Agalia Tan

Poet and novelist Charles Bukowski on forging your own reality:

"I was waiting for something extraordinary to happen but as the years wasted on nothing ever did unless I caused it."

read about the topic, buy books on the topic. Explore the adjacent topics. Go one or two steps removed. Explore all the synonyms. Write about the thing. Write about it again. And again. Keep going until every angle of the idea was covered. Be boring . But in doing so, push and prod and explore the edges of the subject.

About half of my friends kind of hate their jobs, so they're moderately unhappy most of the time, but never unhappy enough to leave. This is the mediocrity trap : situations that are bad-but-not-too-bad keep you forever in their orbit because they never inspire the frustration it takes to achieve escape velocity.

The mediocrity trap is a nasty way... See more

A paper I often return to is Authenticity as Authentication by Alan Moore (2002). I first came across it while writing my thesis on visual authenticity in marketing campaigns. Moore makes a subtle yet insightful observation: we tend to equate authenticity with unmediated experiences. Though he focuses on music, I found his ideas applicable to the... See more

And if I’m honest in the work, maybe I could be honest as a person. Maybe.

Mind-expanding surprises rather than gap-closing surprises.

Create a "failure resume". Document your mistakes and what you learned from them. This helps normalize failure and turn it into a powerful tool for growth. You'll read it and be reminded

"Two years, not two months.

The visible progress you're hoping for usually comes slower than you'd like. Even with consistent effort it can take a long time before progress feels significant. It might be a year of writing and editing before the book really starts to come together. You may need two years of recovery from a major injury before you... See more