DGQ 16: What is a story that you’ve told or have yet to tell where you either fight to hold back tears or fight to hold back giggles?

tears

Whenever I host fireside chats, I always ask three questions before the talk begins, usually a week in advance.

  1. What would make this interview the most memorable one you’ve been a guest for even two years from now?
  2. Are there any topics you don’t want to talk about? Or are sick of talking about?
  3. Are there any questions you have yet to be asked, but wish someone were to ask you?

On top of the above three questions , occasionally, I ask a fourth. Do you have a home run story that has gotten you a standing ovation in the past — privately or publicly?

The goal is simple. Despite hours of research and asking mutuals, sometimes I still can’t find anything that’s humanizing about my guest. And I know for a fact that all humans are imperfect. And that imperfection makes each person relatable. Just like when Neil Gaiman met Neil Armstrong. But recently, I’ve fallen in love with a new way to phrase the fourth question.

What is a story that you’ve told or have yet to tell where you either fight to hold back tears or fight to hold back giggles?

On my flight to New York recently, I watched a movie starring one of my favorite actors in the world, Tom Hanks, which inspired this question. And, subsequently this blogpost. A Man Called Otto. Inspired by Fredrick Backman’s A Man Called Ove. And I’m not ashamed to say, I cried during that movie. While Rotten Tomatoes may not give it the score I think it deserves, it was well-written and well-produced. Through it, I realized that powerful stories are powerful not because of how awesome the protagonist is. But by how relatable their weaknesses are. Their limitations. I’ll give an example… to avoid spoiling the afore-mentioned movie.

Spiderman isn’t awesome because he has mutant powers. He’s awesome because he’s prone to all the emotions and struggles, be it love, bullies at school, a horrible boss, and how he acts out against all of that. Spiderman’s much more relatable than a super billionaire who owns all the gadgets in the world or an alien from another planet. He’s just a kid from Brooklyn. Or Queens, depending on which Spiderman suits your fancy. And as Brandon Sanderson once said, limitations are more interesting than powers. Limitations make us human. And characters who exhibit humanness and still somehow overcome impossible odds are stories that are passed from generation to generation.

That said, storytelling, outside the realm of superpowers, is equally as true. In a world where appearance and social capital goes a long way, trying to be perfect, to look perfect, and to act perfect is a fallacy in the modern era. While we know we’re not perfect, as a society, we continue to strive for perfection.

After watching a lot of movies, and in my free time, watching acting lessons (FYI, would fail as an actor, but still find the craft fascinating.), I’ve learned we don’t cry when watching movies because the characters cry easily. We cry because the character is trying to hold back their tears. And we don’t laugh during a show or a movie because the comedian laughs easily. We laugh even more because they’re trying to hold back their own laughter. The narrators and characters we see are a reflection of who we truly are.

In many ways, if someone cries easily, it relieves the audience of the ability, some artists may call it responsibility, to cry. Someone, the actor or actress or character has diffused the tension already. But if they fight to hold back their tears, holding back the floodgates, we as the audience are more likely to cry in their stead.

Now I say all of this because I find most fireside chats and interviews unrelatable. Now it’s a product of many things. And I genuinely believe a plethora of individuals do have something powerful and insightful to share, but the stage needs to be ready for them. It’s rare for guests to drop some head-turning advice in the first 10 minutes. Which means… it’s up to both the host and the guest to hold the audience’s attention long enough, as well as create enough opportunities for the guest to shine. The above question, in my opinion, does both.

So all in all, going forward, rather than asking for a home run story, I will ask for stories where people are just people. And for stories that mean a tremendous amount to the people telling them. That they have no choice but to let even a little bit of themselves out emotionally.

Photo by shahin khalaji on Unsplash


The DGQ series is a series dedicated to my process of question discovery and execution. When curiosity is the why, DGQ is the how. It’s an inside scoop of what goes on in my noggin’. My hope is that it offers some illumination to you, my readers, so you can tackle the world and build relationships with my best tools at your disposal. It also happens to stand for damn good questions, or dumb and garbled questions. I’ll let you decide which it falls under.


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The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.

#unfiltered #67 How To Make Writing Easy For Those Struggling

writing

A founder looking to write more long-form recently asked me, “What does your writing process look like?” As I was sharing my long answer to her short question, I realized, “Holy f**k, my writing process sure has evolved over the past few years.” In an effort to encase my current thoughts in amber, I find myself transcribing thoughts from gray matter to illegible scribblings. And from a 180-grams-per-meter-squared canvas to a two-dimensional electronic screen once again.

A trip down memory lane

I remember when my friend first asked me, “How are you able to commit to a weekly writing schedule? Aren’t you busy enough?” And I shared a secret with him. Something that one of my mentors shared with me.

Before officially starting my blog, I wrote 10 essays – a Plan B in case I ever went through a dry spell. Knowing I had the comfort of a cheat week and still having content to put out gave me the courage to continue writing every week. Almost three years later, of those 10 initial pieces, I’ve only two of the afore-mentioned. In the world of content creation, there’s a massive graveyard of creators who never make it past 10 pieces of content – be it blogposts, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, and so on. I would know. I started 3 blogs before this one. For each of the three prior to this one, I have an epitaph that made it to five or less posts.

The evolution of process

In my first year, I usually spent time conceiving a blogpost at night when I found myself to be the most creative, and editing the same one in the morning before the rooster cried to the awakening sun, when I found myself free of distraction and in peak efficiency. Yet despite a greatly industrialized process, one consistent theme throughout 2019 and 2020 was regret from publishing an essay too soon. There were multiple cases where I’d stumble on new, yet relevant information often within hours of publishing. In fact, this gnawing yarn of remorse reached such a level of prowess that I was re-editing blogposts by the paragraph on a monthly basis. Sorry to all of my early subscribers. Good news is you have your very own limited edition copies of David-jumped-the gun-again.

And so I started delaying my publishing schedules – to account for this sense of continual regret. In my current phase, I break down writing into three phases:

  1. Time to create
  2. Time to ruminate
  3. Time to edit

Time to create

One of my friends once told me the secret to creativity is to “give your brain time to be bored.” DJ, one of the most creative people I know, having worked to create some of the most iconic animations we know today during his time at Cartoon Network and Lucasfilm, and now a YouTuber with over half a million subscribed, once shared with me, “Creativity is a residue of time wasted.”

When I asked him to unpack that statement, he said, “Good ideas are gifts from the universe – fish that swim in that river. All you have to do is learn how to reach up and fish for them. And just like fishing, if you stick around long enough – if you’re patient enough, you’ll be able to catch a few. But you never know what fish you’ll reel in. Just that you will.”

And he’s right. The more time you spend moving or doing, the less bandwidth your brain has to explore new possibilities. The nuance here is not to block some amount of time every day to ideate. In fact, if you’ll allow me to be brutally honest, while it is giving yourself time to be bored, it’s too structured. And by definition, creativity, like DJ mentioned, is unstructured thinking. Subsequently, blocked time often creates unnecessary stress and anxiety to create. Especially when your mind is drawing blanks and you’re on a clock.

Instead, allocate time immediately after your brain has been given 10 or more minutes to be bored. For example, after you take a shower. Or go on a 30-minute run. Or a 20-minute power nap. Simply, even going on a 20+ minute walk helps your brain re-center and refresh. And always, always write down your ideas. No matter how awesome or lame you think it is. The more you practice the art of ideating, the more consistently better your ideas will be. Not saying that I’m the most creative person out there, but I still have “trash” ideas every so often, but at a far less frequency than when I started.

Time to ruminate

If you’ve ever bought a new car – for the sake of this essay, a black Toyota Camry – as soon as you buy it, you start noticing more black Toyota Camry’s on the street. In fact, you’ll start being able to identify the 2022 versions versus the 2021 or the 2016 ones. A combination of recency bias and confirmation bias. The same holds if you go to a new restaurant, you’ll start noticing that it pops up more in conversations with friends or as you’re scrolling through Instagram.

On the same side of the token, once you seed an idea in your brain (or better, on paper), you start realizing, there is more content and discourse in the world about said idea than you once thought. In the time I spend between creating and editing, I stumble upon or (re)discover articles, podcasts, conversations, experts in my network, just to name a few, when I give my brain time to ruminate.

I like to visualize the scene from Ratatouille when Remy is savoring the individual and collective flavors of the strawberry and cheese, unlike his brother Emile who gorges food down without a second thought. Whereas Emile loses the magic of culinary world, Remy sees what no rat has been able to enjoy prior. Simply put, be Remy! Savor your thoughts.

Time to edit

For me, editing has become the easiest, yet hardest part of writing. All I have to do is string together words and thoughts. I have all the biggest pieces on paper already, but formatting, grammar, punctuation, you name it, feels just like busy work, especially where there are so many more productive things I could be doing.

So, time to edit is akin to time to be inspired. As such, there are two takeaways I’ve learned about myself over the past three years:

  1. I edit in the early morning or late at night. No one will ping me (usually). There is no urgency to respond. Simply, no distractions.
  2. I have a Google doc (which I might share one day, but as of now, it’s a hot mess) that includes all the pieces of content that has, in the past, inspired me to feel a distinct emotion. I use this library of emotions when the content I am creating (blogpost, email, pitch deck feedback, replying to a friend who’s in a rut) requires empathy. For example…
    1. If I want to feel sad, Thai life insurance commercials are my go-to 5-minute sadness augmenters. Here’s one of my favorites.
    2. For insecurity, I like to revisit Neil Gaiman’s short blogpost on imposter syndrome.
    3. For pure inspiration and drive, Remember the Name or any of Eminem’s songs.

In closing

While I don’t timebox myself in this 3-step process, on average, writing a blogpost takes me about two to three weeks. In case your curious, any blogpost where I lead with a sentence that includes “recently” instead of a set time probably took a few weeks to come to fruition.

In effect, writing never feels like a chore. Rather, it’s inspired. Inspiring. Uplifting. And de-stressing.

Photo by John Jennings on Unsplash


#unfiltered is a series where I share my raw thoughts and unfiltered commentary about anything and everything. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity (which also may one day find its way into a more thesis-driven blogpost). Who knows? The possibilities are endless.


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Any views expressed on this blog are mine and mine alone. They are not a representation of values held by On Deck, DECODE, or any other entity I am or have been associated with. They are for informational and entertainment purposes only. None of this is legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Please do your own diligence before investing in startups and consult your own adviser before making any investments.