I spend most of my time trying to engineer my future. You'll often find me reading, writing or tinkering.
If I could summarise one of the core tenets to my life philosophy within a product, it would be the Fellow Stagg EKG gooseneck kettle.
Follow the story below to find out why.
What do you do at the start of every new day?
What are your habits?
How do you spend your time?
To me, the Fellow Stagg EKG is a reminder of:
When things just work - beautiful design and sharp functionality can co-exist
Invest lavishly in the everyday things
Set up the day by winning the morning
Simplicity - less is often more
Compound interest - Quality of life is built by the quality of habits
I spend most of my time trying to engineer my future.
You'll often find me reading, writing or tinkering.
I was born into the hustle and bustle of the vibrant city that is Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and then from the ages of 12 and beyond, I was raised in the quiet and clean Northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia.
During those early years in my life, I could not care any less about books. "Why bother sitting still and read when I could have way more fun playing computer games?" was the rationale in my mind at the time.
As a kid, most of my priorities were evidently on the here and now, never really having to consider the consequences of my actions on the future.
Then one day, I discovered the classic ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ by Stephen Covey - which is a pretty hefty book to encounter as a kid who prided himself on having an excellent twitch response on the mouse and keyboard.
It absolutely changed my world. It put the responsibility of leading my life back into my own hands. It helped me realise that it was going to be up to me to make the change I wanted to see in the world, nobody else was going to do it for me.
Once I was ready to see, books became my teachers, my friends and my travel companions and much more.
Over the years since that pivotal moment, I have gone down the rabbit hole of reading even greater books, the ones that captivated me for days on end, and also others that were downright terrible, repetitive and boring.
Like us, books come in all shapes and sizes. And there is no one size fits all, which to my belief is a great thing’
My all-time favourite books:
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Zero to One by Peter Thiel
48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
The Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
The Great Mental Models by Farnam St
“The world is always full of the sound of waves. The little fishes, abandoning themselves to the waves, dance and sing and play, but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth?”
“When we have another chance, let us meet again. Life, though it may seem long, is in truth all too short. I beg you to take the best possible care of yourself. My regards from afar.”
“Failure is not the inability to achieve what you wanted to achieve but the inability to be authentic to yourself.”
“Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.”
“The fire of the mills was dying down. There was only a faint tinge of red left on the edge of the earth, just enough to outline the scraps of clouds ripped by the tortured battle of the storm in the sky… It's a terrible night for any animal caught unprotected on that plain. This is when one should appreciate the meaning of being a man.”
“I am a museum full of art but you had your eyes shut.”
"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.”
“Do more than belong: participate.
Do more than care: help.
Do more than believe: practice.
Do more than be fair: be kind.
Do more than forgive: forget.
Do more than dream: work.”
“There's no difference between a pessimist who says, "Oh, it's hopeless, so don't bother doing anything," and an optimist who says, "Don't bother doing anything, it's going to turn out fine anyway." Either way, nothing happens”
“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”
“There's no difference between a pessimist who says, "Oh, it's hopeless, so don't bother doing anything," and an optimist who says, "Don't bother doing anything, it's going to turn out fine anyway." Either way, nothing happens”
"They stopped us after about two or three hours, perhaps realising that we were too shattered to make any progress. Allowed to stop I sat down on the spot and curled up. After thirty six hours of constant activity I could finally rest. The tropical forest sounds didn't interrupt my sleep that night and I wasn't visited in my dreams. Tomorrow would be a new dawn.”
Writing came about as an unexpected by-product from my initiating foray into front end web development in 2017.
Learning HTML and CSS and building a website from scratch taught me the power of code in enabling self-expression, which first led to key reflective pieces into my personal history and then eventually to the creation of a dedicated 'blog' page.
I had little idea of what in the world I was going to write about, but knew that I had plenty of space to fill, so I just focused on getting started.
To reflect:
To understand:
To create:
Photo by Julian Goh (2020)
Started The Offline Space, a concept of selling curated, high quality physical books in restaurants and cafes (2020 - current) and Feedforward.me, fostering life-changing coffeeshop conversations (2021 - current)
Initated a Japanese car enthusiast community, Car Meets Syndicate Gladstone, that grew organically to 450 strong in 12 months (2020 - 2021)
Started exploration into specialty coffee (2019)
Learnt basic HTML and CSS through a low-cost, self-guided MOOC (2017)
Competed in the Mooloolaba Olympic Distance Triathlon (2020), Yeppoon Sprint Triathlon (2018) and Tour of Margaret River as part of Champions Lakes Racing (2017)
Ownership and restoration of a 1994 Mitsubishi FTO (2017 - current)
Backpacked with my brother through Taiwan, Hong Kong and Vietnam in 2017, then Japan and Korea in 2020.
Doing street photography in Perth CBD in between commutes from university and home (2013 - 2016)
Backpacked through London, Paris, Geneva, Munich and Amsterdam with my brother over a month (2015)
Interned at a coal power research institute for two months in Hangzhou, China as part of the New Colombo Plan Short Term Mobility program (2015)
Photos by Julian Goh (2018-2021)
