Category: Creativity
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Thank you, Keane
My friend Keane Tan passed away eight years ago. He was 26. Thanks for encouraging me with my writing. Thanks for showing me how open the world was, and how everyone was one cold email away. Thanks for helping me and our friends win the first year case competition. Thanks for letting me in after…
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Two articles I wrote very early in my career
A couple of years ago, I wrote about my gig writing for Techvibes while I was an undergrad university student. I was a self-taught writer, and these posts are part of my very early work. Techvibes was acquired in 2016, and most of the articles were stripped of author credentials. Some of them have all…
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Learn about yourself by making something you’ll throw out right away
One useful way to take the pressure off making something—anything!—is to never show it to anyone else. It’s just you and your work. You can say whatever you want to say. Write down your deepest fears. Write down the ambition that’s too unrealistic to even whisper about to anyone else. Write what you’ve wished you…
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Writing tired
In my ideal world, I’d wake up around 8am, eat breakfast and have a matcha latte, and write for 1-2 hours. In this state, the writing just flows out. 60–95%, I don’t write under these ideal conditions. Life is asking me to take care of other things. Instead, I keep my eyes peeled for openings…
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Two ways to increase the value of your work
People get value from your work and experiences when you publish it and they experience it. There are two ways to increase the value of your work: You can improve the experience (e.g., through crafting the story, or telling it in a new and interesting way). You can contextualize it further. Or, you can get…
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Cultivating a life with less deadline pressure
Instead of counting down with a timer, try counting up with a stop watch. This is a lesson I learned from a personal trainer, who was timing me as I rested between sets. In addition to tracking what’s left to do, proactively track what you did. This is the iDoneThis philosophy. Right now, I cross…
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Streaks are fragile, practices are anti fragile
Streaks are useful for keeping a behavior going. When you’re on a streak, the momentum and fear of breaking the streak carries you through to repeating a behavior. If you’ve worked out three times a week for 100 weeks straight, you want to do the same next week to keep the streak going. But what…
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Meditating through self-forgiveness, frustration, and overwhelm
A friend was going through a hard time at work. They knew I practiced meditation, and wanted to learn more about the practice. It has been almost a decade since I started. Here’s some of what I shared with them: If you want to get started meditating, Headspace publishes some guided meditations at YouTube that…