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#204 - Not Easier. Just Better. 🚌

Hi folks, from unseasonably cool-for-this-time-of-year New York. My family and I just made our semi-annual pilgrimage to the US to visit grandparents, cousins, and friends on both its coasts.

This year, the visit is well-timed: in between the usual bagels and pizza we'll take down in New York, and the dim sum and all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue that await in LA, we'll also watch a slew of World Cup matches. On TV, but without needing to wake up at the usual too-early-for-Asia hours. ⚽

I'm looking forward to a summer of soccer and reconnection, so I'm trying something looser in the weeks to come: some weeks a new issue, some weeks a past read that landed well (like below), and some weeks a take on the news and trends animating the world of work, like I did in the early days of this newsletter.
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A chance to experiment, keep things flexible, and embrace, I hope, a slightly slower pace over the summer. 🙏

If you're in the TalentStories WhatsApp community and have ever wondered why a bus emoji sits atop the group -- it's because of issue #147.

That issue, on the upside, and the nuance, of doing hard things went out in April, 2025. But of the 435 stories I'd featured by that point, the first story, below, was perhaps the all-time-most-responded to one.

Many people had yet to come across Duke basketball coach Kara Lawson's YouTube clip, and were just as moved as I was by her message. I made my wife and kids watch the 3-minute video, and still return to it every few months.

All of which makes it a worthy first-ever re-featured story. Don't skip the rest, though: the takes from Nvidia's Jensen Huang and author Mark Manson in Story #2, and the uplifting quote from journalist Sherrell Dorsey in Story #3, are just as good.

Thanks for reading and re-exploring with me -- and have a great end of the week!

Aki

#147 - The Easy Bus Never Comes Around 🚌

Last month, I caught up with a friend visiting Singapore. It had been years, so we covered a lot of ground, but one of the things we talked about was hard work: the career upside of working hard, and working on hard things.

After my friend left, I sent him an article: a great read that asks why NFL quarterback Josh Allen is so special -- and so overlooked from a talent standpoint. (You don't have to be a sports fan to appreciate it).

My friend wrote back, "The quote in that post is from one of my favorite YouTube videos of all time!"

“Video?", I thought. "What video?". 🤔

The quote, it turns out, comes from a speech. I found it online, and watched it in my home office. It was so good, and so poignant, it forced me to get out of my chair and start pacing around the room. Mind you, this is a small space; I must have looked ridiculous. But nobody was around to high five, and I didn't know what to do with my enthusiasm. 🤷🏻

The speech -- "Handle Hard Better" -- is Story #1, below. But it also got me reflecting on the hard things I'd worked on over the years. As soon as it did, I was reminded of my love-hate relationship with those grindy career moments; the weird mix of "omg, I can't believe I did that", and "omg, I am so grateful that I did" emotions they elicit:

Running medical projects in Guatemala that I was unqualified to lead, in a language I had to learn on the fly. Joining Uber as one of its first five employees in Asia. Starting my own business and learning to write, build my own brand and distribution, and pitch my advisory work. All experiences that make me wince a bit when I revisit them, even though I'm thankful to have had them (or to be having them :).

It turns out there are reasons for this tension. There's a logic that explains why such hard experiences can also be so meaningful and, well, so darn good for us. This week, our Stories explore the nature of hard work, and ask what lessons we should -- and should not -- draw from them:

🎯 Story #1 - Duke basketball coach Kara Lawson delivers a stirring speech to her team on the need to become someone who "handles hard well". She's pulling no punches -- and I'm not exaggerating when I say it's your best use of 2 minutes and 49 seconds today. 🏀

🎯 Story #2 - Jensen Huang, billionaire CEO of ascendant chipmaker NVIDIA, wishes students at his own alma mater: "doses of pain" and "suffering". Make that [checks notes], "ample doses of pain", and "endless suffering". As in, the kind that never stops. 😳 There's a logic to his blunt advice, and we break it down.

🎯 Story #3 - Sometimes calls to work hard get distorted. Held up not as a means to an end, but as an end itself. Our last Story starts as a personal one, about my time at Uber. But ends with an entrepreneur's eloquent challenge to hustle culture; to growth-at-all-costs, hyper productivity, and never-ending grind. It's as important -- and inspiring -- as Kara Lawson's message. And I hope you will read it. 🙌🏻

Thanks for reading -- and have a great end of the week!

Aki

P.S. What I actually did when I felt compelled to share Lawson's video was put it in the TalentStories WhatsApp group, which led to a round of (virtual) high fives. ✋ It's an awesome, insightful bunch -- if you want to join the conversation, just let me know and I'll add you to the group!
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#1

Meet Kara Lawson: basketball star, Olympic gold medalist, head coach of Duke University women's basketball team -- stirring orator. I've already hyped up her speech, and don't think there's much worth adding. I'll just say that for the sake of today's issue, this first Story establishes "hard" as an inevitable fact of life. Then encourage you to give the video a watch. It's less than 3 minutes long and I've transcribed it below:

Handle Hard Better

“I was talking with Shay a couple days ago, and one of the things we talked about was how we all wait in life for things to get easier.

Think in your own life, if you’ve waited for something to get easier:

‘Oh, I just got to get through this, and then it’ll be easy. I just got to get through preseason, and then it’ll be okay. I’ve just got to get through my junior year of high school, and then the classes are going to get easier. Or I’ve just got to get to my spring and my senior year of college and it’s going to be easier.’

It’s what we do. We wait for stuff to get easier.

It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better. That’s what happens.

Most people think that it’s going to get easier. Life is going to get easier. Basketball is going to get easier. School’s going to get easier. It never gets easier. What happens is you become someone that handles hard stuff better.

So that’s a mental shift that has to occur in each of your brains. It has to. Because if you go around waiting for stuff to get easier in life, it’s never going to happen. And then what happens?

‘Oh, it’s so hard. Oh, I can’t do it. Oh, this—I don’t know—when is it going to be easy for me? Oh, it’s easy for other people.’

It’s not. It’s hard.

And the second we see you handling stuff, handling hard better -- what are we gonna do? We’re gonna make it harder. We’re gonna make it harder. Because we’re preparing you for when you leave here. Not just basketball—in life.

And if you think life, when you leave college, is going to all of a sudden get easy because you graduated and you got a Duke degree, it’s not gonna get easier. It’s gonna get harder.

So make yourself a person that handles hard well. Not someone that’s waiting for the easy. Because if you have a meaningful pursuit in life, it will never be easy.

If you’re trying to win a championship. If you’re trying to have a family—ask your parents, do you think it was ever easy for them to raise kids? Karen, is it easy? It’s not!

Any meaningful pursuit in life, if you want to be successful at it—it goes to the people that handle hard well. Those are the people that get the stuff they want.

People that wait around for easy? You probably see them at the bus stop. They’re waiting for easy—the easy bus to come around.

Easy bus never comes around.

Gotta handle hard. Okay? So don’t get discouraged through this time, if it’s hard. Don’t get discouraged! It’s supposed to be!

And don’t wait for it to be, ‘Oh, I just gotta get through the summer, and then it’ll all of a sudden get easy in the fall.’

No, it won’t. It won’t. It won’t get easy in the fall.

So make yourself someone that handles hard well. And then whatever comes at you, you’re gonna be great.

You’re gonna be great. Okay?”

#2

If you think about it, Kara's speech ⬆️ is an elevated, inspiring form of the messages we get from early on: "No pain, no gain". "That which does not kill you makes you stronger." But why is learning to "handle hard" such an important mindset, and lifeskill; what makes it so critical to success?

Jensen Huang, CEO of chipmaker NVIDIA, offered one -- edgy -- take last year when he told a group of Stanford students that they a) were entitled and b) "endless suffering" was their best route to success.

What gives? 🤔

Well, when a student asked him how to maximize the chance of success, Huang skipped right over stuff like technical chops and interpersonal skills -- and went straight to suffering:

And where does that resilience come from? For Huang, the source is simple:

Whereas, he went on, most Stanford students suffer from the opposite: high expectations, as a product of their elite educations:

Huang's philosophy doesn't just apply to him. As the founder and CEO of the company, his beliefs are hardwired into the way NVIDIA operates; even the language it uses:

To sum up his thinking then: suffering builds character --> character develops resilience --> resilience enables experimentation without fear of failure --> experimentation leads to innovation --> innovation ultimately leads to success. It's why he ended his talk with such matter-of-fact bluntness: "For all of you Stanford students, I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering."

We get another rationale for why handling hardship is so important from author Mark Manson. Manson is best known for his provocatively titled book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. The self-help guide with its "you're not actually that special" message struck a chord, became an international bestseller, and even a documentary.

The book delights, broadly, in delivering harsh truths, and in challenging readers' endless pursuit of happiness. No surprise then that one of its passages ties straight to our exploration of hard work; even to Huang's language of "suffering" and "innovation".

But for Manson, suffering serves a specific, practical purpose: it drives change. More fundamentally, it's core to human nature and explains why we've survived and thrived as a species. This makes embracing hardship just as relevant to individual success:

#3

This week's reflection didn't just send me down work memory lane, it also reminded me that I loathe bro'y, Silicon Valley-infused "hustle culture". The way the actual value of hard work so often gets perverted as some form of: "Rise n' grind!", or "I'll sleep when I'm dead.". The way we often value outsized effort regardless of results, and obsess over soul-numbing optimization, efficiency and productivity.

My years at Uber are an example of the fine line between working hard, doing something great -- and glorifying "the hustle". I joined Uber in 2013 and partnered closely, for years, with the GM of our Asia business. As the head of the region, and a long-tenured employee, he set the cultural tone from the top. He also used to block his calendar as "Do Not Schedule" -- from 2am to 6am.

This meant two things:

1) any time before 2am and after 6am was fair game for calls

2) 2am-6am was presumably for sleep

I say "presumably", because more than once during our Zoom calls -- the man fell asleep. DURING the call. Mid-stream. I remember thinking, "Do I wake him up? Do I let the guy sleep? If I shout -- will he hear me?" 😬

It was a hustle n' grind culture, and a startup. Being called a "hustler" was the highest form of compliment, and you wore it as badge of honor. It meant herculean effort, and long, sleepless nights.

On the other hand, we wouldn't have managed to rewire urban transportation, and change the way people in cities all over the world got around, with less. The sleepy head of Asia? Was also one of the most immensely talented people I've worked with; I learned from him, and he made me better. The culture was grindy, but it was also efficient and results driven.
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So was it "worth" it? Would I do it again? I'll answer that next week, when we explore the ROI of working on hard things: the need to ensure that if we're grinding, it's on something worth doing.

This week, I want to end with something by Sherrell Dorsey, an author, journalist, and entrepreneur (who also, I should note, worked at Uber for a time). 💡

In response to a well-meaning Tweet from a young influencer convinced of the need to "always surround yourself with high performers", Dorsey crafted this eloquent, much needed reply. An important reminder that, yes, hard work is a required input for adaptation, growth, and success. But that there are also limits; that there is a difference between mindless grind and intentional effort; and that hard work is ultimately part of the human experience: