When you meet someone who is brilliant at what they do, you’re generally witnessing the product of significant time and energy investment. In an interview, Richard Feynman articulates this point well: “If you take an ordinary person who’s willing to devote a great deal of time and study and work and thinking and mathematics and timeline, then he’s become a scientist.” We can generally become decent at most things with marginal time investment.

I attended a product management conference today and learned a lot of new ideas about how I can be a better Data Scientist for product teams. All of these bright ideas are useless, however, until I do something with them. This is an essential distinction: acquiring knowledge is not the thing that makes the difference. None of the knowledge I picked up today is meaningful until I start making better decisions in light of it.

A culture where it is acceptable to make mistakes and learn from them is essential. Of course, there are some situations and disciplines where we cannot tolerate too much risk and therefore need to rely on conservative decisions — we must be the judge of when this is necessary. But…

Dr. Mike Massimino was rejected from NASA’s astronaut program 3 times before being accepted. Dr. Peggy Whitson who, as of this August has logged almost 2 years in space was rejected 4 times before joining NASA. José Herández’, whose journey from the farm fields of Stockton, California all the way…

Growing up I thought I was a very disciplined and dedicated piano student until I witnessed the playing of a few of my teacher’s other students whose playing was clearly on an entirely different level from mine. These students routinely practiced up to 8 hours a day, which made my…

The ability to say “no” is just as much a skill that requires patience and practice as any other capability we endeavor to obtain in order to be more productive and happier people. Three observations that help with honing this skill: Saying “no” is about opportunity cost: you are trading…

Being here — alive, right now — is a somewhat underappreciated observation. Existing now affords you all kinds of opportunities: you can pick up the phone and connect with someone who also exists now. You can step outside and smell all the literal and figurative roses in your surroundings. Yesterday would’ve been the birthday of a dear friend from college who is no longer here. She was a bright light — hilarious, brilliant, caring — gone far too soon.

Jenny Chen and Jeffrey Brown started Izola Bakery during the pandemic with zero professional baking experience. In their most recent customer email (worth reading in its entirety), Brown describes their humble beginnings: “…we began with the croissant recipe on the side of the flour bag and worked our way to…

The decisions we make today are not always in harmony with the outcomes we desire in the future. Sometimes the easier thing done today is just a debt incurred on your (and your team’s) future self. A half-baked solution that you cobble together today that technically works may very well…