Amy Zhen

Hedonic Treadmill : Expectations rise with results, so nothing feels as good as you’d imagine for as long as you’d expect.

I'm really inspired by also how they were really quiet for a really long time at the beginning. They were not trying to become the next new success story on the pages of every paper. They were much more just like, "We're just going to prove through the quality of our output over time that we are doing something interesting, and weird, and different... See more

If everyone is busy making everything,

how can anyone perfect anything?

We start to confuse convenience with joy.

Abundance with choice.

Designing something requires focus.

The first thing we ask is:

What do we want people to feel?

Delight.

Surprise.

Love.

Connection.

Then we begin to craft around our intention.

It takes time.

There are a thousand no’s for ever... See more

make what you need, make what you want.

the more and better access everyone has to tools, resources, etc, the clearer it becomes that the final boss bottlenecks are courage, imagination and giving a shit

The better life you absolutely can build isn’t going to be brought to you by ChatGPT but by your own steady uphill clawing and through careful management of your own expectations. You live here. This is it.

The way I beat intellectual obesity was by trying to become the best writer I can be. Writing requires you to filter out bad information because you have a duty to your readers to not be full of shit. Writing also forces you to periodically shut out information altogether so you can be alone with your thoughts. This regular confrontation with yours... See more