–2026

1,401 posts

← 2016–2022

2026 302

October 2026

  1. The barbell of effort
  2. Realizing losing investments and experiences
  3. Sleeping beauties
  4. Joint accountability
  5. The best gift you can give someone
  6. Don’t save the good stuff
  7. True fandom
  8. Don’t wait to get asked
  9. The supporter
  10. Don’t work with clients who don’t care
  11. Effects are not excuses
  12. Gut checks
  13. Misapplying the Pareto principle
  14. The best in the world is not a global competition
  15. Aspirations need updates
  16. Instead of saying everything, just say something
  17. Priority amnesia
  18. Sophomore slump
  19. The value of a better guess
  20. Don’t play games rigged against you
  21. The accountability edge
  22. Your schedule is not the blocker
  23. It won’t get easier on its own
  24. A return to the gym
  25. Almost there
  26. Time bound does not mean rushing
  27. Creative constipation
  28. Ordinary breakthroughs
  29. The consolations of The Office’s alternate ending
  30. Space easy rewards out

September 2026

  1. Discount fixation
  2. Not making a decision is a decision
  3. An entrepreneur’s mascot
  4. Premature product positioning
  5. Time desensitization makes it easier to be patient
  6. The shifting meaning of radio
  7. Willingness is the cost of admission
  8. Keep work in perspective
  9. The line between the last to win and the first to lose
  10. A writer’s little empire
  11. Look Back
  12. The gravity of the interim
  13. After an athletic career
  14. Beauty in the ordinary
  15. Don’t paint those stripes
  16. Experimenting with a slower start to the day
  17. Introspection’s reward
  18. Zoo Run
  19. You deserve to publish
  20. If you love your work, you’re responsible for marketing it
  21. You create what you consume
  22. Make a dent on your circumstances
  23. The 100 year storm
  24. Good products can change systems
  25. The price of the spotlight
  26. Two turning stories about money
  27. Writing at a blog helps you write more elsewhere
  28. Just enough whelm
  29. Don’t bargain with reality
  30. Falling back in love, for the right reasons

August 2026

  1. Special is made of ordinary
  2. Sale on sale on sale
  3. Will rushing make anyone happy?
  4. Plan simple enough trips
  5. I will speak at Medium Day
  6. New shoes for sore ankles
  7. Rock bottom isn’t a place, it’s a decision
  8. Creative clarity
  9. The punctual bloomer
  10. Don’t pick a glamorous job
  11. “Think different” was a response
  12. Experts don’t overcorrect
  13. Don’t let activation energy expire
  14. Decompose a big idea into small projects
  15. A gentle slip out of the comfort zone
  16. Short guy syndrome
  17. Prioritize energizing environments
  18. An artist’s effort, results, and skills
  19. Go ahead
  20. Make your own practice exam
  21. Read it with your own eyes
  22. We make our structures, and then our structures make us
  23. Making docs easier on the eyes
  24. Different is a choice
  25. Integrity and bad work
  26. A portfolio of experiments
  27. Make two portfolios
  28. Master one play
  29. Don’t start with the stove top
  30. Creative slack

July 2026

  1. What worked this year may not work next year
  2. Help three people
  3. The problem market
  4. Calibrating a portfolio’s focus
  5. When time is scarce, energy is abundant
  6. The future of work is made up
  7. So many people, so many interests
  8. Simple projects survive
  9. A longer time horizon creates the conditions for abundance
  10. 5 tactics for hitting the Hacker News front page
  11. Talent-led sales
  12. Notes on making The Consistency Journal
  13. Marketing is about finding the exceptions
  14. Dare to bore me
  15. Treat your objects as if they had consciousness
  16. Notes on adopting a dog
  17. Find diverse sources of happiness
  18. Don’t settle for a bootleg
  19. Memories before Liquid Glass
  20. The freedom of generosity
  21. Venture mindset
  22. Making a product opens up new occasions
  23. Extra creative
  24. Creative focus
  25. Making in bets
  26. Public transit as a destination
  27. Buy things you need, with money you have, to impress people you like
  28. Self approval
  29. Creative stupidity
  30. Frame money with value, not morality
  31. The Love Metric

June 2026

  1. Your first try is a proof of concept
  2. Making new material with the old
  3. Make your work pay off
  4. Happiness, desires, values, and environments
  5. Creating the conditions for organic content growth
  6. A market fueled by purpose
  7. Don’t check your blog metrics yet
  8. Creative contribution
  9. Ownership requires energy and storage
  10. Developing a clearer business strategy helped unblock my writing
  11. Top 40,000,000 under 40
  12. Introducing my business writing services at LinkedIn
  13. Be the best in the world, for a few real people
  14. Against reality distortion
  15. Modest shapes
  16. Choicefulness
  17. Take your practice seriously
  18. Multiple strategies
  19. A fan of yourself
  20. Play the whole game
  21. Experience happens in the passthrough
  22. Winning at the casino
  23. Pokopia
  24. The quality of your decision making process vs. how it turns out
  25. No bad beats
  26. Landing it
  27. Remembering a restaurant
  28. Work works itself to work
  29. Good writing is like furniture
  30. Choose to trust yourself

May 2026

  1. Don’t mix up your products with your art
  2. You can’t bet on yourself if you don’t trust yourself
  3. Success happens when you teach someone how you think
  4. Spring cleaning the inbox
  5. Self expansion
  6. Are your creative projects livestock or pets?
  7. The power of a supportive environment
  8. Whoever holds your dream gets to take it away
  9. Waking up from the trance of avoidance
  10. The intermediate hump
  11. Incline to the improbable
  12. A technician’s expertise
  13. Scheduling, payoff, and clarity
  14. Bloat
  15. Five conditions that amplify your best efforts
  16. Rethink your product’s price, packaging, and promotion
  17. The prolific Iceman
  18. Take more photos
  19. Reflecting on creative consistency
  20. Confidence is high
  21. The courage to miss out
  22. Ira Glass, and the gap
  23. Vinyl isn’t just about the sound
  24. Let the small stuff slide
  25. Why I’m prolific, and why you should be too
  26. A house with its own website
  27. Obviously AI, totally acceptable
  28. A restaurant’s evolution
  29. Maladaptive frugality, at Hacker News
  30. Just another name on another list
  31. Be mindful of renting capabilities

April 2026

  1. Adventure starts when everything goes wrong
  2. Please prompt me, and allow me to prompt you
  3. Resumption matters, now more than ever
  4. Thanks for reaching out
  5. Maladaptive frugality
  6. Speaking with i-Think
  7. Sometimes, it goes before it works
  8. A beginner’s guide to asking
  9. Always ask
  10. Speak directly with your customers
  11. Your friends, your customers, and your work
  12. Scrap paper is powerful because it’s friendly
  13. Take yourself seriously
  14. Clarify your definition of success
  15. On AI music and writing
  16. Easier done than said
  17. Which story will you choose?
  18. The ROI of a recovery attempt
  19. The community circuit
  20. Difficulty is a positive early signal
  21. Talk to your competitors
  22. Creative enfeeblement
  23. Talking about your goals is a tradeoff
  24. Introducing the Consistency Journal
  25. Five random posts
  26. Nonsense
  27. Introducing random posts
  28. Second nature
  29. Be curious, not judgmental
  30. Thank you, Faiz

March 2026

  1. What’s obvious to you might not be to me
  2. Add purpose to the payoff
  3. A final goodbye
  4. Bias for continuity
  5. Five minutes ahead
  6. Shaping a solution
  7. In praise of the quiet celebration
  8. Recoverability is more useful than reversibility
  9. Learning Chinese again
  10. Shape your projects and tasks
  11. Learning fast vs. learning with your heart
  12. Define your creative surfaces
  13. Keep interruptions brief
  14. Release and consumption cycles
  15. Early and late are relative
  16. No more big rings
  17. Pokémon published Red and Green before making them perfect
  18. Pokémon, collection, and connection
  19. Change your hands, change your psychology
  20. The six lean, long, years of starting up Pokémon
  21. Did you know many successful artists worked day jobs?
  22. Early experiences with Pokémon
  23. Evolve or die
  24. Small talk sets up big ideas
  25. Everything is impermanent
  26. Fun first
  27. The first Pokémon
  28. How to find people who link to your blog
  29. Your intentions need baking and cleaning
  30. A masseur’s wisdom
  31. Turn a creative fever into lasting inspiration

February 2026

  1. Social media just doesn’t hit like a website does
  2. This, too, can be meditation
  3. The sauce and the main course
  4. You can opt out of incentives
  5. Practicing in public
  6. Five lessons for whispering into the Hacker News front page
  7. Anybody else can do it…
  8. People-shaped problems
  9. Trust yourself
  10. The return of slow
  11. Bet on each other
  12. Happy year of the fire horse
  13. Sketch, don’t paint
  14. Nostalgia and withered technology
  15. 10 years of stories
  16. I will speak at CreativeMornings
  17. An idea not pursued
  18. Write to remember your good ideas
  19. Trunk Sale Tour 26
  20. Is the business on your side?
  21. Launch first, improve later
  22. Recoverable and irrecoverable decisions
  23. Going through the motions
  24. It’s also your idea now
  25. Balance
  26. The night I became an entrepreneur
  27. Foundational content
  28. The 48 Laws of Power started with powerlessness

January 2026

  1. Escape velocity
  2. The hungry ghost’s favorite ingredient was ambition
  3. A return to my business writing practice
  4. Craft your little empire
  5. A matter of size
  6. Celebrating the debut of Home Room
  7. Evening constitutional
  8. Why people still ask for directions
  9. Becoming more mindful of overcorrecting
  10. Manage your energy, not just your time
  11. Five
  12. Some teachers show you what to avoid
  13. 5 ideas I will be practicing this year
  14. Five books I’ve enjoyed recently
  15. How I stretch my attention span
  16. Three early career plays
  17. You can either learn or be judgmental
  18. Publish once before making it perfect the second time
  19. Two lessons I learned writing something heavy
  20. Reflecting on my failure to write a NYT bestselling book
  21. Remember the idea now, not later
  22. The power of proof assets
  23. When you delay a task, your mind makes it more intimidating
  24. Good things happen when you can be flexible with timing
  25. New year, New Material
  26. Miracleless growth
  27. Make your dream something you can’t fail at
  28. Why not today?
  29. The scribbled sheet of paper that changed fashion
  30. A journal’s purpose
  31. Stop exploiting yourself

2025 368

December 2025

  1. It’s always worth spending time up front to make the process smoother
  2. Third places on Christmas
  3. The asymptotic queue
  4. Whatever you struggle with is a great place to start writing
  5. Maybe promotion isn’t about making money, it’s about helping your work find other people
  6. Finding an answer to a question nobody else could answer
  7. Why Allen Iverson stopped dunking
  8. The point of writing every day isn’t to write every day
  9. When is a best effort enough?
  10. Participation is more important than the outcome
  11. The joys of blooming “late”
  12. Thank you, Keane
  13. Two articles I wrote very early in my career
  14. Fans will always be fans, even if they come and go
  15. Imagining the future of The Path, after Cumberland Terrace
  16. Figure out what’s working, and do more of it
  17. Learn about yourself by making something you’ll throw out right away
  18. Simple questions to sense content marketing ROI
  19. While the image of success is loud, real success is quiet
  20. Sometimes, the quiet achievements are the most important ones
  21. Marketing readiness
  22. Writing tired
  23. Two ways to increase the value of your work
  24. The writer’s room inside your mind
  25. Cultivating a life with less deadline pressure
  26. Create full-time job opportunities by adding value as a freelancer
  27. Notes from a season of movement
  28. Streaks are fragile, practices are anti fragile
  29. Meditating through self-forgiveness, frustration, and overwhelm
  30. Imagined realities can be shaped
  31. Being frugal makes entrepreneurs less fragile

November 2025

  1. When you follow your inclinations, you create a special type of luck
  2. Don’t make maintenance a last resort
  3. Good judgment does not mean being judgmental
  4. To get back into reading, choose a book just for fun
  5. Strong defense sets up strong offense
  6. If you’re exploring your career, keep more options open
  7. Share your reminders to yourself
  8. Maybe it’s not you
  9. If you’re unsure what to do, take any action
  10. The first step to get out of a hole is to stop digging
  11. Defense to offense
  12. Are you being rude to yourself?
  13. How to compete with geniuses
  14. Five tactics to scan for career opportunities
  15. Survival of the most flexible
  16. Clarify what your career currently supports
  17. Finding help is a skill worth mastering
  18. The Middle Way
  19. Wisdom starts with walking
  20. Lest we forget
  21. Good project management is about getting ahead of opportunities and problems
  22. Your routines are your opinions
  23. Fill in stories with realistic details
  24. Bias for novelty
  25. If they can do it, so can you
  26. The right and wrong times to burn the boats
  27. Document whatever’s in front of you
  28. Be mindful of what you’re getting good at
  29. Three particularly resonant posts
  30. In praise of the early morning flight
  31. Make a list of pains you prevented

October 2025

  1. AI is useful because you can blame it
  2. Three lessons from giving dishes an extra rinse at dim sum
  3. Respond to mistakes with guilt and gratitude
  4. Aerial roots can strengthen a tree’s foundation and absorb water and nutrients
  5. Impress as few people as possible
  6. You can always choose to be calm
  7. Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice is permanent
  8. The schedule is your project’s most important feature
  9. Every day is an opportunity to improve a skill and create momentum
  10. Make a list of things you want to do while you wait
  11. Don’t let a misunderstanding distract you from your goals
  12. When you do interesting things, you learn to make boring things interesting
  13. If optimizing for commitment doesn’t work for you, optimize for balance instead
  14. Treat your morning ritual like an opening chess move
  15. Even if the doctor recommends doing nothing, the visit will be worth it
  16. Create space for the things you want, so they can find you
  17. What tomorrow doesn’t tell you
  18. A dollar is a dollar, except what it means when you earn it
  19. Giving thanks
  20. It was supposed to rain
  21. You will have something worth saying after you write, not before
  22. Three things writing every day has refined for me
  23. Only boring people get bored
  24. Craft, not fame, makes your story worth telling
  25. Me and you
  26. Three moments from writing this week
  27. Stop chasing positive outcomes, allow them to find you with an indirect approach
  28. Pineapples, pizza, and possibility
  29. Collect underpants → ??? → Profit: A guide to filling in the question marks in your plans
  30. Do things that make you feel proud of yourself
  31. Three useful pieces of advice for public speaking

September 2025

  1. Music is a buoy in the seas of time and space
  2. Don’t just support it, enjoy it
  3. The paranoid only survive if it doesn’t kill them first
  4. Make your phone dumber so it’s less addictive
  5. Robert Frost on uniting your hobby and vocation
  6. Making art is a small part of the job
  7. The desire paths of your mind
  8. When you change your routines up, you slow time down
  9. Doing difficult things with, and without, motivation
  10. Three easy ways to give to a good cause
  11. Artists make New Work
  12. Better options
  13. Build your own supply chain, gain more control, do more work
  14. Skill mindset
  15. When someone persuades you it’ll be easy, it’s a signal to feel uneasy
  16. Studying, in an age of instant knowledge
  17. Questions to assess your project’s momentum
  18. 0 1
  19. Today, now
  20. Progress happens between practice sessions
  21. Creative competition
  22. What I got out of business school
  23. Stop trying to fill an acceptance shaped hole with ambition
  24. Find things that give you energy
  25. Tying my hands to the siren song of social media
  26. A place is a tool that people maintain
  27. What Terry Fox started
  28. Turn a difference of kind into a difference of degree
  29. Cross the swamp
  30. Patience creates new possibilities

August 2025

  1. Make space for projects that show momentum, by quitting the ones that don’t
  2. Restraint, and a better no
  3. Leadership looks sweet and tastes bitter
  4. Stacking the deck to win
  5. What do you want to focus on?
  6. The lion and the rat
  7. Poetry vs. textbook
  8. A bit of unconditional love, for the things you make
  9. Out the backpack
  10. Products, services, education, self service, and scale
  11. You, independent publishing, and the audience
  12. Personal growth happens after voluntary discomfort
  13. Stay with it
  14. How to walk more
  15. Just don’t it
  16. What is your relationship with your craft?
  17. The courage to tell (yourself) a new story
  18. A more resilient confidence
  19. The 12-year-old author
  20. Make your place interesting
  21. New Material on Creative Odyssey
  22. Accept, commit, and endure
  23. Two practical approaches to focus
  24. Ask for help
  25. How many steps ahead?
  26. Reality vs. possibility
  27. Art about art
  28. What would a doctor do?
  29. It’s easier to make art, harder to make a living off it
  30. The day you took your buttons back
  31. The bad joke phenomenon

July 2025

  1. The circumstance and the experience
  2. Your chance to change a life
  3. The facade of a lottery
  4. Three ways to understand winning
  5. Hell’s Kitchen
  6. When a detour is the best route
  7. Contemplation vs. observation
  8. The path with the best odds
  9. Perpetual beginner
  10. No
  11. Defining Winning
  12. Graduation eyes
  13. An album and four good articles
  14. More ways to write every day
  15. Who is this belief useful for?
  16. If stress was a dog
  17. Lessons I learn, over and over again
  18. Get your customer’s name right, or don’t ask at all
  19. A birthday is a reminder
  20. Eight ways to write more
  21. An advantage and disadvantage to publishing at a blog
  22. Philip Glass’s composing practice
  23. Meditations, with art
  24. Buy less junk food for better portion control, even if it means paying more
  25. Live and dead options
  26. In praise of scruffy writing
  27. Creative risk and precursive faith
  28. The shortcut that isn’t
  29. Creative Doing, at Creative Odyssey
  30. A good example is worth the effort
  31. World building, observations, and names
  32. A lesson this blog has taught me

June 2025

  1. Discover what you want to say by writing every day
  2. Your brain’s ecosystem
  3. Sleeping just enough
  4. Taking a break from writing a new book
  5. Reading more, again, gently
  6. Don’t just talk about it, write it out
  7. Assume sincerity
  8. Dead ends and gateways
  9. Success shouldn’t be an excuse
  10. The sincerity of a blog post
  11. Tolerance for difficult emotions
  12. More notes on fragmented sleep
  13. Take no ordinary moment for granted
  14. NYC by foot, ferry, or car
  15. Some slight adjustments for people who take photos to remember moments
  16. Soundtracks that soothe
  17. Sincerest forms, part 2
  18. Everyday choices
  19. The way through
  20. Three quotes that have caught my eye
  21. The middle path
  22. Push and Ye, masculinity and maturity
  23. Branches, trunk, and roots
  24. Book to behavior
  25. Aligning process with results
  26. 60 2
  27. Drawing a cartoon every day
  28. What is life asking of you?
  29. Deliberate deprivation
  30. Choose the frame
  31. Don’t open the app, open your journal instead

May 2025

  1. When the dream changes
  2. It’s not about how you make it, it’s about how you spend it
  3. A setback is a good opportunity…
  4. Keeping this blog a main thing
  5. Creative lineage
  6. Three ways to learn taste
  7. Organizing principle
  8. Three things about options
  9. Sincerest forms
  10. Start lightly, without a commitment to consistency
  11. Survival mode
  12. Questions on my mind
  13. One of the most important rules to writing
  14. Deliberate boredom
  15. Three things about creative success
  16. Wading through the junk
  17. What will you grow in your mud?
  18. Maybe passion had nothing to do with it
  19. Walking your path
  20. Is time working with you, or against you?
  21. Three things about friends
  22. Intense emotions and clear actions
  23. Optimism vs. delusion
  24. Define your work
  25. Participate, even if you’re not prepared
  26. You meet ten people…
  27. Customer satisfaction builds momentum
  28. Style = best traits + taste + flair
  29. Practicing
  30. Getting rich
  31. Your own project

April 2025

  1. Two quotes about fans and enthusiasm
  2. Making the money vs. collecting it
  3. The right answer vs. your answer
  4. The trunk and the branches
  5. Why not both?
  6. The wall of cringe
  7. Cash covers things up
  8. Memory, reliability, trust, and confidence
  9. Talking myself away from the fear of being seen
  10. A new way of thinking
  11. You learn to swim by swimming…
  12. “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”
  13. What the jellyfish knows: A compilation
  14. My new Q&A video practice
  15. Don’t let AI determine your intentions
  16. The jellyfish knows how to survive uncertain times
  17. From research to imagination
  18. Writers and readers as co-creators
  19. Whose task is this?
  20. One step at a time
  21. “Why is this important to me?”
  22. The privilege and point of writing
  23. Do you borrow from your future to pay for the present and past?
  24. Why you feel lost, what to do next
  25. Commit first, plan later
  26. How replaceable is your work?
  27. Professionalism and pressure
  28. Progress ebbs and flows
  29. Top of mind
  30. Don’t fight back, fight forward with forgiveness

March 2025

  1. Letting go of the scene
  2. AI and living tutorials
  3. Micro-meditations
  4. Contentions: Apple TV’s billion dollar loss
  5. Kinetic and energeial living
  6. The time will pass anyway
  7. Surrender, control, and anxiety
  8. Putting it out there
  9. A place for feelings that interfere
  10. Chatter vs. inspiration
  11. Books and lifestyle
  12. Read your journals like they’re books or articles
  13. Why Ted Lasso gets away with not knowing anything about football
  14. Where you work changes how you work
  15. 3.15.20
  16. “Football is life”
  17. 20 lessons from 2 years in New York City
  18. A strategy needs time
  19. More responsibility, more failure
  20. AI as an answer key
  21. Notes on fragmented sleep
  22. Convenience, growth, commitment, and sacredness
  23. Limitations of causal reasoning
  24. Keep the back up plan a back up plan
  25. Causal and effectual reasoning
  26. Don’t let batch processing get in the way of building momentum
  27. Character, habits, systems, and freedom
  28. Three conditions to just do stuff (and minimize overthinking)
  29. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast
  30. On writing with AI vs. writing with people
  31. How wanting something less freed me up to do more

February 2025

  1. Some people have it, some people don’t?
  2. AI can help spot the difference
  3. Discovering the work that needs to be made
  4. Building a body of work on self-acceptance
  5. Hangry
  6. Find an idea that’s easy to pick up and put down
  7. This is the perfect time
  8. Why applying to 100+ jobs doesn’t work
  9. Creative energy: Generative mode vs. explosive mode
  10. Opportunistic vs. strategic
  11. Reconsider your definitions
  12. To minimize overthinking, set and adhere to a time constraint
  13. Leaders trust people, not AI, to be accountable
  14. Free lunches
  15. If you’re embarrassed by your early work, that means you did it right
  16. You won’t think your way out of overthinking
  17. Who you are vs. how you appear
  18. When you make a new option, you make the world better
  19. Practice being bored
  20. Three quotes on routine living
  21. Skateboarding as an infinite game
  22. Document the moment
  23. Golden Generation
  24. You vs. the parasite
  25. To know vs. to do
  26. “Never do nothing”
  27. One chance
  28. What’s the point?

January 2025

  1. Blogging for smaller audiences and deeper connections
  2. Three stories about emotional reactions
  3. Chipping away
  4. Good prose
  5. Discouragement is a test
  6. Good Enough
  7. Teenage years, interfaces, and classic technology
  8. Living the contradictions
  9. Sometimes, you just gotta wait
  10. What do you need?
  11. The natural game
  12. You vs. the package of you
  13. Meeting people with cold emails
  14. A path to consistency
  15. The right to make a classic
  16. A useful rule for relationships
  17. Polish as a commodity
  18. The secrets of the tree
  19. Primary focus
  20. A proverb is a commercial for your own pondering
  21. A useful belief for tasteful entrepreneurs
  22. The power of the paper calendar
  23. Rereading past work
  24. Four ways to reach out to your network for (job) opportunities
  25. Algorithms charge an ignorance premium on marketing
  26. Don’t worry about getting chosen
  27. Find a place where your effort makes an impact
  28. Who came before you?
  29. The leap
  30. Clear structures for creative visions
  31. Openness

2024 365

December 2024

  1. Everything I shipped in 2024
  2. Clocks
  3. I don’t miss RSS one bit…
  4. How do you decide what’s worth reading?
  5. Pausing remains powerful
  6. Mutual understanding
  7. Define it
  8. Kowloon Walled City
  9. Stories as psychological moonshots
  10. Creative unattachment
  11. My 2015 interview with MC Jin
  12. Turner’s practice
  13. Be the first
  14. Friends pay full price
  15. Deliberate play
  16. Every dollar you save is a coupon on the next thing you buy
  17. On lateness and imperfection
  18. Greatness means avoiding stupid mistakes consistently
  19. The new direction
  20. Itoya and the charm of stationary
  21. Just do the real thing (again)
  22. Worth the wait
  23. The vessel heuristic
  24. A place and its magic
  25. Disorientation
  26. Invest in your stories
  27. Fast & Furious
  28. Confidence vs. trusting the process
  29. Serious writing
  30. Some notes on a return visit to Hong Kong
  31. The Path

November 2024

  1. A few seconds of space
  2. Incompletion risk
  3. Overmatching the situation
  4. Find more ways to win
  5. Everyone makes mistakes
  6. Guarding against incentives
  7. A genuine reaction
  8. 100% organic
  9. What are you running away from?
  10. The magic of the first trip
  11. Overthinking and stopping
  12. Business is about making dreams come true
  13. A spreadsheet is a creative tool like a whiteboard is
  14. When you save money, you buy freedom
  15. Effort and pressure
  16. Discipline and interest
  17. Water polo and penicillin
  18. Ordinary inspiration, extraordinary work
  19. Long & McQuade
  20. Your city’s culture needs you
  21. The infinite game of blogging: 1,000 posts later
  22. A podcast’s marketing foundation
  23. Disappointment and writing
  24. Creative success will not fill the hole in your heart
  25. Ladders as liberating rules
  26. Waking up from the trance of hesitation
  27. Very early Thursdays
  28. Giving new life to a dead publication
  29. Wiggle room
  30. Free coffee

October 2024

  1. The minimum
  2. Three things about deadlines
  3. Easy, boring, and obvious
  4. Feedback vs. validation
  5. Negative capability
  6. Out of the comfort zone
  7. A reminder
  8. Read the room
  9. Optional vs. required vs. prohibited
  10. What went right?
  11. Open ears, open mind
  12. Spare time
  13. The architect and the assignment
  14. Have you disappointed enough people lately?
  15. There is no failure
  16. The secret isn’t in the recipe
  17. A good brand honors a group
  18. When overdelivering fails
  19. New Material
  20. Work arrangements can be flexible
  21. One good reason
  22. Suits and the backlist
  23. Over and over
  24. Ignorance premium and the idiot index
  25. Open up about your problems
  26. Be somebody else’s good luck
  27. Three ways of seeing reality
  28. The power of small updates
  29. Shrigley’s quantities
  30. Weirdly Brilliant
  31. Nintendo’s weakness

September 2024

  1. Prioritizing
  2. “Impossible” may just be a problem you haven’t solved yet
  3. Be mindful of what you look for, because you might find it
  4. Action vs. declaration
  5. Cross-subsidization
  6. Realistic vs. dream jobs
  7. Doing your work your way
  8. A business needs its own magazine
  9. Retitling
  10. Typing vs. writing
  11. On personal change
  12. Signs of maturity
  13. Rules are made to be rewritten
  14. A letter from the past
  15. Picasso, the boilermaker, and expertise
  16. Making mistakes, with grace
  17. The long, hard, stupid way at Hacker News
  18. Old friends
  19. Two ideas to stand out when you’re applying to jobs
  20. Keep one specific person in mind when you write
  21. Trust summaries (AI or otherwise) at your own risk
  22. Follow your excitement, try experiments, make more work
  23. Quick notes in case you need to write a book
  24. Editing a call-to-action
  25. Pushing less, pushing lightly
  26. Make the frontlist and backlist work for each other
  27. Ambition demands sacrifice
  28. Make “good” impossible
  29. “Return on Investment”
  30. Post-travel integration

August 2024

  1. Record, rewrite, rehearse
  2. A well-rounded creative practice
  3. Some nice quotes
  4. Progress in restraint
  5. Don’t start from scratch
  6. Optional prerequisites
  7. A regular amount of effort
  8. Software vs. hardware orientation
  9. Categorization, commoditization, and clarity
  10. Moving with the efficiency of trust
  11. First generation artist
  12. Getting ahead vs. falling behind
  13. Just five minutes
  14. Strategic desperation
  15. Confidence scaffolding
  16. Find and feed expansion
  17. What annoys you?
  18. Go all the way
  19. Keep the interest alive
  20. Two hairstylists
  21. Hype vs. reality
  22. A new story for hobbyist websites
  23. Announce yourself quietly
  24. Remove imaginary barriers
  25. Mature confidence
  26. Consistency and breaks
  27. More art, less stock
  28. Keep your promises to yourself
  29. Is time on your side?
  30. Avoid sitting with rejection

July 2024

  1. Staying in practice
  2. Find people who need the best idea
  3. Three good ways to let go of expectations
  4. What can you demo?
  5. Make another option
  6. Unscheduled and flexible
  7. Helpful overconfidence vs. hurtful overconfidence
  8. Potential
  9. Three things I learned after placing Creative Doing in a bookstore
  10. 5 pieces I re-read recently
  11. Clarity, success, and confidence
  12. Three dimensional business cards
  13. Another business model example blending creativity and expertise
  14. Procrastination
  15. Presenting uncertainty
  16. Confidence buffer
  17. Cargo cult confidence
  18. Game reps
  19. Be nice and kind to yourself
  20. Two types of confidence
  21. Doing the impossible
  22. The case for a non-social publishing surface
  23. 3 ways out of the declining writing market
  24. Most things won’t go anywhere…
  25. The timeline of change
  26. Momentum
  27. What’s your work worth?
  28. Pay to play vs. paid to play
  29. No optimism, no business
  30. Desire vs. drive
  31. The two wolves

June 2024

  1. The sign vs. the signal
  2. Short-term vs. long-term
  3. Rejection calibration
  4. “I don’t accept that…”
  5. Foresight is not essential
  6. Reality catches up
  7. Shoot your shot
  8. Luck vs. skill
  9. Self-belief vs. the odds
  10. How do you think it’s going to turn out?
  11. Ask people to give you what you want
  12. Don’t let the name stop you
  13. Re-appraising perfection
  14. Liberating rules vs. governing rules
  15. Coping with reality
  16. What’s right vs. who’s right
  17. Basketball evolved because its inventor let go of control
  18. Building confidence on a foundation of practice
  19. The story of Mohini
  20. Help the best idea win
  21. The Scallenge
  22. Tuning the guitar
  23. Highlighting the practice
  24. Learning to talk to customers, directly
  25. Determination vs. desperation
  26. Write a new future today
  27. Practice, audition, and performance
  28. Read your old journals
  29. When you’re switching careers, don’t rush to a resolution
  30. Say what needs to be said

May 2024

  1. “I’m already doing that, though!”
  2. Choosing how you feel
  3. You made it!
  4. Derrick White and confidence
  5. The work vs. the strategy
  6. Sheridan’s levels of autonomy
  7. One sitting vs. many sittings
  8. From 0 to 3,000 book sales
  9. Afterthought vs. forethought
  10. On my 366th day at Figma
  11. Find a task that charges your battery
  12. Stick around until you find the lightbulb moment
  13. Pecking wood
  14. Don’t overlook pain prevention
  15. Letting go
  16. Three mechanisms of “manifesting”
  17. Advice for taking advice
  18. Starting, developing, and finishing
  19. Polished packaging vs. punk packaging
  20. Apple’s bad ad
  21. J. Cole’s hard decision for an easy life
  22. Listen to yourself, and do more of what works
  23. Contact list to database
  24. Be your own co-founder (or publisher, or distributor, etc.)
  25. The database stance
  26. Good editing means trusting yourself
  27. Get rich or die tryin’
  28. The effort is the point
  29. What AI won’t change in art
  30. Thin rewards vs. thick rewards
  31. The brand signature litmus test

April 2024

  1. A 20 year detour
  2. Practicing vs. pushing
  3. Find spaces to talk about your ideas
  4. Notes on promotion, at the book fair
  5. What can you point to?
  6. You can’t summarize the most important parts of a book
  7. Stopping
  8. Doing it all
  9. Effective first
  10. Your craft and your business model
  11. On franchises
  12. What if that’s what it takes?
  13. The pressure sweet spot
  14. “Please make some noise!”
  15. Success vs. happiness
  16. Make your business the case study
  17. Constructive criticism
  18. Yardsticks and patience
  19. Make the present catch up to the future
  20. Selling and transparency
  21. The slump
  22. Pursuing vs. ensuing
  23. In order to figure it out, you need to do it
  24. Independent vs. interdependent
  25. You can just do stuff, you know
  26. Earning confidence
  27. 100 times
  28. Something to respond to
  29. Prove it
  30. “What if I’m no good?”
  31. This is a bad sign

March 2024

  1. Preparation is not an excuse for procrastination
  2. A second opinion, before giving up
  3. Professional karaoke
  4. “I saw your latest project…”
  5. Martin Scorsese’s longcut
  6. “Intellectual concentration as entertainment”
  7. Monthly hackathons, but for writing
  8. Believe it
  9. The dirt
  10. Pivot sooner and slower
  11. Delusions and evolutionary fitness
  12. Pain, suffering, and low expectations
  13. Entrepreneurship isn’t a job title, it’s a mindset
  14. Preparation enables presence
  15. Change the metaphor
  16. Notes-based meeting prep
  17. The case of the stolen smell
  18. Big fish in a bigger pond
  19. David Chang on the long, hard, stupid way
  20. Expensive and cheap information
  21. The destination is a new way of seeing
  22. Volunteering
  23. Comfort zone
  24. Dreams vs. delusions
  25. “Producing is about discouraging creativity”
  26. Do you want to be known for that?
  27. Restraint
  28. Essentials week: Write down 10 ideas
  29. Essentials week: What Does It Mean to Be a Creative Person?
  30. Essentials week: This Four Stage Creative Process Shows You How to Unlock Your Creativity

February 2024

  1. Essentials week: On quitting, failing, and, “I find a lot of people who should quit don’t”
  2. Essentials week: Bill Watterson, Picasso, and HN on self promotion
  3. Essentials week: 8 Lessons from 800 Note Cards in the Zettelkasten
  4. Essentials week: Don’t think to write, write to think
  5. Just leave the bags at home?
  6. Cold-blooded creative work
  7. No bad ideas, no good ideas
  8. “How can I help?”
  9. Visiting vs. living somewhere
  10. Write it down for someone else
  11. Parenthood and possibilities
  12. Three things about competition
  13. Foundation first
  14. Three things about Dan Runcie building Trapital
  15. When happiness happens
  16. Value your ignorance
  17. A new Bloomberg
  18. Dependence
  19. Clear the calendar
  20. Five themes in the creative process
  21. Plugging in and powering up
  22. A technique if you can’t figure out what you want
  23. Spot the difference
  24. Two product and content marketing prompts
  25. Three lessons from Peter Yang
  26. The 90% tax on your creative work
  27. The 50 best 50 Cent quotes
  28. It’s not real feedback until it hurts
  29. “I should have done this earlier”

January 2024

  1. Three things I learned about execution as an employee (that I didn’t as an entrepreneur)
  2. Demos need details
  3. Run with it
  4. Friendship and creative work
  5. Tell people what you want to do, and it just might happen
  6. Three things on spontaneity
  7. Zen longcutting
  8. Six things about glamorous jobs
  9. Showing up vs. disappearing
  10. “How do you work past self doubt?”
  11. Assumptions and big decisions
  12. Intelligence, energy, and integrity
  13. Just write
  14. To earn an opportunity, steer into the concerns
  15. 5 minutes
  16. Creativity and data
  17. To find a good position, list out every possible criticism and craft the narrative
  18. Audio and alter egos
  19. Meditating on a flight
  20. “The road is made by walking”
  21. On why people around you stop you from changing
  22. The right season
  23. Put the words on the page
  24. Lightning in a bottle
  25. A place is a tool
  26. It’s still hard
  27. Serve tomorrow’s lucky 10,000
  28. The curse of knowledge
  29. Can’t vs. didn’t
  30. Two questions for choosing a company to work with
  31. Just one tooth

2023 366

December 2023

  1. To succeed in the age of A.I., build your capacity for longcuts
  2. If you do the thing, then you can keep the job title
  3. What to think vs. how to think
  4. The consistency edge
  5. To move forward through rejection, take a passion stance
  6. Sam Altman on self-belief and willfulness
  7. “You decide”
  8. An editor’s retrospective
  9. “You’re nobody here at $10 million”
  10. Authors write
  11. How many doors can you open?
  12. What does success mean to you, now?
  13. Playing injured
  14. Going direct buys you freedom
  15. When prestige narrows horizons
  16. The pinnacle of success
  17. Dealing in hope
  18. Writing is transference of energy
  19. Finding echoes of other people in yourself
  20. Process leads to purpose
  21. Favors balance out
  22. “Happy-when” people
  23. It’s just business
  24. Stand up
  25. Make a map of memories
  26. The copycat brand litmus test
  27. Celebrate the occasion, the offer is an afterthought
  28. Sales vs. marketing
  29. Your creative work’s right size
  30. Dealing with failure
  31. Ambiguity, fear, and possibility

November 2023

  1. The alchemy of scarcity
  2. A gym for reading
  3. The failure and the learning
  4. Audiobooks are books
  5. Choose the action, choose the consequence
  6. Sweet lemons
  7. Five life lessons from playing board games
  8. Hold yourself accountable
  9. 100% off
  10. Deconstructing Pat Riley’s guarantee
  11. Make a book about a person
  12. Out the trunk
  13. Three types of imaginary barriers
  14. Rich Paul on flying private, salary with LeBron, and fronting
  15. On businesses publishing books
  16. “Should I be doing that instead?”
  17. If you’re reading to learn, don’t read the whole book
  18. Nice vs. kind
  19. Choose someone else
  20. The real thing
  21. To break through perfectionism, take a small step in any direction
  22. Brain Age
  23. Two kinds of truths
  24. “You don’t need to get comfortable before you can practice your skills”
  25. “You want to feel a gap between what you expected and what actually happened”
  26. “That’s too bad, but nothing for me to be ashamed of”
  27. “My record sales ain’t much as theirs, and we still ride the same coupes”
  28. Three quotes on ordinariness
  29. Contentions: Put a price on your marketing
  30. Positioning and patience

October 2023

  1. Seth Godin, on expectations
  2. The one line paradox
  3. Endurance
  4. Books are an organized hobby
  5. Winning vs. not losing
  6. Practice as perpetuation
  7. Three things about your competitors
  8. Never take offense that you have to negotiate
  9. Eigenzeit
  10. 615 days of blogging for the hell of it
  11. Swoopers and bashers
  12. To balance out overthinking, ask yourself, “How hard can it be?”
  13. Keep faith in the end, accept inconvenient facts
  14. Create a lot of value, extract a small part of it
  15. The point of taking notes isn’t to take notes, it’s to think more effectively
  16. Whenever you’re stuck, write down 10 ideas
  17. 2.5 hours with Rising Green
  18. Meme as spine (continued)
  19. The little poster that Steve Jobs made famous
  20. Contentions: Do something nobody else can
  21. The aspiration capability gap
  22. Opportunities are earned
  23. Gohar World
  24. A meme can be a spine for your creative work
  25. You are traffic
  26. Why almost everything is actually more difficult than it seems
  27. Contentions: Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Stripe Press, and why it all works
  28. For better video calls, play a soundtrack
  29. Permission marketing, consistent distribution
  30. Philip Glass, on independence
  31. Appliances vs. toys

September 2023

  1. Future fables
  2. Fun is fun, compromised or otherwise
  3. Thinking outside of what exists
  4. “Work on your terms, at your own pace”
  5. Cash for longevity, not capital
  6. Forget what happens next
  7. Kirby and the power of polish
  8. Finding a way, with minutes a day
  9. Anna Wintour on audiences
  10. Anna Wintour on developing taste
  11. Write the book you want to live
  12. Cut it in half
  13. A little flame of talent
  14. Contentions: A good brand enables profit margins and product expansion
  15. Results orientation
  16. The illusion of catching up
  17. Contentions: The best content marketing example is Marginal Revolution
  18. An author, on both sides of publishing
  19. Confidence compounds, so does hesitancy
  20. Who benefits from low agency beliefs and behaviors?
  21. To promote your work on social media, ask friends to like or share, and send them a calendar invite
  22. Jamming on a WIP
  23. Creative Doing, now available on Kindle
  24. Google and the Dip
  25. Contentions: Same campaign, fresh hook
  26. Publish everything, promote selectively
  27. Beginner’s luck
  28. It wouldn’t be the same without you
  29. Aiming high vs. aiming low
  30. Publish it anyway

August 2023

  1. Focus on the future
  2. Seizing your right to make art
  3. On developing your capacity for self-doubt
  4. Prophecizing greatness
  5. The squeeze
  6. Obviousness fallacy
  7. Permission: To wait, or not to wait?
  8. 20 years of writing daily
  9. Montage fallacy
  10. Confidence, from within
  11. Manifesting works as an initial step
  12. Take an inventory of your top ten memories
  13. Writing, in the Office of the CEO
  14. Intergenerational advantages
  15. Contentions: Bringing creativity, brand, and distribution together
  16. Your art doesn’t need more time, your time needs more art
  17. Posse
  18. “Why not?”
  19. Your bowl of spaghetti
  20. Charlie Munger, on low expectations
  21. Create momentum
  22. Paul Graham, on raising ambition
  23. Lupe and A.I.
  24. Hiring VIPs
  25. Define yourself outside your life’s task
  26. Same word, different meaning
  27. This was a really cool talk at Config
  28. Stick to the whim
  29. Advice for considering advice
  30. Good editing is cutting
  31. Uphill thinking

July 2023

  1. Creativity, just because
  2. A trustworthy expert’s tone
  3. Points for pointedness
  4. The negative press brand litmus test
  5. Expectations vs. support
  6. The hotel lobby brand litmus test
  7. Saving money, getting rich
  8. Lean into trying
  9. Docs, branding, and opinions
  10. “Put the paint on the canvas!”
  11. Predictive processing theory
  12. The case against the case against travel
  13. The subtle misery of high expectations
  14. GL HF
  15. A newsletter you’ll want to share…
  16. Last mile pressure
  17. No interruptions, please
  18. Don’t be precious about promoting your work
  19. Boredom feeds creativity
  20. Making it happen
  21. Creative Doing, at Figma
  22. A ladder of independence
  23. Serious possibilism
  24. Quantity and the long tail
  25. Ronald Read
  26. A quick spine prompt
  27. Fingerprints
  28. Getting ahead of it
  29. Three appointments, please
  30. Losing 101
  31. Subtle life changes

June 2023

  1. On writing a newsletter about books
  2. Contentions: Advocacy, ambassadorship, and relations
  3. World building
  4. Independence is a team sport
  5. Put it out there
  6. Vision, practice, and spine
  7. “This is not important”
  8. Cliffhangers are cheap
  9. Documenting Config
  10. “I don’t have anything to say about this…”
  11. When emotions limit earnings
  12. “Don’t do that”
  13. Doing meta-creativity well
  14. A creator’s perspective
  15. “You don’t even know what hard is”
  16. Medium Day topics
  17. Changing your context
  18. Contextualization
  19. Marketplace of truths
  20. Advice for high performers
  21. Ironic effects
  22. Free lunch
  23. On first principles
  24. Paper happy
  25. Contentions: Track your rewriting
  26. Promote your best work
  27. Stretching time back out
  28. On shrinking, dying, industries
  29. Your future is constrained by…
  30. Suspension of disbelief

May 2023

  1. Rereading
  2. This TV show was too real
  3. What would you do if you were a rich kid?
  4. Brag
  5. Nirvana fallacy
  6. It’s not supposed to go according to plan
  7. Playoff mode
  8. Pronoia
  9. The action imperative
  10. It is what it is
  11. Holding back the good stuff
  12. “Problems” create meaning
  13. The best
  14. You see the world as you are
  15. Virgil Abloh’s first website
  16. The liking gap
  17. Participation trophies
  18. The only way to change someone’s mind
  19. Life is a team sport
  20. Do more, think less
  21. The 451 day project
  22. Getting to know a business
  23. “What would you recommend?”
  24. Contentions: Names set expectations
  25. People make plans, and nature laughs
  26. Play to your strengths
  27. Their currency, their rules
  28. Compiling
  29. What are we surviving for?
  30. Talker’s block, redux
  31. Contentions: Long live typing

April 2023

  1. Fan non-fiction
  2. Steps to success
  3. A deliverable is just an artifact
  4. Question everything
  5. Start with the end in mind
  6. Eating your vegetables
  7. The preciousness paradox
  8. Contentions: What A.I. will not disrupt in marketing, editing, and writing
  9. Fictional brands
  10. Contentions: They’re asking ChatGPT first
  11. Learning to love rejection
  12. Quit while you’re ahead
  13. Make your work the best practice, and let people copy it
  14. Red lights
  15. Skimming a book can change your life
  16. If you can’t prioritize it, make it a practice
  17. Seeing the expectations you picked up
  18. Getting stuff done sets you apart
  19. Flexibility cost
  20. Text generation
  21. Beef and A24
  22. “You can do anything…”
  23. Maps, masks, and models
  24. Practicing
  25. The work needs to be enough: A creative manifesto
  26. Oops
  27. A table for your thoughts
  28. Creating a perception
  29. Separate Bedrooms
  30. Switch lanes to expand your perspective

March 2023

  1. Betrayals
  2. Abundance of comfort
  3. “What do you write about?”
  4. Decisiveness has an expiry date
  5. Validation addiction
  6. Bad dads
  7. Why writing is fun for me
  8. Sour yell
  9. 10 questions to help you decide between career options
  10. Contentions: Even release notes are an opportunity
  11. A fisherman and banker exchange numbers
  12. You can’t judge creative work by Sales
  13. “This will do”
  14. Donald Glover, on productive gentleness
  15. What my personal website and blog have done for me
  16. “Luck” covers the outcomes we can’t explain
  17. Don’t make what you think other people want you to make
  18. From fliers to billboards
  19. 11 books that started as articles, speeches, or podcasts
  20. Contentions: Writing for yourself vs. writing for the reader
  21. Extreme affirmations don’t work, compassion does
  22. Marc Eckō, on branding as religion
  23. The prediction machine
  24. Get optimism out of your head
  25. Productive pygmalion
  26. Priceless advice, on believing
  27. The joys of illuminating
  28. Lucky girl syndrome
  29. Either way, you’re probably right
  30. Icing on the cake
  31. The happiness folder, redux

February 2023

  1. Craft, plus
  2. I dare you to hope
  3. Cruel optimism
  4. 5 sentences on Pharrell’s appointment as Louis Vuitton’s Men’s Creative Director
  5. Declassifying secrets
  6. Contentions: Content strategy, in action, at a very early startup
  7. Blind Faith Heroic by Richard MacDonald
  8. Less mainstream, more premium
  9. “Art changes people and people change the world”
  10. On quitting, failing, and, “I find a lot of people who should quit don’t”
  11. Contentions: If you really want to make an impact, tell a story
  12. Contentions: Predictions drive great brands
  13. In praise of the obvious
  14. One with the people
  15. I wrote every day for 365 days. Here are my results and 5 insights
  16. Contentions: Writing to understand
  17. Shuffle mode
  18. Interviewing experts to learn
  19. Thin layers
  20. “Evolve or Die”
  21. Unsticking
  22. Democratized gatekeeping (redux)
  23. Put your name on it
  24. #The100DayProject 2023
  25. Practice vs. perfection
  26. 8 lessons on creativity I learned from Virgil Abloh
  27. My new website!
  28. Democratized gatekeeping
  29. Misunderstanding

January 2023

  1. Practice improvising
  2. What doesn’t kill you makes you more creative
  3. Craigslist
  4. The case for consistency
  5. It’s the climb
  6. Taking your own advice
  7. “I don’t believe in titles, I believe in work”
  8. Graceful embarrassment
  9. In defense of copycats
  10. Contentions: Describing your work
  11. The smart thing vs. the right thing
  12. Solomon’s Paradox
  13. Don’t live the someday life
  14. Perceptions vs. the truth
  15. Jeitinho
  16. Your noise, my song
  17. Ship it anyway
  18. On book promotion
  19. Shipping early as self-sabotage
  20. Need vs. Want
  21. What’s it’s name?
  22. Career patterns
  23. Emily in Paris
  24. Contentions: Defending the turf
  25. Creative Doing, at Pitch’s Presentation Gallery
  26. Too big, too fast
  27. On the go
  28. Instinct
  29. “Will it work?”
  30. Teaching yourself
  31. When the Mexican fisherman parable breaks

← 2016–2022