I'm starting a newsletter: Not Busy Notes.
The name is mostly a joke — at least it has been.
I'm 24 (posting in June 2026).
I founded my first company at 18 — and I’ve been busy ever since.
It’s been about 6 years into entrepreneurship, and I’ve failed 100+ ideas and been running various business activities in parallel.
My IG handle: @chris_not_busy
One day, when I was around 21, I just randomly changed my Instagram handle to @chris_not_busy to be sarcastic.
This year, I'm building several AI products, designing an AI course at HKU, and trying to sell in Hong Kong as a Korean founder who still does not speak Cantonese.
So no, I'm not writing this from some calm, finished place.
I'm writing it from the middle.
That is probably the only reason this is worth writing.
Most founder content starts after the fact.
After the company worked.
After the system was clean.
After the person figured out the lesson and could package it into a framework.
This is not that.
I have not figured out how to be not busy.
But I have become very aware of the cost of staying busy.
The cost is not just time.
It is attention.
It is body.
It is mood.
It is the ability to think clearly.
It is the ability to be present with people who did not ask to live inside your startup stress.
This is not abstract for me.
In a normal week, I am trying to protect three gym sessions.
Usually 1.5 hours each.
Three outdoor 5K runs.
Sometimes badminton.
Church responsibilities that do not care how many unread emails I have.
Cooking, because eating like a founder stereotype gets old very quickly.
Anime.
Games.
Quiet time.
Family time.
People.
Nothing glamorous.
Just the parts of life that disappear first when work starts calling itself urgent.
I am not consistent yet.
Some weeks I protect the routine.
Some weeks the routine gets eaten.
But that is the point.
If the only way my work can grow is by slowly taking back my body, my faith, my hobbies, and my ability to be present, then the business is not scaling.
It is just borrowing from the rest of my life.
The work can keep growing.
That part is good.
But if the system does not get calmer, the person doing the work becomes the bottleneck, the battery, and the emergency system all at once.
I have been that person too many times.
So this is the project.
Not Busy Notes is where I will write honestly about trying to become successful and peaceful at the same time.
Not successful first, peaceful later.
Not peaceful by quitting the work.
Both, if possible.
I do not know if that is fully possible yet.
But I think it is worth attempting in public.
AI makes the question harder to ignore.
If a prompt can save 40 minutes, an automation can remove a recurring task, and a system can stop me from holding every decision in my head, then being Not Busy is not just a personality trait.
It becomes a design problem.
What I do know is that "less busy" does not mean less ambitious.
It does not mean smaller work.
It does not mean fewer responsibilities.
It does not mean pretending I do not want to build big things.
It means the work cannot be allowed to consume the whole person.
It means learning what to automate.
What to delegate.
What to reject.
What to keep doing with discipline, even when nobody sees it.
It means building systems instead of becoming the system.
That is the part I want to document.
The prompts that actually saved time.
The automations that broke.
The hires that helped.
The meetings I should not have taken.
The projects I cut even though I liked them.
The weeks where I protected sleep.
The weeks where I failed.
Especially the weeks where I failed.
Because I do not want this to become productivity content.
I am not interested in writing "5 ways to get your time back."
There are enough people doing that.
I am more interested in the slower question:
What does it actually take to build a life where the work can grow, but the person doing the work does not disappear?
That question sits underneath almost everything I am doing right now.
Knobase is one version of it.
How do people own what they know instead of renting their thinking by the hour?
Teaching AI at The University of Hong Kong is another version.
How do students learn to use AI without becoming more scattered, more dependent, more busy?
MediTutor is another version.
How do people practice high-stakes skills safely before the real moment arrives?
Even the way I run my week is another version.
How do I keep multiple products alive without making every product feel like an emergency?
That is why I am writing.
Not because I arrived.
Because I am in the fight, and I want a record of what actually happens.
Here is what readers should expect.
Some weeks, I will write about building:
the product decisions, launch systems, research workflows, automations, and tools that actually survive real work.
Some weeks, I will write about teaching:
HKU, ISF, AI education, simulations, course design, and what teaching reveals about what people actually need to learn.
Some weeks, I will write about selling:
Hong Kong enterprise, credibility, language gaps, warm introductions, awards, and the slow work of becoming trusted.
Some weeks, I will write about running:
the calendar, body, memory, meetings, routines, faith, recovery, and the parts of life that disappear first when work starts calling itself urgent.
The categories will change.
The question underneath will stay the same:
How does the work grow without owning the person doing it?
I will share artifacts when I can.
Screenshots.
Prompts.
Calendars.
Drafts.
Numbers.
Decisions.
Things I cut.
The promise is simple:
I will be less busy than I was last quarter.
Some quarters, I might prove that true.
Some quarters, I might go backwards.
I will write both.
The work did not get smaller.
The system has to get calmer.
That is the note I am starting with.
— Chris, still trying