Herbert Lui

Blog on creativity, marketing, and the human condition.

  • About
  • Creative Doing
  • Newsletter
  • 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
  • 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
←Previous Page
1 … 6 7 8 9 10 … 140
Next Page→