Category: Turning Stories
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What will you grow in your mud?
Sometimes, people ask me why I wrote a book about creativity. Short answer: it’s because I experienced a creative block. (Long answer here!) I spent many years looking for the answer to this creative block, and I put the most useful information I found into my book Creative Doing. I still often find myself experiencing…
Herbert Lui
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Maybe passion had nothing to do with it
Most people do not get paid to do their hobbies. (Trying to make money off your hobby could actually ruin it.) No matter your passion, it will ebb and flow. Actively cultivating passion, to love your job—whatever it happens to be, is a more resilient strategy than passively expecting passion to carry you through your…
Herbert Lui
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Walking your path
In my 20s, I watched a lot of interviews with artists so I could understand how they found success. I believed I could reverse engineer these paths, and I appreciated this genre of media so much I started making my own by interviewing recording artists and authors. While I learned more than my fair share,…
Herbert Lui
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Intense emotions and clear actions
“Inspiration is for amateurs,” Chuck Close says. There are two ways to interpret this: 1. A professional shows up even when they don’t feel inspiration. They show up every day and do the work. They don’t wait for an intense emotion to pull them into the work. 2. A professional does not mindlessly engage inspiration.…
Herbert Lui
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Optimism vs. delusion
Making the choice to be optimistic is always worth it, especially when it’s the more difficult decision to make. As Bob Iger, who leads Disney, puts it, optimism is the ability to focus on what matters—steering your team towards the best possible outcome, and moving forward in spite of setbacks. It also means letting go…
Herbert Lui
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Getting rich
One path to getting rich looks more like saving money. While your friends buy the fancier options, you don’t. You’re not broke, you’re living within your means and taking steps toward richness. Maybe you used to borrow from the future, and now you’ve given that inclination up. Whereas most people may feel a horrifying shame…
Herbert Lui
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Two quotes about fans and enthusiasm
“It’s not what you know. It’s who you know,” the cliché goes. (Not one of the quotes.) If you’re doing creative work—visual art, writing, music, entrepreneurship, programming, design, amongst the many other forms of expression—it’s entirely about who you know and who knows you. These people create supportive contexts for you by working as managers,…
Herbert Lui
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Making the money vs. collecting it
Chris Rock asked a young comic what he did that day. “Nothing,” the young comic said. “But I’m going to do a set tonight.” “You make money during the day. You collect it at night,” Chris responded. “During the day is where the money is made.” There’s a writing lesson here: While comics and comedians…
Herbert Lui
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The right answer vs. your answer
Cluely is a new AI app that listens to your conversations and feeds you the best answers. The team behind it created a phrase designed to be misunderstood and polarizing, but saying that it lets you cheat on any conversation. Cheating like a calculator is cheating a math test, of course. If you choose to…
Herbert Lui
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Why not both?
“Do you want this, or that?” Yes. Sometimes, the best option isn’t to choose one or the other. It’s to choose both. (The formal business school term for this is integrative thinking.) For example, if you’re an author, and you’re asking yourself, “Do you want to self-publish your next book, or work with a publisher?” …
Herbert Lui