Category: Turning Stories
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
Finding help is a skill worth mastering
Everybody needs help. Asking for help can feel difficult though. You might worry about coming off as needy, or as an imposition. There’s a craft to finding help, and it’s worth mastering. Any improvement at it is worth being proud of. Your style is unique; everybody has a different comfort level with how public they…
Herbert Lui
-
Good project management is about getting ahead of opportunities and problems
One useful way to think about project management involves anticipation. You can consider different scenarios and make plans for how to handle them. Goals and visions can serve as anchors for these scenarios. So can unplanned opportunities that pop up, and problems that you can foresee. For example, a friend of mine leading a publicity…
Herbert Lui
-
The right and wrong times to burn the boats
When you’re in a good position, there are multiple ways for you to win. When you’re in a bad position, there’s only one way for you to win, and it requires some divine intervention. This analogy is balanced out by ancient wisdom: The night before a critical battle, an army’s general ordered them to burn…
Herbert Lui