Things I Heard

While listening to a podcast episode interviewing Bret Taylor (one of the leading engineers behind the development of Google Maps):

If someone says something I’m not familiar with, I’ve gotten over the feeling dumb thing, I’m like - I don’t know what that is, explain that to me. —Bret Taylor

I have a good friend who epitomizes the type A personality. No matter how busy he is and how much responsibility he takes on, he always finds time to host events, practice the piano, read books, cook new recipes, and more. I often find myself in awe at this. When I asked how he’s able to do so much, he replied (and I paraphrase):

The way I get so much done with my time is that I set out a chunk of time to do something and I just sit down and do it. I don’t let myself get distracted. It takes discipline. —Friend

I think one of the most notable pieces of advice I’ve gotten from talks by software developers while as a student at the University of Chicago is the emphasis on documentation and readability:

Your code in industry is read 10,000 times more than it is edited - readibility is more important than being smart. —Mark Cohen

My scivis and datavis CS professor Gordon Kindlmann (one of my favorite professors) would give a motivating spiel at the start of every class on what it means to be a good computer scientist, engineer, and learner. It almost always involved quotes from famous software engineers past and present e.g. Margaret Hamilton or Leslie Lamport. But funnily enough, the most memorable one was when he pulled up a TikTok of someone named Dr. Becky as part of his class warmup. He told the class that in this TikTok, Dr. Becky succinctly explained something important and fundamental to what it means to grow and overcome challenges on the path to becoming more capable.

The Learning Space is the space between not knowing, and knowing. But in between, it’s very hard. In that space it’s instinctual to want to avoid that frustrating and uncomfortable feeling. But the next time you feel that way, recognize that it is a sign that you are learning something new. Only by embracing this feeling and pushing forward can you become the person that knows the answer. —Gordon Kindlmann

I went to a talk titled “God, the Grind, and the Good Life” by my social psychology professor, Professor Oishi (another one of my favorite professors). An important principle that he applies in his own life when work gets difficult is that he replaces “have to” with “get to” in his mind. Instead of “I have to finish this paper” he thinks “I get to finish this paper” because not everyone gets that opportunity to work on interesting research projects and publish their results. He also emphasizes stepping away from the hedonic treadmill by maximizing success while managing expectation and ambition. As success grows, often ambition grows as well, and if we use the analogy of self esteem as success divided by ambition, if you don’t curb your ambitions, you will never be satisfied. At the end of the day, subjectivity matters the most when it comes to reconciling work with the good life.

If you believe you are living a good life, that’s all that matters. —Shigehiro Oishi

Happiness is not intensity but frequency. Small and frequent happy moments in enduring relationships make a good life, not promotions and big life events. —Shigehiro Oishi