Category: Turning Stories
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“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”
A couple of months ago, I caught up with a good friend on the phone. An opening came up for me to recommend Derek Sivers’s book, Useful Not True, and so I did. I chatted with my friend again, a couple of days ago, and he told me the book resonated with him. Particularly, he…
Herbert Lui
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The jellyfish knows how to survive uncertain times
A lion’s mane jellyfish can release up to 45,000 eggs per day. The jellyfish’s strategy is to lay as many eggs as possible and leave them to fend for themselves. Most of these eggs don’t survive, probably fewer than 0.1%. In ecology, this approach is known as a high reproduction selection—better known as r–selection. Fish,…
Herbert Lui
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From research to imagination
You remember a fragment of a song that sounds like it’s from the eighties. You do some research, but you struggle to remember where you heard it, and when. Your guesses are more imagination than recall. No hints come to mind. When this happened to Questlove, he was stumped. He decided to transform this research…
Herbert Lui
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The privilege and point of writing
Last weekend, my good friend showed me how I could train an LLM to write blog posts just like me. The LLM generously assessed my voice and tone (which made me feel understood!), and then spat out a blog post that could’ve been a first draft for me. While I felt curious about it, I…
Herbert Lui
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Do you borrow from your future to pay for the present and past?
A ponzi scheme takes place when the schemer uses cash from later investors to pay returns to early investors. My friend Peter makes the case that when an entrepreneur borrows from their business’s future to pay off present and past obligations, they are operating it like a ponzi scheme. Peter’s framing of the situation resonated…
Herbert Lui
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Why you feel lost, what to do next
The story of The Courage to Be Disliked is told mostly in dialogue, between a student and a philosopher. Spoiler alert: While the student starts off opposing the philosopher, hellbent on proving the philosopher and their school of thinking—Adlerian psychology—wrong, he starts to come around. By the end of the book, the student’s intention has…
Herbert Lui
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Commit first, plan later
My former colleague at Figma, Claire Butler, recently wrote a really great post about what she learned working at Figma. The lesson that stood out to me most was this one, “When you’re stuck, commit to action. Strategy will follow.” In other words, if you’re making something new, planning too far ahead will likely just…
Herbert Lui
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Progress ebbs and flows
This was a lesson one of my bosses shared with me: most people don’t improve consistently every quarter. Instead, progress ebbs and flows. Sometimes—maybe many times—you might feel like you’re going through a plateau. Many other people would quit. If you remain confident you’re heading in the right direction, then you need to stick with…
Herbert Lui
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Don’t fight back, fight forward with forgiveness
A restaurateur speaks up publicly for what he thinks is right. The people who think he’s wrong take action. They vandalize his restaurant. Glass is shattered. Mirrors broken. Furniture destroyed. He had invited his father to town to dine at the restaurant. That can’t happen now that the restaurant is in such bad shape. He…
Herbert Lui
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Letting go of the scene
I live in downtown NYC. I wouldn’t consider FiDi a particularly cool neighborhood. Geographically speaking, I could probably be further from the scene—I’m not in the burbs!—but socially speaking, I haven’t broken in. To be honest, I could not be less interested. Yes, there is occasional FOMO. While I moved here for work, when I…
Herbert Lui