HN user
I log out of every social media website/app because the act of logging in is just enough friction for me to be mindful: do I really want to do this?
The sense of slowness creates the conditions for pausing and being mindful of what you're doing.
In spirit, this reminds me of the return to slow/analog: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48084980
Consider it the no- or low-alcohol alternative to full speed. https://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html
I've been noticing the same thing, though I'd frame it as analog getting more appealing largely because it's slower than digital. The demand for a slower pace is driven by two factors imo:
Need: People can’t move so fast all the time, so they will dedicate parts of their lives to slow down and process what’s actually happening in their outer and inner worlds. It will involve activities like creative hobbies, fitness, and meditation.
Nostalgia: When people aren’t sure if the future will be better than the present, the past seems even more appealing. We remember the best of the past. While we swipe glass all the time now, we used to push buttons, pound on keys, and shake hands. It was a more tactile era, and we miss it. Vinyl sales have gone up from 1 million in 2006 to 49 million in 2023 [1]. Streaming will still be the dominant source of delivering music, but vinyl represents something else. (I believe most of them end up being framed on people's walls, to be clear)
I wrote more about this here: https://herbertlui.net/the-return-of-slow/
I suspect more people will be interested in writing by hand, for example, so I've been working with my partner to make a journal. Very analog, very slow!
[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/7699/lp-sales-in-the-united-s...
In the spirit of yes, and: how about a subscription similar to a pay as you go phone plan? Pay for the month, and when you don't pay, then you don't get to keep going. After a couple of months, they unsubscribe you, get rid of your account, etc. More often than not, the first thing I do when I sign up for a service is cancel it (after confirming I can use it for the billing period).
Many times, across companies, sometime between the day and half an hour before a meeting, I see a flurry of actions—including responses, decisions, deliverables/drafts, etc. In that sense, I think a meeting works because people don't want to show up empty handed, so it adds psychological urgency.
I think small teams can be an exception here, but across most teams (particularly quickly growing ones) and across functions, a weekly sync is irritating but obvious, proven, solution to getting things done.
This resonates with me! In a blog post, I wrote, "It has never been easier to avoid boredom. Distraction is all around you, offering to cover up the painful things you’re avoiding that boredom can sometimes be a gateway to.
Yet without boredom, there can be no inspiration. Boredom is the mud from which the flower of imagination blossoms. Your next creative idea is just one boring moment away." https://herbertlui.net/deliberate-boredom/
I love the Wingspan soundtrack, it's available on Bandcamp! https://monstercouch.bandcamp.com/album/wingspan-original-vi...
So instead of trying and occasionally failing, they just... stop trying. The fear of making something bad is worse than producing nothing at all.
"Loosening up" is a way to describe this skill.
It reminds me of a story from Richard Feynman. In his book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, he recalls an art class when he was instructed to draw without looking at the paper. The first time he did it, his pencil broke at the very beginning and he had nothing but impressions in his paper.
The second time he did it, he was impressed with the results, noticing a “funny, semi-Picasso like strength” in his work.
He knew that it would be impossible to draw well without looking at the paper, so he didn’t consciously try. He writes, “I had thought that ‘loosen up’ meant ‘make sloppy drawings,’ but it really meant to relax and not worry about how the drawing is going to come out.”
Being allowed to fail is a condition for your mind to want to try new ideas. I elaborate on this here in my book, Creative Doing: https://www.holloway.com/g/creative-doing/sections/relinquis...
There is a lot I like about this post, including the author's intuition to invoke the jellyfish.
A lion’s mane jellyfish can release up to 45,000 eggs per day. The jellyfish’s strategy is to lay as many eggs as possible and leave them to fend for themselves. Most of these eggs don’t survive, probably fewer than 0.1%.
Compare this with an elephant, which can only give birth to one calf at a time. The elephant’s strategy is to dedicate its effort into raising a relatively small number of calves. Many of these calves survive to see adulthood. This approach might sound familiar because it’s how we raise our kids as well.
If you're feeling stuck, and unwilling to look stupid, maybe it's time to approach your creative ideas less like an elephant and more like a jellyfish. I write more about this here: https://herbertlui.net/the-jellyfish-knows-how-to-survive-un...
The advantage to writing a blog, nowadays, is because your writing will be so difficult hard to discover, you can put all your ideas out there—good and bad—and only become known for the good ones. (That's what I'm hoping to do!)
In other words, "Publish everything, promote selectively" (Elaborated on this here: https://herbertlui.net/publish-everything-promote-selectivel...)
Reminds me of "Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student" by Max Alper, an excerpt from which I really appreciated:
You’re not a failure by being a dayjobber, Billy, you’re an artist, just like the rest of us. So what if you aren’t some rich kid from the Upper East Side who had the privilege of being stuck in a practice room since Kindergarten? Sure that kid can shred, but do you really want to be that person? You’re playing shows, making records, and selling merch online, all without daddy’s money to hold you down. You’re making it happen without the head start that Richy Rich got the second he was born. Be proud of that! Knowing that the game is rigged is liberating! Just because the music industry lacks meritocracy doesn’t mean you can’t blow these assholes out of the water through your craft. Your experiences outside their bubble will only foster more creativity as a result.
Source: https://klangmag.co/lifers-dayjobbers-and-the-independently-...
HN thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36693297
It's mentioned in the article that this is a (really good!) painted version of The Torment of Saint Anthony, an engraving by Martin Schongauer.
Michelangelo would go on to find his first patron, a Cardinal named Raffaele Riario, by forging a sculpture and artificially aging it (which, back then, was a conventional practice to demonstrate expertise and skill: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-a-forged-sculpture...)
Dishonesty aside, both stories are reminders that there's a power to doing stuff with your own two hands (not genning it), as well as not to let today's emphasis on originality take away from using imitation/transcription to practice your craft: https://herbertlui.net/in-defense-of-copycats/
While this is a super interesting post, and worth contemplating, I do not think it is a useful story for the majority of aspiring writers, who often are very good at thinking themselves into a creative block. (Aspiring writer being someone who wants to write, but isn't writing yet)
Programs like NaNoWriMo mislead aspiring writers. "Write every day" is great advice, but the first 90% of writing a book is often not writing -- it's thinking/planning/researching. There are other golf clubs in that bag. Many writers only start "writing" once their ball is very nearly in the hole.
To use the author's analogy, NaNoWriMo is useful for encouraging the aspiring writer to actually show up tothe golf course or the rowboat, because most people who want to write have talked themselves out of it.
(I would be curious to learn more about the "many writers" claim.)
It's also worth considering how writing a book/post/whatever contributes to an overarching body of work. Two quotes come to mind:
“Every novelist spends their life writing the same story over and over.” Danielle Chelosky https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/writer-and-music-j...
“My subject matter doesn’t vary so much from book to book. Just the surface does. The settings, etc. I tend to write the same book over and over, or at least, I take the same subject I took last time out and refine it, or do a slightly different take on it,” Kazuo Ishiguro says to The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/live/2015/jan/16/kazuo-ish...
I think it's more useful to see writing literally as part of the thinking/planning/researching process, not as separate from it and thus soil for a creative block.
You need to deliberately prioritize your growth and choose to go against the current. You need to deliberately introduce friction to the process.
This resonates! Doing things the long, hard, stupid way is the extreme version/application of this opinion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41512207
Also, since convenience/comfort are so widely available now, you practically need to choose discomfort in order to grow: https://herbertlui.net/personal-growth-happens-after-volunta...
Same! I use Feedbin (https://feedbin.com/) to aggregate new posts. On desktop, I'll sync Feedbin up with NetNewsWire (https://netnewswire.com/).
Substack and Medium both support RSS. You can just type /feed after the URL. e.g., tk.substack.com/feed and tk.medium.com/feed
For other newsletters, I use Kill the Newsletter (https://kill-the-newsletter.com/) to subscribe via RSS.
If you’re repeatedly drawn to a thought, feeling, or belief, write it out. Be fast, be sloppy.
I couldn't agree more here! A friend has wanted to start a writing/journaling habit for a long time, but didn't know what to write about. I told him, don't think to write—write to think [1].
Show up to an empty page, without knowing, is totally acceptable! So is writing things down that make you feel embarrassed, confused, etc.
When I'm journaling, I often find prompts/frameworks helpful for guiding this escape.
I really like Byron Katie's framework, which she calls The Work [2]. After you notice and draw to mind a stressful thought, answer these four questions:
Q1. Is it true? Q2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? Q3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought? Q4. Who would you be without that thought?
Then, invert the thought. She writes, "Turn the thought around. Is the opposite as true as or truer than the original thought?"
Derek Sivers also shares some really great questions for journaling for reframing [3].
I also show up to the page
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32628196
You're building up a portfolio of writing about topics that interest you.
This reason resonates with me immensely.
You're not just writing about what you've figured out, sometimes you're actually deepening your understanding as you write! Writing is the thinking process: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32628196
I have been writing every day at my blog for three years now, and it's been very rewarding for me to figure out what I actually care about and seeing patterns.
I like thinking about it like a bunch of skateboarders lugging the video camera around to capture the moment. (They did this before social media!)
P.S., You may also enjoy the similar sentiment in this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42992159
While I'm sorry to hear about the setbacks, it sounds like you've really overcome them. Congratulations on the momentum!
I've found journaling and introspection to be helpful for building confidence. Sharing some questions below intended for you to journal through:
But I question myself, who cares what people think? But subconsciously I clearly care very deeply what EVERYONE thinks and it’s exhausting.
I think you've hit it on the nose here!
Have you focused on this point in therapy?
What role do you think family and cultural background might play?
(Aside: I grew up in a collectivist culture and my family is quite traditional—people pleasing is the norm!)
What would it take for you to like yourself even if other people don't like you?
I’m dumb as bricks in other areas - social situations with more than 1 person are extremely hard to navigate, I constantly have relationship issues with everyone, I find the workplace and jobs impossible to perform in even though I have innate ability in what I do.
In her book Scout Mindset, Julia Galef suggests there are two types of confidence:
1. Epistemic confidence—certainty in something, like a weather prediction
2. Social confidence—comfort with other people, and self assurance. It sounds like you might consider focusing on building social confidence.
What is your inner dialogue like? How do you talk to yourself generally? (Are you hard on yourself? Were your parents hard on you?)
Did you grow up learning that you could only feel confident after you've "earned it" or had a good reason to? (Kunal Gupta wrote a good post on this here: https://www.howto.live/post/confidence)
When I say confidence I mean quiet confidence, confidence in my own actions and abilities and lot in life x social interactions.
I feel certain that just by defining confidence for yourself so clearly, you're going to get there sooner or later!
Yes! Whatever blog solution you choose, buy your own domain name. I personally use Namecheap, I have heard good things about Porkbun. That way you can always control the flow of link traffic.
And set up a mailing list! If you use Substack, buy a domain name. Otherwise you can use ConvertKit, Ghost, etc., and collect your reader's emails directly.
Building a direct connection with your customers/audience/people is the key. As this piece suggests, an email list is a great way to get started.
It could really be any list of any contact info that you can export and download as a data file at some point. I have seen physical stores leave clipboards out for people to sign up for a mailing list and that works.
I feel extremely passionate about this topic and I've written extensively on it.
1: Going direct buys you freedom: https://herbertlui.net/going-direct-buys-you-freedom/
2: Own your marketing, own your income: https://herbertlui.net/own-your-marketing-own-your-income/
3: Learning to talk to customers, directly: https://herbertlui.net/learning-to-talk-to-customers-directl...
Of course, I'm not the only one:
The Rostra manifesto is also great! https://www.rostra.co/
There are also the filmmakers buying their own theater: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/westwood...
I like to think of it more as being intentional, and less as desperate/too forward. You want to know what you're looking for and, just as important, what you're not looking for.
In terms of reaching out, here are some things I did when I was job hunting:
1. The classic referral
Find the job post and work backwards from there (e.g., is there somebody I know (1st connection) or somebody who knows somebody I know (2nd connection) on LinkedIn who works at the company?).
If I knew the 1st connection, I'd reach out and ask if they were comfortable referring me.
2. The forwardable email
If it was a 2nd connection, I'd reach out with a forwardable email (https://also.roybahat.com/introductions-and-the-forward-intr...) and ask if they'd be able to forward an email and make an intro if they received a positive response.
3. Job hunting as an occasion
I made time to catch up with good friends. It felt energizing to get the moral support, with the added bonus that sometimes they knew people working at companies looking to hire. For example I would eventually get a job offer from Figma and that was because a good friend's partner worked there and was glad to refer me. I hadn't even heard of the opportunity before we talked.
4. The weak ties
I also made time to catch up with people I didn't know that well. There's some research on "weak ties" that suggest that people who you don't know well probably are exposed to a very different network to you, and will come across very different opportunities. The convo would be an opportunity for us to catch up and I'd talk about being open to job opportunities.
I hope this helps!
Edutainment and ads dominate the market
Can't help but notice that this piece was also a form of edutainment.
This was great. I immediately jumped to Day 90, which felt relateable:
I envisioned 90 Days would be a magical story of a guy who left his job and found his passion, like the many similar stories I’ve read. I even tried for the first month to paint each day in a new light, glorifying what was otherwise a mundane set of 24 hours.... 90 Days paints a more realistic picture of what really happened. It’s not a stunning success or an abysmal failure, but rather something in between.
https://ninetydays.substack.com/p/day-90-90-days
Thanks for sharing, and making time to document the journey.
Tangential anecdote: When I went to a buffet as a child, I loaded up on mashed potatoes, fries, onion rings, etc. I would be told by family and friends that I was effectively wrong for choosing those foods because seafood, meat, etc., was more expensive and therefore more valuable and worth choosing.
I don't think that was a bad outcome necessarily, because I picked foods that were super unhealthy and cater to thin dopamine hits. But I do think the reasoning (value vs. health) was off as it started instilling a sense of letting perceived/imagined value reign over personal instincts and inclinations.
Reading this felt like a call to be more present, pay more attention to the small things, do things for their own sake, etc.