Herbert Lui

@BStulberg Feels like an interesting luxury belief @robkhenderson

Honestly—it's really interesting to see super successful people saying that striving doesn't make you happy and that the key is wanting less all the while they are striving hard as ever recording hundreds of podcasts to make bestseller lists. I think a more accurate view is that success may not make you happy (debatable) but that striving can be incredible and energizing, especially if you do it with good people and prioritize your values along the way. (This is the important part.) The implicit—and sometimes explicit—message of "don't strive or worry too much about success" coming from super successful strivers strikes me as a bit of a marketing gimmick. Pursue excellence! Find things you love and give them your all. True, you probably won't find the satisfaction you long for on the top of the mountain, but you very well may find it on the climb.

Launch day 🚀My very first book, “Navigating the Creative Odyssey: Embracing Curiosity, Courage and the Chaos of Creation" is out now internationally! amzn.eu/d/bm2UiCo

Creative expression involves physical, mental, and emotional contributions. I like to represent these as the hands, the head, and the heart.

If a lot of people see your creative work all the time, then it’ll be more difficult for you to tinker and experiment. Reaching a smaller audience used to be a bug, but now it’s a feature. e.g., @JColeNC shipped a new song to his *blog* inevitable.live/algorithm/clou…

Throw out the piece of feedback that drains your personal energy, and makes you feel less excited about your work.

“When I read the book there were so many ready-made scenes, and the great venue of the oil fields and all that. Those were kind of the obvious things that seemed worth making a film about.” — Paul Thomas Anderson on Upton Sinclair’s Oil!

If you work in film or the recording arts, sounds, scenes, and storyboards are references as well. Filmmaker David Lynch calls this “firewood,” and is constantly looking out for and stockpiling music to inspire his scenes in his films.

“You can’t make a poem with ideas. … You make it with words.” — Edgar Degas, to Stéphane Mallarmé

Creative Doing is on sale right now at Amazon for $0.99 as an ebook. And it just hit number 1 on Amazon’s Psychology bestseller list in the UK 🥳🇬🇧 geni.us/sqBw

@sidesey @holloway @BookBub Hi! I'm the author, thanks for considering. I wanted to send you a gift link for the first chapter: holloway.com/g/creative-doi…

@holloway @HerbertLui @BookBub I see it’s on sale again. I am or was somewhat tempted. It does promise a lot but gives me no idea even of one of the 75 exercises. Are they time consuming, tricky, for specific industries? I’ve downloaded the sample and it seems you want us to sub and buy more on your website.

📣 ICYMI @HerbertLui's best-selling book “Creative Doing” is currently just $0.99 on Kindle as part of a @BookBub promo 👀amazon.com/dp/B0CH3P7FGD #creativity #writingadvice

“If you get so good at drawing with your right hand that you can even make a beautiful sketch with your eyes closed, you should immediately change to your left hand to avoid repeating yourself.” — Krsto Hegedušić

Whatever your creative operation is, make it so you can complete it within a minute. Nobody does anything well in a minute. Put that possibility out of your mind. Focus on the process. There will be a time and place to care about results—but it’s not while you do the work.

If you're seeking inspiration: Follow the first thing that pops into your head after 30 seconds. Do the thing you think you want to do. Write a list out and roll dice. Don’t make your goal to “finish a thing”; make it to “start with anything.”

If you want to write a book, write at least one sentence today. If you want to draw, sketch out a person or an object—something in front of you. If you want to make music, record yourself humming a melody. Try to create it on an instrument or in your computer. Do this daily.

In an art class, Richard Feynman was instructed to draw without looking at the paper. 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 try

“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.” — Richard Feynman

At an extreme, constant progress leads us to chase perfection. In turn, if we can’t do something perfectly, we just won’t do it. Perfectionism creates an impossible standard for us to meet. This is just one of many reasons we start procrastinating and get blocked.

“Work which remains permeated with the play attitude is art." — John Dewey

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@rorysutherland @morganhousel @oliverburkeman highlighted a great term for this, turning words: ckarchive.com/b/8kuqhoh0rwq2…

@rorysutherland Here's an example: I used to associate saving money with constraint. Then @morganhousel told me a new story about how saving money actually meant freedom, and it enabled me to save a lot more money with a lot less effort. herbertlui.net/when-you-save-… Same me, same info, new story

I am still figuring out how to land this: In Alchemy, @rorysutherland introduced the concept of psychological moonshots—psychology and design that makes experiences 10x more fun or 10x less painful—and I think stories are great psychological moonshots. herbertlui.net/stories-as-psy…