i get that we all had to start somewhere - usually from the bottom. just today i read someone’s first post that is all about committing to “writing for the audience of none”. the other day i read another post that addresses the tension between writing for the self vs. publishing for the audience. every day i log on to this platform and there’s always at least one post that questions the nature of their intention of writing online, not that there’s anything wrong about it - there seems to be quite an audience for the topic, too, which is great. but there is just something incredibly fascinating about being in an ocean full of talented writers, and each of them constantly repeats the same thing like a mantra, as if saying it out loud and putting it down to words would keep them from breaking the spell and uncover the ugly truth that deep down, maybe, what they really want is for that numbers to rack up.

here’s what i know: it's perfectly valid to want people to like and engage with what you write. in a general sense, when you create anything, you do it to share with other human beings. art, craft, food—anything you create is a way to connect with others through our shared humanity. and wanting someone to like or read your writings is part of that. it’s just that in this world we live in, so enormous and so crowded and so lonely, on top of social media algorithm constantly messing up with our own psyche, it can be easy to look for connection in ways that aren’t healthy.

everyday i thank brené brown for coining the term near-enemy because it’s become increasingly clear to me that engagement is the near enemy of connection. it’s important to learn to decouple the two, because underneath the debilitating shame to admit that we are yearning for engagement is usually a genuine desire to connect and resonate with others. it only truly becomes a problem when people try to substitute engagement for connection because numerical engagement is the only form of online interaction they’ve been introduced to that gives them a sense of connection.

if you think about it, it makes sense why some people couldn’t find it in them to decouple the need for engagement from the desire to connect. modern social media has always been designed largely to sell ads, so everything in it is carefully built and crafted to keep users on the platform and come back for more. this includes funnelling our means of communicating and form of appreciation into micro-clicks and smaller vessels like likes, reblog/repost/restack, and shares. but real connection doesn’t happen over these buttons. to social media companies, the time people spend fostering genuine connection with others is the money they’re losing when these people could have been spending time scrolling and getting sucked into their platform instead.

on top of that, social media has also skewed our ability to perceive numbers. 10 likes online feels like only 10 likes because our brain might not translate that into 10 actual people connecting with our work. but if you imagine yourself standing in a room with 10 different people, that room is crowded! it’s why i think we should try to find communities outside social media to belong to, online and/or offline, because just 5 other writers telling you how interesting your work is will always feel better than 100 people pushing “like!” and disappearing into the internet void.

that being said, i can’t blame anybody for thinking that writing for engagement’s sake is a problem when we all technically hang out on a space that actively encourages it in order to be seen. but implying that the answer to that pain and dilemma should be “so we should all just write for ourselves and look down on anyone who does otherwise” is stupid, when we should instead be questioning why the most popular writing platform is also leaning towards adopting the social media structure and why we live in a society that doesn’t foster and in fact actively supressess genuine connection through art and words.

so here’s my invitation.

• for casual readers and enjoyers: use your words. as human beings we’ll always be wired for connection, but connection as a skill isn’t something we inherently born with. so build that muscle and make time for leaving comments when you find something you really enjoy reading. let the writer know which part resonates with you and what your takeaways are. don’t let that “like” button trick you into thinking it’s all you can do to convey your appreciation. practice beyond clicking and go as far as thanking the writer in their DMs or email.

• for writers: it’s okay to admit that you want people to engage with your work because the origin of that desire is a genuine connection. but also understand that connection can happen way before the writing even starts, and that you don’t need to wait until you hit publish/share for your writing to be an engine of connection. instead, find a beta reader or a coach. join writing accountability groups or form one. talk about what you write on a zoom call. the solution of our loneliness and insecurity is and always has been genuine community, and by actively searching for it outside what social media offers we’re making that change to decouple the need for engagement from genuine connection. they’re two ideas you have to keep separate, but you are still allowed to have both, and one is much more important to the creative process than the other.

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thinking in movies

the reason why i’m saying all this is because i’m not immune to engagement, too. i’ve had my own fair share of virality, both on tumblr and twitter. mostly on twitter.

when i tweeted this video clip of top secret! (1984) back when i was still a prolific fan tweeter and the number of likes and retweets shot through the roof, you have no idea how much it reconstructed my worldview. i remember feeling all sorts of excitement - addiction, in a way. some sense of connection. i had people from different generations reaching out to me that they were nostalgic for young val kilmer (i don’t blame them).

to an extent, i guess i WAS making connection with these people through a simple caption and my knowledge of this particular scene of top secret!. it only became insanely dreadful to me when the engagement died down and i was back to being alone as the interactions didn’t continue. that’s how i realized that i was mistaking shallow interactions for genuine connection: an object of value to a company that wants my genuine appreciation for this movie to make other users stay on their platform for 0.1 second longer.

to echo this wonderful essay by :

Substack is not the savior of anything. Not of writing, not of you, me, or anyone else. It’s ultimately a money-making machine like the rest of them, with strategies and schemes to hold your attention as long as possible. If my putting Substack on a pedestal is all that's taken away from this, I’ve been misunderstood. My only argument is that it is a social media platform with an emphasis on the totality of writing that’s become an alternative space for an underserved group of people to enjoyable spend their time.

i’m older and wiser now, so when this substack note of mine found its target audience this week i knew better than to let it consume my attention and eat me up from the inside. i did, however, made the intention to check it back regularly: not to worry about the numbers but rather to reply to interesting comments and reach out to writers who i wanted to connect with.

YOU’RE INVITED!

On June 25th, join me for a spicy 🌶 deep dive on the modern state of lead magnets. We'll then explore what it means to be moving away from the traditional definition of lead magnet, going beyond transactional to exceptional, and transform your current free offerings into an engine of trust-transfer and connection.

This is for you, if:

• You’re offering free resources as part of your business growth strategy.

• ​You have an existing free offering that is ready for a refresh.

• You’re all about putting humans first on the forefront of your business.

You’ll learn about:

• ​How to go from only “collecting leads” to creating a gift that keeps on giving for your followings, deepen your relationships, and help transfer trusts for your business.

• ​Behind the scenes of how successful businesses have effectively incorporated the spirit of giving away meaningful resources into their growth strategies.

• ​A simple framework to audit your current growth strategy in a way that expands the value of your business offerings.

how to join

I’m hosting this workshop as part of the Business With Heart: Putting Humans First weeklong expo where we’re running it as a fundraiser. The minimum donation that we ask to join the expo is $7. When you join, not only you get access to this workshop, but you’ll find other workshops hosted by a roster of amazing people, table round discussions, study groups, and connection calls.

Take me to the expo →

If you’re interested in joining but the cost is a concern, please send me a message and I’ll get you set up, no questions asked.

8 reasons why substack is not (yet) the new tumblr

1. tumblr is the only remaining social platform in which algorithm is opted-in, not assumed. people there are known to reject “for you” pages and will boycott the feature if it’s forced upon them instead of being something they can opt-in to. it means tumblr posts circulate organically through people who choose to reblog it to their site and feed it to other people’s dashboard. friendships and community support are formed through the act of intentional sharing and discovery, not because the algorithm decides to pick it up and shove it on user feeds.

2. if there’s one thing tumblr users fight so hard for it’s stagnancy. hardcore users who have been there since the late 00s will do whatever it takes to make tumblr the last vestige of good social media that is safe and pleasurable to use. this means: no tiktok-esque vertical video format and no giving away user data to advertisers. “monetization” is always being taken with a grant of salt so that community aspect and collaborative culture will always be the backbone of the platform, even if it means the website is not always profitable to the investors.

3. on tumblr you could gift each other crabs for $2.99. for fun.

   

4. there are no “tumblr influencers”. tumblr makes it so that your follower count is kept to private, making it impossible for anyone to brag about their popularity, unless they choose to reveal it for some reason. in general, status there is based on opinion and not numbers; and how popular you think someone is is a vibes-only calculation. this on its own has successfully eliminated the element of competition off the platform. the last thing you’ll see on tumblr is writers and artists being insecure about building their tumblr audience. they will, however, complain about building audience somewhere outside tumblr.

5. consequently, the general rules of tumblr is that you go there to hang out and scream into the void, not to sell people something. otherwise, people could smell your bullshit and will block you for good. again, tumblr also doesn’t track user clicks, making it impractical to do any traffic marketing there. thriving creators on tumblr are thriving because the amount of connection they put for their audience. they make money by giving away more free stuffs as opposed to putting them behind paywalls.

6. on tumblr you don’t use polls for research. you use it to conduct a platform-wide bug race.

   

7. on tumblr, the ability to go anonymous is a two-edged sword: on one hand, it gives you the freedom to express yourself under a pseudonym. you could have the most incredulous user handle ever graced the internet like powerbottombrucespringsteen (all love) and people would still take your opinion and views seriously. you could be pursuing doctoral degrees and running 6 figure businesses IRL and they wouldn’t even matter in the eye of the community if you don’t participate in the collaborative culture. you are seen as what you appear as, how you show up online, what you give to the community, and not for what you are behind the screen. on the other hand: it makes it easier for people to receive hate messages and hide under anonymity.

8. substack doesn’t have neil gaiman, a permanent tumblr resident.

3 ways substack is heading towards becoming a better evolution of tumblr

1. substack is the first and only platform i’ve seen outside tumblr with a really good knack for longevity and archiving. while the typical shelf life of a social media post lasts for 5-10 minutes, a tumblr post from 2012 could still circulate and be celebrated in the year of 2024, and again in the coming years. revisiting and rediscovering are important virtues that go against the way social media works, where the algorithm usually favors newer stuffs. on substack, however, you could always go down the rabbit hole without being interrupted by ads, which i think is the first step towards building a library on top of the social feature.

2. the fact that you can restack any part of a substack post is godsent. not only it gives smaller publications a chance to be discovered, it’s also a tool for interesting discussions to open up and new ideas to grow from. some of my posts here are inspired by other people’s conversations under a restacked post. on the writer’s side, it’s always good to know which part of a post resonates and what people’s takeaways are. if we could leave “serial liking” etiquette behind and encourage more people to restack instead i think we would be undefeated anywhere.

3. i’ve never seen any platform other than substack that could match the intensity of tumblr’s hatred towards generative AI and the “content”ification of writing. like they said: a community full of writers ennui towards generative AI is a warrior’s bond stronger and more meaningful than marriage.

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thinking in (fake) movies

did you know that back in 2022, tumblr invented a fake martin scorsese movie and gaslighted everyone on the internet into thinking that it’s real?

goncharov is a fascinating result of an entire user base bandwagoning on plot points and then mashing them up to create actual coherent story. the success of goncharov highlights tumblr as actual social media based in community effort rather than status, and that being in a community that values entertaining others leads to incredible collaborative works of creativity that don’t even feel like work to make. martin scorsese not only acknowledging the bit but also playing along with it is the most satisfying ending goncharov could have gotten.

to me, this is the ultimate beauty of tumblr: when you treat a platform as a sandbox and not a popularity contest, technically any post can be a cultural phenomenon if your friends and mutuals are dedicated to the bit enough and also just really want to cause problems.

Word Station is a Notion dashboard built for writers and creatives who are looking for a seamless blend of content planning, publishing, and distribution. Along with a Wordcraft database to keep track of and move your work up the publishing pipeline, you’ll also find instructions to customize your Channels database and create a signposting system that helps people find their way into your work.

Grab this template

ESSAY THAT INSPIRED THIS

in case you missed it: google is integrating AI into their search engine, and last week everyone was on a run to uncover the funniest, wrongest possible AI-generated google search results.

here are some of my favorites:

• fruits ending with “um”

• straight up answered a search query with the beatles lyrics (if you sing you lose)

• ok to drink antibiotics

the reason behind this catastrophe is because opinionated forums like reddit and quora are, at least as i’m writing this letter, still included in the model in which the AI was trained on. meaning that if we look something up on google and it catches on a reddit or quora thread with the same query or topic as ours, the AI actually thinks it counts as a reliable source and then generates a summarized answer on top of the search results.

it’s harmless in concept if you’re just googling basic facts, or you’re just searching for coffee place recs. it’s harmless until the AI decides to deduct an answer from reddit user fucksmith to add glue to get cheese to stick to our pizza without knowing the context it was written in.

what’s most entertaining to me is seeing how diverse, almost polarized the public reactions are to this update. there are AI supporters who are hopeful still, defensive even, to the fact that this is just the first iteration of this feature, and that fixes and improvement are on their way. though concern seemed to be the main reaction that i get coming from people who are worried about their children using google. some are also enraged seeing that these generative answers could escalate to a level as extreme as recommending people to commit murder.

weirdly enough, for the longest time i’ve had a love and hate relationship with AI, this is the first time i genuinely feel like everything is going to be fine. seeing new stances emerging, people not wasting a second to invent browser plugins that undo what google does, and even new memes born out of this collective experience has truly made me hopeful.

my friend and team member tatiana figueiredo once wrote an essay on why AI won’t take our jobs. in times like this, i find myself always circling back to these questions she asks in it:

though the changes AI is enabling to our work are undeniable, i’ve been considering another angle. what are the non-AI opportunities that AI enables?

in this future where lots of jobs are automated away and we’re all super productive with the help of robots, what will life actually look like? and what will online businesses look like?

there’s a reason why people travel down to bali and bangkok all the time: a change of scenery.

the profound nature of humanity is that we will always invent a way to escape boredom and everyday routines. even in a future where AI does become a driving force in our lives, i don’t see how that’s going to change the escapist nature in us. if anything, the silver lining that an AI-driven culture creates is that there will always be a percentage of people who inevitably turn to seek out something human-crafted for a change.

maybe it’s because i’m always told that AI is coming for us and there’s nothing else we can do except to adapt to the change. but adapting is not the same as conforming. humans will remain humans even if everything around us changes, and something about last week’s event tells me that we’ll always find ourselves a way to rebel out of a situation when it gets dire.

history goes to show that we have been masters in doing that, and we always will be.

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thinking in movies

in singing in the rain (1952), we’re being taken back to the late 1920s where film industry is navigating a massive transition from silent movies to “talkies”. i couldn’t help but notice an uncanny parallel to our situation now with AI.

we grow up watching talking movies so it might not register to us that movies used to be silent. and here’s the thing: different movie output is that it requires different process, and different process also demands for different crews and teams that do the job.

that rings a bell for you?

it’s implied in the movie that people who work in the industry are losing jobs and opportunities due to the transition. silent performers are shown to be struggling to convey their acting through talking and there are now more demands for movies with sound. yet at the same time, a whole new set of opportunities open up: the role of a voice coach. the concept of voiceovers. sound engineers and the technologies needed to support the sound production. boom guys, people who know how to work cables, and generally more people on the set.

so here’s an idea i’m entertaining: a future where the becoming of AI doesn’t mean the death of everything else, but rather an endless opportunity to bring more humanity to the table - whether it’s through our writing, our art, and our line of businesses.

last october i tweeted about wanting to crowdsource a name for my content calendar dashboard in notion that doesn’t include the words “content” and “calendar” in it. as with everything post-elon twitter, it got zero responses. it could be that the “xwitter” algorithm was suppressing my tweet so that nobody saw it.

it doesn’t take a genius to know that i’m the biggest hater of the word “content” on the internet (and if you didn’t then, you do now). the most common argument people sometimes throw back at me is that “content” has only merely become an umbrella term, almost a technical one, to describe something that fills the space of a medium on the internet. but the fact they’re telling me this only further reveals the reason why it never sits right with me: the intentionality of turning our work into something that “fills the space” instead of something we deliberately make space for, something so meaningful that it deserves its own space instead of the other way around.

in the context of the film industry, even big names like martin scorsese and guillermo del toro have stepped up and took this matter into their own hands. it’s diabolical to see the reduction and homogenization that are being done by streaming services to moving images for the sake of keeping people on their platforms. and while others might think, “what does this industry-scale fight have to do with my process?” it’s the innocence of the question that terrifies me, to realize that on a slightly smaller scale, people have been unconsciously practicing the same thing to their own work.

when people call their content planner a “content engine”, “content flywheel”, or even “content operating system”, my first thought is always: why does the practice of “content creation” have to be heavily affiliated with machinery? the use of machines implies productivity, and productivity is almost always being measured by constant output, if not volume. productivity is the near enemy of creativity, and it operates on eliminating everything that slows down the machine - sometimes that includes creativity itself1.

to put it another way: are we not just creating for the sake of creating?

if yes, then i don’t think i’ll be participating in that.

i’m also not saying that i’ll be policing everyone who still calls their publishing system “content calendar”. everyone is allowed to call their content calendar whatever they want. but i profoundly believe that we are the product of the environment we create for ourselves, and that intention is everything.

so when i open up Notion and go to this dashboard, i’m perfectly happy to see my 9358263 drafts lying around waiting to be edited and the calendar empty. it opens up a whole other can of worms on how i plan to build the practice of publishing consistently, but the point is that i don’t feel compelled to fill out this calendar just for the sake of keeping my “audience” “engaged”. it’s only there for when my writings are truly ready to go out and see the world.

ladies and gentlemen, i want you all to meet: my word station :)

the quotes i put there is by annie dillard, which i found through ’s brilliant essay:

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

i hope that this reflection unlocks something for you. and if it does, i’d love for you to reach out and tell me about it!

you can grab the template below.

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thinking in movies

a movie that goes with this week’s reflection is billy wilder’s ace in the hole (1951).

as we talk about sacrificing creativity for the sake of productivity, this movie becomes a twisted looking glass on how things are unironically the same now as they were over 70 years ago. newspaper business (runs by kirk douglas’ character) is this movie’s substack publications, and the question that it asks over to us is: how far would you go to keep your audience engaged?

it’s dark and cynical, but brilliant nonetheless. i’d love for you to give this one a try.

it’s a wonderful life (1946) dir. frank capra

as with every other years, i spent the last week of 2023 reading other people’s year in review and coaching them through theirs instead of completing my own. i’m still surprised by how hectic last week had been compared to the year before—i was making plans with friends and family and trying to catch up with my holiday watchlist, which left very little to no time for me to sit down and complete my 2023 wrap up. took me a second to realize it wasn’t happening any time last week, so i decided not to force it and came up with this massive piece instead.

that’s the thing about annual review: it doesn’t happen overnight. you were never supposed to complete it in one sitting, because the more time you spend on it, the more gratifying it will be. and that becomes another whole thing: everyone around you is telling you to do your version of yearly recap but nobody is teaching you what materials to gather, which tools to utilize, and how to make the best out of it.

below is 7 reflection tools to help you complete your annual review and prepare you into planning for the new year. what this list tells you is basically what to look at when you’re doing your year in review. i’ve also included an example of my setup, how i turn them into valuable insights, and additional prompts that go with the reflection.

disclaimer:

• many of these techniques i learned from Notion Mastery (affiliate link), a membership program designed to help you level up with Notion1. i’m a proud affiliate partner and alumnus, and what you’re seeing below is a direct outcome of having gone through the course and community experience as well as having been using the tool for 3+ years.

• i didn’t come up with the prompts; most are heavily curated from The Moon List, Unravel Your Year, and The Business of Community.

reading logs

BOOKS, ARTICLES, AND KNOWLEDGE OF VARIOUS FORMATS

last october i wrote quite a lengthy essay on why i think reading, amongst many things, serves as a time machine as powerful as writing and journaling. if you don’t keep a journal (nor you intend to rely on the practice of filling it out), keeping a log of your readings is the easiest way to help us collect valuable insights even if we don’t necessarily take notes out of them. the log itself already is a reflection of our curiosity and attention span at a certain time in our lives, and you’ll be surprised by how much your answer to the simple question of “why did i decide to read this?” will inform us about ourselves.

prompts to help you go through this reflection:

• what have you been loving recently because it feels tailor made for you?

• what deeply captured your full attention?

• contrarily, what did you halfway focus on?

• what questions and explorations are you taking with you into the new year?

brain vomits

RAW THOUGHTS & PONDERINGS

i don’t necessarily take elaborate notes out of the things i read, but if i was reading something and a relevant thought came across and grabbed my attention in a chokehold, i would want a place to capture that thought immediately for further inspection. there is a dedicated section in my journal that serves this purpose that i review regularly and towards the end of the year—some of which got repurposed into essay ideas while some others stayed unanswered. the point is to use these raw, unfiltered thoughts to guide you through your review and unravel what would otherwise have stayed hidden.

georgia o’keeffe on making your unknown known:

making your unknown known is the important thing—and keeping the unknown always beyond you—catching crystallizing your simpler clearer version of life—only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead—that you must always keep working to grasp—the form must take care of itself if you can keep your vision clear.

prompts to help you go through this reflection:

• if your body and mind could talk, what have they been saying this year?

• what is one question that you found yourself asking over and over again this year? (and is there a version of an answer?)

• what patterns in your own behavior or thought process did you recognize (or continue) this year?

writings wrapped

+ OTHER CREATIVE OUTPUTS

personally, this is my favorite way to wrap up the year. looking back at everything i’ve written throughout the year, published or not, whoever the audience is, never fails to give me instant joy and allows me to celebrate how far i’ve came in my writing journey. depends on what type of creative journey you’re embarking on, this could be youtube videos published, newsletter streak, or podcast you’ve created. good news is that most platforms nowadays already have a “yearly wrap” feature do the heavy-lifting work for you (unless you have a specific metrics you’d like to dig more into).

to me, this is also what “running your own race” looks like. did a fantastic job articulating this concept in her essay: you set certain standards for yourself, and you focus on meeting them. when you meet them, you’re proud of yourself. when you don’t, you urge yourself to try harder. you don’t question your standards based on what anyone else is doing. you don’t look over at someone else’s race and think, i’m doing a bad job because you’re going faster. you just focus on your own pace.

prompts to help you go through this reflection:

• how have your practice evolved over the last 12 months? what feels different now?

• how is your work a reflection of you?

• who are you becoming this year? does it excite or scare you?

• what memorable responses have you had to your work?

favorite moments

BIG WINS, SMALL JOYS

this one may seem like a no-brainer, but there is actually a vast difference between revisiting your favorite moments out of thin air vs. having a year worth of journaling habit to back you up. without any reflection tools to dig into, our brain will most likely zoom in to the most festive, eventful memories that we can remember where we *think* we felt the happiest. this doesn’t mean they aren’t worth celebrating—they are, and should probably go into our review! but happiness comes in different forms other than what feels like “cloud nine moments”, and we often overlook the simple pleasures that bring us joy without even trying that are also important to be grateful for.

i like having a visual diary of my favorite moments of the year, and my journal database does that for me. i have a view called “favorite moments” that holds all my journal entries with happiness score equals to more than 7, and it’s always very interesting to see which days are self-proclaimed “the happiest”. predictably, happiness means seeing the corrs live in my city for the first time, exploring bangkok with a close friend i haven’t seen in 2 years, and reuniting with friends over weddings and movie premieres. but it’s also nice to see happiness turns out to be as simple as watching kevin costner still win the golden globes over bob odenkirk (which of course got recorded in the journal).

prompts to help you go through this reflection:

• what are you most proud of accomplishing?

• what are all the things you’re grateful for from this year?

• which connections have you cherished the most this year?

• what’s changing this year in ways that delight you?

lowest moments

WHAT WENT WRONG

making room for grief is the complete half of celebration, if not the key of reflection itself. so in addition to having a “favorite moments” view, i also keep another one that serves the opposite: to display journal entries that mark the days i felt the lowest and challenged (happiness score equal to lower than 4).

as with everything else, life roadblocks come in varying sizes. i’ve experienced losses this year that seemed nearly impossible to recover from, but sitting where i am right now and going through this reflection always managed to knock some sense into my head that things did get better at the end, however hard it had been at the time. it also goes to say how dramatic i can be when things go wrong and the comedy that follows when they didn’t end up being permanent situation.

prompts to help you go through this reflection:

• what are the things that didn’t go as planned this year in your work, in your life, and in the world?

• what parts of yourself and your life have ended this year?

• if you could forgive yourself for something from this year, what would it be?

• what are the hard questions this year brought up that you’re still wrestling with?

• what will you miss about this year?

themed practices

WHAT GETS LOGGED, GETS REVIEWED

back when i was still working on my english i would read books out loud for an hour and force myself to hold a conversation in every live event that i attended, logged the action into my journal entry and marked it as “practice day”, and kept it up for a long time. it was an ideal tracking system that requires absolutely nothing else other than showing up at the practice without any bare minimum—the complete opposite of my previous attempts where i over-complicated everything by fussing with metrics to track and milestones to achieve. i decided to throw all that away and focused on the only important thing: showing up.

a year and a half later, my speaking noticeably improved and i could manage conversations just fine without relying on the tracker, but the habit of logging my practices stuck and proved to be the only thing that works for me. so i started doing the same thing for other things i want to be better at:

• drinking water

• eating vegetables

• working out

• keeping a running habit

• connecting with friends

unlike SMART goals that you can pre-plan and set an ETA for completion, identity-based goals rely on you showing up and do the thing that will bring you closer to said identity. for example: there is never gonna be any prestigious roadmap that will get me to eat vegetables more, but i could, however, add some greens in my noodles for lunch today, and count that practice towards the goal.

prompts to help you go through this reflection:

• what new priorities have you uncovered this year?

• what’s supported you most this year? what’s really helped?

• what do you wish you’d made more time for?

places

WHERE TO GO (AND NOT TO)

ever since and i unspokenly committed to trying out coffee shops around the city as many as we could this year, i started logging our discoveries into my places database and turned it into a heatmap. this ended up being a pretty cool catalogue of places to go back to for when we were burned out from trying out new places and just wanted a quick no-brainer to hang out, and was what kept us from going back to places that are clearly overhyped and not worth the visit.

prompts to help you go through this reflection:

• what are the places in your city, town or neighbourhood you’d like to explore?

• who are the people you’d like to connect with more?

• when did a field trip make a difference this year, and how?

on why humans need annual reviews to make sense of things:

terrible years really make you understand the point of a new year. i know nothing much will have changed between dec 31 and jan 1, but we need to be able to partition off everything that’s happened to us, we need a moment to say, ‘that’s done, we’re done with it, it’s over’ and have a little hope that the future will be different. we need to be able to stop and take a breath and sing, in the middle of winter, and prepare ourselves for spring.

i know it’s probably too late to wish you all a happy holidays, nonetheless, i hope you had a good one, and thank you for sticking with me and doc day afternoon.

here’s to 2024!

forrest gump (1994) dir. robert zemeckis

i saw forrest gump (1994) for the first time at 15 and i remember disliking the movie so much i’d have been willing to sell my soul to the devil to get that two and a half hours of my life back. the next time i decided to watch it again was because it was playing on cable and i had nothing better to do, only this time my parents made me go for a quick grocery run because i spent the last of their tissue sobbing in front of the TV. i was barely 19.

it frustrates me that some changes are only meant to be seen after they have occurred. granted, there are many caveats to identifying changes in ourselves, but i want to specifically highlight the amusement in finding out that we’re seeing the world differently than we used to and it completely rearranges the way we perceive stories and ideas. i never thought that 3 years was a long enough time for anyone to undergo such a drastic change, but look at me: i went from dozing off in front of my laptop to developing high sensory perception to moving pictures and emotional range the size of texas. i could pinpoint the exact tom hanks line in which i realized i wasn’t that 15 years old girl anymore, but i could never tell why it had to be that one. it’s like crossing a road you don’t remember crossing and nobody told you how. like getting a receipt that just says “you’ve grown” but it won’t tell you what counts towards it. you just know.

as far as wondering “where did that 15 years old girl go?” goes, i also couldn’t help but ask which part of me now is still the same as that 15 years old girl. to put it differently: recognizing what’s changed is one thing, but figuring out what stays is another thing. it’s easier to identify the former because the human brain interprets change as a threat, so we are most likely going to notice it for better or worse. the latter, on the other hand, is more uninteresting and seemingly pointless in hindsight. it’s like finding a needle in the haystack and then not knowing what to do with it once you have it in hand. like playing where’s waldo? against yourself, only harder.

i really love this saying and graph that i found on tumblr:

the past isn’t behind you, it coils inside your body. i especially love the notion that we are always going to have some sense of connection with our past selves because the spiral construct makes it almost impossible not to. even disconnection, in my opinion, is its own form of connection—it’s finding out you’re no longer fascinated by a thing that you used to at a certain age. it’s reading a book for the second time and then coming out with a completely different takeaway than when you first read it. it’s not getting what a movie is about on the first watch, and then completely blown away when you see it again after some time.

this brings me to the possibility that the things we’re creating and the ideas we’re sharing today have been inside us all along. it makes sense that we set plans aside and leave ideas behind because it seemed like it wasn’t going anywhere else, but what if the reason we felt that way is because we were seeing it from the wrong, half-baked side of the road? what if we just need to allow for some time to pass and let it help us find the best side of the road to see the complete picture?

a lot of writers have pointed this out to me. my favorite is from :

When I look back in my notes I realize so much of what I write about today I was ruminating about 2-3 years ago. I always knew what I was going to say. I just didn’t have the tools, I didn’t have the maturity, I didn’t have the language or sensitivity to beauty to recognize what that was. So much of what I learned was latent, unexpressed because I wasn’t ready. I had to stick with it. I had to wring it out with time, effort, intention. ( — things that take time)

i’ve seen people burn money, go on a pilgrimage, and basically jump out of their comfort zone trying to find their “next big thing”. what they won’t believe is that when the time aligns, their “next big thing” could be something that’s been inside them all along. it might not be in the same form it originally was in, but one with a strong sense of connection with their past selves will realize that it’s still the same part of ourselves, in essence.

that’s why revisiting helps: it allows us to see what’s been overlooked. i believe we do ourselves a great disservice by not keeping a practice of looking back and reaching out to what our past selves were reading, thinking, or feeling at that time of our lives. a peer of mine pointed out that writing is the best way that we do this, and as much as i love writing as a medium of reflection, i feel like we’re gonna miss out on so many revelations by limiting ourselves to only one medium of reflection. to me, re-reading is a time machine as powerful as writing when we really tune in to that sense of connection with our past selves. if re-watching forrest gump (1994) at 18 is what led me to giving birth to this essay, i’d like to find out what else i’m able to achieve when i re-watch more movies. it’s not the medium. it’s in our intention.

:

Looking back can be a reminder of what is constant and actually meaningful. A realization that sometimes you don’t need to “come back” or find yourself because you’re right there, and have been all along. ( — new prompts for looking back)

only this time, in addition to looking back: also search inwards.

for the past isn’t behind you—it coils inside your body.

special thanks to , diana-maria demco, and paudan jain of write of passage cohort 11 for the help in shaping up this essay!

free resource!

overview

• this template was created as part of my essay, we are the age we have ever been, and is one of the components of my mind garden template.

• this page leverages the practice of keeping a simple journal log every day in which you can add your thoughts, ponderings, learnings, and even link it to various media you’re consuming that day. i included a few examples to show you how it looks like when you keep doing it every day!

• this template partially leverages the AI add-on to help you generate summary automatically. everyone can use Notion AI add-on for free, but there is a limit to the complimentary responses Notion gives as a trial. to get more AI responses, click here. (affiliate link)

Grab this template

last week i turned 25 and i remember feeling a little bit bewildered at how mediocre the whole day had been. in my defense, i was expecting some kind of revelation to strike. big, grand epiphanies. that when i woke up in the morning, freshly 25, everything would finally click together and make sense of my life. instead: i slept in, went out to grab coffee, and had a free birthday steak for lunch. i guess that, too, was its own revelation—that as you get older birthdays will feel less like a celebration and more like a normal wednesday, except for when you get free meals and discounted deals (and people bombarding you with tom cruise GIFs).

it’s hard not to make a big deal out of birthdays when you notice that you’re spending it differently than you used to. maybe it’s because this is my first time not having a corporate job in years. i quit my previous role because i wanted to have more time for writing and yet writing is not how i make a living at the moment. maybe it’s because instead of pursuing a safe, normal corporate career like all my friends are at 25, what i did was open a substack blog with a name that is practically a pun to my favorite al pacino movie, because that’s what i find fulfilling at the moment. alas.

i find myself coming back to this tweet:

i wonder if that’s the reason why people fear course-correction: it creates the illusion of time wasted. worse, it signals failure. because what else does it say about you if you had to get out of the thing that you’ve deliberately chosen to do in the first place, if not poor judgment? one of my peers said you don’t need anybody’s permission to change course and pursue more than one interest, which i seconded wholeheartedly. but you can’t deny the mortifying ordeal of having to present yourself with a brand new identity after having attached to one for a long time. for some people, it’s the dread of having to introduce yourself in one community as X and the other community as Y just so you don’t feel out of place.

maybe that’s why people invented concepts like ikigai: to make sense of their identity. to feel good about not having to fit into a box, to be able to fit into multiple boxes at once and have a word to shout it out from the rooftop. to navigate multitudes, to find their people, and ultimately? to feel less lonely. last year i tweeted that i’m the “antithesis of ikigai” just to declare my stance towards the notion of ikigai. to my own surprise, my fellow notion ambassador and colleague ben borowski offered that my ikigai is curiosity. i have to admit that it never really left my mind ever since.

the man, the legend, the human proxy

my family and i were sitting in the living room together one morning when i looked up and saw a very familiar face speaking on TV. this was back when every news channel had been reporting back and forth on the latest development of the oceangate submarine accident, and even though i kinda could have seen it coming, i still had to do a double take when i read the name on the screen:

i remember going on the internet afterwards and finding out people were outraged that the world’s first go-to person to discuss about submersibles behavior was the same person who made the movie titanic in 1997. actual person on tumblr going off about this:

Why do I keep seeing James Cameron all over my news (I know these are both Insider, but I have been seeing James Cameron in the news for days from several different outlets, I’m just lazy) Listen, I know he did the time and made the movie but how is he any different? Rich white guy? Profited off of the exploitation of the tragedy of the Titanic? Self entitled expert? Bleh I’m over seeing his crusty wannabe Saruman face all over my phone. Go back to the Avatar movies and think about what you’ve done.

it’s so interesting how quick people turn to skepticism every time somebody turns to be doing something they weren’t set out to do initially. why would a filmmaker know anything about submersibles? i really enjoy the occurence in which people forget james cameron legitimately numbers among the small handful of people most qualified to talk about the disaster, because then i get to explain to them why the highest grossing filmmaker in the history of cinema is also a certified Nat Geo explorer and NASA advisor. if i had a dollar every time i did this with my friends, i’d be so disgustingly rich and wouldn’t be telling you all of this.

i have to admit it’s also possible that i’ve been using james cameron as a proxy to make sense of my own identity—so when people ask me, hypothetically, how would an earth science graduate know anything about building a business and creative process? not that i know anyone who would actually throw around that kind of question. but it really takes the burden off my shoulders just to be able to figuratively point them at james cameron and say, THAT’S how. next question.

in retrospect, maybe that’s why i find memoirs to be soothing (even more so than novels). every time i think about how ridiculous it is that i’m pursuing a lot of things with agonizingly minimal overlap in between, i have to remind myself there are literally people out there who have already lived exactly the life i fear of being ridiculed for. it’s weirdly comforting, in a way. i’m crazy if i think i’m gonna be the next james cameron, but the fact that i’m not the only one in this world with an engineering degree who also wants to be intellectually acknowledged for their creative ambitions and artistic lenses really puts things into perspective. it makes me feel less lonely, and fuels me to go even further.

here’s one thing i ultimately learned: we are an amalgamation of everywhere we’ve ever been and everything we’ve ever loved. in the tweet above, miller refers to this as failed hobbies and forgotten instruments, but i’m also talking about sidelined passion projects. jobs we’ve outgrown. college degrees and GPAs that have gone completely irrelevant with time. it’s so easy to hold grudges and take these things for granted when they didn’t work out as planned because i feel like i’m owed something from them. but if i learn to treat them like old friends and just truly embrace them with gratitude, maybe i’ll find that they’ll embrace me in return, time after time.

in my substack about page i write that my essays will always be a living evidence of what it’s like to be a young woman who is deeply rooted in STEM but also writes fiction, studies film, preaches about the creative process, and growing a business at the same time. last week i turned 25, and i realized these things are not gonna change for a long time.

special thanks to , , , and from write of passage cohort 11 for going out of their way to help me out with this piece!

jerry maguire (1996) — he GETS it

two years ago i released a notion template called the mind garden, which is an exact replica of my own knowledge management dashboard of the same name. this was a fun year for me, personally, back when notion’s functionalities were still agonizingly limited and the community actually worked hand in hand inventing workarounds and pioneering hacks to push notion’s ability to high heaven. people cheered at feature loopholes somebody’s discovered and it didn’t take long until the words get out, either through demonstrations on social media or templates circulation. my mind garden template was, to a limit, also an (unconscious) attempt at that.

fast-forward to present, loopholes got turned into actual features, and along with other huge improvements to the way notion databases work it became apparent to me that a lot of things in my mind garden dashboard didn’t survive the time war. it’s like every time i go there to retrieve some information i got whiplashed into 2021. and even though the dashboard is still functional, it didn’t leverage the power notion currently holds. more importantly, it was starting not to reflect the way my brain works.

that’s when i knew a revamp is due.

but it’s only until this summer that i’d started working on revamping it. i guess the caveat is that since the dashboard is intended to serve as a mirror image of my brain, most of the groundwork had to happen internally as opposed to externally, i.e. making actual changes in my workspace. this means i’ve spent a lot of time reflecting, staring out into nothing, having various internal arguments with my brain, and basically thinking about thinking during my free time. i needed to make sense of what felt outdated and why was it not working anymore so i could make proper adjustment in response to that.

it all mostly boils down to:

1. my inputs (my media consumption; where does my source of learnings currently come from? what lights up my brain these days and when does it often happen? what really urges me to click on that notion web clipper icon?)

2. my outputs (in what ways do i intend to repurpose my inputs into? how can i make all of that information helpful for myself, and eventually for others?)

3. the in-betweens (what process, mindset, or habit will pave the road and help me achieve that?)

once i reached mental agreement with my brain on the above things, we shook hands and then i got to work.

on showcasing vs. processing

to me, one of the traps that most notion template builders easily fall into is the urge to create visual dashboards — often so visual they’re almost dysfunctional.

don’t get me wrong, i personally will decorate my dashboards like there’s no tomorrow, but only to an extent that i remember i’m gonna be the one using it on a daily basis (and eventually, other people as well, if i’m releasing it into a template). so not only it has to be visual enough, but above everything, it also has to serve its purposes.

what it means is that the visual aspects cannot be in the way of the workflow, because that also means breaking the thinking process, thus breaking the previous agreement with my brain. it means deliberately choosing which feature and/or block to roll out that will further prompt the thinking and facilitate processing information, instead of the other way around. believe me or not, there have been multiple occasions where i held back on doing something because it’s just ‘too many clicks’ or ‘suddenly i don’t feel like doing it anymore’.

the idea of optimizing notion for thinking is that you try to create a space where you’re more likely going to do the thing you’re supposed to do than not.

some (highly personal) examples of this:"

• the gallery view is great for showcasing, but i find that it doesn’t really create a sense of urgency for me to take action and add anything to it. during the revamp process i decided to turn some of them into table views with only a few properties that will inform me what my next action should be (summarize, tag, etc.)

• back when database tabs didn’t exist i used to depend on numbered toggles like it’s got me on a chokehold, but now that things have escalated in the notionland i love that i’m able to add numbers to my tabs and treat them like some kind of process to follow.

• contextual buttons really do help take care of filling out key properties and relations with minimal clicking so i could focus on capturing ideas and making clear notes — basically helping my future self out.

keeping this concept in mind, i ended up with two types of dashboard at the end of the revamp: (1) the mind garden, exclusively for showcasing purpose and is optimized for quick retrieval of information, and (2) brain hour, which is more like taking your brain on a date, and is highly optimized for thinking, capturing ideas, taking notes, and processing (hence the name).

if you’ve purchased the template before, you’d know that the brain hour dashboard has always been there as a concept — that once a week, i will spend an hour (sometimes two) in there just making notes and keeping it open as i go through clipped articles and ongoing books. post-revamp, the practice stays the same, but now that notion’s shipped all these new features, i’m finally able to turn it into something more thorough, deliberate, and helpful.

i would set up a camp there if i could.

(there is also a secret third dashboard that i’m working on called (3) the retrospective. the idea is that if reviewing + planning happens at a weekly to yearly level, i believe that goes for learning, too. remind me to make a separate blog post for this once it’s done!)

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factoring in automation (or out)

in 2020, i read a blog post that has since rewired my perspective about teaching and learning forever. it’s targeted towards fiction writers, but i believe the same principle applies. september c. fawkes: we will always grow faster and become better writers if we can learn on a conscious level. for one, we might pick up some things on a subconscious level, but others we’ll totally miss. often the challenge of learning and teaching writing is figuring out how to explain what happens on a subconscious level on a conscious level.

i’m a big advocate for automation, especially if we’re talking business ops and work efficiency, but learning is the only department in my life where i try to minimize the use of automation and bots. this is because i profoundly believe in the art of practice — that it’s by engaging in the process of reviewing and summarizing on a conscious level that our learning gradually solidifies, whereas introducing automation feels like taking that awareness out of the process.

i think the irony for me is that we’ve spent years implementing processes to work around the lack of automation in notion, and now it feels like a fully-furnished house. i’ve personally gotten really used to the business of dragging and dropping database items that i needed to pause for a moment to consider how will these new shiny features fit into the system. there’s always area to optimize, of course, but there’s also a part of me that wants to stick to what already works.

i don’t know what the future holds, or if someone will come up with something that will turn my world around, but i feel perfectly fine allowing myself go all-caveman when i’m inside this dashboard. for now.

obviously, this might not work for everyone since we all consume different things and none of us are being influenced by exactly the same thing. what’s perfectly convenient for me might not be ideal for you, and what i liberally call learning might feel like labor to everyone else. this is where i encourage you to take liberty and experiment on what works. reflect and iterate. the brain wants what the brain wants, and it’s up to you to figure out what and how.

at least that’s how i came up with mine!

if you find this piece helpful, or if something resonates, i’d love for you to reach out and tell me about it.

mind garden 2.0: electric boogaloo

you can grab the mind garden template for $15 on gumroad. if you’re reading this, it means that i haven’t made any changes to the template; but the price will go up when the new version goes live in october. if you purchased the template before then, you’ll get free access to the updates + bonus coaching sessions with me at a discounted rate.

i want this

this substack post officially marks 80 days since i left my corporate job, and within those days i have:

• picked up writing fiction again (added approx. 16,500 words to an ongoing project)

• watched 59 movies in total (rewatch included) and finished both seasons of FX’s the bear

• gave my notion journal + mind garden dashboard a complete makeover (which i’m gonna write more about in the next few weeks)

• gone on a 5 days trip to thailand

• organized this super nerdy ethan hunt the eras tour custom shirt purchase for my friends

if you’re looking for some spicy behind the scenes of why i left the job, i don’t actually have one! it was a pretty decent job in some analytics company with mid to high paying wage - when people asked me about it, i like to tell them my previous role can be summed up as ‘i do the talking so the engineers don’t have to’. somewhere around may 2023 i grew out of it and left.

i guess the only spicy part of this whole business of quitting came from people around me who thought that ‘outgrowing it’ is not enough reason for anybody to resign from their full-time job, but then again when have i ever fitted into the boxes that people create for themselves? paul graham on how to do great work: but fields aren’t people; you don’t owe them any loyalty. if in the course of working on one thing you discover another that’s more exciting, don’t be afraid to switch.

one of the straws that finally broke the camel’s back was the realization that i’ve been writing noticeably less than before and i really don’t like that feeling. writing online has been an integral part of my life ever since i got introduced to the internet in the early 2010s - it’s part of who i am, and i wanted to honor it more. there is something incredibly liberating in finding out that i write and build better things when i ‘make’ time for it as opposed to only ‘finding’ it. leaving corporate job was the first of a series of steps that would allow me to gain that agency back, that was once lost amidst all the chaos that is working nine-to-five, to structure my life around writing and connecting with amazing people through the serendipity that it creates.

also, don’t let the list above fool you - i might make it sound like i’m already living The Ideal Life, but i’m actually pretty far from where i want myself to be. i still have a lot to figure out and i’d love for this newsletter to be a living manifestation of that journey. at this point in my life i’m quite still excited (and potentially, naive) about the type of audience i can reach and the communities i’ll be able to keep building through writing and nerding out about Notion, which is perhaps why launching this newsletter series feels like the right decision that will hopefully tie everything together.

you can read more about what i’m currently up to will help shape this newsletter here.

you should subscribe to this newsletter if you are:

• someone who’s trying to rack up their visibility points in 2023

• someone who jokes about depending on Notion to run their whole life and then makes the surprised pikachu face when they find out they have been depending on Notion to run their whole life

• similarly, someone who is nosy about how other people run their lives and/or businesses in Notion

• someone who, like me, doesn’t mind other people typing exclusively in lowercase

• someone with a habit of compulsively clipping articles and hoarding quotes in hopes of luring the Secret Knowledge of the Universe that’s lurking just right around the corner

• someone who believes that how people rank mission: impossible movies will someday replace the astrology and MBTI personality test

• someone with a STEM background but also has a complicated stance towards how AI is being leveraged in the creative industry and is therefore resigned to misery

• someone who is still on tumblr in the year of our lord and savior 2023 not because twitter is becoming more and more unusable now than ever but because they simply just haven’t left since they stumbled upon it in the early 10s and all their friends and stuffs are there

• someone who is always constantly thinking about how the ever-growing creator economy impacts an artist’s creative process, the art that follows, and their relationship with it

• someone who thinks movies should go back to being grainy and textured and sweaty

• someone who is like, the second they start doing something that fifty other people can do just as well they need to quit that thing and do something else

• someone who voted for al pacino during the big 2023 twitter poll showdown

thanks for reading me

to kick this off here’s an excerpt that i really like from carl phillips’ beautiful essay:

How to avoid repeating ourselves, how to keep seeing things anew, how to separate habit from habit’s predictability—and how to find the stamina to do so? I think this is where self-awareness—about ourselves, yes, but also about the work—is key. I’ve written plenty of poems that interested me, but later, sometimes minutes after finishing them, sometimes months, I’ll realize I’ve merely echoed what I’ve written somewhere else before. Or I’ve used an image I’ve used often—fair enough—but I haven’t used it any differently than I have before. For me those poems aren’t worth holding onto. That doesn’t mean they weren’t worth writing, since everything we write is a necessary step to the poems we need to write, but I don’t find that I need to publish them. This may be the most important requirement for a career, the ability to look at one’s own work with enough detachment to be a useful monitor and critic of the work, across decades.

i believe starting this newsletter is just my subconscious trying to say: here’s a piece of my soul! here are the parts of me i didn’t know what else to do with! i wrapped them up in something i love in an attempt to understand my own feelings and curiosity and maybe the whole world. hope you like it. let’s be friends.