How Elon Musk and long-form blog Wait But Why gave Hong Kong organic farmer Jessica Fong courage and the strength to start her business

In his illustrated long-form blog Wait But Why, writer Tim Urban delves into subjects ranging from artificial intelligence to career choices and Mars colonisation to the nature of time with an endless well of curiosity and a constant desire to see the bigger picture. Jessica Fong, founder and CEO of Common Farms, which grows organic greens in indoor farms around Hong Kong, tells Richard Lord how it changed her life.

When I discovered Wait But Why, in 2016, I was trying to make sense of life. I had family problems. I had thought I knew everything, realised I didn’t and was looking for meaning. What is life? What is work? Why do we do it? I didn’t know how to connect the dots. There was lots of uncertainty in my life and I was looking for answers. I knew I wanted to do more, but I didn’t know what more was. I kept getting different perspectives from different people; I was confused and needed grounding.

I made some good money when I was younger, working in product development, and it allowed me to travel around the world. I would buy a load of books and travel with them but not read them, because I’m a slow reader and thought it would take too much time. I was lugging them around the world in a suitcase – it was really heavy.

When I discovered Wait But Why, I kept wanting to read it more. It was highly entertaining and very funny; it had a storytelling way of presenting a lot of facts. Time was definitely one thing I remember that really resonated (2014 post Your Life in Weeks breaks the average lifespan down using various graphics and illustrations to examine the nature of time). I started to have a lot of questions about time. What does time actually mean? What does it mean on a longer scale – on a my-life scale? We might think what we do matters, but on a grander scale, it doesn’t. It was good to get so grounded.

Another that stuck with me is The Cook and the Chef (a 2015 post, the last in a series about Elon Musk, examining the billionaire’s mindset of rejecting received wisdom and working everything out from first principles). I’d started my own business before, in product development, but hadn’t really worked with a team. I wanted to build another business, something more meaningful, and it really connected the dots for me.