Paul Yu

2025/2/28 Wednesday

In a Colin and Samir podcast, Jack Conte, the founder of Patreon, said that this video about Vincent Van Gogh was his absolute favourite video on YouTube. It’s about the hidden years where Van Gogh painted endlessly for an audience of just one, his brother. 9 years of painting, working on his craft, getting good, and finally selling a painting. It’s particularly inspiring because he was so bad at it when he started at the age of 27. He just loved drawing and painting so much that he kept going. Perhaps it’s this love for the craft that is most important to an artist.

Here’s the video link:

2025/2/16 Sunday

Notes from my stream of consciousness writing #151

• My girlfriend noticed that on Instagram I saw her story but did not “like” it. Long ago, I’ve deleted Instagram and replaced it with DFinsta (DF stands for distraction-free) and I don’t see stories on my home screen. I only see stories among the people I’m messaging in the messenger page. I think checking who saw your story and who liked it is toxic. It’s exactly one of the things I hate about Instagram. I feel like, if you post something, you shouldn’t be able to know who saw it or who liked it, and you should only see comments. That’s the way YouTube works. You don’t see who liked it or who saw it, you only see comments. There’s so much more peace of mind because then it doesn’t matter who saw it or who “liked” it.
• Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work and other bestsellers, said not to waste time on interacting with posts from your friends. Don’t hit that like button. Instead, reach out to your close friends for a call or quality in-person time. In fact, better not to see any posts from your friends at all and just hear about it directly from them.
• My uncle said that social media is a useful tool for keeping in touch with tertiary friends. Friends that you’re not super close with but friends that you’re on good terms with and hardly see. You can see what they’ve been up to (although you can’t really tell how they’re doing because you have no idea what’s going on inside of a person regardless of outward happy appearances). My question is, is it even worth keeping “in touch” with tertiary friends? I haven’t done that and I’m just fine, meeting a few friends in person once in a while is all I’ve needed.

2024/11/7 Thursday

Time to eliminate “probably,” “maybe,” “think I could,” and “try” from my vocabulary.

Here’s the video I learned this from:

2024/11/7 Thursday

Based on stream of consciousness writing #125

A friend said she found and read my blog. I hadn’t checked or posted on it for months, so I asked what she thought of it. She said she found it inspiring. This prompted me to revisit my blog for the first time in a while. When I started skimming through, I realized that my blog is super valuable, perhaps most to me. It’s a collection of my thoughts and lessons I’ve learned, and it’s worth revisiting on a regular basis. This made me want to start blogging again.

Having even considered whether I should get rid of this blog because of the monthly and yearly costs, just reading it myself now and having a friend tell me it’s inspiring shows me that the cost is totally worth it. Even if hardly anyone else reads it, it’s worth it just for myself. So here’s to getting back into blogging and continuing it.

2024/11/7 Thursday

I’m currently persisting making YouTube videos, so my answer is experimentation.

2024/11/7 Thursday

Most successful people write every single day.

It's their first lever-moving task.

They write:

• Video scripts
• Newsletters
• Emails and outreach
• Advertisements
• Social posts
• Threads
• Articles
• Landing pages
• Books, eBooks, and guides
• Education products

If you're a freelancer, creator, creative, coach, founder, or simply a beginner looking for a way to set themselves up for a lucrative future of independent work:

Writing is the foundation of your success.

You can have a product or service, but if you don't have an audience (from writing) then you don't have a business. You have a hobby. Or just a way to feel like you're making progress.

Write for 1-2 hours in the morning.

—Dan Koe

2024/8/21 Wednesday

I’ve been posting on YouTube for over a year, but I still don’t know my niche. Then I read this:

2024/8/17 Saturday

Let me share something that I’ve been reading over and over again from the book Hell Yeah or No: what’s worth doing

I can’t help but think, maybe he’s on to something. What if I dedicate 4 hours every day to completely disconnect? I want to find out.