My main goal for 2016 was to triple my output, primarily by focusing high-level processes, as opposed to e.g. things normally lumped under productivity tricks. By any reasonable measure this was a major success–for example, the team I manage at work saw a 100%-300% increase in per-person productivity depending on how you measure it, and we scaled from
Say you have a classification task, such as figuring out which people are most likely to buy your product. Machine Learning courses often assume you have a large amount of data and relatively little domain expertise. But many practical situations involve small data and a significant amount of domain expertise, either yours or your coworkers’. What’s a simple
Those of you who know me might know that I tend to get obsessed about things sometimes. And by sometimes I mean I almost always have one obsession that lasts about 1-6 weeks where I spend most of my waking hours thinking about, studying, or working on some topic. These obsessions have included statistics, video
Over the years, I’ve developed a decision making process based on researching psychology, decision-making literature, and my own personal experience. Several people have commented that my procedure for making decisions often leads to very good choices very quickly, and in some cases it’s helped them make a decision in minutes or hours that they were
Every year, I like to pick one thing I’d particularly like to improve, in order to guide my goals and actions. My focus this year is on increasing the quantity of my output, which includes things like machine learning/programming work, math learned, writing published, talks given, and advice sessions. Broadly speaking, I plan to devise
Ben Kuhn wrote a post on the tradeoff between readability, hackability, and generality in software. The post discusses how what starts off as a simple script often runs into a place where he has to either duplicate code, make it harder to understand, or harder to extend. One thing worth noting about this problem is that
I’ve noticed that very competent people tend to use one of two patterns for solving problems and creating value. Efficiency means taking a given objective and reducing the effort needed to achieve it–such as automating away a manual process, or creating a checklist to set up better parties. Disproportionate Results, a term used by Ramit Sethi, means searching for
Ira Glass talks about how beginning artists have standards much higher than their actual ability, and how the process of getting good at art is a long, painful period of bridging the gap between your taste and your ability: All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.
Many articles on Functional Programming claim that it makes code simpler and more maintainable, but the examples provided tend to either be too abstract or too difficult to understand if you don’t already know Functional concepts. This post provides a simple, specific example of how the concept of Lazy Evaluation lets you separate concerns and create
A key heuristic for confidence seems to be “cards in your back pocket.” For example, it’s much easier to negotiate salary when you know you have other job offers. It’s much easier to confidently give a talk if you’ve done it before and know you can recover even if you get derailed. It’s much easier
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Dec | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |