Category: Turning Stories
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Don’t make maintenance a last resort
If you only ever visit the doctor when you have an emergency, you’d believe that every doctor’s trip should be urgent and borderline life threatening. “The doctor is so ineffective!” you might think. That’s not how it needs to be though. Annual check ups and visits with mild symptoms help you get ahead of the…
Herbert Lui
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Good judgment does not mean being judgmental
Anyone who wants to make good work needs to master the art of receiving constructive feedback, knowing what to do with it, and following through with making changes. “There are no writers, there are only rewriters,” says author John Seabrook. What pieces of feedback are useful? Which is most important? What are some possible solutions?…
Herbert Lui
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To get back into reading, choose a book just for fun
Whenever you fall off a reading practice, a useful way to get back into it is to read a book just for fun. Purely out of interest, curiosity, and joy. Some books that have done that for me lately: Office Ladies, Adversity for Sale, How Starbucks Saved My Life. When you don’t read, it’s easy…
Herbert Lui
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Strong defense sets up strong offense
A few days ago, I observed how my work either felt like playing defense or offense in a sport. I wrote, “Saving money, living gently and slowly, and minimizing risk feels like playing defense… Getting in motion, creativity, and shipping work feels like playing offense.” I am in the thick of a season where I…
Herbert Lui
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If you’re exploring your career, keep more options open
There will be seasons where you need to keep options open, and others when you need to commit. My friend Jason wrote a provocative article about the latter. When we recently caught up, I mentioned his article and I told him how I felt like I’d been juggling a lot of projects. I wondered out…
Herbert Lui
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Share your reminders to yourself
If a lesson was important enough for you to remind yourself about, there’s a good chance it will be useful for other people too. A lesson is particularly helpful when you share the story that led you to learn the lesson. People remember stories. What’s obvious to you isn’t obvious to everyone else. Publish your…
Herbert Lui
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Maybe it’s not you
A good friend of mine has worked tenures at several great tech companies. Their professional success was never surprising to me; I’d known them for years, and I knew any team would be lucky to have them. Still, when tech companies started laying people off—by the tens of thousands—they got caught in two of them,…
Herbert Lui
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The first step to get out of a hole is to stop digging
In the physical world, it’s very clear when you’re digging yourself into a hole. Kids do that when they’re playing. In the financial or emotional world, it’s less clear, and you can live in denial for a long time. There are signs, though. You will notice you’re borrowing from tomorrow to pay for today and…
Herbert Lui
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How to compete with geniuses
You don’t compete with geniuses by trying to outsmart them. That won’t work. You compete with them by coming together with your team (which could be official teammates like co-workers, or unofficial teammates like friends and acquaintances). You share ideas and synthesize new ones together. You learn to rely on one another. You apologize when…
Herbert Lui
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Survival of the most flexible
Change happens faster and faster. So do new opportunities and challenges. If you’re flexible enough to adapt to these changes, you’ll gain an advantage. For example, if you’re able to quickly move to a new city for a better work opportunity, while your equally smart peers are tied down to a house they need to…
Herbert Lui