Author: Herbert Lui
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Picasso, the boilermaker, and expertise
If you want to build a business on your expertise—specialized knowledge—one early key is to break out of the idea that your effort should be directly correlated with your income. Here’s a good, perhaps fictional, example that starts off with a woman asking Picasso to make a sketch for her: Picasso complied and then said,…
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Making mistakes, with grace
You’re going to make a lot of mistakes. If you didn’t learn how to make mistakes gracefully, here’s one way to do it: Acknowledge the mistake. Apologize to someone if you’ve caused them pain or done something wrong. Make an effort to make things right and to lower the odds of it happening again, and…
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The long, hard, stupid way at Hacker News
A few years ago, I joined Chris Do at The Futur podcast, where I mentioned a story about Momofuku displaying chickens that they weren’t actually serving. I didn’t do a great job explaining the story. After I heard Frank Chimero mention a similar idea six months ago, my brain remembered the idea and I wrote…
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Old friends
Old friends know the past versions of you very well. However, those experiences and images make it difficult for them to see new versions of you. If they are opposed to change, and don’t want to lose you as a friend, your desire to grow in a different direction will feel painful to them. They…
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Two ideas to stand out when you’re applying to jobs
First idea: Email the person who is hiring for the job to introduce yourself. If you’re not sure, make the best guess. For example, if you’re applying for a job as a content marketing manager, email the marketing director. If you’re applying for a job as a security engineer, email the director of security. It…
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Keep one specific person in mind when you write
I don’t mean a persona. I mean a real person with a first name and last name. Ideally, you’ve met them and spent some time talking with them. If you haven’t, maybe you can attend one of their speeches at a conference or find an interview online somewhere. If you can’t spend time with this…
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Trust summaries (AI or otherwise) at your own risk
A very specialized, expert, government trial suggests that AI underperforms compared to people at summarizing information. Reading a book summary is not the same as reading a book. In fact, you miss the most important parts of the book when you read the summary. Worse yet, you may even fool yourself into thinking you know…
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Follow your excitement, try experiments, make more work
When Ryan Holiday writes about creative work, I read. His book Perennial Seller has been super helpful as I’ve been promoting Creative Doing. In one of his recent posts, he explains that his third book, The Obstacle Is the Way (and ensuing series on stoic philosophy), was nowhere near a sure thing when he wrote…
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Quick notes in case you need to write a book
gwern makes the case for not writing a book. All good stuff to consider, especially ahead of time. While writing a book is unlikely to make you rich, it’s an ambitious endeavor that can take a toll on your mental health and that of the people around you. If you really must write a book—for…
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Editing a call-to-action
In the middle of a great show, a jazz musician asks us—the audience, “Does anybody still listen to CDs?” Nobody raises their hand. “Of course not,” he laughs. So do we. He tells us the title of his new album, which he made CDs for. He also adds that it is available on Spotify and…