Category: Creator Confidential

• Keep the back up plan a back up plan

  The future is unpredictable. It’s always great to have an option, maybe two, in case things don’t go according to plan. That’s why you’d want to have a backup plan. In my freshman year in university, I made a backup plan that took too much of my energy. According to my plan, I would switch…

  Herbert Lui

  March 8, 2025

  Creator Confidential, Expectations, Life

• Causal and effectual reasoning

  What makes a person entrepreneurial? Professor Saras D. Sarasvathy believes the distinguishing factor is in the reasoning process. She identifies two types of reasoning: When you think with causal reasoning, you focus on what you want to do—the desired end goal, or the destination—and then work backwards from that. Business leaders, managers, and strategists tend…

  Herbert Lui

  March 7, 2025

  Creativity, Creator Confidential, Expectations, Turning Stories

• Don’t let batch processing get in the way of building momentum

  One of the earliest pieces of productivity advice I came across was the concept of grouping similar tasks together, and doing it all in one go. This is known as “batch processing.” For example, if you’re going to read and respond to your emails, don’t do them one at a time throughout the day. Make…

  Herbert Lui

  March 6, 2025

  A Matter of Time, Creativity, Creator Confidential, Turning Stories

• Character, habits, systems, and freedom

  An author speculates that GLP-1 drugs will curb a lot of people’s impulses. This could potentially help a lot of people make better—less impulsive—decisions. In this speculation, one concern will be a division of advantage: the people who can afford the impulse control drugs would be at a greater advantage than the people who can’t…

  Herbert Lui

  March 5, 2025

  Creator Confidential, Life, Turning Stories

• Three conditions to just do stuff (and minimize overthinking)

  If you have fun writing something, the reader will have fun reading it. You’ve given your work the right energy.  Building on this observation, Cassidy Williams notes that sometimes she wants her work to be strategic, or clear and thorough. She writes, “I think a lot of that overthinking and ‘being in my head’ about…

  Herbert Lui

  March 4, 2025

  Creativity, Creator Confidential, Expectations, Turning Stories

• Slow is smooth and smooth is fast

  In the industrial era, the people that did more stuff—faster—added more value to the world. Efficiency was the buzzword. That’s no longer the case. Now, slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. We are already bumping up on the limits of how fast we can do our work—and we will never execute faster than AI…

  Herbert Lui

  March 3, 2025

  A Matter of Time, Creativity, Creator Confidential, Turning Stories

• On writing with AI vs. writing with people

  AI is, very clearly, disrupting writing and editing. (I’ve kept an eye on it since 2021! Back then, you’d be forgiven for mixing up GPT-3 with C-P30.) I’ve recently come across more work from writers declaring that they’re turning more to AI solutions to be researchers, thought partners, and developmental editors. Let’s assume that an…

  Herbert Lui

  March 2, 2025

  Creativity, Creator Confidential

• How wanting something less freed me up to do more

  While it’s good to be passionate about your work, an overwhelming ambition—bordering on a need—to achieve or have something, sometimes this drive actually gets in the way. I learned this the hard way.  I spent most of my 20s wanting to be a bestselling author—recognized by traditional publications, sold lots of books, invited to speeches,…

  Herbert Lui

  March 1, 2025

  Creativity, Creator Confidential, Expectations, Turning Stories

• Some people have it, some people don’t?

  A few years ago, I wrote that writing is thinking. You are better off writing to think, not trying to think before you write. “But some people are just better at it,” Ant K writes in a comment (which Karolis recently agreed with). He compared his work with another author he held in high esteem.…

  Herbert Lui

  February 28, 2025

  Creativity, Creator Confidential, Expectations, Turning Stories

• Discovering the work that needs to be made

  I’m finally making good progress on the second draft of my next book. It feels good enough to actually discuss—and much less fragile than the first draft. To be precise, it actually feels more like the first draft of the book that it was actually meant to be. “Every block of stone has a statue…

  Herbert Lui

  February 26, 2025

  A Matter of Time, Creativity, Creator Confidential, Expectations