Herbert Lui

Blog on creativity, marketing, and the human condition.

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  • 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
  • Deliberate deprivation

    There are several ancient practices that involve deprivation. This includes fasting, celibacy, and silent retreats. What are the reasons people did this? In a world filled with even more excess and indulgence than the past, is there a case to introduce more deprivation, more intentionally, into our lives? If you’ve been flirting with someone or…

    Herbert Lui

    June 2, 2025
    Creativity, Turning Stories
  • Choose the frame

    There are a hundred interpretations to each event in your life. Choose the one that is the most useful to you.  This frame should be consistent with your values, make you feel proud, and energize you. Look for metaphors to help you make sense of it. Practice it every day. Thank you BJ Miller for…

    Herbert Lui

    June 1, 2025
    Expectations
  • Don’t open the app, open your journal instead

    Buy a paper journal. It can be the cheapest one from a convenience store, it can be a beautiful leather bound one, it can be a structured one with guidance and prompts—whichever makes you feel better. It just needs to have space that you can write in. The next time you get an urge to…

    Herbert Lui

    May 31, 2025
    Creativity
  • When the dream changes

    Hacks is one of my favorite shows on TV. It’s smart, hilarious, and very tightly-written. While there are many moments and lines that I like from the show (“You don’t even know what hard is”), perhaps the most meaningful one took place in the penultimate episode of the fourth season. There’s a good recap here,…

    Herbert Lui

    May 30, 2025
    Creativity, Creator Confidential, Expectations, Turning Stories
  • It’s not about how you make it, it’s about how you spend it

    Of the few people who accumulate vast amounts of money—tens or hundreds of millions—there are many who lose it all. They spend the money on failed businesses, expensive things like cars, illiquid investments like mansions, living out lavish group experiences with their friends and entourage. Even incredibly high earners can go broke if they’re not…

    Herbert Lui

    May 29, 2025
    Expectations, Life, Turning Stories
  • A setback is a good opportunity…

    To choose optimism.  When things are going well, it’s easy to feel optimistic. The momentum can practically carry you away. It’s when things aren’t going well, that’s the real opportunity—a game rep—to actually practice optimism in three ways: If you can seize this moment, you can seize the next one as well.

    Herbert Lui

    May 28, 2025
    Creativity, Expectations
  • Keeping this blog a main thing

    Writing at this blog is a good source of energy for the rest of my life. When I write this blog, I do better at the rest of the stuff—my work and business, my family, etc.  Sometimes, I want to promote my writing. I want to make a newsletter, more posts at LinkedIn or Medium,…

    Herbert Lui

    May 27, 2025
    A Matter of Time, Creator Confidential
  • Creative lineage

    You and your work are not on an island. You are part of a tradition—the most recent people to join a party that started decades, maybe centuries or millennia ago.  Who came before you? What work came before your work? “For me music has always been about lineage,” Philip Glass writes in his memoir, Words…

    Herbert Lui

    May 27, 2025
    Creativity, Creator Confidential
  • Three ways to learn taste

    Martin Scorsese approached filmmaking by having one of his archivists record videos of films and live TV with multiple VCRs, and cataloging them into a system. He ended up with thousands of these videos. You will approach your work with the same kind of obsessiveness, though perhaps to a smaller degree. You will research meticulously,…

    Herbert Lui

    May 26, 2025
    Creativity, Creator Confidential
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