Personal Development

September has come and gone. Autumn is in full swing now and everyone is prepping for the winter. September was a busy month for me, both personally and professionally. I started traveling more again and wrote up a storm on my Medium account. I finally hit a nerve over there and have been experiencing viral follower growth as well as decent earnings. These earnings aren’t big enough to replace my day job earnings, more like extra money for beer. The subjects of my viral articles are climate change and the stock market. I’ve been pretty heavy on the climate change ones because gloom and doom (fear) seem to drive a lot of traffic. ...

There was a short time when at a previous Startup I moved out of Sales and into Marketing. I had to produce a lot targeted content in a niche market and that’s how I earned my living. A lot of the content I created ended up on the company’s blog, video library, or community boards so I considered myself a Professional Blogger back then. Now that I’m back in Sales and I Blog here for fun, I consider myself a writer and a Semi-Professional Blogger now. ...

I’m going to start this post with a big helping of gratitude. I’m so grateful to the 1000’s of readers that helped me get into the field of Data Science and Machine Learning. I was a part-time blogger that turned my passion into a full-time gig in the AI Startup world. This post is my way of paying it forward to you. Read below if you want to learn how to make money blogging. ...

It’s Saturday and the month of April is almost over. It WAS Saturday when I started writing this but now it’s the last day of April. It’s been especially cold this April and the leaves aren’t even out on the trees where I live. That’s been a big bummer. There have been a few days this month that have been perfect Spring days and my body is ready for the warm weather. I just want to get out and work out in my yard. For the most part, Mother Nature took my place, the cool weather and rain has done wonders for my front lawn. ...

I hope that this blog post finds all of my readers happy and healthy. It feels really strange having to write that because of all the death that’s descending upon us. Covid19 is really hitting my state (New Jersey) really hard. If you’ve been reading my newsletter, you’d know that we’ve been self-isolating for several weeks. It’s downright scary. There are some small silver linings to all this, I’ve heard from many friends that I haven’t heard from over the years. We’ve been catching up via Zoom video calls. My kids have been doing virtual schooling and I started taking an online class in Go Language. As a family we’ve been working outside in the garden (as weather permits) and I’ve been baking up a storm. I’m also spending more time studying Karate and working on my Kata. ...

Happy New Year readers! Granted it’s already 10 days into the new year but I’ve been having a well deserved break and easing back into work. Now that 2020 is here I hope to amp up more of what I did last year. Read more books, go to the Dojo/exercise more, and make more adventures with the family. I’m not really into the ’new year resolutions’ because I like to ease into things, not make abrupt cold turkey changes. ...

Lately I’ve been reading Seneca as part of my exploration of Stoicism. There’s a lot of great things here and I recommend you check out the video and my notes below: To live well we must be constant students of life Seneca’s essay “On the shortness of life” reminds us that time is a non-renewable resource Treat time as a commodity, people guard their property but squander time The amount of time we get is uncertain, you could die at 20 or 100 Death creeps up on time wasters Make the most of time, it is an amplifier when used properly Don’t invest your time preparing for life Seneca pushes us to live right now and not to delay happiness Your typical life is work till 60 and then wait to be happy What usually happens is your old to enjoy life then and regret not making most of life Planning the big things in life but don’t delay living it Live life for your own self Being busy with things we don’t like is the greatest distraction of your life We waste time at jobs we don’t like, relationships we’re not happy in, etc Invest your time into making a life worth living Practice Premeditatio Malorum While you waste your time by procrastinating, life goes on Researchers call the dissonance of “short-term gratification vs long-term commitments” as time inconsistency To fight this, use Premeditatio Malorum which is a form of negative visualization Think of what could go wrong with your long term task and then make plans to achieve it. This will offset the distractions Make Long Term Rewards Immediate The need to procrastinate it he most powerful RIGHT at the start of work When rewards are years away (i.e. diploma, career, et), you tend to procrastinate To overcome, you must bundle a reward at the start of the task You can eat a piece of cheesecake when you lost 10lbs or give yourself time to browse the web once you finished those pesky spreadsheet task Make the Most of your Free Time Too often we waste our free time with stupid stuff. Gossiping, drinking at the bar, etc There’s plenty of time to do everything we want if we just stop wasting our free time We work hard to earn money and free time, so why waste that precious free time Use your lunch hour to explore the city, write in a journal, play an instrument, reading, etc To beat mediocrity and start living your life, make the most of your free time Spend time reflecting on your past Present time is transitory (it’s moving), Future is uncertain, the past is unalterable Seneca says pay attention to the past, so you can be effective today Personal note: Journaling is a wonderful way of capturing the past ##Stop Wasting Time in Life’s Trivialities ...

I’m back in Silicon Valley for a few days to attend our yearly Sales Engineering (SE) training. It’s a great way for the growing SE team to get together and talk shop. I find these yearly meetings very useful but they’re hectic. Fun but hectic. I love being on California. It’s such a wonderful place for the outdoors and ‘chilling’ in cities like San Francisco. I’m a big fan of the SoCal desert areas and Joshua Tree is one of my favorite destinations. Ever since I life in Albuquerque, I’ve had a pull toward the mountains and deserts. Yet it seems that I won’t get away this time for much needed fun out in those mountains. ...

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been blogging now for over 12 years. I’ve written 100’s of posts, some short and some long. I’ve had my shares of ups and downs here but in the end I’m glad I stuck with it. It’s made me realize that blogging has led to my personal growth. Blogging has become a career! What’s happened is that I’ve been reposting and repopulating old posts from my archive. I took these posts down a few years ago thinking they were of no use, but now I realize I was wrong. Sure there were some cringe worthy type of posts back then, but I look at them now and smile. I’m so far removed from them now and I realize I so different now. ...

My posting activity has started to drop off again. This is partly due to a large workload and traveling schedule. I’m enjoying my work immensely but my blog is neglected as a result. A few weeks ago I even considered shutting this blog down because I feel like I’m like an “old man shouting at clouds.” I’ve come to realize that my skills are not in coding but in communication. ...