Herbert Lui

In their book Scarcity, Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan suggest that scarcity often starts with abundance. Imagine you have a deadline next week. That’s plenty of time to do the task—abundance—so you figure you’ll do it later. Eventually, you forget about it, and you only remember the day of the deadline. Now there’s scarcity: you have to do it, today, or you’ll face the consequences of missing the deadline. That’s just a simple example. That day would be stressful; you have your regular…

I was recently chatting with a friend who wanted to reach more software developers. I recalled some of the advice I gave him in my latest post at LinkedIn, which I’ve republished below: I’ve hit the front page of Hacker News 10+ times for Figma and other companies, and picked up five tactics along the way: 1. A post has a good shot if it picks up 10 to 15 upvotes in its first 30 minutes. I’ve seen advice suggesting 5 or 6 upvotes in the first five to ten minutes, but that feels risky to me. A…

When I started an independent editorial studio, most of my business came from referrals. I continued this as I rebooted my business writing practice several months ago. I also wrote thoughtful cold emails to companies I very intentionally filtered and focused on, and made time to chat with former clients and coworkers. These sales activities led to a lot of fulfilling conversations, and even potential deals that might land in coming months. Nothing worked out in the near-term though. This was…

It’s been almost a year since we started developing the original idea for what turned into The Consistency Journal. This post is intentionally brief and incomplete: Sometimes an experiment needs months or years to work out. Taking on work outside of an experiment can buy the time and relaxation you need to sustain it. It reminds me of how the Pokemon Company sustained itself by doing services work while making its first games, which delayed the process. Part of this practice involved not…

One of my friends is an incredibly talented software developer. After a long stint building their own software products, they’d started freelancing again and built a great website for their first client. My friend gave the client’s website a facelift, of course; plus, along the way, they made it more efficient so the website loaded instantly (it took half a minute before). They also set up a pick up service for the client, which was there but not working before. All this, for a simple website…

Before The Office made its debut, the landscape of TV comedies was driven by Friends and Baywatch. Studios wanted to see beautiful people cracking jokes. The British version of The Office was the antithesis of that, and the showrunner of the American version wanted to keep that spirit. When Allison Jones was casting The Office, she looked for emerging actors. The casting call used the words “non-star” and “unknown.” As they auditioned, she told them, “If you think you’re doing too little,…

It’s been three weeks since my wife and I adopted our dog. This post is intentionally brief: Our walks started off far too ambitious. Our dog needed more time to get used to our neighborhood, as well as the sounds of the city. (I had no idea how loud downtown Toronto was!) I used to go on long walks with my previous dog, with the assumption that she enjoyed it and needed to burn off energy. I needed to update the expectations and norms that came with that experience. Getting her emotionally…

There are many aspects to life. When you let one of these aspects dominate the rest—say, a job, a relationship, a professional goal, or a vocation—you also tie your happiness to it. Whenever it inevitably fluctuates, so will your sense of well-being. A reliable way to create a life is to shrink the influence of one dominating area and introduce new aspects. Signing up for a recreational team sport is a common way to do this. Or learning something completely random (e.g., New Yorker…

Yesterday, I wrote about a hobby I had as a teenager: hacking my Windows computer’s interface to look like a Mac. Eventually, I made a decision that I just wanted to buy a real Mac. That was a significant mindset shift: making due with the status quo wasn’t the only choice. I could just choose to do the real thing. In my case, get a job or do some odd jobs, save money, and eventually buy a real Mac computer. Or, look for contests that had Macs as a prize, participate in as many as possible, and…

When I was a young boy, I saw Windows XP for the first time and thought it looked really nice. My family had an old beige desktop computer with Windows 98, so I spent many months asking my parents to buy the new Windows XP OS. They acquiesced at some point, and my computer’s interface got a beautiful makeover. Unfortunately, the hardware could barely keep up, and the software upgrade slowed my computer down immensely. That didn’t stop me from trying to make my computer’s interface look better…

A friend of mine practices two hobbies: photography and tennis. He recently found a way to blend them together by volunteering to take photos of local tennis clubs and tournaments. He could probably get paid a small fee, of course, but then he would be taking on a client. He would feel obligated to take on their suggestions. Instead, he’s giving his time and energy as a gift. In exchange, he gets the freedom to practice his craft how he likes. The post The freedom of generosity appeared first…

Less than a year after introducing its agentic browser ChatGPT Atlas to the world, OpenAI recently shut it down. My guess is the team decided to make a bet on building an AI browser, but the product wasn’t really working, and Google Chrome proved to be a strong incumbent. That resulted in a decision to shut ChatGPT Atlas down as a separate product, bundle it into ChatGPT, and focus on bets with more momentum. For different reasons, OpenAI also shut down its video model Sora, even after its…

When you make your own product, you create an occasion to consider all the details. It’s an opportunity to care, and it’s not one that everyone decides to take up. For example, when I showed a friend an early version of The Consistency Journal, he noticed that the paper was rougher than he was used to. His favorite notebooks, from Kokuyo, had smooth paper. Even though I’d published Creative Doing already, I’d never really paid much attention to the paper. Now that my customers would be the ones…

The team at Dinamo Typefaces write a fun newsletter. In the latest issue, their team introduced an updated version of their font, Gravity. In the release notes, you’ll find a 10-page original manga, hand drawn by graphic designer Melanie Schmidt. She writes, “Every line was refined digitally before I switched to analogue for the shading, because apparently I enjoy making my life unnecessarily difficult.” Going beyond requirements is a gamble. While it can feel tough in the moment, you’ll at…

This year is Apple’s 50th year in business. Decades ago, it lost creative focus, and spread itself too thin. Tim Cook describes how Apple does things, “We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us.” Each of these projects are special to someone; and each of those people need to accept the rejection of that project, in order to harness their energy and focus it on a few key projects. That’s creative focus:…

The Consistency Journal is an experiment. There are signs of early momentum, but I don’t know how it’s going to go. It started off as a pet, and now it’s more like livestock. Creative Doing was an experiment. I started interesting conversations with it. While I continue to promote it, it’s transitioned into being a part of my foundation. I’m making more experiments with the raw materials from it, including my speech at CreativeMornings and using it to connect with readers and discover new…

In her memoir Airplane Mode, author Shahnaz Habib shares her travels around the world. One of my favorite passages, though, was about her taking her local Brooklyn bus as a new parent, “Where I wanted to be was on the bus… The bus itself became my destination. A place to sit, a window to look through as the world streamed by, offering itself without demanding anything.” This passage came to mind to me today as I went to renew my Canadian passport just outside of downtown Toronto. I usually…

“We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.” I forget when I came across this quote, but I remember being young. It resonated with me deeply. Inverting this is useful: only buy things you need, with money you have, to impress people you like. Remember, anything you don’t buy, treat it like a 100% off discount. The post Buy things you need, with money you have, to impress people you like appeared first on Herbert Lui.

Peer pressure takes place when the people around you are doing something that goes against something you believe in. It could be a goal, your values, or a desire. It can be brief, like being the only person not drinking at a party because you want to wake up without a hangover. When your friends all egg each other on, and you decline and say, “I’m not drinking tonight,” or “I don’t drink,” expect peer pressure. It can involve a different multi-year commitment, like renting a property when most…

My latest column for 3 Quarks Daily is live, entitled, “Five Ways Bad Ideas Lead to Good Ones.” It was a fun revisiting of Creative Doing, as well as ideas I wrote in some blog posts. In writing this one, I came up with the phrase “creative stupidity,” which was a riff on “productively stupid,” that has caught my attention. If you’re not feeling creatively stupid every so often—as well as experiencing the self-doubt that comes with it—then you’re not taking enough risk in your work. Developing…

You can influence how you feel. As Derek Sivers writes, “You choose your reaction. Not the first one, but the next.” When you learn to pause, even just for a few seconds, you can influence how you behave after your first reaction. Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Your thoughts lead to feelings, and your feelings lead to thoughts. If you choose to feel proud when you save money, you will feel shame when you spend it. Needing to deal with an unexpected fee may stir up a strong emotion…

If you’re publishing content, one useful way to measure success is to read what people are writing about it online. Margarita Noriega, who’s the current managing editor of Morning Brew, calls this the Love Metric. When she sees someone saying something nice about her work online, she shares it with her team. I did something similar when I worked at Figma: I pulled together links and screenshots in an internal FigJam file, which I entitled the Wall of Love. Inverting this relationship is useful:…

A proof of concept is a test project. The point is to make sure an idea can actually be created in the physical world. Perhaps it’s a prototype, or simply a finalized version of a draft, demo, or sketch. If it’s your first time making something new, treat it like a proof of concept. Make it a recoverable risk; don’t invest any money or time you can’t afford to lose. Avoid optimizing for profit, or making it perfect yet. Inspired by Jeremy Leslie’s interview with Danny Miller. The post Your…

A piece of advice I’ve found very useful is work with what’s in front of you. I’ve found myself applying this in single, short, writing sessions as well. For example, writing a blog post or outline without opening a new tab, using only my lived experiences as research. Writing a social media or newsletter by using whatever I’ve written at this blog as a first draft. Or, coming up with a new idea with the existing research, not finding new research to surface a new idea. It’s a useful constraint…

In the past couple of weeks, my wife and I started watching a few different movies at home. We paused them all and stepped away, because we just weren’t enjoying them. We may give a couple of them another shot. Attention is more precious than ever. Promoting your work to other people is only part of the effort. Once they decide to spend some of their attention with your work, put your best effort into making it worth their time. You can’t summarize the most important parts of a book The post…

“Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want,” Naval Ravikant wrote. Sheryl Crow famously sang, “It’s not having what you want/It’s wanting what you’ve got.” Being happy with what you have is a reliable way to find happiness. The problem is it’s not so easy to shape this sense of satisfaction. Companies collectively spend over a trillion dollars to shape your desires and persuade you to make change. People are constantly on social media influencing…

A month after I first started at Figma, I traveled from NYC to SF for its annual conference named Config. It was the first in-person one after the pandemic. My co-worker Jenny and I wrote a liveblog for it, and I also got to see a copy of Creative Doing on the bookshelf at Figma HQ. A lot of other stuff went on though, and here’s one of the stories (I recently shared at LinkedIn as well): Three years ago at Config 2023, Figma had just hit the front page of Hacker News with 500+ upvotes. My…

There are a lot of dedicated entrepreneurs who have set up their own dog rescue agencies in South Korea. Each one has, effectively, created their own market. They rescue dogs in troubled circumstances, and match them up with people who want to have a dog in their life. It sounds simple enough, but logistics can get tricky quickly, especially with international laws and regulations. Plus, all of this takes place over the internet and with the help of dedicated volunteers who help chaperone dogs…

Here’s the latest edition of my newsletter for early-stage growth leaders, Leading Thinker, which I also shared at LinkedIn: TL;DR: When you start a new blog or publication, your metrics will disappoint you. That disappointment leads to doubt, and often kills a content practice before it has a proper chance to make an impact. A more useful signal in the first few months is author satisfaction, and it’s something you can actually pay attention to. I write about content strategy, and I’ve helped…

Awards and sales performance are the easiest ways to measure creative work. They also frame the creative process as a competition. There are winners and losers in both, and it focuses on results. This isn’t a useful frame for actually making something you want to make, which is what being a creative person actually means. Instead, shift your focus to the process. Measure your creative work by your contribution. What can you give? Who can you help? Where can you offer support? In The Courage to…