experiments on S Anand

My Year in 2023

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 01:52:08 +0000

In 2023, I made 3 resolutions:

Run 50 experiments. I managed 44 / 50. (Here are some). Learnings: I need to improve planning (9), scepticism (6), and lateral thinking (4).
Make 1 change a month in my environment. I managed 8 / 12. The largest impact was from meeting new people, working out of new places, and using new gadgets.
Calendar integrity, i.e. stick to my calendar. I succeeded over 95% of the time.

My most memorable events in 2023 were:

In 2024, I plan to:

Compound long-term goals, daily. I want fewer, bigger, more meaningful outcomes.
Hit 80 heart points, daily. Cycling or swimming (not walking, on doctor’s advice.)
Be a better husband.

I’ll continue to:

Experiment, like in 2023.
Change environments, like in 2023.
Read 50 books a year, like in 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020.

I’m curious — what’s ONE thing you’d like to do in 2024?

Comments

Santhosh 1 Jan 2024 7:53 pm: One thing that I want to do is run planned experiments and run more experiments !!!
My Year in 2024 - S Anand 30 Dec 2024 10:00 pm (pingback): […] Here’s the report card for my 2024 resolutions: […]
My learnings as week notes - S Anand 25 Dec 2024 7:57 pm (pingback): […] of my goals for 2024 is to “Compound long-term goals, daily.” Learning is one of […]

One Year of Transforming Thoughts by Changing Environments

Wed, 27 Dec 2023 06:33:35 +0000

From The Extended Mind I learnt that our environment shapes our thinking more than I’d expected. That we can arrange our environment to extend our thoughts.

In 2023, each month I changed something in my environment to see:

What does “changing my environment involve”? What can I change?
Will I succeed?
Does it affect my thoughts? Can I track this?

Here are the results.

🟢 Jan. New desk orientations. Rotated standing desk, settled on one direction. Impact: LOW. I don’t know if my thoughts changed.
🟢 Jan: New walking routes. I explored new areas in Singapore, Hyderabad and Chennai. Impact: MEDIUM. Just seeing new shops, posters and layouts helped me think differently.
🔴 Jan: New song genres. I playlist-ed with several western genres, but listened only twice.
🔴 Feb: New book genres. I list 12 genres I dislike: Art, Chick Lit, Christian, Cookbooks, Gay and Lesbian, Horror, Music, Paranormal, Poetry, Religion, Sports, Travel. I didn’t read any.
🔴 Mar: Sleep over problems. Sleep is a great way to solve complex problems. But I couldn’t summon the willpower to “load” problems at night.
🟢 Mar: New people. I met a new person daily. Impact: HIGH. Meeting diverse people had the highest impact.
🟢 Apr: New work places. I worked out of libraries, cafes, school, parks, and offices. Impact: HIGH. New complex environments (like libraries) prompted new thoughts.
🟢 Jun. Notes from podcasts. I took notes rather than just listening. This helped me reflect and synthesize. Impact: MEDIUM. BTW, I listen mostly to Cautionary Tales, The Knowledge Project, Hidden Brain, How I write, The Seen and the Unseen, and Deep Questions.
🟢 Jul: New gadgets. I bought several new gadgets that changed my habits. Impact: HIGH.
- Portable USB fan lets me sit comfortably anywhere in any room
- Desk clock (with a second’s hand) keeps me on time for meetings
- Gaming laptop lets me run LLMs locally on the GPU
- Rucksack lets me carry laptops and clothes in one bag
- Pomodoro timer helps me time my activities and focus
- Monitor lets me code while seeing the output
- Gaming chair lets me read lying down
- Standing desk gives me a mobile re-orientable desk
- Raincoat lets me cycle in the rain
- Gaming mouse lets me browse leaning back (and play Minecraft)
- Cycle phone mount lets me film while cycling
- Plastic belt lets me through airport security
- Lycra sandals helps me with rains and airport security
- Rain bonnet helps me grab lunch when raining
- Bicycle lamps let me cycle at night
- Fidget cube keeps my hands occupied while I think
- Bluetooth speaker lets me carry songs while washing dishes
- Others had lower impact. I don’t use them much.
- Gaming microphone
- USB hub
- Video conference light
- Graphic tablet
- Monitor stand
🔴 Aug: New cuisines. I tried a Bibimbap, a Verdure Ciambatta, and then discovered my cholesterol problem. I stopped.
🟢 Aug: New work habit. I used Pomodoro with micro-tasks. Impact: MEDIUM. I became more aware of where I misestimate time and got less distracted.
🟢 Nov: New exercise pattern. I switched walking to cycling. This increases heart points, reduces foot stress, and gets me to work. Impact: MEDIUM. I switched from typing notes to dictating, which needs a different thought process.

In summary:

8 / 12 attempts were successful.
New people, new places, and new gadgets had high impact on thoughts. Most others had at least medium impact.
The changes mostly led to diverse thinking. But measuring that is subjective.

I’ll continue exploring new environments in 2024. I’m evaluating:

New book genres (contd)
New music genres (contd)
Walking meetings
Reading while walking
New places to sleep (e.g. AirBnB)
Working while traveling
New audiences to teach
New attires

Comments

Santosh 27 Dec 2023 4:37 pm: Superb articulation Anand…never thought adding gadgets will enable productivity…BTW, your suggestion on notes in VS code is one transformation step for me…
My Year in 2023 - S Anand 31 Dec 2023 8:20 pm (pingback): […] 1 change a month in my environment. I managed 8 / 12. New people, new places to work, and new gadgets had the most […]
Jaspreet 7 Mar 2024 10:52 pm: Woowwww!! I always used to hear the popular suggestion “To change your life, you need to change your habits” - and I am now more convinced to the idea - if someone wants to change their life - they need to change what they hear, speak, watch or just break the pattern of what they have been doing all this time and I just realized thats what I am trying to do in my current situation of life and thats how I am evolving. I have changed my taste of music, replaced the series/films to new genre, replaced the books, replaced the articles. So, basically we don’t need to leave the habits - we need to replace the habits - thats the crux!

Zeigarnik effect vs my procrastination

Sat, 28 Jan 2023 15:52:55 +0000

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.

In Mar-Apr 2022, I started micro-journalling to find out why. Whenever I was working on something, I wrote down whenever I started, stopped, or skipped working, and why.

- Tue 01 Mar. ❌ Create React app with any one Vega chart where attributes control chart signals
  - 09:30am. Skipped. INTERRUPTED. Shobana. Cleaning bedroom
  - 09:50am. Skipped. SCHEDULED. Breakfast
  - 10:10am. Skipped. INTERRUPTED. Naveen. Call
  - 10:50am. Skipped. DISTRACTED. LinkedIn. 3b1b videos
  - 12:30pm. Skipped. SCHEDULED. Calls
  - 01:30pm. Skipped. SCHEDULED. Lunch
  - 02:00pm. Skipped. INTERRUPTED. Shobana. Cleaning, Dhyeya airtel card
  - 02:30pm. Skipped. PROCRASTINATED. Didn't feel like working
- Sat 05 Mar. ❌ Record Jio videos fully. Run productivity log alongside it.
  - 09:45am. Skipped. INTERRUPTED. Appa. Investment, music
  - 11:00am. Skipped. PROCRASTINATED. Only 2 hours to next call. Let's do it later. Plenty of time tomorrow.
  - 01:30pm. Skipped. PROCRASTINATED. Only 30 min to next call. Plenty of time tomorrow.
  - 03:45pm. Skipped. PROCRASTINATED. Half day wasted already. It’s OK to take one day off completely.
- Mon 07 Mar. ✅ Record Jio videos fully. Run productivity log alongside it.
  - 09:37am. Started. ZEIGARNIK. Was thinking about this since morning.
  - 10:00am. Stopped. INTERRUPTED. Naveen. Called
  - 10:25am. Started. ZEIGARNIK. Just continued with momentum.
  - 01:00pm. Stopped. SCHEDULED. Lunch
  - 01:30pm. Started. ZEIGARNIK. Just continued with momentum.
  - 03:15pm. Stopped. COMPLETED.

After 2 months, a few patterns emerged.

Why I skip working

Distraction (50%).
1. Interesting things (22%) were the biggest. Less important things (e.g. programming, browsing/research)
2. Movies (10%) pulled me away
3. Email (8%) was fairly common
4. Organizing things (6%) like my calendar, TODOs, financials, etc.
5. Social media, interestingly, was not on my list
Procrastination (25%). There were 3 kinds:
1. It’s hard, and I’m stuck
2. I don’t feel like doing it
3. I don’t have time – my next task begins sooner than I can finish
Schedule (14%). I’d scheduled something else for then (usually food)
Interrupted (12%). Usually by family or close colleagues

Why I start working

Zeigarnik effect (68%). I keep thinking about the problem. So even after a break, I just plunge right in
Mindfulness (19%). I got started just by the act of writing the journal
Distraction (9%). Sometimes, distractions work in my favor. A movie gets stuck, or someone pings about the topic, or my mind is processing the problem in the background
Completed (3%). I finished the previous task and the momentum just took me to the next

Why I stop working

Schedule (47%). I have another meeting/task planned at that time
Interruption (35%). This is mostly by colleagues (22%), family (8%), or hunger/thirst (6%)
Exhaustion (10%). I’m just too tired to go on
Distraction (8%). To do this, I need to do THAT first, and I get sucked into THAT

What I learned

The Zeigarnik effect helps me start. Once I start solving something the momentum carries forward. The next best is to write down why I’m not starting it (micro-journalling).
To avoid procrastination, I should eliminate distractions first. Specifically, use a new Virtual Desktop, block movies, and block email & notifications.
To avoid schedules interrupting me, I should batch meetings even more tightly, giving me longer or more flexible blocks to work on

My Year in 2022

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 03:12:25 +0000

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:

I completed 10 years at Gramener in February.
I moved to Singapore in August. (Cycling and ComicCon were mind-blowing discoveries.)

2 habits I continued from last year:

In 2023, I plan to:

Run 50 experiments. I’ll learn by disproving my beliefs with measurable tests.
Make 1 change a month in my environment. 90% of our thoughts are shaped by our environment. (Read The Extended Mind.) So I’ll use the remaining 10% to shape my environment.
Calendar integrity. Stick to my calendar. Especially the time I block for myself to work. (This is a 2021 habit I’ve slipped on.)

I’m curious — what’s ONE thing you’d like to do in 2023?

Comments

My Year in 2023 - S Anand 31 Dec 2023 7:22 am (pingback): […] For 2023, I made 3 resolutions: […]
Picking books to read - S Anand 11 Jan 2023 8:50 am (pingback): […] 2023, I’m reshaping my environment. Picking books I usually won’t pick. (Read The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the Delight of […]

Increasing calendar effectiveness by 2X

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 08:01:20 +0000

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.

How to measure it?

Since Dec 1, I categorized all my Outlook calendar entries into one of these categories:

Red is “low reach”. Green is “high reach”. This is what 6-10 Dec 2021 looked like:

I continued this for 8 weeks.

Did effectiveness increase?

In Week 1, I reached 30 people on average. This was the control week.

In Weeks 2-3, the reach increased from 30 to 77. In Weeks 4-8, it settled at 64.

So, yes, effectiveness increased. in Jan 2022, I reached twice as many people per week as when I started off.

I didn’t measure quality/impact. One-on-one coaching has more impact than a lecture. Reach is just a crude first approximation for effectiveness.

How did this happen?

What gets measured, improves. I’d categorize each entry on my calendar. This enabled 3 things:

I’d try to remove low-reach (<50 reach - red) items. This reduced rom 45 to 29 hours a week.
I’d try to add high-reach (>= 50 reach - green) items. This increased from 12 to 18 hours a week.

So, I now have 10 more hours of “me time” every week, while I still reach 2X as many people.

What next?

I’m exploring better measures of effectiveness. I believe:

Effectiveness is goal alignment. It’s personal, and purely a function of your priorities.
Effectiveness is multipled by assets. Actions that create assets improve effectiveness.

Once I discover a robust measure, I will to re-categorize my calendar and re-run this experiment.

If you use a measure of effectiveness of impact, please let me know – I’d love to learn from that.

Comments

My Year in 2022 - S Anand 31 Dec 2022 8:42 am (pingback): […] 10X more effective. I improved my calendar effectiveness 2X in Jan. But I realized this is actually efficiency. Not effectiveness. Maybe effectiveness […]

Laptop power usage

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:09:29 +0000

I just got a digital wattmeter. Had no idea about these until Google PowerMeter, but now, they’re all the rage. Mine’s a pretty simple model and all I plan to do with it is play around with a few household gadgets.

My first target, obviously, was my Dell Latitude E5400. The statistics are interesting:

Power	… when…
0.3W	Laptop is switched off. The adapter must be consuming the power
1.3W	Laptop is on standby.
12W	The lid is closed, and no applications are running.
18.5W	The laptop is on, the lid is open, and no applications are running
25W	The laptop is writing to the hard disk
34W	One CPU is fully utilised
41W	Both CPUs are fully utilised

Looks like the display and hard disk each consume about 6.5 watts each, while the CPU consumes a whopping 15 + 7 = 22 watts.

One interesting observation is that the colour of the display doesn’t make much of a difference. From my CRT monitor days, I’d remembered that a black screen consumes less power, and is less likely to wear the screen off. So my desktop background has always been black, and most of my applications use a black theme. But it turns out that on LCDs, it makes absolutely no difference. A full white screen uses the same power as a full black screen. So I’ve really been wasting my time the last 9 years. (There is a good reason to have a black screen, sometimes – it’s much easier on the eyes when reading without lights.)

Another lesson was that turning off the wireless had no effect whatsoever. (It worked quite well for my Blackberry, though. Increased the battery life quite a bit. I thought the same might apply for laptops, but looks like it doesn’t.)

I’ll do an audit of some of my home appliances and post it out here. Wonder if there’s a repository of power usage for appliances…

Comments

Dibyo 8 Feb 2010 3:15 am: I have always run a laptop battery longer by putting the wireless off, the difference is immediate, so this is NEWS TO ME! This is how I figured it - point at battery icon (e.g. 50 mins left) - switch off wireless - point a min later (1 hour left). What was I doing wrong?
JB 8 Feb 2010 5:25 am: Informative. I should buy one as well as show this to my roomies, who leave their personal laptops lid-opened throughout the day and night while sleeping or away to office. Thanks.
Nikhith 8 Feb 2010 5:44 am: I have one doubt about the way u conducted these tests and deduced the results Mr. Anand. I’m sure u could use the power meter only to check the power usage when u connected the charger. But the power strain on the charger due to white background and wireless on, is much less significant as compared to the power strain on the batteries alone. So i guess there will considerable increase in the battery backup due to black background and wireless off. I’m just hypothesizing this, and this must answer u r question too Dibyo
S Anand 10 Feb 2010 5:06 pm: @Dibyo: just to be sure, I tried it again. Definitely no change in power consumption when the wireless is turned off. Not sure if the problem is with how Windows calculates the power consumption, or whether your laptop’s wireless is different somehow…
S Anand 10 Feb 2010 5:09 pm: @Nikhith: If that were the case, changing the display’s brightness shouldn’t have affected much either. But for every notch that I darkened the display, the power consumption fell visibly by about 0.5W. So I suspect the actual usage of the laptop is directly transmitted to the mains, and the battery doesn’t really do much of a buffering. (At least when it’s charged, I guess. Mine was fully charged.) This means that the the wireless power consumption really is insignificant compared to CPU usage, brightness, or hard disk usage.
Amit 22 Mar 2010 3:32 pm: thanks Anand for sharing the experiment result. As per my understanding, with wireless switch on battery consumption is higher. many times my laptop’s battery has dried very fast because by mistake I have left the wireless switch on. you can also validate this by just leaving machine for sometime on battery power with/without wireless switch on ( dont use the ac power).
Rajesh 25 Mar 2010 11:13 am: Where can I get this gadget in India?
S Anand 25 Mar 2010 4:18 pm: You know, I’ve been hunting all over Bangalore and Chennai for it. Yet to find one!
Raj 24 Feb 2011 7:10 am: Wonderful information. No one has given this much clarity on this topic. Keep going. Thanks R@J.

Amazing physics experiments

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Videos of amazing physics experiments.

Google Adwords algorithm

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Interesting experiment to test the impact of changing the rate for Google Adwords. Two identical sites have Adwords account. One has an established account paying $0.10 per word. Another is a new account, and begins by paying $1.00, then lowers it to $0.40. The former got 15,000 click-throughs regularly. The latter started just above 15,000 and fell to 1,200 after the rate drop. Does the Adwords algorithm favours rate increases disproportionately (and hence is evil?) Or is the fact that the former site an established one create the difference?

Self writing blogs and blog automation

Tue, 05 Oct 2004 12:00:00 +0000

iamlearn and rrobot are self-writing blogs. Written by programs, that is. They’re quite readable, though somewhat meaningless. (Why not write a useful self-writing blog… like Google News?)

Pasta

Thu, 15 Aug 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Incidentally, this kitchen hosted my latest attempt at making pasta. I found a simple pesto sauce recipe, and ended up spending about Rs. 500 for the ingredients. We managed to eat it. Barely.

Annals of improbable research

Thu, 08 Feb 2001 12:00:00 +0000

The Annals of Improbable Research have sent all kinds of things by post. Almost two-thirds were delivered. I doubt if it would happen in India.

The Fat Project

Tue, 07 Nov 2000 12:00:00 +0000

The Fat Project tried to get two people to gain 30 pounds in 30 days. One made it. One didn’t. For the first time, you can actually see flesh grow.