Advice

  1. Get a Roomba (or similar robot vacuum).
  2. Hire people to clean your house.
  3. If you're getting nose surgery, shave your moustache the night before.
  4. When I'm looking to work with someone, I'm looking for 1) someone that does what they say they're going to do 2) who can do what I want them to do and 3) will be reasonably pleasant to work with.
  5. On your mountain bike, get the longest dropper post that can fit.
  6. If you work in ML, you need to understand backprop:. The best way is to write your own implementation from scratch. It really does help your intuition.
  7. When hot waxing skis, use much less wax than you think you need.
  8. When hot waxing skis, if your edges have recently been tuned, wear gloves. I have 3 bandaids on my fingers.
  9. Never buy an AC unit; spend the extra money and get a heat pump.
  10. Don't buy a road bike unless you're planning to race. Buy a gravel bike. Make sure it can fit at least 40mm, and preferably 50mm, tires.
  11. Wax your bike chain. It's tedious and annoying at first, but it's worth it. No more black gunk.
  12. Agency continues to be underrated, even by people who know this. You can just do things. Formal education tries to beat this out of us, but don't listen. You can just do things. I have received an immense amount of value from doing things that no one encouraged me to do.
  13. Encourage people to do things. There is a definite lack of encouragement. If you see someone doing something you think is good, tell them.
  14. You may have a rich internal life, but no one knows that. You have to create a public surface area for people to be aware of you. Once I started writing publicly, I had a lot of people start reaching out to me, which led to incredible opportunities. I didn't become smarter, or more able, by writing (well… maybe a little). I became more public, so others could see this. I have many friends and colleagues who are smarter than me, but less public, so no one knows it, and they receive much fewer opportunities than I do.
  15. You can just do things. One day, I read Dan Luu's advice on Big companies v. startups:

    it's possible to get the upside of working at a startup by working at a big company and investing in startups… you actually only need to invest $25k/yr to get the equity benefit of being a very early employee. Not only can you get better risk adjusted returns (by diversifying), you'll also have much more income if you work at a big company and invest $25k/yr than if you work at a startup.

    I found this compelling so I started doing it. I didn't need anyone's permission. We'll see how it plays out.

  16. Custom orthotics/insoles are excellent, and should be prioritized (particularly in skiing). They make a remarkable difference.
  17. You should be stretching every day. I have had a distinct improvement in the quality of my daily life through stretching daily (and lifting weights 1-3x per week).
  18. Non-alcoholic beer tastes remarkably good.
  19. If you live somewhere cold, like I do, you have to embrace winter or it'll drive you crazy. I have made a conscious decision to get really into skiing (which I always enjoyed). It causes me to look forward to the cold & snowy weather, and not become horribly depressed once the days become shorter. Good gear helps.
  20. Read more papers. I have never read enough papers throughout my career. Every time I spend more time reading papers, I have benefitted massively.