I was at Cream Centre with my father on a Sunday afternoon. We’d finished a light lunch and were debating dessert. (He has triglycerides. I have cholesterol.) This was my fifth visit this year, and I had abstained so far. I couldn’t any longer. I ordered a Sizzling Brownie Sundae. But not for reasons you might think. Expertise comes from experience. I scrape food more than 99% of the people I know. So, I consider myself an expert. Here’s a guide on the art of scraping. ...
Last week, I was at IIT Madras for lunch with the faculty. The dessert was carrot halwa with ice cream. I scraped the last bits with my spoon, but a little ice cream was left over. I was torn. I CAN’T POSSIBLY waste it. But can I lick it? In public? I don’t have a problem licking at home. I lick my fingers. Plates. Bowls. Ladles. The cream on milk. The leftover milk in the glass. (If my tongue doesn’t reach that far, I wipe it with my finger and lick the finger.) ...
I make commitments but don’t always deliver on time. In 2022, I ran an experiment to find out why I procrastinate. In Jan-Feb 2022, I listed the top 2 things I wanted to get done each day and measured how often I completed them. 14 Jan. ❌ Summarise from three research reports 12 Jan. ❌ UIFactory experiment ✅ Decide if I am a (…) 11 Jan. ❌ UIFactory experiment ✅ Agree on publishing in (…) 10 Jan. ❌ Client video. ❌ UIFactory experiment 09 Jan. ❌ UIFactory experiment. ❌ Attrition email as a story 07 Jan. ❌ ZS visual 06 Jan. ❌ Release Gramex Guide. ✅ UWC application 05 Jan. ❌ Publish network cluster post. ❌ Release Gramex guide 04 Jan. ❌ Publish network cluster post. ✅ Release Gramex. 03 Jan. ✅ Publish election TDS video. ❌ Publish Network cluster post. 02 Jan. ❌ Publish election TDS video. ❌ Publish Network cluster post. 01 Jan. ❌ Publish Network cluster post. ✅ Finalize SG school. I completed 23 / 57 things (40%). That’s one of my TOP priorities. ...
I add book recommendations to my GoodReads – To-read list. Then I sort by rating and pick the first one I like to read. In 2023, I’m reshaping my environment. Picking books I usually won’t pick. (Read The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the Delight of Not Getting What You Wanted if you want to be similarly inspired.) So here are 4 approaches I’m adding to my process. Algorithmic. Sort Kaggle books based on popularity, rating, and age. Pick the top 10 (or 50) Serendipitous. Go to bookstores and libraries. Pick the most popular books Award-winning. Pick from the Pulitzer, Booker, Nobel, Hugo, and other award winners Challenges. Pick from Popsugar, Book Riot, Goodreads, The 52 Book Club, and other challenges FYI, here are algorithmic results (for books with 100+ ratings and a 4+ average on Goodreads): ...
I read 52 books in 2022 (about the same as in 2021 and 2020.) Here’s what I read (best books first). Mind-blowing Man’s Search for Meaning. Viktor Frankl. It’s 75 years old and timeless. Who we are is independent of what’s around us. This book shows us why. This story is a great example. My best book of 2022. The Paper Menagerie. Ken Liu. I cried all the way from the beach to home. The skies joined me. It’s short. Touching. It healed a wound I can’t speak about. The most touching book of 2022. The Data Detective. Tim Harford. 10 powerful, down-to-earth rules for how to make sense of data, and avoid being fooled. I plan to incorporate every one of these into my talks. The most useful guide to working with data in 2022. The Extended Mind. Annie Murphy Paul. Explains how we think not just inside our brains, but in our bodies, in our physical environment, and in the people around us. The most effective guide to transforming my thinking in 2022. Life-changing ...
In 2022, I made 3 resolutions: Run 50 experiments. I ran ~20 until April (here are some), but stopped (for no reason). I’ll continue. Speak at 10 global forums. I delivered 10+ PyCon talks. They were pre-recorded, allowing me to scale. But recording videos and no feedback are boring. I’ll explore how to scale enjoyably. Be 10X more effective. I improved my calendar effectiveness 2X in Jan. But I realized this is actually efficiency. Not effectiveness. Maybe effectiveness shouldn’t be optimized, but discovered. I’ll continue to ponder. Milestones in 2022: ...
Microsoft ported its PowerPoint Speaker Coach to Teams. Since September, it’s given me suggestions covering 11 hours in 77 calls (I speak ~10 min/call.) I say “uhh” a lot. That’s intentional I use the filler word “uhh” in 70% of my calls. That did not surprise me. I do that intentionally. On a poor network, they know I’m still connected They know I’m going to say something I sound less confident. That invites critique I can learn from But I also use filler words like “You know” and “I mean” in half the calls, and “like”, “actually”, and “basically” in a fifth. That’s NOT intentional, and I’ll be conscious. ...
My family and I relocated to Singapore today. Most of my major life decisions have involved the distance from Chennai. In 1992, I wanted to study physics at IIT Kanpur or Kharagpur. My father erased the choices from my admission form and calmly said, “Tick anything in Chennai.” I ticked everything except Chemical Engineering. Prof Kalyanakrishnan saw my rank, said “You’ll get Chemical Engineering”, and ticked it for me. No one heard me say, “But I don’t like Chemical Engineering.” ...
My music library has around 1,000 songs (mostly Tamil and Hindi, with some Telugu and English film songs). I spent this morning tagging them by year with mp3tag. (Manually. You don’t automate the pleasures of life.) I thought my 1990s collection would be the largest. I was in college, listening to lots of music then. But surprisingly, my collection has grown post the 1990s. ...
On 12 Jan 2012, on a flight back from London, I wrote: … it was clear in my mind. I would be an entrepreneur. I would create a small company that would probably fold. Then I’d do it again. And again, 10 times, because 1 in 10 companies survive. And finally, I’d be running a small business that’d be called successful by virtue of having survived. A modest, achievable ambition that I had the courage for. ...
I took a 2022 goal to be 10X more effective. In Jan, I managed 2X. Here’s how. What is effectiveness? I don’t know. I’m figuring it out. But to start off, I measured the number of people my actions directly impact. For example: Discussing my Tools in Data Science Course or writing a blog post impacts ~500 people. Mailing all Gramener employees impacts ~200 people. Shopping with my wife impacts 2 people – her and me (in very different ways). Clearly, the impact is not equal. But it’s a start. ...
In 2021, I made 3 resolutions. Lose 10 kgs. I lost 5 kg in 3 months. But gained it back by the year-end. Fail big. I practiced confronting people – and failed. I still run from fights. Even when important. Calendar integrity. I stuck to my calendar 90% of the time. But personal commitments slipped. On learning, I discovered network clusters. My PyCon talk on movie networks is the start of a fascinating exploration of actors that I’ll write more about. ...
On my Goodreads 2021 reading challenge, I read 52/50 books in 2021. I managed 47/50 in 2020 (see 2020 reviews) and 26/24 in 2019. Here’s what I read (best books first). Mind-blowing The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. It’s the best non-fiction I’ve read in 5 years. It focuses Wealth and Happiness. It’s short. I finished it in a day. But it’s deep. I can spend a decade practicing just a single sentence. It’s available at navalmanack.com as a free e-book and audio book. Rhythm of War. The 4th book of the Stormlight Archives is an action-packed fantasy. A great gift for teenagers. In an extra-ordinary magic system, Brandon Sanderson builds up to the greatest climax I’ve read. What an ending! Death Note #1-#12. Light Yagami gets hold of a “death note”. If he writes a name on it, they die. “L” is out to catch him. In a cat-and-mouse psychological thriller, Light and L work next to each other, share their plans, and still try to outwit the other. It’s like chess. The pieces are visible. But it’s the strategy that counts. A brilliant comic series. Life-changing ...
What do you pick for someone you don’t know well enough? I generally pick books. I know books well enough to match them to people’s personalities. Even if they’re not a book reader. (The risk is that they might have already read the book.) As for the kids, toys like the tiny tower diy playhouses for sale would bring them so much joy. The other safe item is food. Chocolates, dry fruits, etc. Everyone likes them. (Even if they’re dieting, dry fruits and dark chocolates are fine.) ...
LinkedIn has a page that shows the people who most recently followed you. At first, it shows just 20 people. But as you scroll, it keeps fetching the rest. I’d love to get the full list on a spreadsheet. I’m curious about: What kind of people follow me? Which of them has the most followers? Who are my earliest followers? But first, I need to scrape this list. Normally, I’d spend a day writing a program. But I tried a different approach yesterday. ...
I use PowerPoint instead of Adobe Illustrator or Sketch. I’m familiar with it, and it does everything I need. One of the features I’m really excited by in PowerPoint is the ability to manipulate shapes. Let’s say you have a rectangle and a circle. You can select both of these shapes and in the Shape Format > Merge Shapes dropdown, you can: merge them with a union combine them (like an XOR operation in Boolean algebra) fragment them, which breaks them up into pieces intersect them subtract them This is so powerful that you can create any kind of shape. Let’s take an icon from Font Awesome at random – say an address card – and create it. ...
There are more Bollywood actors in Hollywood. Some are even turning down Hollywood roles. So we wondered: How easily can a Bollywood actor connect to a Hollywood actor? As part of the Oct 2019 Gramener data story hackathon, Anand, Kishore, and Niyas created a Jolie No 1 — a data video where [Govinda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Govinda_(actor) announces (in our imagination) that he will act with Angelina Jolie in Jolie No 1, but declines to comment on who introduced them. We picked a theme first The hackathon theme was “movies”. We explored 5 themes: ...
Ganes and I created a data movie on speed-cubing records as part of a Gramener hackathon. Here’s a video of us talking about how we created it. Anand: We picked the Rubik’s cube story for this hackathon. Tell me more about how this excited you. Ganes: Since my son started solving the Rubik’s cube a few months back, I’ve been fascinated with these competitions. I still don’t know how to solve it, but I like watching it. ...
I walked ~11 million steps in the last 3 years, at ~10K steps daily. Since 1 Jan 2018, I've steadily increased my walking average until Aug 2018. Then my legs started aching. So I cut it down until Jan 2019. In Feb, I resumed and was fairly steady until May 2020. To complement workouts like this, products that are aimed for men over 50 can be used. In May, my wife refused to let me walk for more than an hour a day. It took me a few months to convince her and level up. I ended 2020 averaging a little over 10K steps for the year. ...
In 2020 I made 3 resolutions. Read 50 books. I almost made it. Here are my reviews. Walk 10,000 steps daily. I managed it, like the last two years. Lose 2 kgs. I failed – and instead, put on 6 kgs. On self-improvement, I completed a Landmark course and an Art of Living course. Both had a huge productivity impact. (Mail me for details.) On software, I starting playing Minecraft and moved from Gmail to Windows 10 Mail. More on this. ...