Category: Turning Stories
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Start lightly, without a commitment to consistency
Many entertainers are on YouTube. When people asked comedian Yoo Jae-suk why he wasn’t, he explained that he didn’t have the time. Starting a YouTube channel would be a program in itself, and he wanted to do it well. Jae-suk’s friend and colleague, Kim Jong-kook, runs a channel with millions of subscribers. Jong-kook explained to…
Herbert Lui
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Survival mode
If you’re starting a business with little (or no) money, your main priority is to survive. You will have a mission, and a position, and specific work you want to take on. Sometimes though, if your pipeline only has suboptimal clients, boring work, and projects you’re embarrassed to be associated with, you will need to…
Herbert Lui
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Deliberate boredom
It has never been easier to avoid boredom. Distraction is all around you, offering to cover up the painful things you’re avoiding that boredom can sometimes be a gateway to. Yet without boredom, there can be no inspiration. Boredom is the mud from which the flower of imagination blossoms. Your next creative idea is just…
Herbert Lui
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Wading through the junk
When science fiction was still emerging, one criticism of the genre was the sheer volume of bad work. After decades of defending science fiction, one writer realized that the criticism applied to everything. “Ninety percent of everything is crap,” he said. That observation became known as Sturgeon’s Law. “One of my painting teachers said 85…
Herbert Lui
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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