Herbert Lui

Blog on creativity, marketing, and the human condition.

  • About
  • Creative Doing
  • Newsletter
  • The way through

    Sean Blanda’s reflection on one year of running his business has been on my mind the past few weeks, particularly his reflection on ego: I have had a wandering eye — which in my case, means roughly six domains were registered with good intentions and I was late in the process with a few companies…

    Herbert Lui

    June 12, 2025
    Expectations, Turning Stories
  • Three quotes that have caught my eye

    “The pressure to perform is baked into our larger society. As a result, children are increasingly absorbing the message that they have no value outside of their accomplishments.” — Jennifer Breheny Wallace via Karen Rosenkranz “If you’re a social perfectionist, you’ll have unusually high expectations of yourself. Your self-esteem will be dangerously dependent on maintaining…

    Herbert Lui

    June 11, 2025
    Expectations, Life
  • The middle path

    Starting in the 1990s, Europe and the U.S. outsourced manufacturing to China for a variety of reasons (mostly because it was cheaper). MIT economist David Autor coined the term “China Shock” to describe this trend, which took place suddenly over seven years. While stuff got cheaper, and American companies’ margins got bigger, this disruption also…

    Herbert Lui

    June 10, 2025
    Creator Confidential, Turning Stories
  • Push and Ye, masculinity and maturity

    Pusha T and Malice’s GQ interview has been making the rounds on the internet. There has been a lot of noise particularly about Push describing why he can’t work with Ye anymore, “He knows I don’t think he’s a man.” While I found the phrasing surprising, the sentiment was understandable. Push has been one of…

    Herbert Lui

    June 9, 2025
    Creativity, Creator Confidential, Life
  • Branches, trunk, and roots

    Hamza and I recently joined Emil Drud’s podcast Creative Odyssey as guests. It was our first appearance as New Material. I was describing how I thought about blogging, which I described as the trunk of my practice. Emil responded with a good question: what are the roots? Hamza, Emil, and I discussed it for a…

    Herbert Lui

    June 8, 2025
    Creativity, Turning Stories
  • Book to behavior

    It’s easy to find a good book to read. Actually reading the book is a little more difficult. It’s still doable though. The real impact starts by learning from the book and making changes to how you behave. This is where you truly start seeing results. You take notes. You make plans and ideate next…

    Herbert Lui

    June 7, 2025
    Expectations, Life
  • Aligning process with results

    Earlier in my career, I focused on work that gave me energy. Some of my projects made no money (like Prologue, my early writing at Medium, etc.). I took on projects that could subsidize them. I really enjoyed this way of working. I felt free, energized, and curious. In this season of my career, I…

    Herbert Lui

    June 6, 2025
    Creator Confidential, Life
  • 60%

    In school, 50% was the average grade.  In the working world, the average grade is closer to 0%. You can always decide not to show up, or to do the minimum. 60% is much closer to 100% than 0%. With some added effort and process changes, you could get to 80%. If you rescope or…

    Herbert Lui

    June 5, 2025
    Creativity, Expectations, Turning Stories
  • Drawing a cartoon every day

    Before the New Yorker published her first cartoon, Liza Donnelly submitted eight cartoons every week for two years. (Over 800 cartoons!) Drawing must be a practice that dies hard, because Liza still publishes a new one every day at Substack and at Medium. Sometimes she draws live, which is a delight to watch.

    Herbert Lui

    June 4, 2025
    Creativity, Creator Confidential
  • What is life asking of you?

    Freddie Roach hated boxing. He’d enrolled in training since he was young, and got into hundreds of fights outside the gym as well. While he created momentum as a professional boxer, he suffered a string of defeats and was eventually diagnosed with symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.  For a boxer who never quit a fight—in fact,…

    Herbert Lui

    June 3, 2025
    Creativity, Creator Confidential, Expectations, Turning Stories
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