One of my deeply held beliefs is that people, in general, don’t make enough changes in their lives. They tend to live for too long in the same city, go too frequently to the same restaurants, date the wrong person for too long, and continue working in jobs they hate for far too long. All of these are inertia problems — what’s known is comfortable and the unknown seems, if not...
I love learning new things, and I’m always looking for ways to get better at learning new things. Whereas a lot of people stop deliberately learning new things once they graduate from whatever formal level of schooling they’ve made it to, I’ve had the good fortune to have the time, energy, and inclination to be able to continue to invest in learning new things, and recently I’ve been...
People ask me a lot about my move from New York City to Mexico City. I made the move two years ago, when I was 30 — I moved from NYC where I had a big professional and friend network to Mexico City where I literally knew no one and I didn’t speak the language. I’m very happy to report that I’m two years into the move and I couldn’t be happier. However, I talk to lots of other foreigners who have...
I’ve been working remotely for the last two years, so I had the advantage of a decent period of adjustment before the COVID-19 crisis hit and forced the majority of tech workers into a fairly extended (and, perhaps, indefinite?) period of remote work. Lots of pixels have already been spilled with advice about how to make that adjustment, but I want to talk about an oft-overlooked angle that...
In the last few years I have invested _a lot_ of time in pure, rote memorization. Over this period, I’ve changed my opinion 180 degrees from how I thought about memorization when I was in high school. Back then, I thought that any topic that was “pure memorization” wasn’t worth learning, and now I believe that memorization is a necessary condition for many types of...
I, unfortunately enough, have spent a lot of time on dating apps. I was an okcupid user back in the early 2010s and have since then (excluding a few happy years coupled) been a longtime Bumble/Tinder/Hinge user. Over that time I’ve seen lots change about the dating apps — from Tinder’s incredible swipe interface innovation that turned finding a lifelong mate to cherish into a...
One habit that I’ve built up over the years that I count as one of my super powers is training myself to say “thank you” reflexively anytime anyone criticizes or corrects me. If I’m cooking something in the kitchen and someone says “you’re doing that wrong”, or if I’m showing someone some code I wrote at work and they say “that’s the...
Over the last few years I’ve noticed that one phrase that I use over and over again has had an outsized impacts on both my work and personal relationships. It’s become my secret weapon to help me be a better friend and a better to partner to everyone I’m lucky enough to spend much time with. That phrase is “how can I help?”. How can I help? In all kinds of...