From 2017 to 2018, Raymond Hou (Raymond) was still attending National Cheng Kung University and had not yet graduated. During these two years, he turned writing from scattered social-media posts into public work with a theme and accumulated body, and gained visibility on Medium. The results from this period later became the starting point for his work philosophy of “turning tacit knowledge into explicit assets.”
From self-positioning to public work
Raymond began writing before 2017. Since 2014, he had regularly posted learning reflections on social media. He later concluded that Facebook content was difficult to preserve and amounted to posts that vanished quickly, not a real record. In 2017, he moved to Medium, giving his scattered sharing focused themes and a regular newsletter rhythm.
In March of that year, he laid out his background and growth in a public long-form essay. His family could not afford extracurricular lessons when he was in elementary school, so he saved money by selling CDs and doing part-time work at a Yu-Gi-Oh! card shop. He wanted to afford the albums his classmates were listening to and use material things to create “common ground” that would help him fit in. After entering The Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University, the economic gap among students proved too large for this money-based connection to bridge. It pushed him to ask, “Then what is something I can do?” The essay summarized his self-positioning as “a turtle going to explore the ocean floor”: “He runs fast; I’ll go explore the ocean floor.” This way of dealing with differences in background set the tone for his later choice of topics and expression: using personal experience as material and turning a difficult past into content others could learn from.
Visibility on Medium
At first, each of Raymond’s Medium articles received fewer than one hundred views. He kept writing, focusing on digital tools, productivity methods, and personal growth. About a year later, he became a Medium Top Writer in the Productivity category and ranked among Medium’s more-followed writers in Taiwan. In 2018, his series of interview guides passed 500,000 cumulative views, the highest reach for a single topic during this period.
For Raymond, this experience confirmed that public work itself can bring opportunities to an author. He often describes the phenomenon as “a portfolio is the best résumé”: the work he published brought strangers to him, and led to a job opportunity at a multinational company.1
Opportunities that grew out of writing
The visibility he gained through writing led to several opportunities outside school in these two years. Around 2017, at age 21, Raymond was invited to speak at a TEDx annual event on “The Power of Sharing.” Around the same time, he launched his first online course on cloud tools and productivity on the Hahow course platform. It was also an early form of what would later become his main product line: online courses. None of these invitations came from his active pursuit; they came because people saw his public work and reached out.
Significance for what followed
One insight from this period, which Raymond has repeatedly cited, was: “Turn tacit knowledge into explicit assets, so you can sell one unit of time many times.” Writing methods from his mind into content that can be read and purchased allows the output of a unit of time to be used repeatedly. This logic later ran through his newsletter, online courses, and paid memberships, and is central to how he understands the working style of a Super Individual. Writing also became a long-term habit: he compared his attitude toward writing to Haruki Murakami’s attitude toward running, seeing it as a way to become quiet and process experience rather than chase a single viral hit.2
In terms of platform choice, Raymond moved his writing home from Medium to a self-hosted WordPress site in 2020. But he considered his accumulation on Medium from 2017–2018 to be the dividing line between his personal writing as an amateur pursuit and a systematic practice. Related concepts are discussed in Writing and Career Development.
Sources cited
Footnotes
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Hou Zhixun, “What I Learned About Turning 30 Over the Past Decade,” WordPress, 2024-09-17. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “Raymond Hou’s User Manual,” WordPress, 2024-10-02. View original ↩