The Curious Engineer

All blogs / Essays / personal

More To That

moretothat.com

An illustrated, long-form blog that delves deeper into the things that make us who we are.

Essays / personal

’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
182 from 21 Mar 2018 to 23 Oct 2026
Posting
monthly (8 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
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2026 5

  1. Selfish Building
  2. On the Spirit of Teaching
  3. AI Is an Extension of Your Creative Self
  4. The Foundation and the Frontier
  5. Listening Is the Silencing of the Mind

2025 15

  1. Intuition and the Inner Compass
  2. The Three Principles of Self-Understanding
  3. The Pitfalls of Consistency
  4. On Turning 40
  5. Ideas Arise Through Action
  6. “Is There More to Life Than This?”
  7. Tales From the Island of Illness
  8. The Poison of Status
  9. The Story of My First Book
  10. Ending the Anger Economy
  11. Our Last 2 Moats
  12. Everything Will Be Okay
  13. The Skill That Will Never Die
  14. On Fleeing the Inferno
  15. The Three Types of Writing

2024 15

  1. Revisiting Travel
  2. The End of Shame
  3. Tech Is No Substitute for Depth
  4. Metric-Less Success
  5. The Tired Nature of Thought
  6. The Fallacy of Passion
  7. The Riddle of Ambition
  8. The Riddle of Happiness
  9. Be Kind, But Keep Your Integrity
  10. The Unity of the Political Animal
  11. The Thin Line Between Delight and Doubt
  12. The Three Foundational Questions
  13. The Questioning Mind Is Most Alive
  14. The Labor of Inspiration
  15. Fear Is a Framing Problem

2023 26

  1. The Embrace of Agency
  2. The Allergy to Uncertainty
  3. Why I Write About the Human Condition
  4. The Boundaries of Rationality
  5. The Illusion of Control
  6. Compassion Is the Greatest Virtue
  7. The Inner Compass
  8. The Tightrope of Discipline
  9. The Problem of What Others Think
  10. Burnout Is the Echo of Self-Judgment
  11. The Fallacy of a Just World
  12. The Tension Between Art and Money
  13. On Pain, Suffering, and Hope
  14. Status and the Illusion of Progress
  15. Value Is Not Essence
  16. A Few Lessons on Showing Up
  17. The Trouble With Transcendence
  18. Frictionless Creativity
  19. Being Poor vs. Feeling Poor
  20. The Levers That Money Can’t Pull
  21. The Function of Education
  22. A Memory of Aloneness
  23. The Beauty of Hardship
  24. The Antidote to Envy
  25. How to Build an Audience Without Losing Yourself
  26. A Timeless New Year

2022 20

  1. The Riddle of Rest
  2. How to Beat Worry
  3. The Artist Gives Us the Vision
  4. The Survival Instinct of Money
  5. Knowledge Is Not Understanding
  6. When Advice Collides With Truth
  7. The Meaning-Making Animal
  8. The Mind Scribble: Solving the Blank Page Problem
  9. The Arc of the Practical Creator
  10. Nostalgia and the Cessation of Time
  11. The Game You Don’t Need to Play
  12. The Problem With Note-Taking
  13. Love Has No Gain or Loss
  14. Equanimity: A Creator’s Greatest Asset
  15. True Learning Is Done With Agency
  16. Write to Give Yourself Advice
  17. The Gamification of Life
  18. Create for Just One Hour Each Day
  19. The Time Trap of Productivity
  20. Interest-First Friendships

2021 25

  1. The Many Worlds of Enough
  2. Some of Life’s Great Paradoxes
  3. The Nothingness of Money
  4. Be Challenged. Not Overwhelmed.
  5. The Dream That Is Existence
  6. The Gift of Challenge
  7. There’s Nothing More Real Than Your Potential
  8. When 1 + 1 = 3
  9. God Is a Spectrum of Being
  10. Make Classics, Not Content
  11. Three Thoughts on Writing (Reflection on May 2021)
  12. Speculation: A Game You Can’t Win
  13. Multi-Tasking and Our Greatest Fear
  14. On Differentiating Pain and Suffering (Video Reflection on April 2021)
  15. A Reflection on Being Asian
  16. Words Are the Sculptors of Culture
  17. On Living in a Burnout Society (Video Reflection on March 2021)
  18. Envy Is the Cancer of the Soul
  19. The Mundane Is Beauty Without Wonder
  20. Taming the Inner Critic (Reflection on February 2021)
  21. The River of Compassion
  22. Ask Me Anything: January 2021
  23. The Staircase of the Self
  24. The Riddle of Boredom
  25. Thought Stop Signs: The Source of Lazy Thinking

2020 42

  1. The Year in Which Relativism Reigned Supreme (Reflection on December 2020)
  2. Fluid Thought: The Art of Exploring Without Expecting
  3. Crying Babies and the Absence of Language (Reflection on November 2020)
  4. Pursue Mastery, Not Status
  5. The Omnipresence of Work
  6. Doing Meaningful Work With Limited Time (Reflection on October 2020)
  7. A Letter to My Newborn Daughter
  8. The Power of the Dissenting Voice
  9. A World Driven by Incentives
  10. The Long Tail of Negative Emotions
  11. Creativity Starts Before Anything Is Made
  12. Reflections on August 2020
  13. The Information Lifecycle: How Three Filters Shape the Mind
  14. Reality Is Never Strange. We Are.
  15. Reflections on July 2020
  16. Mere Superheroes
  17. The Ultimate Guide to Visual Storytelling
  18. Weaponized Silence: The Worst Form of Quiet
  19. Good Enough Is Just Fine
  20. Reflections on June 2020
  21. How Money Forever Changed Us
  22. How Money Forever Changed Us: An Audio Reflection
  23. Personal Experience Is Everything
  24. What Is the Present Moment?
  25. Reflections on May 2020
  26. Why Everyone Can Face the Truth
  27. The Infinite Shades of Uncertainty
  28. Rethinking Productivity
  29. Painting the Bullseye: What Happens When We Lose Our Curiosity?
  30. The Day You Decided to Take the Leap
  31. Reflections on April 2020
  32. Why We Doubt Ourselves
  33. The Reciprocity of Interest (A Reflection)
  34. Write for Yourself, and Wisdom Will Follow
  35. Reflections on March 2020
  36. Shocks, Setbacks, and the Slowdown of Time
  37. Finding Peace Within the Pandemic
  38. Philosophy Has Lost Its Way
  39. It’s Mainstream to Hate the Mainstream
  40. Respect Is No Substitute for Love
  41. More To That: The First Year (PDFs)
  42. Money Is the Megaphone of Identity

2019 24

  1. Reflections on 2019
  2. The Four Ancestral Wants: A Brief Dive into the Nature of Desire
  3. How to Be Thankful for Your Life with One Simple Reset
  4. What Makes Death Bad?
  5. The Small Things Are Big Windows Into Who You Are
  6. The Release Ratio: How to Make Use of Everything You Know
  7. What We Get Wrong About Evil
  8. Happiness Is a Serious Matter
  9. The Riddle of the Well-Paying, Pointless Job
  10. Thankfully, Life Is Full of Problems
  11. Are You My Friend?
  12. Do You Really Believe What You Believe?
  13. The Economics of Writing (And Why Now Is the Best Time to Do It)
  14. The Finality of Everything
  15. Memory Is the Shadow of Fact, the Artifact of Feeling
  16. Socrates: The Badass Godfather of Uncertainty
  17. Self-Help and the Smuggling of Values
  18. The Creator and the Crowd: Originality’s Balancing Act
  19. The Meaning of Life Is Absurd
  20. Why Having a Wedding Makes Sense
  21. Welcome to Patron-Only Content!
  22. The Right Side of Thought
  23. How to Calm the Anxious Brain
  24. You Are Not Your Anxiety: A Journey Into the Anxious Brain

2018 10

  1. The Garden You Can Touch
  2. “The Quest to the Unlived Life” (A Behind-the-Scenes Audio Post)
  3. The Quest to the Unlived Life
  4. A (Longer Than Expected) Look Into My Writing/Illustrating Process
  5. How Natural Selection Screwed Us
  6. Death: The Roommate of Life
  7. A Behind-the-Scenes Look: The Patreon Stop Motion Video
  8. From Ignorance to Wisdom: A Framework for Knowledge
  9. Knowledge Is Not a Thing
  10. Travel Is No Cure for the Mind