Category: Turning Stories
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Character, habits, systems, and freedom
An author speculates that GLP-1 drugs will curb a lot of people’s impulses. This could potentially help a lot of people make better—less impulsive—decisions. In this speculation, one concern will be a division of advantage: the people who can afford the impulse control drugs would be at a greater advantage than the people who can’t…
Herbert Lui
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Three conditions to just do stuff (and minimize overthinking)
If you have fun writing something, the reader will have fun reading it. You’ve given your work the right energy. Building on this observation, Cassidy Williams notes that sometimes she wants her work to be strategic, or clear and thorough. She writes, “I think a lot of that overthinking and ‘being in my head’ about…
Herbert Lui
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Slow is smooth and smooth is fast
In the industrial era, the people that did more stuff—faster—added more value to the world. Efficiency was the buzzword. That’s no longer the case. Now, slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. We are already bumping up on the limits of how fast we can do our work—and we will never execute faster than AI…
Herbert Lui
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How wanting something less freed me up to do more
While it’s good to be passionate about your work, an overwhelming ambition—bordering on a need—to achieve or have something, sometimes this drive actually gets in the way. I learned this the hard way. I spent most of my 20s wanting to be a bestselling author—recognized by traditional publications, sold lots of books, invited to speeches,…
Herbert Lui
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Some people have it, some people don’t?
A few years ago, I wrote that writing is thinking. You are better off writing to think, not trying to think before you write. “But some people are just better at it,” Ant K writes in a comment (which Karolis recently agreed with). He compared his work with another author he held in high esteem.…
Herbert Lui
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Hangry
Hangry is an emotional state of being hungry and feeling angry. If I don’t eat, I get hangry. The longer I go, the hangrier I get. When I travelled with my friends, they would crack jokes as they reminded me to pack a snack bar. I used to get really upset with myself for feeling…
Herbert Lui
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Find an idea that’s easy to pick up and put down
One thing that made writing really frustrating for me early on was trying to complete a draft of an idea that I clearly didn’t have enough time to express. For example, there are many days when I have 15 minutes—maybe five!—to write. If I was still “stuck” in the middle of a draft that I’d…
Herbert Lui
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This is the perfect time
Image by Austin Chan If you’re reading this, you’re thinking, “I’m too late,” or “Other people are so much better at this than me,” or, “Why bother?” You’re probably feeling defeated, depressed, and a special kind of self-loathing that comes with awareness. You know that you shouldn’t feel this way. It’s not constructive. But you…
Herbert Lui
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Practice being bored
When was the last time you were the only person in the room not using your phone? You’re not as busy as you think. If you feel busy, it’s because you’re running away from feeling bored. While boredom feels really bad at first, it comes with a lot of benefits. For starters, it frees your…
Herbert Lui
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You vs. the parasite
I did bookkeeping for my first year of business. One year was enough for me. It was boring and very spreadsheet–heavy, and I knew I never wanted to do it again. So I did what I thought savvy entrepreneurs called “delegating.” I hired a bookkeeping and accounting firm to do it for me, and I…
Herbert Lui