Agalia Tan

@agaaalia

Senior Strategist at We Are Social

RADAR Chapter Lead for Singapore

musingsandmore.substack.com

"Whether you are an adult or child, your first attempts will often seem unimportant or foolish.

The open mic night at a nearly empty bar.

The early blog posts that get ignored.

The dance recital on a little stage.

Early attempts are easy to dismiss because they don't seem to amount to much. But you have to do the low stakes stuff to prepare for the

from 3-2-1: When to be patient, why we procrastinate, and the importance of early attempts

Remember how sabrina carpenter was preparing for her moment :”)

Slowly is the fastest way to get where you want to be

the real success goes to those who obsess

“The feeling of progress is one of the best feelings of all. This is true even when progress is small.”

from 3-2-1: On progress, friendship, and how to improve your writing

Separate the processes of creating from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you write the first draft, don’t let the judgy editor get near. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgment.

from Interview: Kevin Kelly, Editor, Author, and Futurist by Kevin Kelly

The mathematical genius Alexander Grothendieck once had a metaphor for solving problems. He suggested that instead of forcing open an impossibly hard kernel with a hammer and chisel, one should simply let it sit in water and wait. Over time, the shell softens and opens with ease. This is also true in writing; time is the only non-substitutable ingr... See more

from Epiphanies Come From Waiting

All success is a lagging indicator. When a day’s writing goes well, it’s a lagging indicator of hours and hours spent researching and thinking… Hitting a personal record on the bench press is a lagging indicator of a lot of discipline and hard work. Receiving a promotion is a lagging indicator of a lot of quality work. Delivering a keynote with con

Everything is temporary. When a mood is so overwhelming we tend to mistake the intensity of it for the longevity of it

Successful people don’t just ride out the Dip. They don’t just buckle down and survive it. No, they lean into the Dip. They push harder, changing the rules as they go. Just because you know you’re in the Dip doesn’t mean you have to live happily with it. Dips don’t last quite as long when you whittle at them

— The Dip