27 Aug 2025 #writing
These days a loved one needed a blood transfusion.
My first instinct to look for donors was to write a WhatsApp status for my friends and contacts to see. I wrote something like,
“Urgent! Blood donors needed. O+. DM for more info.”
But then I realized I made the #1 mistake of writing and copywriting. I made the message about me, not about the readers. Anyone reading would ask, “What’s in there for me?” There was nothing for the reader.
After realizing my mistake, I wore my copywriting hat and changed my message,
“Has you done your good action of the day? Donate blood. It only takes a few minutes, you get a souvenir and have the chance of saving a life. DM me and I’d tell you how to help.”
That’s a copy written in favor of the reader, not of the writer. Because good copy and good writing is always about the reader.
26 Aug 2025 #misc
For so long, I was afraid of putting “writer” on my bio online.
I was full of self-doubt. “I don’t have thousands of followers.” “I don’t have a novel.” “I’m not even an English native speaker.”
Even after years of blogging, calling myself a writer was an impossible goal. Maybe because I pictured writers as Hemingways retreating to an island to return with a Nobel-winning novel.
I wish I had read Mark Thompson’s post challenging the distinction between “real” writing and everything else sooner. It would have saved me so many moments of self-doubt. He wrote,
If your words help someone, teach someone, inspire someone, or even just get them to click “follow,” then they’ve done their job.
If just one person has started writing and managed to change their situation after reading my articles, that is a win.
Stop chasing the “real writer” myth.
If you have helped, inspired, or made someone take any form of action with your words, that’s real writing. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Tweet, a blog post, or a 70,000-word work of fiction. Because all writing that moves someone is real. Period.
25 Aug 2025 #misc
Since last year, I’ve made a habit to write 10 ideas a day.
That’s a concept I learned from James Altucher. I even followed some of the exercises from “How to Become an Idea Machine,” a book with dozens of prompts to exercise your idea muscles.
Writing those 10 ideas has taught me we need plenty of bad ideas to find a good one. And once we find a good idea, we need ideas to execute it.
Did you come up with a book idea? Great. The next step is writing another 10 to (possibly) make that book a reality. Do you need research? Do you need to compile scattered blog posts? Do you need to test subjects first on social media?
This applies beyond writing books. These days, a neighbor decided to change our main door lock. It was rusty and in poor shape. That was a good idea. But he didn’t let everybody else know and didn’t have enough key copies for everyone. That was bad execution. Good ideas need good execution ideas too.
24 Aug 2025 #misc
I’ve been in a hospital with a loved one more times than I wanted.
Waiting in hospital rooms, I’ve written 10-idea lists, imagined the future of hospitals with AI, and learned some lessons about our bodies.
Before a recent exam, my loved one was so nervous that I had to enter the examination room too. The doctor could have dismissed her as just another nervous patient. But he calmed her down by explaining the possible diagnosis in simple words. That really worked.
When my loved one apologized to him, his answer inspired me. “Don’t worry. This is my job and I do it because I really like it,” he said. You could tell by the way he spoke to his patients. Then he said, “I’m passionate about this. And here, between you and me, the hospital owes me money, but I still keep doing it.”
Unlike my loved one’s doctor, I’m reluctant to use the word “passion.” That’s one of the subjects I’ve changed my mind about as a coder. The corporate world drained it out of me.
But, whether the word passion or not, find something worth showing up for every day, even without pay. That’s what he taught me, even though I wasn’t the one he was treating.
23 Aug 2025 #misc
“I saw it on TikTok,” she told me.
I was making small talk with a young girl at a hospital. She wanted to join the military. I asked her why, in a curious way. “It keeps appearing on my TikTok.”
A couple of days ago, she watched one short of another young girl leading a female squad running around a military base. She kept seeing the same videos since then. “Of course, the more videos you watch…they will keep popping up,” I said.
If you stop your endless scrolling to watch a short, the algorithm will flood you with more. “Hey, she just watched the whole short, we’d be better off showing her similar content. She seems to like that type of content.” That’s what TikTok would think. Its job is to exploit our attention and keep us in the same echo chamber.
Don’t make a decision just because TikTok keeps showing you the same videos. That’s not a sign from the Universe. That’s not guidance either. It’s manipulation.