Raymond Hou’s (Raymond’s) public writing repeatedly returns to an unresolved tension: on one side is the “desire for control,” wanting to hold every variable in one’s hands; on the other is acknowledging that most things are not under one’s control and pursuing an “ability to control” and a sense of ease. This pull runs through his work philosophy, team experience, and creative outlook. There is no final answer; it repeatedly swings between the two in different situations. Raymond calls the latter “a path of freedom and a sense of control,” while the former often appears as anxiety, rushing, and an inability to let things go. This entry describes the two ends, the situations that most often trigger them, and several principles Raymond currently uses to ease the tension.
The Two Ends: Hold Things Tightly or See the Bigger Picture
The desire-for-control end grew out of Raymond’s early survival circumstances. At the start of his business, income was unstable. He described pushing at full force whenever an opportunity appeared, with twelve-hour workdays as the minimum (related coping methods in Raymond’s Strategy for Working with Stress). This habit of “toughing it out at full force” inclined him to take responsibility for the outcome of everything, even tasks he had already handed off.
The ability-to-control end draws on a criterion from Stoic philosophy: first distinguish whether something is within one’s control; accept what is not and do not generate emotions over it (see the three-part control framework in Raymond’s Practice of Stoicism). In notes on The Infinite Game, he described this as how skilled people face uncertainty and used one of his few positive descriptions: “They are often confident and at ease, relaxed but still mindful of the goal.”1 This can be seen as the end of the tension he aspires to.
Trigger One: The Team and “Following Up on Tasks”
One of the clearest manifestations of this tension was Raymond’s brief team expansion in 2023. In his year-end review, he clarified that the source of his stress was neither creating nor working with people, but “following up on tasks.” Work handed off but not completed on time made him very stressed. He often could not resist doing it himself, which indirectly damaged his trust in teammates; after doing it himself, he felt worse. He used the Zeigarnik effect to explain why he could not let go and listed “practicing how to escape the pressure of delegated but unfinished tasks and not meddling by doing them myself” as a personality trait to keep improving.2 This is a direct conflict between desire for control and ability to control: the wish to delegate (let go) and the wish to hold on (intervene) pull against each other over the same task.
Trigger Two: Growth Metrics and “Questioning Infinite Growth”
The second situation arises around business goals. Raymond described a gathering of business owners where people took turns calling for “three times or five times revenue growth.” He said “doubling growth is enough.” He felt somewhat awkward at the time but later believed it was the right goal and a better fit for him. He summarizes the principle of a company of one as “questioning infinite growth,” and leaves the brand tagline at “work smart” rather than “work hard.” Here, giving up the desire to control scale is redefined as another form of ability to control: “If expenses do not change much, maintaining flexibility is itself a form of success.”
Trigger Three: Traffic, Masks, and Losing Oneself
The third situation concerns creation. Raymond observes that many creators put on an “expert” mask to maintain traffic. Over time, “not only does creating become pressure, but one’s sense of control over life is gradually depleted,” and they become “slaves to traffic.” He calls the countermeasure a “slow money” philosophy and leaves a line in an article that summarizes the tension: “By controlling desires and spending, you can also slowly find a path of freedom and a sense of control.”3 The key reversal is that genuine control does not mean grasping more—traffic, income, external labels—but restraining one’s desires and gaining the right to choose by “actively not being tempted.”
How Raymond Eases the Tension
Raymond does not claim to have resolved the pull. Instead, he has developed practices that move him toward the ability-to-control side. First, return attention to what is controllable and partly controllable in the three-part framework (see Raymond’s Practice of Stoicism): find alternatives for what is uncontrollable, treat what is partly controllable as learning, and standardize what is controllable into one’s own capabilities. Second, use dynamic rest and independent areas of growth as psychological insurance, so self-worth is not tied to the ups and downs of a single job (see Raymond’s Strategy for Working with Stress). Third, change work and life from opposites into integration (Work-Life Integration). He says that taking one’s work seriously is “an attitude of reverence toward life,” not dividing life into periods that must be strictly controlled. Fourth, accept that “faster does not necessarily mean winning” and use long-term thinking instead of anxiety about controlling short-term outcomes.
What Remains Unresolved
This is listed as a tension, rather than a settled philosophy, because Raymond’s own accounts show it recurring. The same year-end review that discusses the ease of “questioning infinite growth” also records a cycle in which he could not let go of tasks, intervened himself, and felt worse. He says he can “easily lose himself in a rhythm of laissez-faire,” and admits he has not yet trained himself out of following up on tasks. For Raymond, desire for control versus ability to control is not a question that ends after choosing a side once. It is an oscillation that must be continually recalibrated as business scale, team conditions, and personal energy change. A sense of ease is the direction he describes, not a state he claims to have reached.
Sources
Footnotes
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Raymond Hou, “What The Infinite Game Doesn’t Tell You: Social Involution and How to Escape Finite Games,” WordPress article, 2021-01-30. View original ↩
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Raymond Hou, “2023 Year-End Review: The Last Year Before Turning Thirty,” WordPress article, 2024-01-25. View original ↩
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Raymond Hou, “Earn Traffic and Monetize Quickly, but Lose Yourself? A New Beginning for AI Creators,” WordPress article, 2025-07-10. View original ↩