HH#89.mp3

Harpreet: [00:00:09] What's up, everybody? Welcome. Welcome to the heart of the data science. Happy hour. It is Friday, July 15th. I'm kicking it alive and dry in Elk Grove, California, with the one and only emphasis the hanging out here. Man, super excited to have all you guys here today will be hosted by the one and only Tom AIs. I'm excited for him taking over and and being host. I'm going to bounce out quick, but before I bounce out, I want to give a quick shout out to our sponsors. This episode of the Data Science Podcast is brought to you by Z, by HP. Get rapid results from your most demanding data sets, train data models and create data visualizations with Z, data science, laptops and desktop workstations. The Data Science Stack Manager provides convenient access to popular tools and updates them automatically to help you customize your environment on Windows and Linux through HP dot com for data science to learn more. No podcast episode released today because we're on a bit of a hiatus, but this will be released and out there for the world. That's it for me. I'm going to hand this over to Dr. Tom AIs, who is going to be the host. You all. Cheers. Take care. Have a great session. We'll be joining in from the road soon. Also, just a quick shout out to everybody in there in the building that lives in the building. Jay, what's going on? Eric Russell, good to see you guys here. Matt, take care.

Speaker2: [00:01:37] And Tom, that's all you.

Speaker3: [00:01:40] And rest assured, we are jealous. You two have fun, but not too much fun because we're not there. All right. Hey, it's just to have.

Harpreet: [00:01:50] Just enough fun. Just enough? Yes.

Speaker3: [00:01:52] Yes.

Harpreet: [00:01:53] Just take care. Right.

Speaker3: [00:01:57] It's great to have you all here. Sadly, [00:02:00] I cannot misbehave as usual in the chat with you guys today because I'm hosting. But I'll watch your antics carefully. And I don't know about you guys, but when I've mentored people, it seems like 90% of the time, probably more. They just need some encouragement to remember their potential. But I find, and especially with myself, there's all this baggage. This. I'm going to talk a little more Cajun today, this shit in our way that it just gets in our way to hamper our potential. And I want to ask you guys. How can we help those that are listening? How can we help each other to get to that complete potential? We all have. And yes. Thank you, Eric. You're going to have to watch me. But Eric's cautioning me on my language, on my Cajun is what I call it, because anyway.

Speaker2: [00:03:12] But one thing.

Speaker3: [00:03:14] And I'm going to break the ice, but I want to hear from you guys. If I could go back and talk to my younger self, I would say, Tom, slow down and focus on fewer things. Be more patient. If you're going to get good at something, even with your PhD, you're going to have to take your time. You're going to have to go even deeper than you went in grad school. You're going to have to be patient. And even if you think you're so talented, you're really not. When you start something new, you're going to make some mistakes and you've got to push through. And when you get tired, rest. But really, the one key word I'd go back [00:04:00] and tell myself is be patient. And then right after that, stick with it. So that's just my thought. We can talk around that. But I'd like to hear from you guys too, because really, in honor of Harpreet for putting this amazing community together in this amazing, consistent, happy hour thing, I stopped and I thought, what? What does he really care about? Well, we've all been just trying to help each other with questions, but I figured in honor of Harpreet and the great work he's done this great communities form, how can we help each other reach our greatest potentials? Because what's he say at the end of every half hour? Happy hour? I can't say it perfectly, but it goes something like You only have one life to live.

Speaker3: [00:04:47] Might as well go out and do something great. Well, it's in that spirit. How do we reach our full potential? So let me be quiet and hear from others. Right. My brother, thank you for joining us. I know it's insanely late for you and aunty. Same thing, but you usually join us. Crazy late and Auntie's writing is back right now. So we'll. We'll give him time to get settled in his office. If no one goes right away, I will ask for volunteers, which means I will volunteer you. That's my funny way of saying I'll ask, but I'm not really going to ask. I'll do it. The Marine style. Right, Albert? I'll say, Hey, let's hear from you. I give a.

Harpreet: [00:05:34] First thought and then come up with a different thought. That's probably better later. But one thing that kind of comes to mind for helping one another reach our potential, and this is probably because I'm tired on a Friday afternoon and I don't feel like working really hard at the moment is like. Like taking a moment to appreciate at any time, taking [00:06:00] a moment to appreciate who we are right now, because where we are right now is a pretty good spot relative to hopefully where we've been in the past. Right. And had a therapist mentioned one time like you don't. You shouldn't love potential. You should love a person, right? It's like you can see potential. But if you don't like love and appreciate that the person who they are today, right now, then like just loving that they could be a nicer person, a better listener or cooler data scientist or whatever, like is ultimately not going to serve anybody in the long run or whatever. So I think that having a big dose of just recognizing and appreciating the pretty amazing ness that is already in each person. And I don't know, you know, like Jay, for example, like Jay, we've been on these calls a couple of times, but like, I don't know, J. J has got like a whole universe of, like something that I could benefit from if I understood it better. And by sharing it with me or by learning together, he would be better. I would get better, you know? And so I think that there's a lot to be recognized just from like taking like that. I don't know. Is that like a, that's like a Zen approach or just like an appreciating what already is kind of approach?

Speaker3: [00:07:28] I think I. Oh, go ahead, J. Yeah.

Harpreet: [00:07:31] I think, I think I should respond because Erica kind of took some of the words out of my mouth that I was going to say, saying, if we are to help each other like reach our potential, then we have to start asking the deeper questions like, what is it that you like about your field? What is it that you.

Speaker3: [00:07:51] Like doing and then.

Harpreet: [00:07:53] Nudging each other to ensure that we're actually going forward with.

Speaker3: [00:07:57] What we want? Like at the end of the day. [00:08:00]

Harpreet: [00:08:01] Because like there's a thousand things that we always have to do, have to do this, that and the other.

Speaker3: [00:08:05] But even like we can get lost in that and then.

Harpreet: [00:08:10] Like lose the focus. And so if we can push each other, at least know each other a little bit better and say, Hey, you liked X, Y, Z, did you do anything about that? Is there anything I can help you with so you can focus on that like that sort of back and forth that builds better camaraderie and will allow us to reach what we want to do in life, I think is a way to look at it.

Speaker3: [00:08:29] That's great. J and I. Eric, sometimes your thoughts are a corner case for me. That's why I like you. But I want to make sure I heard you right. And, Jay, I did hear you. That was perfectly clear to me. But, Eric, what I heard you say is, hey, remember, that's a person. Don't just look at their potential. I appreciate the person that's there before you. And I think what you were getting at, Eric, also, is that you can't always see the potential. And what I would say is but we know it's there. It may be hidden by certain things, but Eric, complete the circle. Let me know if I caught you right or not, because I want to make sure we're clear on that before we go on.

Harpreet: [00:09:11] Yeah. The other piece I was going to say is like or like I thought you were going to say, not only can you you may or may not see the potential, you also may or may not see the whole person. I guarantee you don't see the whole person. Right, because nobody even knows what my back look looks like because I'm always on zoom, right? And that's just like a silly example. So understanding the whole person, or at least acknowledging to yourself that you don't know the whole person because you're never going to know everybody even on this call. But just like recognizing or understanding where it's like, Oh, that person missed the date. Yeah, that person missed a day on LinkedIn, hard mowed, those lazy bums, you know, or whatever. It's like, Oh, actually, maybe they just have, you know, some big crazy thing going on or some huge thing in their life. And so just like recognizing [00:10:00] and helping and it's yeah, people are people complex.

Speaker3: [00:10:05] So this is a great point. We don't necessarily know someone's potential. We don't necessarily know them. In fact, I struggle with the fact that I can't even know myself perfectly. I had to learn to confess to myself and Eric. Just let me know if this jives with what you're saying. I'm almost completely blind and ignorant. And to add to that state of complication that I'm in, I'm also corrupt and injured in my soul. And thank God I'm powerless. But if I approach myself with humility doesn't mean I'm denying my amazing potential. But I remember that I got to remain humble because I'm blind, ignorant, corrupt and injured. And I'm not trying to say you're all that similar to, but I am. It's just a state of humanity. And Eric, you're absolutely right. All I'm saying is there is an amazing potential in each person. I just want to be part of a community that cares enough about each other, like I think we all do to get the stuff out of the way that keeps us from getting to fulfilling that. I'm really glad that Russell has his hand up because before someone started speaking, Russell, I was going to volunteer you first, but going ahead.

Harpreet: [00:11:32] Okay. Thanks, Tom. Yeah, just a couple of supplements. I think it's been great. The comments from Eric and Jay so far. What I'd like to say, though, is that I think collaboration and collaboration is one of the cornerstones for helping your fellow colleagues. And what I mean by that is true collaboration. I wanting the best for someone else and wanting to help someone else achieve their best, even if it surpasses [00:12:00] your current limits. So you have to check your ego, check your vanity, have no narcissism, be completely open to want the best for your fellow colleagues. And by that you should receive some reflective improvement yourself simply by doing that. And if they are also doing the same to you, you'll get some direct benefit from it. So it's a big mutual beneficial act to do that, but you really need to set aside ego. I think that's one of the biggest things and I say this in terms of kind of leadership and management as well as there's a it's kind of a proverb, but I think I've cobbled it together from three or four and it goes like this. Pau is the teacher whose student does not surpass them. I if you're teaching someone, you should expect them to surpass the limits you are when you're teaching, because you have the benefit of your wisdom and your experience that you can condense for them to learn from in a shorter period of time. And I think very much is the same for colleagues. Just trying to collaborate. Now, you may not be teaching them anything, but you can share with them and give them a, you know, a sounding board and, and a mirror to bounce things off, etc.. So bring the same kind of philosophy, completely objective, be restricted, and no ego based collaboration with everybody. And we should all be on a, on a great position to, to evolve positively.

Speaker3: [00:13:31] Thank you for that and for continuing to display your long face technique. It always amazes me how you're able to transmogrified your head like that. And I'm going to be sad when you get the new laptop. Now, this is great. And yeah, now you're frozen. Rustling. If you can still hear us.

Harpreet: [00:13:51] Yeah.

Speaker3: [00:13:56] I do know that people wanted Eric to turn around, [00:14:00] but I don't think we're going to get in to talk him into doing that. But while y'all try to do that in the chat, I'm going to ask Albert to go ahead and go for us.

Harpreet: [00:14:10] Yeah. So it's funny, like when you first asked this question, I was like, Oh God, this again, because I never I've heard this discussed a few times and every time, just like I have no idea what I would tell my younger self or what. Like there's no overarching guidance that I could give myself to be like, Hey, avoid this block or that. But just listening to Eric and Russell talk like it really came to me that like there's been this, this recurring theme throughout my life that like when I screw up and I mean like, you know, not just stub your toe or do something dumb, but like really offend somebody or say the wrong thing to the wrong person. It's almost always because I'm inwardly focused at the time and it's, you know, it's out of selfishness or nervousness and just like wanting to be funny or wanting to say like the witty little zinger to somebody and it just hits wrong. And then, you know, and then there's there's damage done you can't take back or there's a professional relationship ruined. And so I think if if there's anything just to to totally dovetail off of what you guys said, it's it's just to tell myself to be more outwardly focused, like you have you've got gifts to share what? Share them out of, like, concern or love or just a desire to help other people like you. Don't you don't need to have people look at you because you said the witty thing or the or you you were the most sarcastic person in the room or the smartest kid in the room or whatever have have an outward focus, have a kind of an attitude of service. [00:16:00] And I think if had a better at that now, but if I'd adopted that at a younger age and just, just had a little more confidence, like, You're okay, don't stop worrying about yourself. Like worry about other people. Yeah, I think that would have, that would have helped and that would have it would have benefited me tremendously.

Speaker3: [00:16:20] Albert, I want to back up what you're saying and acknowledge Kim for causing me to laugh too much in the comments. But Albert, when I started to listen to a lot of distilled self-help stuff, I was shocked how much people probably wish they had been listening to the sayings of Jesus all along. In other words, if you quit focusing on yourself and focus on the people you're speaking to or helping or talking to, you would be amazed how much power is in that. In fact, it is so powerful you could do it unethically and become very popular and rise to great power just by never focusing on yourself, only focusing on others. But truly, if you want to help others, which is a great way to reach your own potential because then you have fellow climbers alongside you. Focus on them. I love that. I believe Costa was next. Please go.

Speaker2: [00:17:24] I kind of want to question everything that we're saying with everything that we're saying. We started this whole thing with Eric saying, Let's not worry about the potential. Let's focus on who we are and appreciate who we are. Yet we're sitting here going, Oh, I could have been so much better if younger me. If I could have gone back and told younger me, X, Y and Z, go do this and that. So at the risk of sounding like an egomaniac, I wouldn't go back and say to younger self like my younger self anything at all. Those are my mistakes to make, [00:18:00] right? Like we're all going to run into bear traps and sometimes that's the best way to learn, right? Like, as a teacher, if I'm teaching someone the code and I don't let them ever deal with a stack trace, how the hell are they going to learn to debug, right? Like, that's just fundamentally this. So when I applied that lens to ourselves, I wouldn't go back and say anything because fundamentally we're sitting here having this conversation that is a good result of how we've been brought up to whatever we're at now. Right. The fact that we're able to question ourselves, the fact that we're able to sit here and kind of go, hey, hang on, actually, what's my limit? What can I do better? Right.

Speaker2: [00:18:46] But because there's a lot of people who don't end up at that point of questioning themselves. Right. And that's a powerful mindframe to be at, is being able to question whether what you're doing is right and whether you can do something better. A lot of people don't see that and they go through their whole lives without seeing that. So in some senses, I'm perfectly happy with where I am in that sense. The question for me is. Conversely, I'm going to do exactly what I said we shouldn't do is kind of go back and look at what I've been balancing all through my entire life. Right. And we said it's interesting because we set these very specific stereotypes of success. Right? We overemphasize success over excellence. We overemphasize essentially an image of success that we see that we grow up with. And this is like each of us has a different image. Like, if I tell you, think of someone successful. We all have a very specific image in our head and it might be a parent, it might be a friend, it might be a pop star. It might be someone that we've seen and been exposed to an early age to say, Hey, that's what a successful person looks like. And [00:20:00] when you consider all of that, the question becomes, how much has that shaped the person I am today? Which parts of that are valuable for me to retain for the person I'm going to be tomorrow? And which parts do I really need to question today to see if it's of any value to me moving forward? Right.

Speaker2: [00:20:20] Like for me, I was set really good examples of what a strong work ethic looks like and what, you know, successful people at work look like thanks to my parents and other people that I was exposed to. Right. But it also set in me this like work ethic where I put work well above my own health. Right? I'll chase after like really doing as well as I possibly can in every possible thing aspect of life, right? Like zero failure kind of mindset, which is quite taxing. So how do I balance the ego with the rest of myself? When I say the ego, I mean that ego of wanting to be excellent and everything I do right. And I'm not excellent at everything I do. And that's the proof, is that despite chasing that, I've fallen short in so many ways. Right. So was that actually worthwhile? Sure. It got me to where I am today. But is that worthwhile going forward and can I do something better about it? Probably so. I've kind of been questioning that ego versus balance.

Speaker3: [00:21:28] I guess I love this cost because frankly, hey, we don't get to go back in time and talk to our younger selves. But you know what? There's something we do want to tell them. Well, why don't we just tell ourselves and start really trying to live that consistently now? Because even once you discover it, it's still hard to implement it. It's still hard to change. Right.

Speaker2: [00:21:51] Could I just add to that? Actually, yeah, you're right. It's but it's also that like in that spirit of service that you guys were talking about earlier, the you mentioned [00:22:00] that you mentioned in the spirit of service, we can't live in our present self to advise our past self, but we can live in our present self when someone else has not yet learned to live in their present self. Right. So that might be a kids. It might be other people in your community, it might be people that you're mentoring at work. It might be your direct reports at work, right? If we can look ahead for them and that's their job of a mentor, that's why we seek mentorship. That's why we seek mentors in life and leaders. That's why we structure entire societies around leaders and seniors and and things like that. Right. That's why if you look at most most cultural set setups, there's a strong emphasis on respect for elders, right? Like I'm talking about more conservative cultural setups, but there is a role for that and that is that there's that experience of living in the in the present. Right. So can we pay that forward because we can never pay it back. Right. So really appreciate on that note, you know, the pearls of wisdom that I hear out of all of you guys, whether it was Vin or Tom, Akiko, Russell, everybody on here, right? There's vast amounts of experience from a technical standpoint, personal standpoint, everything. Right. So how do I pay that forward is my question for the next 30 years of my life, plus.

Speaker3: [00:23:19] Cost of thank you for bringing this up, because I got to tell you guys, at least 80% of my mentoring is motivated by you know, I've been walking this trail and you know what? I tripped right here and I don't want the next person to trip. So I'm going to try to put a sign here. It's a lot like that to say, man, I regret this. Boy, do I regret not seeing this when I'm younger. So I'm going to tell you all about it, hoping that you can get higher and further than I did by the time you're my age and and I go at it a lot that way, by the way, Kim is going to lead an experimental expedition. [00:24:00] She's going to take, as many of you want into a park and you're going to pose yourselves as these young kids future self and tell them weird things and then monitor. With them the rest of their lives until you die. To see what happened from that.

Speaker4: [00:24:16] Those nudges, man. It's just about creating those interesting experiences that kids will forever be wondering. Did that.

Speaker3: [00:24:22] Happen?

Speaker4: [00:24:24] Was that real? Did future me come back to tell.

Speaker3: [00:24:27] Me.

Speaker4: [00:24:27] That that I came back and just give me a high five and then just disappeared? What the.

Speaker3: [00:24:32] Heck? Kim The scary thing is that you were willing to say it while Megan Lou was only thinking it. And by the way, Megan, we haven't welcomed you today. This is probably your first time on the show. Mark, let's hear from you, brother.

Harpreet: [00:24:47] First and foremost, welcome, Megan. Happy you're here. The second thing.

Speaker4: [00:24:53] I was here the last time, but, Tom, you were not so.

Speaker2: [00:24:57] Sure you.

Speaker3: [00:24:58] Were here last week.

Speaker4: [00:24:59] I was.

Harpreet: [00:25:02] I actually really enjoy this conversation. I like the costumes as well. It was funny because I was listening to Albert's point and why I really like about this conversation. It's like so nuanced to different backgrounds that I actually felt the opposite on my end of I need to do less, I need to serve and think about people less. And it's not because what he's saying is wrong is that I'm coming from a different point in my life, based on what I've heard right there. And particularly something that's really core to me is like since I was 18, I've been thinking about how do I build systems for social impact and making social change, not just a one off ones, but actual systems that can be maintained repeatable. And I've been after this mission for ten years now and I'm nowhere close to where I want to be, but I'm definitely a lot further. And one of the mistakes I made on this journey was seriously caring [00:26:00] too much about the mission of the cause. And I felt as if this mission of social impact, wherever it may be at that time, a lot of is around. Health care was greater than me, and therefore I had to sacrifice my own well-being to pursue this goal.

Harpreet: [00:26:15] And I see all the time a lot of my friends in social impact they or activism, they go really hard and they burn themselves out and then they can't continue doing the change they need to be. And the reality is, is that like it's a it's a long game. I see my goal. I'm trying to pursue like something until I retire, you know, really just going at this for decades of trying to solve this problem. I have new ideas and I iterate at them and they tend to be wrong many times, but I get to cross it off the list and get close to the next thing. But what I found is that, wow, I keep on having this pattern of helping, helping, helping, burning out hard. I had to go back to help myself. And then and then I repeat this pattern again. And what I've noticed is that people who are successful, they create systems to maintain for the long run. They create systems for the wellbeing, they create systems for their work. And I focus on systems because I'm a systems thinker, but and I think someone said can't give from an empty one either or you can't drink from an empty cup. The phrase that I constantly Kim, the phrase I always go by is serve from your saucer, not from your cup.

Harpreet: [00:27:30] You won't be overflowing from your cup and give what's left over to to others. And, and so, yeah, that's that's where I'm currently at with things. Mistakes I made is I sacrifice my own health, my own wellbeing, my own relationships. And if you're not there for the long run, you can't make the change you want to make. And more importantly, it's going back to what Albert was saying, which I do align with and I maybe took it to an extreme, is that it does for the giant social problems I'm trying to solve. I can't do by myself. [00:28:00] It requires a community of people. And the way you build a community is that you help out your community around you and really support them. And so my whole focus the past year and moving forward is like, how can I be more selfish where it matters? So that way I can be more giving, where I can really make the most of it and still continue to do that continually because it's the continuous steps over and over again that builds success. Not the long sprint die down long sprint. It's just not working for the love I'm currently at anymore.

Speaker3: [00:28:33] Mark Let's do our airline stewards routine together. Everyone make sure to put your own mask on.

Speaker2: [00:28:40] First before you help.

Speaker3: [00:28:42] Others. Because you know.

Harpreet: [00:28:43] What? If you passed out, you can't freaking help anyone.

Speaker3: [00:28:47] So get your own oxygen on first. I wish they would always say that maybe one of these funny stewards or stewardesses will say that during their speech because I'm like, Sue, my wife, were you listening? She gets so focused on our kids like you can't help them right now. You're on DEFCON five because you're worn out. And I think what we're saying to each other. I love, by the way, anyone that's praising Simon Sinek. Thank you. What an awesome guy. What a treasure to our culture. The Infinity Game. Guys, be in this growth mindset the rest of your lives. That's what we're really saying. Focus on your strengths, but also get the crap out of the way. Recognize your own crap and deal with it. And by the way, Albert, thanks for your points because it's the only motivation to go back in time. Kostek was like, Dang, that was so painful when I did that. That was so amazingly embarrassing. I can't believe the dark period I went through because of that. But. Costa You're right, we can't do that. Let's just make sure we're dealing with it now. But [00:30:00] the shout out to Simon Sinek and also I think let's just make sure we don't miss saying this. We've got to stay healthy. And that means avoiding burnout, not trying to do too much at once, etc.. Costa Eager to hear from you again.

Speaker2: [00:30:17] So all of this, whether it's it's what I was talking about or Mark suggesting or any of this, it seems to be a battle between us and our ego. Right. We like to set and I think this might be particular to the kind of people in this room. Right. We like to take on big missions. We like to take on. We like to try and boil the ocean. That is the goal at the end of the day. Right. But and often we know that boiling the ocean doesn't make sense. Doesn't matter how many self-help books you read. And I've read a bunch of them. Right. I've read something like fantastic book worth reading. Right. Read so many books that it just gets mind boggling. And at some point you get to a point where you're like, yeah, I know all this. I know that, yeah, I need to take care of myself. I know that boiling the ocean is not realistic. I've got to look at it one step at a time. So the question is less around acknowledging that we've got to let our ego take a backseat and say, actually, there's a better way to do this and actually empower the community at large.

Speaker2: [00:31:28] The question to me is more how how do you find systems that work? How do you find process work? Or more directly, what do you guys do? Because I'm I'm especially in the last like six months to a year, I've been trying to I've been recognizing and trying to learn how to balance that ego better. And I've done a rubbish job at it, especially now. I'm looking forward to, you know, earning that balance back in my life. So I would really love to know what are the things that that other people in the room [00:32:00] have done to kind of take that immediate situation where they've kind of gone so far over and above that? How do you claw back from that? What are those techniques like? Sure, I might build up to a system one day, but like I'm starting at the bottom of the mountain. At this point, I'd just really love to know what the specific techniques are.

Speaker3: [00:32:20] I want you all to recognize how unfair our brother Costas being to us right now. We've been having this wonderful theoretical talk, but now he wants us to figure out how to implement this stuff. And that's really hard. No, this really gets to the points cost of very good. And this is why I mentioned at the beginning of our time, I recognized after many, many falling down, I mean, complete falling down face covered in mud type falling down like Albert would do in his field. Training with his Marines is a spirit of Tom. Quit boiling the ocean, quit trying to run so fast the whole time. You keep burning out, tripping, falling. Be more patient when you're tired. Take a break. Don't feel like you got to learn all this in one evening. So applaud you. But it comes down to we identify and then I think we need to realize, you know what, this is a new virtue I need to master, but I'm going to suck at it at first. So I've even got to be patient with mastering this virtue. I see a lot of hands up. We're going to get to them all. Help me remember the order. But I got to tell you all, I am giddy with excitement because my brothers in the house now be patient because it's super late for him. But I don't know if many of you have the blessing of having a friend that's as close as a brother that grew up in a totally different culture, totally different religion, totally [00:34:00] different language. And then you get to experience that person's mind because you're that close to him. So I may be putting too much weight on his shoulders right now, but we're about to hear from the amazing rites and courage so rife. You have the floor, brother. We're eager to hear from you. At least I am now.

Harpreet: [00:34:18] I forgot what I want to mention here right now. This is thank you a lot for this. And, you know, I'm maybe I have I'm able to speak the same and more about you because we are brothers. But besides, he is my mentor. But he maybe he didn't recognize this yet. So I have a couple of points related to maybe correction.

Speaker3: [00:34:45] We mentor each other. Just so you all know.

Harpreet: [00:34:48] I didn't recognize that yet. So that's also the good part of it. Okay. First, I have to apologize. I cannot run the camera because I'm in your apartment. I'm sitting on the floor. I have only the coffee machine next to me. No furniture yet. So sorry for that. My point is related to are we really helping others? This is my question now. I think when we talk about the balance between. Ego and and the balance in general, let's say. I think we are always if we are helping, then we are looking for something that benefits us. The benefit here cannot can be not touchable, something that is more for good feeling, for being happy, for at least preventing some mistakes that we perform for other not to do it. But at the end, we are helping ourselves. This is my point. And second, when we are when we ask others to help or to mentor us. Most of the time we are asking them to agree with us. That means we are all must have decision [00:36:00] and we need just to be sure that we are not totally out of the box. We are there on that track. That's why we choose who to ask. Maybe so from from that point of view, it's for me only just if if we are talking about our younger self. Honestly, I prefer to have my younger self. Now that means is more pure. He is more foolish. But yes, he is more afraid of. So from that point of view, I think we are fooling ourselves if we are thinking we are helping others. I think even when we are helping other honestly, we are helping ourselves from that point of view, yes, focusing on ourselves. It's very helpful to perform that kind of, let's say, finding our amazing potential or others amazing potential helping them to find. Maybe simulating.

Speaker3: [00:36:56] Let me see if I can reiterate this, because if I heard you. Right. Right. It seems like you're echoing probably like I said earlier, 95% of the mentoring I do is not oh, well, this is how you do PCA and this is how you relate the PCA features back to the original space. It's not stuff like that most of the time. It's, Hey, you know what, data specializations are hard and it's going to be hard for you. Sometimes I'm not going to sell it to you, but it's so cool when you learn it and then when you finally are able to apply it and solve a problem with it. So you just stick with it. And most of the time that's the kind of stuff people need to hear, right? Is that kind of a part of what you're saying?

Harpreet: [00:37:44] Exactly. Exactly. Most of the time, if we are not talking about teaching mentoring, it's not teaching. This is the most important mentoring. It's innate. Maybe I feel that it's enabling the others to continue to find to continue to [00:38:00] that that target that they choose. At the end. We didn't choose them the target, and we didn't we don't need to learn them or teach them something. We need just to give give them enable them to do that. Give them the motivation. Tell them that this mistake or this drop that you got, it's not the end of the world. Even sometimes if it's the end of the world, then there is no chance to speak to me, for example, or to speak to any other mentor or something. No, it's not the end of the world. So this is the first difference. The second I think we have to I have to highlight one point. It's I think the power the power of the habit. Keeping the habit whenever. How to it? I think it's hard for. Forgive my English. It's still translating from Arabic. So sorry for that. I think it's good to have your progress, your learning, your lifestyle as a set of habits. And whenever there is a bad habit, you have to drop it. We have good habits, keep it and measure yourself according to your good habits. So from that point of view, whatever the drug that you got, for example, just remember for me, for example, I'm still able to drink coffee in the morning. So this is not a drug, so. Having this in mind that even your progress would be part of your habit. If you find this balance between your good habits and lifestyle toward your even soft and hard skills, I think you will be in a good place. Nothing else important. And even the mentor it will be just to tell you that, okay, you still have your lifestyle running and keep it running. So this is the ideas that I get from this and this is maybe can touch the point of how to implement it. Focus [00:40:00] on your habits.

Speaker3: [00:40:01] Very good. Very good. Right. Thank you for that. And many of you have been patient. I remember some hands that were up, but I think Ali has been waiting the longest. And Ali, I am very eager to hear from you. And. Right, thanks again for that.

Harpreet: [00:40:19] Hi. Thank you so much, guys. And it's great to be at the first my first ever broadcast session of the Artist of Data Science. And I followed many of you on LinkedIn for several months now and just want to give a huge shout out for doing such amazing work, I guess. I guess the I just have a few quick things to say and I know a lot of people also want to say things, so I don't want to take too much time. But I think, Tom, the the first thing you mentioned about being patient with your own self and telling your younger self that you don't need to rush, I think that's just resonating with me so much more. I'm I just turned 36. If I live the in 40 year times, I'll hit 40 you. I've been in this data software space for God knows how long and I think as I'm getting older, this thing is resonating more and more with me. Is this being patient? Like, as the cliche goes, Rome wasn't built in a day. And where I am right now, if I look back, it's like several years, several months, several hours, several weeks of hard work that has brought me to this point. And, you know, I wouldn't have been here if I was like looking for shortcuts or trying to like just quickly get to this point.

Harpreet: [00:41:40] So I think I think that has been one of the greatest things for me is this realization. And to your other question about what can we do to make others realize their potential, I think gratitude for me is one of the most important things that stands out. You know, just just [00:42:00] express your gratitude for other people, for whatever they do might be a little thing. Maybe somebody bought your coffee, say thanks to them, or maybe somebody is like your comment or your post on LinkedIn. Say thank you to them. You know, just expressing this goes such a long way because at the end of the day, you know, we all are in some ways looking for for for for acceptance or validation in some ways. So really that's the best way in my mind to help others realize their potential is expressing gratitude for what they've done because that will help them make feel better about themselves. And that's the only way that's one of the most important ways to my mind how like, if we feel better about our own selves, we will be more committed to do more. And the more we do, the better we would be in a position to bring out our true selves and our true potential to the world. So yeah, that's just my sense.

Speaker3: [00:42:54] Very cool. And I think you did a great job of circling in a lot of key points people were making, especially customs. It's like, Hey, this is all fine in theory. How do we put this into practice? And what I hear you saying is, okay, identify where you sec identify a new virtue. You need to overcome that sexiness. Now accept I've got to be patient with even developing that virtue and cost of. I know you're furiously taking notes which you shared, but really I think it's that learning cycle. We we learn and sometimes it's very humbling and then we try. And then we're going to get tired. So we rest and reflect and then we alter our plan. We have to be humble enough to refine that plan as we go. I am deeply regretful. Joe Riis was here. He had his hand up and now I don't see him anymore. And he put his hand down. But if you'll see Joe, tell him. Dang, we're sorry we missed what you were going to say to us, [00:44:00] but his is in the house. Matthew Housley So Matthew, if you want to speak for Joe, let us know. And then, Ali, if that was. There we go. Now, some people have lowered their hands, so I hope that wasn't a bad thing. But Mexico, we always love to hear from you, so please share. Hello.

Speaker4: [00:44:22] Hi. Sorry, I'm trying to figure stuff out because I'm on my iPad. I am living out my best life. Currently, am I quilting table doing a quilt. So that's why I am not on my laptop.

Speaker3: [00:44:36] Should cover textile engineering to keep with our STEM theme here you know.

Speaker4: [00:44:42] I mean, I just want to say I think I think textile engineering, it's going to be the next frontier in terms of how we approach climate change, how we approach waste, labor, human rights. So just putting it out there. But in terms of aside from saying weird things to kids in parks, still not understanding that, don't do it unless it's your kid, you know, just saying. But in terms of like practices for unlocking your potential, but also like just enjoying one's life a bit more like I think and I've had other friends who like come from immigrant families and we all talk about this, but a lot of times you're there's this intense pressure to like honor, generational sacrifice. And I had to kind of give myself permission to, like, literally enjoy stuff that did not make money. And when I was younger, I actually fun fact, like fashion design or a desire to create my own clothing was how I actually got in today's lines, like kind of indirectly because I want to create my own company. But when I was much younger, I was told, Hey, you know, the creative arts, you're going to go broke, you're going to work a job at McDonalds like it was a bad thing, you [00:46:00] know, I was just very much so encouraged and told, you know, like you're not creative. It was funny. I was talking with Jon, with Jon from Super Designs today and told him how like the feedback was kind of like, Oh, you're very you have a great personality, but you're not terribly bright, much like a golden retriever, you know? So.

Speaker3: [00:46:21] You know.

Speaker4: [00:46:22] But so a lot of that kind of sort of feedback I was given early on was like study, you know, put in your time, putting your heart, sweat and labor. You'll be like a good daughter. You'll be a great whatever, right? It was a lot of living life for other people and I think it's only really been in my thirties where I've started to say like, Hey, I kind of need to live life for me. And living life for yourself. It feeds into the ability to teach and mentor others. When I was mentoring and when I was helping people out and I had the mindset of like, I didn't even choose this path for myself. It was terrible. I was a terrible mentor. I was constantly mad at my students for asking actually very reasonable questions from where they were at. And so that whole like you have to put the safety mask on yourself on the airplane before you can help people. That's totally true. There's also be like, you have to give yourself permission to, like live life and to enjoy that. I feel like people who come from lower class families, from people who come from different backgrounds, people of color, like people from the LGBT, LGBT community were so focused on like just trying to make it, you know, make a name for ourselves, represent. It's like, okay, but at the end of the day, like, if you just kind of end your life and you're just tired. Husk That never got to live out your dreams. I mean, it certainly doesn't make a person a good partner and won't make them a good professional data scientist or engineer.

Speaker4: [00:47:51] And so part of that also meant sacrificing kind of like the short term stuff. So for example, I do have my time blocked [00:48:00] out. I do turn down like out events with friends. I don't watch a lot of TV. Like there's a lot of things I have had to do to organize my schedule in such a way that I'm not giving in to like the lizard brain fear of missing out of like, oh, there's this other Coursera class I could be taking. Well, yeah. Or you could also be investing in having date night with your, like, loved ones, you know, figuring out you want to write a blog post that you're really interested. Maybe it's a topic that's not going to get picked up and Google's SEO, or maybe it's not going to go trend on LinkedIn, but you had something you want to say, and I think that is just as valuable. It's like, oh, like was it something else that someone bookmarked in their medium queue and they never go back and read it, you know? So I mean, if I saw younger me like in a park once again, I probably wouldn't go up to them. That'd be a little bit weird, stranger danger and all that, even though I kind of basically look the same. So I don't know, maybe they'd be like, Who are you? But if I went back and talk to that person, I'd be like the two or three things I would say to really. I feel like unlock the potential I would like to have or I would have like to express by now. One is like, don't live life for other people.

Speaker4: [00:49:16] You gotta live life for yourself. That's, that's like number one. Number two is like, give yourself options. You know that that's a big one. It's like it's not even like you can't predict the future. And in the whole sort of there's no free lunch theorem unless you have a priori information about kind of your future. It's not really 100% in stone. So best thing you do is give yourself options. And number three, it's like I think of the day like, you know, I imagine on my bedside, my company is not going to be there holding my, you know, holding my hand, holding my partner's hand going like, oh, Mickey is such a good worker, you know, always on time with their JIRA tickets, great standup, love their commit messages like, yeah, they're not going to say that. I'll be lucky [00:50:00] if my company remembers me in like 20 years, you know? So, I mean, those are all things I would I would hope younger me would have learned earlier, reflected on oh and number four, when you're really valuable, you have a lot of options. And by value, I don't just mean like innate, like wealth or whatever, but if you're providing a lot of value to the marketplace, irrespective of the title that's on your name, how many letters you have after your name, you're always going to be wanted. That's just that's just what it is like. You don't have to bring yourself down to other people's expectations and said you should hold them accountable to your standards. That's just what it is, you know? So that's younger me. Sorry if I'm weirding you out in the park, but do.

Speaker3: [00:50:43] All that.

Speaker4: [00:50:44] And to.

Harpreet: [00:50:46] Achieve.

Speaker4: [00:50:47] Beyond me.

Speaker3: [00:50:48] You are not weirding us. So I need to remind everyone because y'all are so bad about this. I own what Mickey said, so if you're going to use it, it's fine. Just send me a quarter for every time you say it. Now, Vivian, I'm not sure you're aware, and I hope this doesn't make you uncomfortable, but I'm a big fan of yours, and you had your hand up earlier. Would you still like to say something? It's okay if you feel like it was covered, but I'd love to hear from you.

Speaker4: [00:51:21] I was. I don't know. I've been going I was saying something about this to Eric in the comments because he was like, Oh, you don't want to share anymore. But I feel like everybody is being all like, yeah, iterate and be better and try harder. And I've been going through a real, like nihilistic phase lately of like, does it even matter? And like, I mean, whatever. Like, what is progress? Progress is in a straight line. Like, who defines the progress? Who defines the success? And so, like, you might as well just do whatever distracts you enough of [00:52:00] the fact that you will die someday and be forgotten and have that be enough. And I guess that it's a real downer, but it's also kind of freeing, just this feeling of like, I don't know, I've always been like such an overachiever in my whole life. And I feel like I've been going through a phase lately of like, for what? For a why? Like, kind of like what Kiko was saying. Like, will people even remember my accomplishments? Do they even really matter in the wider universe of things? And in some respect that perspective is really freeing of like, you know what? I can do whatever I want because like, none of it matters anyway. So yeah.

Speaker3: [00:52:45] Vivian You've always been the source of Let's Get Real, let's get authentic in this community. And frankly, Vivian, I've been there so many times and I learned to call it for what it really is. Burnout time, Tom. Time to take rest. Things really do matter, but maybe not the things you think matter matter. So would you just rest? Go watch some Indian movies that are awesome and then when you feel the recovery? Vivian I don't know about you and the rest of you, but when I know that I'm burned out, that's okay. No matter how hard much you thought you wanted to keep going, you're getting diminishing returns right now. And I'll take a break and. So it doesn't happen as often anymore because I hate to even get close to that, but it's when the motivation returns. That's the key to me that, oh, you're recovered now get back to work. But Vivien, I so appreciate your honesty on this because I think we all we all get there. I'm [00:54:00] going to need some help with hand order. And because while I'm focusing on what one person said.

Harpreet: [00:54:08] And I think Mark, I think Mark.

Speaker3: [00:54:11] Thank you. Right. Mark Freeman Oh, and there's some great comments to forgive me, Mark, but aunty wrote a very heartfelt one. But go ahead Mark. Yeah.

Harpreet: [00:54:22] No, I agree. I was about to say oh yeah, I was muted. So perfect timing. I also agree aunty's comment was really great. I was going to say like Vivian, your your point about the holistic aspect of it, it really sparked that like why does it even matter and something why and I'm not not trying to speak for you as more so you inspire me for something else. So not trying to not necessarily counter to, to what you're saying, but for me, something that really drives what I do is just my experience in community college where I have all of my close friends at that time, I was the only one to really make it out community college and not get life take not take the best of them. And one of the key values or key kind of things, I was always thinking like, what set me apart from my mom who had a really rough background, my friends had a really rough background is that they had autonomy and choice. Or I had autonomy and choice and support. A lot of my friends who really couldn't really make it that far at some point that you got to pull on yourself and the skills you do. But some people really have a lot of barriers in the way to make it possible.

Harpreet: [00:55:35] And they have to work extra, extra hard to have the choice of saying what matters to me? What is that it? Or even to even get to a point, you're like, Actually, no, this matters. I'm just going to do me and not care about any of this. So for me, what drives a lot of the work I do is thinking about how can I create systems? And I'm seeing systems really broadly because that can be a whole can [00:56:00] of worms to talk about, but to give people a choice to define what's what's meaningful for them, what's going to improve their lives. Because I really liked your point of like who defines better like I that's something I always try to work on is like when I say improving the world, I'm not trying to define what that world improvement is because how can I define that for someone else? It's really seeing how people define that for their own communities and their own lives and providing the resources to empower them to do such. So this is the point. I want to make a less of a comment towards your remarks, but your comment just sparked something in me to say that.

Speaker3: [00:56:44] I thought that was so clear, I'm not going to even summarize it. I thought that was a great add to what Vivian was saying. And Vivian, I do value what you said. I mean, we feel that way sometimes, quite frankly. All right. Right. I'm going to go with Cost of next because he confessed to writing furious notes. And so I'm very curious what came. What fruit came from that activity.

Speaker2: [00:57:10] A couple of big takeaways other than the textile industry being fantastic, which by the way, I've got to say, there's a product called Vidi that's owned by a company called Cognex that came out of the textile industry for defect detection on some very complicated images. So yeah, actually textile industry is doing some crazy stuff in the computer vision space. So it's a hot tip to where we all come from with the data science and all of that. But the other two things was also Makiko mentioned this, that Makiko always gets her JIRA tickets in on time. What? How? That's my biggest question at this point. And the procrastination monkey in my head is going, I need to learn this estimation skill. That is insane. I don't [00:58:00] know how she does it.

Speaker4: [00:58:00] You can tell I'm living my best life because I don't. I would if I wasn't living my best life, what that would look like. But I am living my best life. So sometimes, you know, bugs can't always control them.

Harpreet: [00:58:18] Oh.

Speaker4: [00:58:19] Staring keyboard.

Speaker2: [00:58:20] Mm hmm. But more on more on point. Like, I guess we're all talking about these big questions. And what I'm hearing I'll say are big questions. But what I'm seeing in the chat are small answers, right? Answers is much smaller. Questions like we're talking about like insomnia and health and how do you maintain your welfare. And then Shashank comes out with, I bought an eye mask. I haven't turned back. I'm like, Why have I never done that? That's such a small thing that could potentially help my my sleep. Maybe I should just try it. Right. Vivienne, I'm not trying to, like, counter what you're saying, but often when we ask ourselves large questions, like, does it all really matter? Do I really matter? That's an impossible question to answer. Like that is really not something that our brain can comprehend. Right? It's too big an idea, too big a concept for that. We've got to answer the question of who am I? Which is like that's mind bogglingly dense anyway. Entire religions, based on figuring out who the hell I am. Right? And we've got multiple religions with different approaches and we're still chasing off of that answer at an individual level. Right. So like to answer these big questions sometimes we've got to break it down, right? And how much does it fall back on? Like like like I was saying, there's habits that we form, right? How do we start with the little things? So for me, my goal for today is like take what Shashank took on board and just go get an eye mask, see if that improves my sleep [01:00:00] habits of like waking up in the middle of the night and going, Oh, I know the solution to that.

Speaker2: [01:00:04] I should just try it and jumping on my laptop and just trying it or doing something right. If we're asking ourselves big questions, it's like it's like sprint planning or backlog refinement. If the tickets to them big, that's a 13 pointer or an eight points or you got to break that shit down, right? Like no one's doing 13 point tickets in a sprint. So to break it down into smaller and smaller things. So when you ask yourself a question like, do I really matter? Right? And I've asked myself that question before I reach the point to burn out a couple of years ago. And I literally took a mirror and started breaking down what I thought was me. Like the circle that I identified is this is me and my impact on the on the world. And part of that was music. Part of that was work, part of that was my health.

Speaker2: [01:00:54] Part of that was all of these other things. And like I realized where family and music fit into that puzzle, but I had to break it down and then only focus on that to see, okay, where, where, where does my music fit into my life and then into the community and and what am I doing and what do I need to cut off and stop doing? Or what do I need to start doing to start seeing the value in myself? But you you can only do that piecewise like with any large enough problem. Like you look at it in mathematics, right? It's impossible to come up with a whole solution or a strong fit to a very complex nonlinear data set. So what do we do? We give it a piecewise solution, right? These solutions are really common in math and it's a really common crutch to be able to solve something that's much larger than we can tackle from a complexity perspective. So that's what I'm taking away is little things like face masks, maybe try that. Marc mentioned his ordering and relying on that. Like when he mentioned that a couple of months ago, I [01:02:00] was like, Oh, I should look into that. And then I looked into horror rings.

Speaker2: [01:02:03] I think there's a couple of other competitors out there and I ended up getting. Like a Galaxy Watch or whatever to track my sleep and it tracks it really, really well. So what are we tracking? And in terms of tracking, what are we tracking? Right. Is it just the sleep number? Is it our happiness? And the last week or so, I started an energy journal and basically try to look at my life in like half a day stretch at a time over the last week and just go, was that the high energy part of my day or the low energy part of my day? And where did I lose my energy and where did I not have energy for the things that I wanted to do? Right. And I'm hoping that in three or four weeks I'll start noticing patterns that I'm like, Hey, I need to work on that, but I need to take that fine grained piecewise approach to life because I can't just be like at the end of the week, I am completely out of energy to study, to do this and do that. I don't know why because I can't solve that question for the whole week yet. So I've got to take a piece of our solution to it kind of day by day.

Speaker3: [01:03:05] I applaud that. I think that's the right spirit. I want to remind you all why I want to talk about this. It's hard what we do, data analytics, even just dirty data. Heck, it's hard and we have to be healthy, which is a challenge as we're seeing. In other, in order to keep our brains optimized and get the most out of our careers. Because you guys show up because you are ambitious. And sometimes we do get burned out even when we're not trying to get burned out. Of course, the comments are great. By the way, I was checking on Joe. His basement started flooding, so that's why he had to pop out. I think that was a reasonable reason to leave. But no, I wish he stayed. But I guess getting [01:04:00] off the show is better than having a flooded basement. Right? Right. And then we'll go to Mexico. Go ahead. Right.

Harpreet: [01:04:07] Maybe I can just I can agree again with with Gustav about this question. Are we really able to answer? But beside that, again, I would back to the same point is my company is going to remember me in 20 years. Okay. But I still have the memory. This is the curse that I have to care to care about it. I'll remember me in 20 years, maybe. Or I remember myself before 20 years. So this is why I have to decide about my progress. Now we will define the progress. I think nobody then can able to define the progress for another person outside of the business life. Because the business life, then there is target you have to achieve. But in general it's your goals. So when we are trying to help, it's only to tell that please don't choose a deadly, deadly goal and then get give the motivation. This is the best help that we are helping ourself about it. And they had to help others with it. But we cannot decide the goals and how they are progressing about it. So this is to Vivienne point now, is it really matter? I think it's not matter. We are not going to speak to to speak about it.

Harpreet: [01:05:28] Yes, it's matter. It's matter because we need to discuss this matter because we still asking, is it really matter or not otherwise we are able to live alone. I don't know. Is it really matter to have here why I'm mentioning this? Because I think always there is a border that we don't have to touch ourselves our better life, which is we have to even I agree with Mexico partially, not fully that we have to raise the other standards. This is good until [01:06:00] we have a conflict with the standards that mean here to it's conflict of interest to appear. So all of always when we are focusing on ourselves to remember there is others there and this others we don't need to take care about them, but also we don't need to penetrate them or their world something like this. So this is the only border that I feel about it. It's yes, understanding ourselves. It's help us to understand the others better. Not as they, because we cannot answer who we are, but at least understand the limits that we have. Our internal glow that the bulb that we are living in.

Speaker3: [01:06:39] You know. Right. I don't I'm not sure if this was your main point, but you brought up a really key point. I can't even explain to you all why it keeps me going. But when you identify someone that's younger than you or earlier in their career or earlier in their position than you, and you reach out to help them and they appreciate it. I don't know about you guys, but I find a lot of meaning in that. Now, of course, if you have kids, you inherit that agenda instantly, right? Harpreet. I mean, Harpreet has got this baby boy he's in love with. It's awesome. He posts about it a lot with his friends. I am honored to be among them. But then you start adopting too, right? You or someone comes to you for help and you start helping them. I don't know. I derive a lot of meaning from that and I want to encourage all of you I see in all of you here the ability to really help a lot of people now. You might think, well, I could never do what Harpreet does. He does all this research for everyone. He interviews on the Artists of Data Science Show. I mean, really, I don't know how he does it all and he built this community, but you know how he did it. He did what was possible. And then he thought, Well, [01:08:00] how can I do a little bit more? And how I can do a little bit more? And frankly, right then I had to do the same thing with integrated machine learning in AI, and we're still finding ways to do just a little bit more, but you can get burned out even with that. So we still got to pace ourselves. But that was just something I wanted to add. Before we go back to Nikki and then after she speaks, I'll say what Mickey said. Go ahead, Mickey.

Speaker4: [01:08:28] You know, it's always I always love finding people that I'll agree to disagree with. That's great. You know, I think I think at the end of day, everyone has different burdens to carry. Like traditionally in our in our society, the burden of helping people, of emotional labor, of pushing human rights forward has, for better or worse, typically fallen on the shoulders of people of color, on Native Americans, on LGBTQ communities, women, you know, the trans community as well. So, you know, I think at the end of day, it kind of just depends on where you are in your journey. You know, like I think if someone has a history of, you know, essentially doing emotional labor or labor of any kind for other people, I think they're going to have a different take than maybe people who haven't been burned out by that. But I think that's okay. Like, I think at the end of the day, right, like we all end up having to pick the path for ourselves. And I think that is one of the beautiful things about, for example, living in the US is that, you know, with all the things that are going on, like we do have a lot of rights and privileges in this country that are not available in other countries and societies. And that's something that I'm very grateful for, especially since my mom immigrated here from Japan and she had certain experiences that she wanted to get here. And so I think it's fantastic that we live in a society where we're we're constantly pushing so forward. And I think it's okay for people to take breaks, you know, to also help out. I would say at the [01:10:00] end at the end of the day, just everyone making sure that they know the life that they want to live and they are taking the actions towards that. You know?

Harpreet: [01:10:08] Just again, I have to mention this. Sorry for jumping without raising my hand, but no, that's I'm not I'm not an us. So this is maybe also a different point of view we have to consider. But also, even if the people know what they want to do or what they want, where they want to be, it's not a simple task and we cannot decide. Let's say I will back here. I will clone Viviane or I'll quote her, okay, whatever was my dream after achieving the dream, how this will reflect on me. I'm happy for 30 minutes at the end. The biggest happiness in the world. This will be 30 minutes. Okay. Now, at the end, what will happen after that? So why I'm why this is the question that we don't have to answer honestly, why I have to go on that path, why I have to achieve my goal. I think it's more related to because we are still living. It's essential. So we will find a goal because we have a journey and the journey has to reach to, to, to the end. So in case to follow this the better way, it's why we are waiting that moment which is reaching our target destination. Find the sub goals and move on. So there is no way to tell anybody right now if you I just this question that you answer you ask right now just for people knowing what they want to do or. Okay, can we answer this question right now? This is my question here in this room. I'm not talking about tomorrow. Tomorrow we will know maybe. But in one month and one year. We don't have final answer or accurate answer. We are opening possibilities. Once it's past maybe 24 hours, [01:12:00] we start up possibilities. Start flows. So. Honestly, it's. It's. This is the mean the real meaning of helping. It's not about having final answer. It's just having the answer that keep the show going. That's.

Speaker3: [01:12:23] That's all.

Speaker4: [01:12:25] I mean, I think I agree with that. I don't know if I actually said anything that was not in agreement with that. I do think there are there are there are questions that are important, and I think there are questions that are useful. I don't know if those questions I don't know if that Venn diagram always kind of overlaps. So like the big questions in life, I don't know if there's a way to answer them, and I don't know if it's also terribly useful for like an individual day to day to try to answer that question all the time or even to always focus on it. I think the questions that tend to impact people's lives more like the small questions in a way, which is like, you know, yeah, like similar to that. It's like, well, what is making me happy right now? What do I want to do next? What is driving value and meaning in my life now? And it doesn't have to be. What is the answer to life? It could just be. Well, what's driving meaning in my life is taking care of my family, putting a roof over their head. It could be taking care of my body. It could be making sure my health is there. It could be making sure I'm able to.

Harpreet: [01:13:34] That's exactly this is my point. The show must go on. This is my point. That mean always we have a small thing to keep going, that's all. Since we are there, we are here still. So this is my point. Yep. From that point of view, I agree with you 100%.

Speaker3: [01:13:51] I don't know if this will summarize what you two were saying, but I heard this a long time ago and I continue to think [01:14:00] about it. And it's attributed to Dwight Eisenhower. But people agree we're not sure he was the first one to say it. But it's this. Plans are worthless. But planning is indispensable. And I find that you all come up with a plan. But I really need to accept that that initial plan is probably not going to be very good. But the ongoing planning in other words, I have a plan. I use that plan to plan out what I need to learn and what I need to go do from what I learned. Now I need to take a break and reflect on what happened because it usually doesn't go so good the first cycle. Then I need to plan based on my reflections, based on my failed attempts, based on my incomplete learning. The first time that I didn't realize was incomplete the first time. But now I'm replanning. I'm revising the plan. By the way, in case you weren't aware, I just described what a reinforced learning agent does by trial and error. But, Vivien, I can promise you this. If you keep doing that and you just take an aim that you think you do, like, you will find amazing purpose for yourself in life. But not if you stay burned out all the time. And what we do is so cool if you just keep finding ways to use it to serve humanity better. It's quite gratifying, especially when you're helping others try to learn to do the same. I hope that summarized a bit of what Rafe and Mickey were trying to say. I know we're getting deep, but Costa, please go again. Sir.

Speaker2: [01:15:46] You also described Agile best practices, right? Like no sense in having a massive plan, but the plan is to keep planning. So you come back to it every couple of sprints and adjust sprint plan and re estimate [01:16:00] all that fancy stuff that we like to call agile but often do as waterfall. Sorry, I just re raised my hand. But I do. I do. I do agree with Mickey in the sense that there is a difference between important questions and impactful questions. Right, important questions. And I may be defining this differently. So so there's obviously that lost in translation, right? Important questions like who am I, what what impact do I have in this world? Am I worthwhile? Am I worthless? What's the point of all of this? Right. Important questions. Impactful. Only if you can actually have an answer to. All right. This comes back down to like planning versus planning. The planning aspect is similar to a piecewise solution. I know that I won't have a worthwhile global fit, but I can get a worthwhile enough local fit to approximate my next actions and then re plan and re estimate. Right? This is like essentially how robots do path planning your your dead reckoning, your error error aggregation across different sensors. Over time, you develop confidence on where you are based on all of the different data that you get. So kind of bringing this back down to like questions that we might have answers to. I've got two questions of varying levels of importance and impact. I guess. Question number two is I'll start with question number two, but I kind of want the answer to question number one first because.

Speaker3: [01:17:33] It's probably quicker.

Speaker2: [01:17:35] Question number two is in the next two years, like we've seen a lot of cultural change within work. We've looked at work life balance changes across the world, yet we're still seeing people 50 hour weeks normally, even though legally 40 hours is recommended kind of thing. Right. And we're seeing 70, 80 hour weeks all over the place. And it's different here and well, it's different in Australia, it's different in the US, it's different in Sweden or wherever you are in [01:18:00] the world. It's going to be different culturally. Where do you guys see in your markets probably the next two years? What's the next big like change or change in terms of life balance and and work approaches and work mentalities that's coming across? Last question to you, and it's kind of a larger question, but the more answerable question is question number one, and that's how then what's your car ride? Sing along song then come on, tell me you guys have been doing some Carpool Karaoke. And what song is that?

Harpreet: [01:18:32] We haven't played any music. We just sitting here just talking. We probably should do it. Yeah, we should get something going.

Speaker2: [01:18:40] We need a live stream of you guys singing along to the song. All right.

Harpreet: [01:18:46] I'll record a video.

Speaker2: [01:18:49] Master of Puppets. Yeah, I second that.

Speaker3: [01:18:52] It's too bad Albert left. He could have done a marching cadence song with us. Like, I want to be an airborne ranger or something fun like that. But we lost him, so we can't.

Speaker2: [01:19:02] Do as long as it's not 500 miles.

Harpreet: [01:19:04] Guys, don't make cadences. Do not make me sing cadences.

Speaker3: [01:19:10] We won't. Matt, thanks for. For warning us not to. Hey, guys, this discussion's been very rich. I've been getting some encouraging chats, both on LinkedIn and some private things. But, guys, let me just point something out that we've also been saying in the chat. Plans are not meant to be static and. This this thing cost writing in his notes. I think I'd love to see it when you were final cost, but I hope you'll do a post on what you're gaining from our discussion. But we do need to be careful to identify and implement, and that that's really some type of plan. Keep doing it. Keep it living. Be humble enough to [01:20:00] just warm it up and start completely over that. That can be very cathartic too. I think I've done it all, but I can assure you I confession. I'm 60 now. Every one of these white hairs has been earned the hard way. And I love life more than ever. Now I feel like I can learn faster now, but I want to attribute all of that to humility. Just being willing to look in the mirror and say, Tom Ives, you suck at this now you're really strong.

Harpreet: [01:20:36] Over.

Speaker3: [01:20:37] Here, but don't wallow in it. Let's just fix it and be humble and patient while you do it. Now, that's my summary of what we've been saying, but I bet there's some better summaries with your summaries. I just want to help you guys learn to make your plan because truly, you really do have amazing potential. I had the honor when I was young man of meeting some prodigies. Now they were already performing. But what impressed me was, by the way, one I went to see won an Olympic gold medal. One guy I worked out with won an Olympic gold medal. He was insane. I mean, like one of my friends said, made of different stuff. Another guy was a piano prodigy. You know what was constant among all of them? They had to patiently work hard. Consistently it was the common equation, but if they burned out, they were going to be worthless. So with that, I want to ask you all well, before I do that, is there any summary statements that anyone wishes to make before we take off? And that's okay if there aren't any. Okay. Now, I can't say it [01:22:00] as well as Brother Harpreet does, and I'm still bitter that I'm not in the car with them right now. But guys just go off and do something big. But if you're going to do it, be patient getting there and keep refining your plans. All right, everyone, have an awesome weekend then. And Harper, you two have an awesome road trip. Take care of guys. Rafe. Thanks for coming, brother. I know it was it was hard for you an anti we know you stay up late for these things for that.

Harpreet: [01:22:33] Thank you. I enjoy it, actually. Really? I enjoyed it. And I'm back again to the rhythm. That's also.

Speaker3: [01:22:39] Excellent. You're eager to see the new place, Derek. Glad you could show up. Russell I'm going to miss that long face when you get your new laptop. All right. Got to bug out, guys. Take care of. God bless.