Thought

What do you think money can buy?

When I talk to people, I like to ask a simple question: If you had three wishes, what would you ask for? Many people put “money” at the top. But when I ask the follow-up—What would you do with a lot of money?—most people don’t have an answer. They feel they should get the money first and figure out the purpose later.

Of course, money can buy happiness, safety, or opportunities. But it’s more than that. Money isn’t happiness. Money isn’t safety. Money isn’t opportunity. Money is just a number somewhere. It’s a tool, not a goal. And collecting tools without knowing what they’re for rarely helps you get the job done.

Yes—making, saving, and growing money can be fun. But we should spend more time understanding our goals, because goals define how much money we actually need and shape how we acquire it. When we know the goal, money becomes a tool that serves it—not something we chase endlessly.

Take something simple: if I want to take a trip to Japan, money is the tool that makes the trip possible. But the real goal is meaningful memories with Kate—sharing great food and travelling comfortably together. If I start from my goals, I know exactly how much it costs—and I don’t waste years chasing money without ever going.

That’s just a small example. But what about the bigger things? Owning a business. Living freely. Retiring comfortably—do you know how much it costs?

There are times in life when we’re thrown into difficulty—when the goal feels unclear, the path feels impossible, and everything seems to sit in fog. No one enjoys these moments, but they’re often signs that we’re doing something challenging, and that change is coming. We’re either about to succeed, or we’re about to learn something important.

Life teaches and tests us over and over until we understand the lesson and can move to the next stage. Hard moments reveal patterns. At first, they feel uncomfortable—both physically and emotionally—because nothing is clear. But once we begin, action slowly creates clarity.

Success is wonderful, but the lessons from failure multiply our future success. I’ve come to believe that when we face difficulty, the goal isn’t to “get through it.” The goal is simply to begin. Clarity, lessons, and progress always happen during the work, never before it.

Only the work in progress—truly progresses.

The rise of GPS technology has encouraged us to explore places we’ve never been. I’ve noticed that whenever I get into someone’s car, they always open the map—even when the route is familiar. Maps have become part of the modern dashboard.

Everyone sets a destination for each trip, and they drive with confidence.

Driving or navigating without knowing where you are—or where you’re heading—can be scary. The map shows your progress, and the pinned destination reassures you that you’re moving closer to where you want to go.

Life works the same way.

Living without a clear purpose is like driving without a map. You don’t know the route. You don’t know whether you’re closer or further from your destination. You don’t know if you’re drifting off course or accidentally heading the wrong way—and that is scary.

It’s important to know where you’re heading.

Today.

This week.

This month.

This year.

Five years from now.

Where are you going?

I choose values over metrics of success.

Because I know that what truly matters is felt in the heart, not measured on dashboards or OKRs.

I choose consistency over temporary bursts of motivation.

Because anything sustainable takes time to build, not a sprint of effort.

I choose roots over appearances.

Because inner stability will always matter more than external perception.

I choose simplicity over unnecessary complexity.

Because clarity comes from removing, not adding.

I choose work that aligns with who I am over work the world says is “good.”

Because I want a life built on alignment, not self-betrayal.

I choose inner steadiness over confidence from others.

Because praise can help—but peace has to come from within.

I choose direction over speed.

Because growth without knowing where you’re going isn’t growth at all.

I choose love over fear.

Because creativity grows from safety, not pressure.

I choose a calmer version of myself over a stronger version that’s always exhausted.

Because the best kind of strength doesn’t hurt you.

I choose to be human rather than a machine.

A human who feels, thinks, slows down, speeds up, falls, rests, and begins again.

I choose to believe happiness comes from the things we choose.

And when we are the ones who choose—we reclaim our power.

I used to wake up in the middle of the night with sweat dripping from my head, even though the weather wasn’t hot. The broken sleep affected my energy, my mood, and my ability to create. I started worrying. I wondered whether I was stressed without realising it, or whether something might be wrong with my body.

Then one night, I learned an unexpected lesson.

I wash my hair every night before bed and always dry it quickly with hot air. But one day, I tried switching to cold air instead—and the night sweats disappeared instantly.

I never knew my hair could trap heat and release it while I slept. There’s no scientific explanation I can offer, but that small discovery helped me sleep better, and that alone improved my life. It made me realise that the best kind of learning is learning about yourself.

Even the smallest change in your life is always something big.

What do you do consistently when no one is watching?

Small, quiet habits—reading, exercising, reflecting, doing the hard work in silence—aren’t sexy. No one claps for them. But what we do when no one sees us is who we really are, and it often determines the quality of our life.

What we choose to do in private matters far more than criticism, judgement, or the opinions others project onto us. If we stay disciplined and keep practising the things we love—if we keep working to become the best version of ourselves—we learn to trust ourselves.

Real confidence comes from what we do when no one is watching, not from praise or validation. True confidence is built from the inside, on the days when no one is looking—not from the applause of a million eyes outside.

My first memory of Sydney is the deep blue, cloudless sky. Kate and I were on the ferry from Manly Beach to Circular Quay, where the Opera House sits. Sydney and Kate share one thing in common: both were love at first sight for me.

More than ten years ago, deciding to ask Kate to be my girlfriend (now my wife)—and deciding to move to Sydney—were two of the best decisions I’ve ever made. And both decisions came from feeling, not logic. They came from courage, not fear.

Our family backgrounds were very different. When we first dated, Kate was doing her master’s degree in Sydney while I was trying to find a way to be here with her. Moving countries felt almost impossible. I didn’t even know how to spell “Australia” on the day I first dreamed of living here with Kate.

Logically, nothing made sense—but decisions made from the heart are powerful. They made me brave. They made me look for possibilities instead of obstacles. And eventually, I proudly built a life here with Kate.

I believe it’s important to free ourselves to make big decisions from our own feelings, not from the ideas of people who think they know what’s best for us. Their advice often comes from their own experiences, limitations, or fears.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t listen to others. I’m saying we should take in as much input as we can—but decide from our own intuition. That’s what makes a decision powerful enough to take the necessary action that turns the impossible into possible.

Great decisions are led by love, not fear.

When was the last time you did just one thing?

We turn on the radio the moment we get into the car. We turn on the TV while cooking. We commute with podcasts, exercise with music, eat with screens, sleep with stories we never finish. All of us multitask—we fill every empty space with noise.

Most people misunderstand multitasking as doing more of what matters, using more energy, and producing more results. In reality, when we multitask, we’re avoiding the things that actually matter—because those things require energy. So we conserve energy by doing many unimportant things instead, and the results are usually poor.

I’ve noticed that when I’m tired from work, I’ll put Netflix on half the screen and browse shopping sites on the other half. A glass of wine on the table, a guitar in my hand—and I convince myself this is “rest.” The result? I have no idea what I watched, sometimes I buy things I regret, I drink too much, and my guitar practice goes nowhere.

I later learned that choosing just one activity gives me deeper relaxation and much better recovery (measured by sleep quality). Or, honestly, it’s often better to just go to bed. But choosing to do only one thing takes a lot more energy—that’s why I default to multitasking instead.

Multitasking teaches us to focus less and less. And that lack of focus slowly steals certain skills from us. If you constantly fill silence with noise—playing something in the background at all times—you won’t be able to edit video or compose music with depth and intention.

These are just examples from my own life. How about you?

What important skill might you be losing—by filling every quiet space with noise or multitasking?

Humans are design creatures. Since ancient times, we’ve manipulated form to create function that makes life easier: wheels, currency, vehicles, computers, AI, and countless other things we’ve built and evolved over time.

We all share the instinct to make our lives more comfortable. Using books to lift a monitor, hanging grocery bags on an umbrella handle, using sunglasses as a temporary hairband—these are all acts of design, intentional or not.

As a professional, design is the only career I’ve ever had. I love observing problems and the clever ways people navigate them. I enjoy making things. I change jobs every day within the same company. My work comes with deadlines, but the work itself is never finished or complete. That’s what makes it endlessly fun.

Whether I’m playing music, travelling, or reading—everything eventually connects back to design. If living is my input, then design is my output. And when I have enough input, the output barely feels like effort; it simply flows through me.

If I’m lucky in any way, being able to live my life as a designer is one of my greatest fortunes.

When I feel unsettled, I write down what’s on my mind as numbered bullet points. Each point is no more than three lines—to stop my thoughts from scattering. One bullet point, one idea. And I limit myself to no more than ten points per session.

Writing this way feels like having a conversation with myself. I write down how I feel, ask questions, and answer them—going back and forth until I reach the tenth point. Often, I find clarity before I even get there. The goal is simply to make my thoughts clearer. I don’t share any of this with anyone. I write so I can step back from being the thinker and become the observer.

This practice gives me space between what worries me and how I choose to respond. That space is my safe zone—where ideas bounce around without judgment. I love writing; there is a big difference between thinking you understand something and being able to write it down.

If something is weighing on your mind, try this method. It might help.

If listening is about collecting information (input), then speaking is about sharing information (output). The key is to make sure we have enough input before producing any output—so that what we share is truly useful, not just what we’re comfortable or eager to say.

I used to think that talking about my skills and expertise would help others understand how I could help them. But what most people actually care about is what they can do with me—not what I can do for them. People feel good about you only when you make them feel good about themselves.

As a designer, my best work happens when people feel like they’re part of it. I listen to what they need and design with them. Bringing everyone along the journey is as hard as designing itself—but that’s what separates good designers from great ones.

No matter how innovative your ideas are, how deep your knowledge runs, or how impressive your past achievements might be—they mean little if others don’t feel connected to you. Guiding people on the journey is just as important as reaching the destination.

It took me a long time to understand that. I hope this reflection saves you a little time on your own journey.

Continuing from my last reflection—money is a tool, not a goal—I want to share how I think about my relationship with money.

(And to be clear—this is not financial advice.)

I see myself as the CEO of a company called my life. Money is my employees—they work for me. My job is to set direction and policy, and to hire more capable employees (money) to work for the company.

This company’s mission is simple: to live peacefully and be of value to others. We measure our performance in the amount of happiness we experience each day.

My company has three main departments:

1. Growth — responsible for creating expansion.
2. Venture — focused on seeking new opportunities and knowledge.
3. Joy — dedicated to cultivating happiness.

The rest are general departments that manage everyday operating expenses—the cost of running the company, emergency funds, and other essentials.

One of the scariest things in running the company of life is not knowing my cash flow—especially when income and expenses get mixed together. Sometimes money can trick you into thinking you have what you don’t—and that’s where ugly debt begins.

I allocate resources differently for each department depending on the season of life. The key, I believe, is to define the role of your money clearly. If money is a tool, then using the right tool for the right job will always get you closer to your goals—faster, and better.

Between praise and criticism, which one is harder to handle?

Criticism usually comes from uncensored opinions—and you get to choose whether to take it in or let it go. In fact, constructive criticism can even be helpful, because someone is pointing out what you may not see. And once you see a flaw, you’ve already solved part of the problem.

But praise is much harder to handle, because it’s something we crave. We want to hold on to it—even when it doesn’t serve us, or when it slowly pulls us away from who we are.

Imagine working over the weekend, and your manager praises your dedication. There’s a high chance you’ll work over the weekend again—even if that goes against your personal value of quality family time.

The hardest thing to change is someone’s mind, yet praise can do exactly that. It can influence us without us realising it. If we don’t pause to reflect on the compliments we receive, we become easy to sway.

It’s often clear when criticism comes from good or bad intent—but with praise, we rarely know whether it’s genuine or manipulative.

I think praise and criticism come together as a package. As long as we feel joy from praise, we’ll also feel pain from criticism.

Perhaps the goal isn’t to avoid either—but to stay steady between the two.

Will you double down on your strengths—or upskill your weaknesses?

If you keep sharpening your strengths until you master them, how can you be sure you won’t start seeing every problem as a nail just because you’re holding a hammer? But if you focus only on improving your weaknesses, how can you be sure it’s not like racing a monkey up a tree?

We shouldn’t choose between strengths or weaknesses—we should choose what’s fun. We should develop what we enjoy doing. At first, that might happen to be a strength or a weakness; it doesn’t matter. When we enjoy something, we do it longer. And when we do it long enough, we get good at it. No one needs to be an expert—or have fun—in just one thing.

As a designer, I see skills as a toolbox, not a single tool. I take care of the toolbox I already have while collecting new tools along the way. When the box gets full, I take out old tools I no longer use—or I buy a bigger box.

To answer my question: I’m not trying to perfect my strengths or fix my weaknesses. I’m simply collecting the things I enjoy doing—and I’m excited to see how these tools will compound into something new I can use to explore the unknown.

And to double down on that: life always throws new tools at you through unexpected opportunities—embrace the ambiguity.

Do you really believe your thoughts belong to you?

If they do, can you control them? Can you stop thinking about the past? The future? Can you stop imagining your next holiday while working—or stop thinking about work while on holiday?

I believe our thoughts belong to us, but our ability to control them varies. Think of thoughts like a dog—you own the dog, but how well you control it depends on how well you’ve trained it.

You can train your dog to stay with you in the present, not to run off chasing everything it sees. You can train it to wait before crossing the road, to stay calm around other dogs at the park. Love and patience are the keys.

Here’s the interesting part: you own the dog, but the dog isn’t you. The same goes for thoughts—you own them, but they aren’t you. Every day, your mind produces countless thoughts, good and bad alike—depending on how well you’ve trained it. You don’t have to believe every single one.

The body is a great instrument for observing a thought. I’ve learned to notice the subtle physical shifts that come with different kinds of thoughts—the tension, the ease, the warmth, the chill, the gut feeling.

Over time, these sensations form patterns that help me recognise—more clearly and more quickly—how my body responds to constructive or destructive ideas, so I can choose how to respond before I act.

Perhaps that’s what it means to own a thought—to observe before you act.

Thought adds steps. Action removes them.

Have you ever planned something in detail—every step mapped out carefully—only to find that once you started, nothing went according to plan? You had to adapt, fix things along the way, adjust your plan in real time. And when it was all done, how different was your final outcome from what you first imagined?

As a creative professional, I often raise my hand before knowing exactly how I’ll do something. I like to figure it out on the front line. I enjoy learning by doing—perhaps that’s simply how I learn best. I’ve never liked learning too far ahead; that usually means studying everything without knowing which parts will truly matter.

I prefer taking action, because it gives me an immediate feedback loop. Thinking, on the other hand, tends to multiply thoughts without creating anything tangible. Most of my best work began in uncertainty—I didn’t know where it would end when I started. I just kept going, kept iterating, and sometimes the work carried me further than I ever expected.

Think less. Do more.

Today I tried to think of something to write about, but nothing came to mind. The stories I wanted to share have all been told. I felt like I was trying to invent something out of emptiness—and that goes against the purpose of writing these daily reflections. I want to write about what I’ve felt, seen, or learned.

So today, I’ll write about not being able to write.

This past week I’ve been unwell and staying home in isolation. I haven’t gone anywhere or met anyone, yet I’ve still tried to write every day. Writing, I realised, is like using up a kind of internal resource. And lately, I haven’t been replenishing it—because I haven’t been out living much at all.

When we drain our resources—ideas, money, energy—we start squeezing out what’s left. That pressure creates tension and friction, and it inevitably affects the quality of our work. What I’ve learned today is this: don’t wait until your resources run dry before you refill them. Keep replenishing what you use.

Sometimes, the best thing we can do is put down what we’re doing and go out to find something new to refill ourselves.

Pause to move forward.

Things that are easy to do and easy to repeat rarely lead to meaningful results. Think about it: doomscrolling, binge-watching, drinking—they’re all effortless, endlessly repeatable, and give us instant feedback loops. Yet they never make us feel like we’re progressing. The easier the habit, the faster it traps us.

In contrast, meaningful outcomes often come from simple things most people know but few practise. Exercise, saving and investing, developing a craft—none are complicated, yet few do them consistently enough to see results. Why is that?

The main reason is impatience. When we don’t see the feedback loop straight away, we lose our attention. It’s far easier to open social media and feel entertained instantly than to go running and wait months—or even years—to see the physical change.

While we can’t control how long it takes to see results, we can choose where to place our attention. Instead of waiting for a fit of our jeans—feedback that takes time—why not track our daily weight, running distance, the streak of days we run?

For me, seeing the scale drop by even 0.01% is enough progress to run again tomorrow. I know I’m moving forward, no matter how small the win. After all, a small win beats a big loss any day.

One of life’s simplest joys is eating.

I always pause to thank the food before I eat—both the meal and the person who made it (most of the time, that’s Kate).

A delicious meal feels special because it awakens all five senses—sight, taste, smell, sound, and touch—all at once.

But that doesn’t mean I eat whatever I want, whenever I want.

On ordinary days, I intentionally create small limits around eating—what I eat, when I eat, and what I do while eating.

(No screens, no distractions—just staying with my senses.)

These limits keep eating special. They stop it from becoming just another routine.

Even though the limits mean I eat less, I enjoy it more—and for longer.

When something special happens too often, it becomes ordinary.

Maybe limits aren’t restrictions at all.

Maybe they’re how we preserve the beauty of what’s already good.

For an astronaut travelling to the moon, which leg of the journey holds more meaning—the way there, or the way back?

For most of us, the first few times we go somewhere new are thrilling. But returning home—seeing the people we love, settling back into the rhythm of ordinary life—always carries a different kind of meaning.

The act of going gives the act of returning its meaning. But that meaning begins with the people around us before we ever leave.

And if we look beyond travel, “going somewhere new” doesn’t just mean visiting new places. It can also mean gaining something we’ve never had before—owning material things, reaching a financial goal, or earning a promotion. Yet all of those achievements feel richer when we have someone to return to, someone to share them with—a family, a friend, a team that welcomes us back every day.

We all have goals we want to reach, so we set out on our own journeys. But what’s the point of arriving at the destination if, once you get there, you look around and no one’s beside you?

Every journey has both a departure and a return. Today I might lean on you; tomorrow, you might lean on me. That’s the real meaning of travelling—to support one another, to appreciate each other when we’re together, and to be missed when we’re apart.

To have someone waiting for us when we return—that’s worth more than travelling to the farthest edge of the universe and coming back to no one.

When we’re sick, one thing becomes very clear—the body is honest. Pain shows where it hurts. Food reveals its effect to our body right away. Spend too long on screens and your head spins. The body always knows what it needs—it’s just that when we’re unwell, it speaks louder.

Thinking, on the other hand, is rarely so direct. It argues, persuades, and negotiates. It tells us to keep working when the body asks for rest. It convinces us we can’t make a difference—even before we try.

The body speaks quietly. Thinking shouts.

Imagine standing before a crowd to speak. Your hands tremble, your heart races, your breath shortens. The body quietly says, you’re excited. But thinking twists it out loud: What if no one cares? What if I forget my lines? The thoughts start spinning. The truth is—you’re simply excited. And that excitement doesn’t mean your message isn’t worth sharing.

I’ve learned that when we train the body, we also train thinking. That’s why people say, take a deep breath before you speak. It’s how you tell the body, I’m safe. I’ve got this. And when the body calms down, thinking follows.

We should listen to the body more—and to our thinking a little less. Notice what you feel—before you think.

I think that constantly changing hotels, shifting time zones, and adjusting to different climates over the past few months have confused my body clock. When sleep falls apart, everything else begins to follow—my body feels unwell, and my mind grows foggy.

Whenever I’m sick, I notice how my priorities change. Illness is an honest tool—one that measures imbalance more accurately than any smartwatch ever could, a way for the body to remind us when we’ve been overworking or focusing on the wrong things.

I love travelling, but I’ve learned that the space between trips matters just as much as the journeys themselves.

Being unwell brings me back to my body. It makes me listen. I start to notice where I’m tense, where I feel heat or cold. Without getting sick, I might never have paid such close attention. So I thank my body for showing up to remind me—to help me care for it better before it’s too late.

Maybe success is simpler than we think. Maybe it’s just a good night’s sleep—because that’s the foundation everything else stands on.

I water my indoor plants once a week. My yellow watering can isn’t too small or too big—just right. Some plants need two refills until they’ve had enough. On some weeks, watering feels soothing; on busier ones, it’s just another task to cross off the list.

What’s interesting is this: when my mind is fully present, watering plants makes me happy. But when I’m rushing—when my thoughts are elsewhere—the same act feels like a burden. I think every task can be either joy or duty—it depends on where your mind is while doing it.

We can’t always choose to do only what makes us happy, but we can choose to show up consistently. For me, showing up feels a lot like dollar-cost averaging (DCA) in an index fund. In the short term, the returns rise and fall; in the long term, consistency compounds.

I water my plants every week. In the short term, the joy of doing may ebb and flow—but in the long term, consistency compounds care—leaving me with a small green space to enjoy.

Humans were designed to move their bodies while keeping their minds still. But most of us do the opposite—we move too little and think too much. We sit at desks for hours, often in poor posture, and call it normal—until office syndrome starts calling. We scroll endlessly, bombarding our minds with information until it becomes overwhelming.

Have you ever had a day when you felt uneasy for no clear reason? You worry about the past, fear the future, can’t focus on what’s in front of you. So you reach for cheap dopamine—social media, snacks, or even multitasking—wanting to feel better right now. But soon, you feel worse.

Those days happen because the mind is too active and the body too still. When the body doesn’t move and the mind won’t stop, the imbalance keeps you restless. You sleep poorly, wake up tired, think more, move less—and the cycle repeats.

The solution, I think, is to do what the body was built to do—and think a little less.

Move. Walk. Run. Exercise. Let your body do what it’s meant to do, and reduce the thoughts you let in. Practise mindfulness. When you think about the past or future, your thoughts multiply endlessly. But when your mind stays in the present, there’s only one thought—the one right in front of you.

I treat low moods as reminders—it’s time to move. When I run quietly, and I’ve gone far enough to feel exhausted, all the thoughts fade away. There’s only the sound of my breath and the rhythm of my footsteps. Before I know it, my heart feels lighter—and a light heart always gives birth to better ideas.

When was the last time you truly did nothing when you had free time?

Doing nothing sounds simple—but free time is becoming more and more expensive. We’ve grown afraid of letting time pass without purpose. The moment we have open space, we rush to fill it. Somewhere along the way, we began to mistake speed and productivity for value.

But constant productivity can backfire. Imagine being expected to deliver a project in two weeks—but finishing it in one. People will praise you, but quietly, they’ll raise the bar. Next time, they’ll expect it in less than a week. You’ll chase the praise, push harder, work faster and eventually compromise quality—until you burn out.

Real joy comes from direction over speed, quality over quantity, and the inner joy of doing over external validation. And all of that requires space—to recharge, to reflect, and to rediscover the pleasure of creating without needing applause.

My best ideas often arrive after I step away. I see new opportunities after letting projects rest or coming back from holidays with fresh eyes. I solve tough problems after long, quiet runs.

Sometimes the best thinking happens when I stop trying to think.

Doing nothing doesn’t make you lazy—it makes your doing more alive.

Have you ever noticed how the flight home always feels faster than the flight out?

The activities are the same, the views are the same—sometimes the duration is even longer on paper—but somehow, returning feels quicker. I think it’s because we experience time differently in each direction.

On the way out, time moves in a straight line—from A to B. We don’t know what awaits us, so we watch the clock, anticipate, hope, and wait. Expectation stretches time.

On the way back, time feels circular—from A returning to A. We know what lies ahead, so we release expectation. We let time flow and find ourselves back home almost effortlessly.

Travel reveals how our sense of time mirrors our inner state. I’ve spent many years living on a straight timeline—chasing goals, watching the clock, straining toward destinations. The more I waited for progress, the slower life felt.

But when my mind softened, I began to live in circles instead—doing what I love repeatedly, without chasing. I enjoyed the process so much that time began to disappear. Some days, I even wished it would slow down.

Eventually, I realised both forms of time coexist. My life is made of circular dots connected in a straight line—moments of joy, creation, rest, reflection—all forming a quiet path forward.

I no longer draw the line just to reach the end. I just place one dot at a time—some small, some big—and somehow, those dots become direction.

We often overlook what we already have—until it’s gone. Losing the ordinary in life is far more painful than gaining something extraordinary. You might work hard to earn success, but when illness strikes, everything collapses into one simple wish—to be normal again.

Gratitude is a skill worth practising daily.

Today, I’m flying back to Sydney. I’m grateful to have travelled to Japan again with Kate. Grateful for safe journeys, shared meals, mountain air, autumn leaves, hot springs, the quiet politeness of strangers, the flight home, even the airport lounge.

Grateful to have a home to return to—and a place like Japan to miss.

When we focus on what we have, gratitude becomes endless. But when we fixate on what we lack, expectations rise and suffering follows.

Pay attention to what you pay attention to.

I’ve always admired the language the Japanese use—but I don’t mean Japanese. I mean their silence language—a quiet form of communication that speaks loudly across the city. It doesn’t demand attention; it expects understanding.

Even in major cities like Tokyo, you rarely hear people talking loudly in public. Yet that doesn’t mean they aren’t communicating. The Japanese rely heavily on nonverbal cues—body language, tone, rhythm, distance.

They rarely express their needs directly but expect others to notice them. If you’re being too loud in a quiet place, you’ll feel the weight of a few sharp glances. If you’re blocking a walkway, someone might brush past you—not rudely, but as a signal that you’ve missed the cue.

I find this silence language fascinating because life itself speaks to us in the same way. It doesn’t shout; it whispers. The feedback often comes quietly through our own body. Sit in the wrong posture, and soon your back starts to ache. Carry too much stress, and your shoulders stiffen. It’s quiet, but never empty.

Life communicates in silence—so you must listen carefully.

Pay attention to what you pay attention to. Life speaks in silence, and like the Japanese language of silence, it expects you to understand.

Each quiet morning—when the mind feels clear, the body refreshed, and the world still asleep—what we choose to do in that moment shapes the direction of our lives. I choose calm over noise. Awareness over thought. Books over screens. Stillness over motion.

I believe calm is life’s default state, a natural baseline gifted to us. But it’s fragile. If we’re not careful, we grow addicted to noise—the endless scroll that keeps demanding more of us. We all know that “short clip” will never be short.

To notice the warmth of your breath as it leaves your body, the sound difference between hot and cold water, the scent of coffee and paper, the feeling of your feet gliding over wooden floors, or the light shifting gently with the sun’s angle—these moments remind me that I can still steer the most important instrument of all: my life.

After all, no one wants to be on a plane with a pilot who doesn’t know how to fly.

One of my favourite things about travelling in Japan is the hotel buffet. Beyond the variety of local dishes, most hotels also serve an international spread to accommodate travellers—making the dining room the perfect place to observe people across cultures.

Watching people at a buffet feels like observing a live usability test. You can learn a lot from how people eat—the utensils they choose, the food they prioritise, even how they arrange their plates. Sometimes, just by looking at a tray, you can guess whether it belongs to a Japanese guest or a foreign visitor.

If behaviour is what people do when they think no one is watching—consciously or not—then buffets are a perfect prototype for hotel usability testing. No one feels observed; everyone acts naturally, revealing patterns that might otherwise stay hidden.

Hotels could easily learn from this. By analysing leftover quantities and comparing them to guest demographics by season, they could refine their menus and improve future service.

Prototyping, after all, is about observing what people do, not what they say they’ll do. Surveys, on the other hand, rely on predicting the right questions and expecting people to imagine their future behaviour—which isn’t always accurate.

In the short term, building prototypes may seem more costly than running surveys. But over time, prototypes reveal truths that data alone can’t. They help us adapt our products and services more precisely.

At a quiet inn in northern Japan, time seems to stand still. The old building rests on a mountainside surrounded by lush forest. Guests in yukata shuffle softly through the halls between meals and the onsen—the rhythm of life slows down.

I’m sitting in an open-air hot spring surrounded by nature. The autumn leaves sway gently in the wind, a gust of winter air brushing against my face. Yet my body feels warm and calm, soaked in the heat that brings my mind and body back together. I feel like my body battery has just been fully charged.

But after a while of recharging in stillness, I start to crave movement again. I want to return to my home studio—to create something meaningful for someone. Stillness leads me to action, and action brings me back to stillness.

It’s like a phone taken off the charger once it’s full—ready to be useful again, until it returns to charge when the battery runs low.

If comfort is the moment when our battery is recharging, then it’s a good and necessary thing. But we can’t leave the phone on the charger forever. A fulfilled life, I think, is one where we go out, do something that matters, and know that our charger is waiting for us when we run low.

Two guitarists can play the same guitar and create completely different music—because they play with different goals in mind. Of course, every guitar has its own sound and feel, but it’s the musician who decides how to use that instrument to achieve what they’re aiming for.

Money works the same way. Money is an instrument, not the goal. And since it’s an instrument, we can practise using it—just like a guitarist practises until the sound of fingers sliding across strings feels jazz and rock and roll.

Two people earning the same salary will likely have very different levels of wealth after a few years. The difference lies in how skilfully each person plays the instrument called money.

Setting goals in terms of a number rarely brings lasting satisfaction—because our desires grow as our wealth does. If my goal is to have $1M, I’ll soon start chasing $10M, then $100M, and so on—an endless pursuit.

But if my goal is freedom, and money is simply the tool to achieve it, I’ll use it to buy freedom in small, meaningful doses—doing what I love after work, taking weekend walks, or travelling when I can. It’s the same instrument, but a very different song.

Money is the tool, not the goal—know your goal, not just your savings target.

Related thought

Greetings from Japan.

From unwrapping an onigiri to operating home appliances, the Japanese show remarkable precision in communication. Every instruction is crafted with care, so the receiver can follow it with ease.

But refined communication is a two-way act—both the sender and the receiver must share the same appreciation for detail. This approach feels natural in Japan, where people notice and celebrate the smallest subtleties of daily life.

Carefulness creates distinction, but simplicity creates efficiency.

At breakfast buffets, I often see foreign travellers burning their toast because the unfamiliar toaster looks overly complicated—not because instructions are missing, but because they’re too detailed. Faced with long explanations, people look for shortcuts and rely on trial and error instead.

I believe true universality lies in refined simplicity. The most thoughtful designs don’t just explain—they guide, effortlessly. Because in the end, simple is communication.

After planning a trip abroad, how do you reach your destination as quickly as possible?

One of the fastest ways, I’ve found, is to fly with the national airline of your destination—United Airlines to San Francisco, ANA to Tokyo, China Southern to Guangzhou. The cabin crew and service style often mirror the culture of that country.

The quickest way to understand a culture is to sit 35,000 feet above it. Want to understand a country? Fly its airline.

For example, when ANA flight attendants perform their cross-check before take-off, they point to the aircraft doors rather than just looking at them—a small gesture that reflects Japanese precision. You’ll see the same method used by train operators across Japan. ANA’s attendants also quietly observe passengers, anticipating what they might need next—the same attentiveness you’ll find throughout Japan.

What’s fascinating is how communication style, body language, and problem-solving all reveal an airline’s cultural DNA. I once met a Thai flight attendant working for Singapore Airlines—her manner felt distinctly Singaporean, not Thai.

It’s fair to say that flight attendants are often the first expression of culture you encounter when travelling. These behaviours are shaped by leadership—airline executives working with national institutions to represent their country. Airlines are the face of a nation, so flying with its carrier is one of the fastest ways to experience its culture.

I think company culture works the same way. Culture is simply “people like us do things like this.” It doesn’t originate from the majority but from leadership—who define direction, behaviour, and tone, while everyone else adapts to move in sync.

That’s why it’s important to understand a company’s culture before joining it. There are only two outcomes: either you grow into their kind of person, or you realise you don’t belong and move on.

So how can you tell if a company’s culture fits before joining? Start by observing how leaders communicate, carry themselves, and make decisions. Then compare that to how employees express themselves online—on LinkedIn, X, blogs, or podcasts.

But ultimately, none of this matters if you don’t first know what kind of culture you want for this chapter of your life. Many people know the company they want, but not the culture they need. The right culture begins with self-awareness—once you understand what you value, the right environment will either find you, or you’ll create it yourself.

If we break a flight into three main phases—take-off, cruising, and landing—the moments when an aircraft moves slowest yet consumes the most energy are take-off and landing. But once it climbs to cruising altitude, it glides smoothly, efficiently, and effortlessly in flow.

It’s the same when starting any creative project. Whenever I begin a new design, the early phase is slow and heavy. I need deep focus to understand the problem, plan my approach, and check the resources I’ll need.

But once I take off the project, I enter flow. Everything starts to move faster, and most parts of the design process run almost on autopilot. Of course, occasional turbulence happens—unplanned backlogs, revisions, unexpected feedback—but as long as I take off properly, the rest of the journey usually moves forward smoothly.

Landing a project brings its own kind of turbulence too: communication, final polish, and handoff. But a safe landing is part of the craft.

What’s interesting is that life works the same way. Whether it’s building a habit, saving money, running regularly, or nurturing relationships—it takes far more energy to get started than to keep going.

For me, the hardest kind of communication is cross-sense communication.

I can’t make you hear the scent of a flower—no matter how beautifully I describe it, or even sing about it. If you’ve never smelled that fragrance before, you’ll never truly understand what I’m trying to say.

And in teamwork, sense goes far beyond sight, sound, taste, touch, or smell.

Even when a team shares the same goal, each function often operates through a different sense of reality. A Product Manager (PM) might not understand a designer’s design sense, and likewise, a designer might not grasp a PM’s business sense. We’re trying to make others hear a scent they’ve never smelled.

Before communicating, it helps to understand which sense the other person uses to perceive their world—so we can adjust our approach and speak through the same sense, not across them.

For example, if my PM is operating through a resource-management sense, I’ll present my design with clear scope and milestones—so they can sense that their resources are being managed effectively.

Whenever possible, I like to design in front of them (live sessions). That way, they can see how I structure ideas, make trade-offs, and prioritise details. They begin to understand my design sense more intuitively.

I’ve learned that working side by side is the fastest way to tune our senses together. Once our senses align, communication becomes effortless—and harmony becomes the by-product.

Who will go farther—the rabbit running in circles, or the turtle walking slowly forward?

I once believed that skill and speed were clear advantages. The ability to produce great work quickly should naturally lead to career growth, right? But experience has taught me otherwise. It depends on whether your good work is aligned—with the right place, at the right time.

Creating great work that doesn’t match the organisation’s direction won’t move you forward. Likewise, growing in a company whose goals don’t align with your own won’t take you where you want to go. Both are forms of running in place.

Many of us spend years climbing the corporate ladder—but do we climb because we know what’s at the top, or simply because it’s the only ladder we see in front of us? If we don’t know our direction, how can we tell if we’re actually getting closer to our goal?

It’s no surprise that many people don’t yet know their direction. It takes energy, time, and honesty to sit with yourself long enough to find it. In the end, it’s easier to look around, see where most people are heading, and just follow along.

But as your friend, I’d encourage you to pause—to invest time in defining where you truly want to go. Clarity of direction allows you to design your energy, time, and environment to match your pace—to choose what to pursue and what to let go of—instead of reacting to everything that comes your way.

Every morning when I look out my window, I see a tree—not too big, not too small. It changes with the seasons. In winter, it lets its leaves fall. In summer, it grows new ones to meet the sun. On stormy days, when strong winds blow, it bends and sways but never breaks.

That tree is my role model. I’ve watched it stand tall, flexible, and patient through every kind of weather. It shows up every day—whether under bright skies or heavy rain—offering shade, clean air, and a home for birds that come and go. It contributes quietly, never asking for anything in return.

Sometimes, in my rush to move forward, I forget to notice whether I’m actually contributing where I am. Am I flexible enough to adapt? Have I provided rest or comfort to those around me? Every time I see the tree, it reminds me to pause—to reflect on my values and direction.

The tree moves, but it doesn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t move forward in distance, but it deepens its roots while reaching for the sky. I’ve come to believe that direction matters more than speed. Perhaps success is just a simple equation: direction plus endurance.

One of my favourite flowers is the lily. When placed in a vase, lilies usually last about one to two weeks—but with care, they can survive up to three.

Over those few weeks, you can witness the lily’s quiet transformation day by day. It begins as a closed, green bud, then slowly opens into a full bloom that fills the room with fragrance. Soon after, it begins to wilt; the soft white pollen falls, the petals fade and detach, and eventually, it’s time to say goodbye—clean the vase, replace the water, and welcome new flowers.

I get to see it all—the youth, the blossoming, the fading, and the farewell. It’s like watching a human life unfold: birth, growth, ageing, and passing, all within a few short weeks. Those who tend carefully to their lilies may prolong their beauty for a while, but in the end, we all have to part ways. Only the vase remains—to hold life for the next bloom.

Sometimes, watching the cycle of a lily makes me reflect on my own life. What I do today may not show results immediately. But if I imagine myself as a lily with only two or three weeks to live—and everything I do now will bear fruit within days—would I still choose to spend my time the same way?

If the flower represents our life, I’d like to place mine in the right vase—one that keeps me healthy, fulfilled, and surrounded by joy. The lily doesn’t just ask me questions; often, it also answers them—reminding me what truly matters in each passing moment.

Alright—let’s plan a trip abroad.

How much would you pay for a hotel room with just a single bed and barely enough floor space to walk around it? Your luggage wouldn’t even fit inside—you’d have to store it elsewhere. The walls might not be fully enclosed, so staff could see you at all times. You’d share a communal bathroom with strangers. Sounds like a bad deal, doesn’t it?

But if we move this entire scenario onto an airplane—suddenly you’re flying First Class. You get two or three windows, your seat reclines into a bed that a flight attendant makes for you, and your meal is served on linen. Your luggage is handled carefully and arrives before everyone else’s. The bathroom is spotless, and on some airlines, you can even take a shower mid-flight.

It’s fascinating how the same benefits can have different value depending on the space they exist in. And I think this applies to our careers, too. The same skill, when placed in the right space—team, company, or context—can create exponentially more value.

Space is finite, but value is not. Value can always be created anew when your skills meet the right environment.

Are you using your skills in the space that values them most today?

Most workplaces have two hierarchies: the org chart and influence. The first is easy to read; the second, much harder. It’s rarely written down—you have to observe team dynamics to see it.

Understanding the influence hierarchy means knowing who truly affects decisions, who people listen to, and how choices are made. Often, the influence hierarchy doesn’t mirror the org chart. Recognising that chain of influence can shape your design direction long before your work reaches a customer.

So how can you tell who holds real influence? There’s one signal we often overlook: body posture. It has little to do with title, skill, or corner offices bathed in sunlight.

True influence shows through composed body language, respectful tone, clear speech, humility, and grace. Influential people listen more than they speak. They make decisions with calm confidence that comes from within.

Body language speaks louder than any title on paper. Posture is your personal brand, and your smile is the logo. A strong brand shapes how others feel about you—and that feeling is influence.

Are you waiting for a promotion? Why not start acting like the person in that role today? Step into the posture of the job you want—no permission required.

Is it good to always win?

In every competition, who doesn’t want to win? We all work hard for the best outcome—but the best outcome isn’t reserved for everyone. The top of the pyramid is always smaller than its base. As the saying goes, the winner takes all.

But I believe winner takes all is a scarcity mindset. It assumes resources are limited and must be seized before they’re gone, rather than shared to grow collectively and sustainably. People with this mindset chase the top of the pyramid instead of expanding the base—so the pyramid itself can become larger and higher.

Have you ever worked with someone who can’t stand losing? They win every argument. They always have an opinion. They can critique your work flawlessly. They’re champions defending their title. But tell me—are you happy working with them?

I don’t think losing is always a bad thing. Failure pushes us to try new approaches. It makes us work harder than winners. It helps us connect with others—because let’s be honest, there are more losers than winners in this world.

The problem is, we value outcomes too much and effort too little. Sometimes life throws us into losing so we can grow stronger. The opportunity to learn from our mistakes is just as valuable as victory. Winning and losing both teach us how to collaborate. I know I can’t always be right, so I listen to my teammates more carefully—so that next time, I can do better.

The joy of playing the game itself is far greater than the joy of being a champion. I’d rather be a loser who still gets to play, than a winner who’s too afraid to play—or worse, has no one left who wants to play with them.

When you start something new, do you zoom in or zoom out?

I often get this wrong. Whenever I join a new project or team, I tend to jump straight into design. Maybe it’s because I’ve worked on similar problems before, or the challenge happens to be in my comfort zone. I can produce quickly and work independently—but whether it succeeds or fails, this habit costs me something valuable: the chance to truly connect with my team.

Yes, I usually start by zooming in. I focus too much on what I’m good at. I try to add value before checking whether that value is actually needed by the team—a simple vibe check I often skip. Deep down, it comes from insecurity. I used to believe that not producing meant not having value. But there’s always a step before creating: zooming out to understand what should be created.

The same principle applies beyond design. We need to zoom out before we pinpoint a location on the map, scan the overview on Netflix before choosing a show, or read the index before diving into a book.

Practising zooming out has helped me immensely. I now take time to understand the team’s needs, goals, and my role before I start building anything. This reduces rework, improves collaboration, and helps me move in the same direction as everyone else.

Starting with a zoom-out makes the team zoom in on me—they listen more closely. But starting with a zoom-in often makes the team zoom out—because I might be creating something they never asked for.

“Three wishes! No wishing for more wishes,” the genie says, arms folded and eyebrows raised. If you had three wishes, what would you ask for?

I’ve noticed that most people wish for fame, wealth, power, or immortality. What’s interesting is that we often wish for the things we don’t have—and rarely for the things we already do. What we wish for reveals who we are.

We tend to believe that what we lack defines our desires, and what we already have will stay with us forever. I think that mindset is dangerous. Most people don’t truly know what they want, nor do they appreciate what they already have. They live on autopilot, following a script written by someone else, unsure of where they’re heading.

The idea of three wishes is a good one—but only if we treat it as a daily question, not a once-in-a-lifetime fantasy like in Aladdin. We should set our three wishes each day, so we can make them happen ourselves. After all, we’re each the genie of our own life.

So—what are the three most important things you want to make happen today?

Is winning once out of ten a success—or a failure?

In life, I’ve learned countless things I never use in my daily life: physics, chemistry, biology. Looking back, the ratio might be 1:10—out of every ten things I learn, perhaps only one finds real application. On paper, that’s a “failure rate” of 90%.

But think about it. Imagine you’re buying a house. You might inspect ten properties but purchase only one. Is that failure—or success? Sometimes we need to learn ten things just to discover the one thing we truly enjoy doing.

I don’t see failure as a mistake, but as part of the process that leads to success. I can accept a high ratio of failure to success—as long as the success is big enough to outweigh them all.

One win can erase nine losses.

Do you think having competitors is a good thing?

A mentor once told me that even when we work on the same team with the same goals, in some ways we’re also competing with each other. I find that idea fascinating. If a colleague holds the same role as you, will you spend your energy supporting them to grow—or pushing yourself to get ahead?

I believe both can happen at once. One of the best ways to grow is by helping others grow. And when it comes to innovation, it’s a team sport. Talented teammates aren’t competitors—they’re sparring partners who push me further than I could go alone.

Strong competitors keep me improving. Being the best in the room only makes me stagnant. I don’t fear losing; I fear standing still. That’s why I’m excited to support teammates, even when they’re also my competitors—because they raise the standard I measure myself against.

In the end, we’re all playing a team sport. If the team wins, we all win. I want to work with people far better than me. The competitors I truly fear are the weak ones—because they can trick you into playing the wrong game, on the wrong field.

It’s better to lose the right game than to win the wrong one.

One of the quickest ways to destroy a dream is to make it come true. I used to have many dream guitars, and when I finally started earning enough, I went out and bought them. At the time, I believed spending money on tangible things was a worthy investment—I was simply converting cash into objects of value.

But I was wrong. The more things I owned, the less space I had. And clutter in my home mirrored clutter in my mind. For someone in a creative field, that’s dangerous. I think in images: what I see shapes what I think, my thoughts shape how I feel, and those feelings flow into the work I create.

The turning point came during my first trip to Japan with Kate. That journey showed me that experiences and memories are far more valuable than objects. Travel doesn’t take up space in your home; instead, it expands the space in your mind.

I can’t even remember when I bought each guitar, or how I felt the day I first held one. But I vividly remember every trip with Kate and our friends. Those memories inspire me to create better things, help me understand people more deeply, and give me strength on difficult days.

Today, travel has become one of our top priorities. For Kate and me, it’s our way of recharging. Just as we’d never let a phone battery run empty, we recharge our lives regularly—through travel.

Do you think waiting is happiness or suffering?

Personally, I believe having something to look forward to is good for mental health. But the waiting has to be tangible, with a realistic chance of happening. I place value on the small acts of waiting that shape each day.

I wait for the chance to work on a challenging project. I wait for lunch and coffee breaks. I wait for the ease of the evening. I wait to meet someone. I wait for Friday night. I wait for Saturday morning. I wait to spend the weekend with Kate. I wait for an upcoming holiday—and even for the return home that follows it.

To me, having something to look forward to is better than drifting aimlessly. The arrival of what we’ve been waiting for divides life into distinct segments, like verses of a song. It helps me set the rhythm of my life. And it reminds me that happiness and suffering are always temporary.

In the past, new ideas were a source of suffering for me. The moment an idea appeared, I felt the urge to build it immediately. My mind would circle around it endlessly. And of course, new ideas kept coming—without waiting for me to finish the old ones still hanging. On top of that, there was the pain of failing to capture them quickly enough, only to forget them entirely.

My way out of this cycle was to create. I had to make something—sketch, write, compose, prototype—and I had to do it right away. It felt as though ideas equalled suffering, while creation equalled happiness. But life is never that simple. Paradoxically, once I had created too much, I would feel a different kind of suffering—this time from the act of creating itself—and I would begin searching again for the joy of discovering new ideas.

I find it fascinating that the same thing can be both joy and suffering. These days, I’ve learned that the middle state is the most livable. Not joy, not suffering, but stable. Simply watching ideas as they come and go, knowing new ones will always arrive and the chance to create is endless. Appreciating progress as it unfolds in the present. For me, doing things steadily, with a light heart, is a practice worth keeping.

When was the last time you celebrated a win?

For product designers, the most meaningful projects are often long and complex. They demand collaboration across disciplines, where each specialist brings a different perspective—and it’s never simple to get everyone to measure progress with the same ruler.

We may share the same ultimate goals—solving problems for customers, creating value for the business, building something that lasts. But along the way, our milestones differ. Sometimes a designer’s proudest achievement—a clever interaction design—can become a production bottleneck for engineers. Everyone defines victory a little differently.

In an age where only big wins seem to count, I believe in the power of celebrating small wins. Even the tiniest bit of progress—an idea clarified, a draft completed—can feel just as rewarding as a launch. Small wins energise me to show up each day. They spark a beginner’s mindset, keep me humble, and help me notice and appreciate the victories of others too.

Today, I’ll celebrate with Kate over lunch at our favourite restaurant—because finishing this post is a win worth enjoying.

Am I filling empty space—or am I removing what’s unnecessary from it?

I ask myself this question across many parts of life.

In work: am I adding designs that matter, or stripping away what doesn’t belong?

In relationships: am I trying to collect more friends, or choosing the best ones and keeping them close?

In wealth: am I chasing new opportunities, or staying the course for the long game?

Experience has taught me that happiness comes less from adding and more from removing. I’m happiest when there’s space in my work. I’m happiest with a few close, quality friendships. And I invest—not speculate.

But everything that brings us joy can also bring us pain. The dream job can keep you awake at night. The people you love most will one day leave—and that loss becomes suffering. A luxury lifestyle often raises unrealistic expectations.

To me, happiness isn’t about having everything I want. It’s about needing less. The fewer the expectations, the greater the joy. I’m not chasing “more,” but refining toward “enough.”

They say you’re the average of the few people you spend most of your time with. But how do you know if those people are lifting you up or pulling you down? Eleanor Roosevelt put it well: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”

I love being around people of ideas. They bring perspectives that are fresh and often unexpected—sometimes small at first, but always original. They think differently. They create. They challenge norms. They spark excitement and open new ways of seeing the world. They are creators and sharers—and many of them are united by the same pursuit: ideas.

I’ve never met an idea-driven person who was truly stuck. They generate wealth again and again. They build something meaningful even when starting from nothing. I believe the ability to produce ideas comes from the ability to see ideas. And that’s why it matters so much to put yourself in environments surrounded by people of ideas.

How do you know when you’ve truly succeeded? What principles do you use to measure it? Is it financial freedom? Career growth? The impact you create for others? The truth is, each of us defines success differently—and that definition shifts with time and context.

When I was younger, my idea of success was disposable. It had clear boundaries: moving to Sydney, working for a global company, earning a promotion. But every milestone left me asking the same question: “Now what?”

Humans are wired to keep moving forward. What feels like a big success today may feel ordinary tomorrow. Sometimes I think the unhappiest people might be those who achieve everything they set out to—because they’re left with nothing more to chase.

The escape routes vary. Some raise the bar so high they’ll never reach it in one lifetime—like moving humanity to Mars. For me, at this stage of life, I’ve shifted to what I call a recyclable measure of success. One I can use again and again, every single day.

My measure of success is sleep. A successful life, to me, is one where I can sleep peacefully.

To sleep well each night, I need to balance my days with care, nurture my relationships, manage my wealth and health wisely, and guard myself against the ego-driven traps of anger, envy, and unhelpful comparison. All of this creates a lighter heart. And with a light heart, I sleep well.

That, to me, is success.

When you first apply for a role, the team cares about your skills and past experience. They hire the best fit. But once you’re in, no one looks back at your résumé. What matters is what you contribute now. What matters is whether you’re a good teammate. Put simply: what matters is whether they trust you.

You might deliver dazzling work and impressive results in record time. But none of it lasts if the team doesn’t trust you. Most opportunities come from trust—and trust is earned slowly. It takes time, and time demands patience.

Doing great work doesn’t always require patience—most people enjoy the rush of a big challenge. But supporting the team quietly, doing the simple (sometimes boring) things that unblock others—that demands far more patience.

The ability to be a supporter is a skill many talented people overlook. Yet it’s often the very thing that creates the space for their talents to shine when the moment finally comes.

Technology is making us lose the skill of waiting. We can’t watch a movie from start to finish without doing something else. We struggle to read entire books. We want to get fit instantly. We chase constant stimulation to fill every quiet moment—scrolling endlessly through short clips, not even knowing what we’re looking for, just hoping to stumble on something. It’s as if we always need noise to occupy the mind.

But waiting has its own purpose. It makes the arrival of something meaningful. It deepens our appreciation of what we receive. And, most importantly, it gives us the chance to sit with ourselves—to hear that inner voice and learn to live peacefully with it.

Living with your own voice is a skill. It can be learned. It can be developed. The world, however, is always trying to drown it out—blasting music, pushing opinions, flooding us with gossip, praise, and chatter both online and off. None of these matter as much as the voice you hear inside your own head.

And it would be a shame if that voice wasn’t truly yours. That quiet signal—subtle but persistent—is what I call gut feeling. It’s small. It’s fragile. And yet, it may be the most important thing you ever learn to hear.

Before the world went cashless, I noticed something interesting about how I spent money. When I had a large bill—say $100—it stayed in my wallet much longer than smaller bills of the same value. If I carried one $100 note, I would hesitate before using it. But if I had five $20 notes, I would spend them more freely—and end up parting with the same $100 much faster.

Paying $10 with a $100 bill felt like losing $100, even though the real cost was only 10%. Paying $10 with a $20 bill, however, felt easier—less of a loss. That’s when it struck me: humans don’t make decisions purely with reason, but with emotion.

The amount may be the same—$10—but the feeling is very different. And today, even though I pay almost everything by card, the pattern still shows up. Looking back at my transactions, the small, almost invisible expenses—coffee, eating out, transport—often add up to more than the bigger purchases I resisted with such care.

That made me realise: the real turning points in life often come from these $20-note decisions. Small actions we barely notice accumulate. Five $20 bills become $100. Daily habits stack into meaningful change. Progress is rarely about one big leap—it’s about the $20-note decisions we make every day, quietly adding up to something much greater.

I believe people develop IQ and EQ at different paces, depending on the season of their life. From what I’ve observed, designers with high IQ—meaning strong craft, skill, and taste—often develop EQ, the ability to work well with others, more slowly.

I once attended a series of hand-lettering workshops with master craftsmen and craftswomen. Their lines carried incredible creativity, sharpness, and precision—their letters looked as if they’d been printed by a machine. But spending time with them, you could sense their ego. It wasn’t surprising: their mastery was forged in solitude, built on countless hours of practice, with little need for collaboration.

In today’s world of software design, things are different. Designers, engineers, and PMs rely on one another. Collaboration is the medium as much as the code or the pixels. What’s fascinating is how vibe-code might shift this dynamic—making it easier for individuals to create independently, almost like the hand-lettering artists I once met.

Still, I believe IQ has its limits. You can keep sharpening your skills, but eventually the curve flattens. EQ, however, has no ceiling. Becoming someone others want to work with opens endless possibilities. Vibe-code may raise the baseline of IQ for everyone, but those who understand that humans are wired to depend on each other will continue to stand out.

Places with long views of nature, delicious and nourishing food, clean air, and silence are becoming harder to find—and more expensive. I believe that in the near future, these will be the true luxuries, far more valuable than cars, watches, bags, or clothes. Those goods are on their way to being accessible to almost everyone.

When I stand before a giant tree, a mountain, the sun, the moon, or the endless sea, I feel pulled back into nature. I can sit and watch for a very long time, and it always feels worth pausing everything else to take in the moment. In nature I see myself more clearly than in any mirror. I call this state daydreaming.

As a child, daydreaming was free. I grew up surrounded by nature, and drifting into it came naturally. Today, working in tall buildings, I need to invest time, money, and energy to find the kind of landscapes that make me daydream—often travelling far from home. My daydreams are no longer free.

Food tells a similar story. I used to pick mangoes straight from the tree—one at a time. Now I fill my basket at the supermarket, without knowing where they came from or how they were grown. When was the last time you walked through a city without inhaling cigarette smoke? Or wondered why the stranger next to you was scrolling TikTok on loudspeakers instead of headphones? When was the last time you truly heard your own thoughts?

I don’t want nature, nourishing food, clean air, and silence to become exclusive luxuries. I want them to remain free—shared, respected, and protected through simple acts of courtesy.

I can’t always remember what I’ve eaten, or every piece of information I’ve consumed. But I do believe what I take in—food, drink, or content—shapes who I am today. And tomorrow, I’ll change again, depending on what I consume. That’s why, when it comes to consumption, I believe less is more. It’s not just about what we eat or drink, but also what we feed our minds.

If consumption is the yin, then digestion is the yang—and both matter. Just as the body needs time to turn nutrients into strength, the mind needs space to transform information into ideas. Yet today, that time and space are rare. It feels like we’ve lost our tolerance for boredom. Instead, we snack endlessly on stimulation—scrolling short clips like handfuls of potato chips—without even noticing.

So I’ve started to make myself bored on purpose. When waiting for food or commuting, I sit quietly with no phone, no book, nothing. Boredom makes other activities feel richer. After being bored, I return to demanding work with more energy and joy. But if my baseline is constant stimulation, even meaningful work becomes harder to enjoy.

For me, boredom is the digestion phase of creativity. It gives my brain the silence it needs to process everything I’ve taken in. And almost always, new ideas arrive in those moments when I’m doing nothing—when I’m not even trying to find them—when I’m bored.

There’s a common Thai saying: “Where there is effort, there is success.”

But I question this. Does effort always equal success? Does every attempt lead to victory? Perhaps this saying was coined in a time when outcomes were more predictable. For example: if you planted a mango tree (effort), you would eventually harvest mangoes (success). But in today’s world, where AI accelerates change daily, who can honestly say they don’t try? And who can predict that every effort will lead to success?

I believe in effort, but I also see success and failure as temporary states—fluid, not fixed. Take career growth as an example: if you get promoted this year, you might call it success. But if you remain in the same role next year, do you still see yourself as successful? The promotion that once symbolised achievement might later feel like stagnation—or even failure. Humans evolve continuously, and we are the ones who define what success means at each stage of life.

That’s why I believe: “Where there is effort, there is progress.” Some efforts don’t pay off immediately, but the world tends to reward those with an action bias. At the very least, effort guarantees one thing: you did something. And doing is what drives change. Action is the best form of learning—no one ever learned to ride a bike just by reading about it.

So maybe we should stop chasing a handful of “big” successes. Instead, we should seek daily progress—because we never know when today’s success will become tomorrow’s failure.

What happens if we do the same thing every day? Naturally, we’ll get better at it. It becomes part of our life. We do it more easily, almost without thinking. But on the other hand, we might get bored. We might not enjoy it the way we did at first. We might fall into repetition, stop creating new things, or even quit altogether.

I think taking action always comes with an invisible friction—especially when it comes to good habits: creating every day, writing every day, exercising every day. That friction is what separates amateurs from professionals, dabblers from experts.

So what allows us to keep going long enough for something to become a skill, a career, or even an identity? I believe it’s craft. Craft is care and care means noticing the endless small details within an activity. Unlike the “big picture,” which may only have a single view, the details are limitless—if you choose to look for them.

Craft reveals new details, and those details bring joy and challenge. Continuous joy turns into love for the craft. Love for the craft keeps us going—long enough to become skilled, to see the big picture in new ways, and to let what we do become part of who we are.

Do you enjoy things that feel advanced—tools like Loveable, V0, or Figma Make—cutting-edge, fast, instant—where you don’t have to spend time practising to master the craft? In an era where AI can design for you with just a few prompts, who still cares about kerning, rhythm, whitespace, or even how to construct a clean Figma layout, right?

I see it differently. To me, advanced = mastering the basics. Not everything has a shortcut, not even with AI. Garbage in, garbage out. I once joined an AI workshop where everyone was excited about the outputs, but very few cared about the design details. Most of the results looked similar—and, to me, flat. But the few people with a strong design foundation? Their AI results looked stunning.

Sure, anyone can write a prompt and generate something. But not everyone can translate what’s in their head into something coherent without training—without mastering the basics. People with strong foundations in craft, creativity, and design inevitably use AI better than most. It’s not just about speed. In fact, AI makes craft more important than ever. Without it, we risk flooding the world with work that’s fast, but mediocre—and easily forgotten.

Have you ever noticed how you breathe when you’re in a flow state—the state where ideas come one after another with ease? Do you breathe the same way from the moment you enter flow until the moment you leave it? And how does your breathing affect your body, your mind, and your thoughts?

I think of the body, mind, and thoughts as a team, with the breath acting as the rhythm keeper. I’ve observed that when I’m in flow, my breathing becomes deeper and steadier, sometimes with brief pauses when I’m doing lighter tasks (like writing UX copy while designing UI). I think those pauses are my body’s way of warning me: I’m multitasking now. And my brain doesn’t like it. If I’m not careful, I might slip out of flow.

The most interesting part is this: whenever I enter flow, I find myself thinking less—sometimes not thinking at all about what I’m doing. It’s as if the work creates itself through me. I don’t feel like the creator. I don’t even know where some of the ideas or skills come from. I just sense them, and then act. At times, it’s hard to explain what design principles I’m even following—because the work feels almost channeled.

Artists, singers, designers—we all know this feeling, and it’s hard to train directly. But breathing? That we can train. I believe that if we can breathe the way we do in flow more often throughout the day, then when flow comes, we’ll stay in it longer. The body, mind, and thoughts can work together as a true team, guided by the rhythm of breath.

In the end, success or failure are just temporary states. What remains with us until the very end might simply be: inhale, exhale, repeat. And perhaps that’s enough—to create, and to be happy.

I believe every success is always a group effort, even when it looks like you achieved it alone. Take my own journey as an example: I spent countless hours practising, building a portfolio, designing a website, writing résumés, preparing for interviews, failing, trying again—until I finally joined my dream company. On the surface, it looks like I fought those battles by myself. It looks like I alone made it happen.

But that’s not true. How could I have had the time and energy to push forward without Kate supporting me outside of work—listening when things got tough? Even colleagues, whether kind or difficult, played a role in my success. They taught me lessons that I could never have learned on my own. They pushed me to change things I wouldn’t have dared to change otherwise. My portfolio, my résumé, even the way I spoke in interviews—these were all dots that others helped me plot along the way. And I’m grateful for all of them.

That’s why I believe action is personal, but success is collective. I’m glad that in every success—and even in every failure—I’ve had someone to share it with. I’m glad that what I’ve learned can be passed on to help someone else succeed faster, or go further than me. I believe there’s enough for everyone—if we learn to make the cake bigger, instead of fighting for the biggest slice.

There’s one thing that can instantly bring certain memories back to me. It can relax me, sharpen my focus, or make me feel uneasy. It isn’t food or drink, but it deeply influences taste. It reflects both the place itself and the living conditions of the people there. That thing is scent—an invisible, untouchable, yet undeniable presence.

Some scents trigger feelings tied to specific events, no matter how much time has passed—even when I can’t recall the images, the feeling remains vivid. The right room spray helps me relax before sleep. The smell of coffee in the morning sharpens my concentration for reading. Certain food aromas make my mouth water. And on the other hand, when I have a cold and lose my sense of smell, I notice how the taste of food and drink changes completely.

Have you noticed how suburbs with more affluent communities often carry a pleasant fragrance in the air? It might be from flowers, incense, candles, or simply clean air. I believe that once our basic needs are met, we begin to seek beauty through our senses—through art, fine wine, music, and even scent.

It would be such a shame if beautiful cities were filled with unpleasant smells, because those scents could become the lasting memories for first-time visitors. I believe we all play a role in shaping the sensory quality of our environment. In that sense, we are all designers of the societies we live in.

Today I’m heading home. This was my first time in San Francisco—and in the United States. I spent about two weeks here, so what I’m sharing is only a personal record of impressions from this first visit, something to keep as a memory.

I’ve seen both the beautiful and the unsettling sides of San Francisco. I tasted food ranging from Michelin-star restaurants to small local cafés. I walked through streets filled with flowers and morning fog—but also through the smell of urine and marijuana. I heard soft silence and classy jazz in the background—but also frightening shouts and people blasting loud, tuneless music from portable speakers. I rode in a Waymo self-driving car and also in a cable car that still requires two drivers.

For me, San Francisco has its own charm. The old-fashioned houses blend curiously with modernity. I saw cable cars and Teslas side by side, classical art and contemporary art in the same city. But it would be a shame if the sound of fog and the warmth of the sun were drowned out by loudspeakers, or if every corner were filled with the smell of cannabis. Freedom is a wonderful thing, but it should come with basic courtesy—because that’s what allows the “spaces” we share to become “memories” we share together.

I’m glad I had the chance to see San Francisco and the U.S. This trip gave me fresh perspectives—shapes, flavours, scents, and sounds. It gave me and Kate memories we’ll carry forward. I made new friends, reconnected with old ones from work on a more personal level, and together we created experiences I’m thankful for.

Travel can feel exhausting if you approach it with the mindset of checking off every landmark in a limited time, eating at every famous restaurant, following every review, taking pictures of everything, leaving early and coming back late—trying to squeeze value from every single minute. Unless it’s a work trip, I think this is a scarcity mindset.

Travel has taught me that mistakes and imperfections are inevitable, but there are always new opportunities. You can always return to a place another time. You don’t need to take the same photos as everyone else. If you’re tired, you can rest. You can set the rhythm of your own journey without anyone dictating where to go or when. To me, this is a wealth mindset.

I believe that if we carry this wealth mindset, it reflects across every part of life. Take work, for example: you begin to see clearly what you really want from your career. You’re less distracted by others’ successes, and instead you celebrate them—because you know you have your own rhythm, your own opportunities, and your own timing. You don’t need to tie your self-worth to external validation.

This is what travel has given me: a sense of freedom.

I like being at home. I believe home is one of the most important spaces for creating work, and one of the best investments I’ve ever made. Home gives me and Kate privacy, emotional stability, and rhythm in life. Most importantly, it gives me a strong morning routine. I’m grateful that the world has reached a point where many of us can work from anywhere—and of course, my choice is home.

Right now, I’m writing this from a hotel in San Francisco, with Kate here in the room. Whenever we travel, our private space disappears because we’re together all the time, and I have to compromise my morning routine. I’ve noticed clearly that the amount I read correlates directly with the quality of my writing. My ability to focus also decreases when I don’t practise consistently. And naturally, I run less while travelling, since I save my energy for walking.

Still, I’m happy seeing Kate enjoy each day of travel. I feel that our journeys together are plotting new dots that will someday connect with others. We’re creating good memories together. And I know I’m learning something—though I don’t yet know what it is. I’m excited to bring these new experiences back home and turn them into creative work.

When I find myself in a difficult situation, I used to lose mindfulness and focus too much on the negatives, which only amplified the problem and blinded me from seeing possibilities. That makes an already bad situation worse, multiplying it with negative thoughts. And the more I focus on what’s wrong, the more new problems I see—until everything spirals downward.

Optimism is a skill. And like any skill, it can be learned. For me, anything that can be learned is fun. Practising optimism helps me catch negative thoughts faster, and it turns into a game: challenging myself to find something good in every bad situation. This simple shift has changed my life in many ways.

I’ve noticed my personal art has shifted from black-and-white to vibrant colours. My hobbies have influenced my product design too—I often hear that the interfaces I create feel clean and friendly. I’ve made more friends, moved into a community surrounded by talented people, and grown in income, lifestyle, and relationships.

All of this stems from one small habit: looking for the good in every situation.

During the Industrial Revolution, humanity created countless “labour-saving machines,” and the world advanced rapidly. We could produce goods faster, more precisely, and more reliably, while relying less on human labour. Quality of life improved for everyone.

But with machines came new challenges: reduced employment opportunities, the pressure to learn new skills, and health issues from using our bodies less. Sometimes I think people from before the Industrial Revolution would laugh at us—going to the gym just to exercise our underused bodies.

I’m fascinated by the direction of today’s innovations: vibe-code, AI, self-driving cars. Many of these technologies seem to reduce how much we depend on one another. If machines are giving us “thinking capital”—making us less reliant on other people’s opinions—do we still need EQ? Or are we moving into a world where only the best IQ wins? Where everyone plays the same game, and everyone is a creator rather than a PM, designer, or engineer?

I don’t believe that’s the case. IQ has limits, but EQ does not. One day, cutting-edge design will be something anyone can create. But the ability to endure over time, to work with others, and to unlock the potential of those around us—that can grow endlessly. In the end, no one really cares how talented you are. What they care about is whether you make them more talented.

What humanity needs now isn’t just labour-saving machines or thinking machines. We need “heart-saving machines.”

Skill can be the enemy of courage. And courage is the essential doorway to new learning. I’ve noticed that when someone is consistently praised for being highly skilled in a particular area, they often begin to play it safe—protecting their reputation for excellence in the eyes of others. To me, that’s a shame. Because every one of us has the potential to keep growing, if only we remain brave enough.

I value the effort to improve far more than maintaining the same standard. I dislike the phrase “don’t reinvent the wheel.” I don’t believe the wheels on the first horse-drawn cart and the wheels on an F1 car were made with the same methods. Of course, craftsmanship requires an incredible amount of repetition—but repetition without seeking new approaches is no different from standing still.

I don’t think “being the best” really exists. Any record set today can be broken tomorrow. So why not let the one breaking it be you? What matters most isn’t who’s the best or who ranks the highest. The most formidable person is the one who enjoys what they do—because they’ll keep getting better at it without limit.

I believe that a good question—especially in a group setting—should benefit the responder, the listeners, and the asker. It should push the responder to think more deeply, give the audience a shared understanding, and offer the asker something they can use to grow further.

I used to misunderstand what makes a good question. I thought good questions had to sound smart—technical, complex, full of jargon. Without realising it, many times I wasn’t actually asking a question at all. I was just trying to steal the spotlight from the speaker. I asked questions that already contained answers. I asked because I felt insecure with silence. And that meant I didn’t actually learn anything new. But here’s the truth: if you’re not learning, how can you ever really become smarter?

Now I think a good question begins with good listening. Listening to what the speaker is really trying to say (reading between the lines). Listening to the overall atmosphere of the room (reading the room). Listening to myself to understand what I genuinely want to learn.

A simple technique I use to check myself is this: Is this a question everyone can understand? More often than not, simple questions are far more powerful than ones that only sound clever. Even if the question has no ready answer, if it invites everyone to think together and enjoy the process, then it creates both energy and memorable moments. Don’t you agree?

I think one thing talented people have in common is simplicity. They know what truly matters. They communicate with precision, they know when to stay silent, they can read between the lines. Their words are concise and to the point. They choose the strongest parts of a story, and they know how to adapt their message to the listener.

Communication, to me, is a lot like prototyping in product design. Great designers choose the best, most useful parts of their work to share—so that stakeholders can align quickly and the product can move toward the best outcomes.

In an era where everyone’s attention is being stolen—by social media, AI, group chats, you name it—I think attention itself has become a scarce and valuable resource. The people who respect and honour the attention they receive from others belong to a rare group. They are what I call “the truly talented.”

I think many people start their careers in small companies, where one person has to wear many hats just to keep the business alive and growing. I was one of them. I began my career as a creative in an advertising agency, then gradually learned product design in a small startup where I had to do everything—from branding to product design—often starting and finishing projects entirely on my own.

Doing everything alone has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that it gave me a wide perspective, and it taught me how to create and deliver with limited resources. The disadvantage is that it left me unprepared for working in larger teams, where multiple designers might work on the same product and stakeholders become more complex.

Have you ever wondered why managers don’t often promote people simply for being the best makers? Hard skills are relatively easy to train—especially for people who’ve already learned to deliver end-to-end on their own. But hard skills eventually plateau; your craft can be excellent, but the difference it makes will diminish over time.

Empathy, humility, and the ability to work well with others, however, can grow endlessly. What I’ve learned is that the force that fuels both hard skills and happiness is simply being a good person. Goodness attracts the right work and the right people. And when that happens, you can use your hard skills at the right moment to create impact—while growing together with everyone around you.

Every time I go for a run, I fight against two things: the strength of my body and the strength of my mind. My body has almost never been the real problem. Of course, when I first started running, I had less physical strength than I do now. But it’s the strength of the mind that challenges me every single time—from the very first step until the moment I finish.

It’s not just about whether I run or don’t run. The real battle is with the thoughts that appear while I’m running. My mind gets bombarded with scattered, sometimes even negative thoughts. I suspect that when I run and breathe heavily, my body misinterprets it as anger, which in turn triggers those thoughts. Spending an hour running alone with myself has helped me understand my body and my mind more deeply—but it also brings something new to learn every single day.

What I’ve discovered is that both physical and mental muscles can grow, though not at the same pace. For me, the body has grown faster than the mind. But now, I can often run with a lighter heart, staying present with the act of running itself. And when my mind feels light, I’m surprised by how much further I can go. I’ve realised that I can bring this same state of mind into other areas of life as well. The body and the mind are endlessly fascinating.

On 8 September (9 September in Sydney), my first day in San Francisco, the thing that stunned me most was the contrast between the cable car—which requires two drivers to operate (I wasn’t even sure if it could turn)—and the driverless cars now available for hire like Uber. At first, I thought these cars were just test vehicles feeding data, but no—they’re already running as a commercial service. Incredible. Earlier this year, when I was in China, I thought I had seen how far ahead things were. But San Francisco left me worried about how far behind Australia might fall.

I’m fascinated by big shifts that impact ordinary things people interact with every day. I imagine that in the past, cable cars must have felt revolutionary for their time. They could carry many people, travel longer distances, and didn’t need to stop for rest like horse-drawn carriages. That must have felt wonderfully convenient.

It’s no different from how I felt today seeing self-driving cars. Humanity keeps building tools to reduce labour, and now we’ve begun to build tools to reduce mental labour—AI. I’m excited to see where the world will go from here.

But one thing hasn’t changed: human nature. We still find happiness in the same things—comfort, acceptance, freedom. And we still suffer from the same things—hardship, rejection, confinement. I think the technology that will truly create a breakthrough is the one designed to address these unchanging aspects of human nature.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing at all. There are moments when I add layers of detail even though the original was already good. Times when I say things I know I shouldn’t. Or when I take on responsibilities that belong to others. I see these as small defeats to my own ego.

In difficult situations, I’ve learned that doing nothing requires awareness, mindfulness, and great courage—to wait, to let my actions grow and stand on their own until they’re recognised by others. Sometimes silence is both the best answer and the best question.

Whether it’s silence, stillness, or waiting without suffering—this space is essential. Yet in today’s world, it feels like this space is shrinking. So many products teach us to avoid silence, avoid stillness, avoid waiting. But I believe in an old-fashioned teaching I once heard: Do your best, and then let go of the outcome. Work fully, but don’t cling too tightly.

I don’t see the path to success as a “line”—I see it as a series of “dots.” By this I mean both the “path” and “success” itself are nothing more than dots strung together. The number of dots varies for each person. Even for the same success, I might need more dots at one stage of life than at another. Two people may achieve the same outcome, but with completely different numbers of dots.

Take public speaking, for example. Success on a big stage, which might only come once in a while, is built from countless small dots—daily small talk, standups, or conversations with people around me. The same goes for design work. Each finished piece comes from accumulating dots of trial and error, day after day. The more dots we collect, the more freedom and variety we have to draw our own lines.

The beauty of dots is that we can create them anytime we want. I believe we can make something—anything—whenever we choose. Plotting these dots is never wasted effort; it’s an investment that compounds like interest. If today you don’t yet know how to draw your own line, I’d suggest simply starting with a dot. After all, success itself is just another dot on your line. So enjoy the process of dot, dot, dot.

As someone who works in a creative field, there are many times when I don’t know where to begin—or I start without knowing where the work will end up. We might call this state a creative block. It’s both frightening and thrilling at the same time. Imagine taking 50% of a client’s payment without knowing whether you can actually deliver. That fear and uncertainty is exactly why many people avoid choosing a career in creativity and design.

As a designer, though, I feel excited whenever I’m facing something new. I believe humans are wired with an instinct to explore uncharted territory—both in the physical world and in our inner landscapes. Uncertainty is what makes both the journey and the destination meaningful and memorable. It’s what forces us to help one another, sparking connections and relationships. It gives us purpose and a reason to wake up each day.

Today I want to share how I personally face uncertainty. Every time I don’t know where to start, I ask myself: “What’s the smallest thing I can do right now?” Then I do it immediately—even if it’s just for a few minutes. That small action creates momentum, which grows into bigger progress.

Don’t know how to design the whole app? Just sketch one button. Don’t know what to write? Write that you don’t know what to write. The principle is simple: when facing creative block, move your hands for at least five minutes. Draw, write, or play the guitar. The more I use my hands, the more my brain begins to generate ideas. Sometimes I think our hands are like a second brain.

When I studied computer science, there was a basic logic structure called if–then–else. It’s brilliant for programming, but I’ve come to see it as a poor logic for real life. I don’t like the word if. I don’t want conditions to box in the possibilities of my life.

People often ask me: if you had two choices, which path would you take? My answer is simple: I’d take both.

If strips away my power. For example: If I get promoted, then I’ll be able to make change. If I follow society’s rules, then I’ll be accepted. This if logic makes my outcomes dependent on others before I can achieve what I want. But why should I need to rely on others to unlock my own potential?

What if we replaced if with what if? What if opens doors, expands creativity, and puts power back into our own hands. What if I create change right now without waiting for a promotion? What if I accept myself as I am without waiting for society’s approval? What if…

These days, it feels like a real challenge to watch Netflix on a full screen without also checking my phone. I think we’re all being trained to lose the ability to do just one thing at a time—or to wait for something. TikTok, Shorts, Reels—they’re all quick clips, but when you add up the time spent, it often exceeds the time it would take to watch a full film or read a good book.

In an era where everything “must be fast,” I worry about it. Knowledge must be fast (AI)—but what about the learning curve and the study of sources? Entertainment must be fast—but what about shared activities and genuine connection with people around us? Growth must be fast—but what about the foundations of our craft? Everywhere, people are chasing shortcuts, and we’re becoming unable to wait. And shortcuts, in the long run, can erode quality. I believe patience and space are now among the most precious resources.

What I need right now is space. Space between the things that trigger me and the response I choose. Space that allows the people I care about to enter fully into the moment with me, where I give them my complete attention—no rush, no phone, no work. Just me and what’s in front of me.

I believe that in a world constantly speeding up, it’s okay to slow down. As the F1 movie said: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

The tool we use most often—and the most dangerous if misused—is our thoughts. It almost doesn’t matter what others truly think of us; what matters more is what we think others think of us. And in the same way, it matters more how we think of others than what they are in reality. Our thoughts shape our world.

That’s why it’s so important to step outside of our own thoughts—to see the world as it actually is. For example, I used to believe that in a 1:1 with my manager (or with a direct report), spending time talking about my incredible past work would make the other person feel pleased. But that was only my thought. In reality, the other person may have wanted to discuss something else that mattered more to them. And because 1:1 time is usually short, they never got the chance.

This can leave the other person with a bad impression—not remembering your great achievements, but simply the feeling of not connecting. The worst part is that we may still believe they admire us for our past work, and so next time we fall into the same trap—talking only about ourselves. In short, we get tricked by our own thoughts.

That’s why it’s crucial to step outside of your thoughts, to see reality as it is—not the world constructed by your mind.

I see each day as divided into three phases: morning, afternoon, and evening.

The morning is for preparation—preparing my body, my mind, and my emotions. I spend this time with myself: meditating, reading, journaling, and running. These activities give me focus for the day, knowledge to apply to my responsibilities, space to reflect on strengths and areas for improvement, and resilience to create with energy.

The afternoon is the arena itself. This is when I put all of my preparation into action, applying myself fully to the responsibilities I carry. I use focus to stay present with the work in front of me and with the people who need me. I draw on knowledge to build new insights as the day unfolds. I translate abstract thoughts into tangible outcomes. I keep my energy flowing until evening—resetting at lunchtime to sustain the afternoon.

The evening is for preparing to rest. In the past, I tried to use my evenings to create more opportunities for myself—working after work. But forcing productivity at night destroyed both rest and work quality. Going forward, I’ll experiment with letting go. Evenings will be for play and relaxation, with the ultimate goal of quality sleep. I’ll measure success by when I go to bed and whether my average monthly sleep quality is above 80% on my smartwatch.

I’ve learned that most of the time when I face problems, I don’t always address the root cause. I’m very good at what I’d call “proactive laziness”: I’ll do absolutely everything—except the one thing that actually solves the problem. For example, if I have an issue with person A, I’ll talk to everyone I can… except A.

When you avoid the real issue, problems drag on, and your mind becomes consumed by them. And when your mind is held captive, so are your thoughts. That’s no way to live. I’ve realised that facing problems directly is crucial—not only because it resolves the issue, but because it frees your heart.

A light and free heart has changed my life. I’ve become more willing to face hard conversations with anyone, because I now value my peace of mind above everything else. I put on my oxygen mask first, then I can help others. I’ve also stopped complaining—because if you can complain about something, you already know what needs to be fixed. So why not keep that power to change in your own hands?

It’s time to become the true leader of your own life. Be brave enough to face, to think, and to change.

I believe that the hours after work are crucial for changing my life. The key skill I still need to develop is learning how to rest in a way that supports building something meaningful after my day job. At the moment, I often feel drained after work and fall back into more passive activities, like watching Netflix or drinking wine.

The challenge is threefold:

1. What kind of activity can be both enjoyable and life-enhancing that I can do after work, even when my energy is low?
2. How can I replace passive habits with this new activity?
3. Most importantly, how can I ensure it doesn’t disrupt my sleep but instead improves it—keeping my sleep score above 80 and my body battery above 80%?

Hypothesis:

1. If I consistently use my evenings to create something for myself,
2. Spend quality time having dinner and listening to Kate,
3. And keep to a sleep routine of 9:00 pm – 5:00 am,

then I believe that after 90 days of doing this, my life will take a significant leap forward. I’ll know this hypothesis is true when new opportunities start appearing in my life by June 2026.

I’m happy with what I’m doing right now. I’m part of a good community, working alongside many talented people where respect flows both ways. I carry responsibilities, and my role contributes to the success of others—just as their roles contribute to mine. I’m grateful for a strong team that will continue to grow together.

I feel proud that my abilities bring real value to the team, and that together we’re creating products that reach people all around the world in meaningful ways. I’m part of this drive forward, and it reminds me that my presence matters. Because of that meaning, I want to keep improving every day.

I’m also grateful for the people around me who support and challenge me. I feel excited about learning, about discovering new ideas and approaches to serve my team better, and about steadily growing in my role. Most of all, I’m thankful to have Kate, my wife, by my side—to share in the good moments and successes along this journey.

After facing many things in life—whether with colleagues, home repairs, or my own desire for growth—I’ve come to feel that everything is manageable, as long as I stay patient, humble, and keep moving forward with a light heart. When I approach life this way, progress naturally unfolds.

These small steps of progression accumulate into something much larger. Before I realise it, I’ve already achieved many of the things I wanted. Even if some goals remain unfinished, I trust they will be accomplished as long as I keep going. The key is a light heart and steady action.

In short, doing something calmly and consistently creates progression. Small progressions eventually lead to big ones. If what you’re doing “consistently” is good, you’ll become great—in your own rhythm and time.

A life lived fully is joyful—it means engaging wholeheartedly in both work and play. I want to keep moving forward this way, without slipping back into worrying about others or living a dull life. When I work, I give my best, no matter the task. With creative thinking, I can turn almost anything into something interesting.

Excellence and goodness, to me, mean not getting tangled up in what I can’t control—especially people. Today, I carried out my responsibilities in a way that no one could fault. Criticism will always come, but I welcome it; if it’s valid, why wouldn’t I use it to grow? Life feels incredibly fun when approached this way.

Now I run with a lighter mind. I used to think running made me angry because the heavy breathing stirred up negative thoughts about others, especially at work. But that’s no longer me. I’ve shifted my focus inward—toward my own responsibilities and creative energy. That shift frees me, and I feel excited to see what I’ll create today.