Expressing myself - What do you see when you see?

2022 new year resolutions

I drew this sketch 2.5 years back in 2019 when I was just re-entering into the world of Biology after high school. I was learning A,B,C,D(A,T,C,G to be more precise) of biology. I bombarded my teammates with my curiously dumb questions which they answered patiently. I was becoming a bilingual(Multilingual in the true sense) who could speak Biology, Chemistry, and Machine learning at the same time as well as understand one from the perspective of the other. The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Fast forward to the year 2020-2021 has been fascinating, challenging, adapting, and much more. After adapting to Work from home, working asynchronously improved personal and team productivity but made communication harder. So, I had to find my own ways of communicating. Everyone found their own way of communicating and working which turned out to be great. While the third wave hit us and hit us hard, we found our own ways of coping and adjusting to the new realities.

"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships."

-Michael Jordan

Sometimes, I had to win games(solo projects or bug solving) but the championships(projects) were won with teamwork.

What are my new year resolutions?

• Create more than consume

  • The weakest ink is better than the strongest brain. Paper has more patience than people - Anne Frank

  • I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time. -- Blaise Pascal

  • Generally, I end up consuming(reading) more content as compared to writing(blogs, articles, journal notes with perspective etc.) which in turn makes me a knowledge holder. I will start becoming a knowledge distributor. I will create more presentations, more blogs, more notes, more perspective thoughts on topics. The greater goal is to connect to thousands and continue being the force multiplier.

• Listen more than tell

  • The hardest thing I have found myself was to listen to others fully before explaining my viewpoint. The idea of premature judgment that the speaker is deviating from the topic or don't understand what they are saying or I already know what they are going to say doesn't lead to fruitful outcomes and cause mistrust among others. Giving people the time to express themselves is one of the key things I will try to work upon.

• Not becoming a "cancer" to the team

  • Since I end up attending more meetings I generally have a top-down view and a broader picture of what is going on. This allows me to make arguments and decisions which are much more relevant in the context. Although, it brings new insights and perspectives to the discussion however I end up taking the entire space much like cancer cells rapidly grow and take over the entire body. It inhibits other people to express themselves thereby stunting their growth and making them cut off from the project and the team. I am still learning the art of being passionate about my work but not getting emotional about it.

• Do more than tell

  • Don’t think of doing things. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t ‘try’ to do things. You simply ‘must’ do things.”—Ray Bradbury

• Go into uncharted areas of DevOps and FrontEnd

  • We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training

  • Instinctively I avoided the areas which did not directly deal with data - DevOps and FrontEnd. I was already transitioning from the world of traditional machine learning to deep learning architectures and core sciences(biology and chemistry) were the new beast to be tamed.

  • With the newfound realities, I have accepted that to be present in the whole supply chain, I have to get better on DevOps and FrontEnd

• Catch up with Machine learning advancements

  • New transformers have been released with TensorFlow 2.x version as well. I would try to catch up with Machine learning world advancements by at least trying to take part in one machine learning competition.

• Everyone has 24 hours in a day, but not everyone's 24 hours are equal and neither are mine. So, I will go easy on myself if I am not productive 24/7

• Conviction to take hard decisions and go through things

  • With the imposter syndrome fading away, I am now much more confident in my abilities. I would now try to make decisions with more convictions.

What I will continue from my learning in past years?

• Keep asking stupid questions: willingness to look stupid

  • It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.

  • More often than not, whenever I didn't ask questions, I didn't end up understanding it completely. If I couldn't understand, I couldn't contribute. Moreover, asking those stupid questions helped in a clearer understanding for the team.

  • But asking the same stupid question twice annoys people and waste everyone's time. So, I try to listen to the whole conversation or stay tuned in(maybe someone else has already asked

• Stay a positive rebel: outlier data scientist

  • Rebellion is generally seen as a destructive force but one can be different and still contribute to the larger cause.

• Fill in the gaps, then fill in the gaps between the gaps and fill inside the gaps

• Keep looking for things that are bright, stupid, and fun(The greatness cannot be planned but it can be built)

  • Smooth sea never makes a skilled sailor - so keep embarking into uncharted territories without fear of getting lost

• Keep bricolaging - creativity within constraints

• Keep wearing different hats

  • Positive thinkers invented airplanes but negative thinkers invented parachutes

  • look at the same problem from multiple perspectives and not get intentionally blind

• The passion of the explorer

  • a long term commitment to learning, excited by the challenge, and connectedness to like-minded people

• Keep creating templates

  • As I grow more experienced in the corporate world, I have gone through multiple projects and situations. After a while, one starts seeing patterns and conventions. Templates help in speeding up on tackling similar scenarios

    • Progress tracker for projects

    • Eisenhower matrix

    • Weekly planner

• Choosing quantity over quality

  • a CI/CD approach for improvement

• Hard work and Grit(showing up everyday)

  • Obsession is a substitute for determination and a proxy for ability

  • A river cuts through a rock , not because of its power , but because of its persistency

• Keep building my intuition

  • When you are amateur, your actions are based on your instincts. But with more experience you start considering your actions merging them with instinct and transform them into intuition. 

  • A strong intuition is more powerful than a weak test - first law of medicine

• Keeping things simple

  • Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction - to make things simple.

• Being patient

  • Life gives you lemons, pepper, salt and sometime cold water too, However they don't come altogether neither they come in sequence. So stay in the battle, until the lemonade is ready

• Keep believing the power of compound interest

  • Give me a minute, I'm good. Give me an hour, I'm great. Give me six months, I'm unbeatable. - Col. John 'Hannibal' Smith: The A team

• Have the courage to throw away pet projects if they are paralyzing me from moving forward

  • House blowing up builds character - Deadpool

  • Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.- Stephen King

  • The electric light did not come from continuous improvement of candles.

• Keep learning

  • You'll soon find yesterday's 'fast' become's today's 'normal' and tomorrow's 'slow'