#42 New Year’s Resolution

Last week, Jason and I went to a friend's place. Our friend X organizes weekly "family" dinner, a Thursday night dinner where all are welcomed, usually friends of friends. The topic of New Year's Resolution was brought up. This is my favorite topic. My resolution for 2019 Change to a more technical role at workMake...

#41 An alternative mindset to deal with personal issues

On June 29th , 2017, Satya sent out an email with subject line “Thank You & Our FY18 Opportunity”. It ended with this line “Our mission and culture gives each of us the opportunity to realize our personal passion and use Microsoft as a platform to pursue it. I am reminded of the closing line...

#40 Three Stories from Inside Bill’s Brain

Last month, Jason and I watched the documentary on Netflix Inside Bill's Brian: Decoding Bill Gates. This documentary consists of three episodes about his endeavor in the most pressing issues in the world, health and environment, his early life in Microsoft, and back stories about the influence his parents have on him. I did not...

#39 Three Observations from Google Trends data

Last week, I wrote about What's between you and you-wanna-be. To summarize: 1) The focus on one thing; 2) Realistic plan; 3) De-prioritization. This week, I want to share about how Jason and myself are using the methods. We are both data scientists in our full time job. In our spare time, we like to...

#38 What’s between You and You-Wanna-Be

This morning, when Jason took the first bite into his peanut butter sandwich, he said, "I often say that when we have this much money, when we don't have kids in the house, we will do XYZ. But really, most of these XYZs I want to do, we can do them now." That got me...

#37 What Does One Year of Commute Look Like on Paper?

Last week, inspired by Seth Godin, I decided that I will get data, make easy-to-understand, convincing and memorable visualizations for each of my blogs. The goal is to inspire my readers to take actions in their own lives. This week, I want to start with a v2 for Those Painful Gifts: Commute Since February 2019, I...

#36 Be Remarkable. No One Has Time for Anything Less Than That. You neither.

Last week, after a meeting with a marketing director Kevin at work, he asked if I have fun plans for the Labor Day weekend. I said, "Fun for me but probably not for you. I will write blogs. Like I do every weekend." He is amused and surprised by my answer, and nice enough to...

#35 What are Actionable Insights and How to Generate Them

I work in analytics in a digital marketing team. My company sells B2B software products. Our team does analysis and reporting on what marketing programs are working and what are not. "Working" can be measured in different ways, such as working in acquiring new customers or driving revenue growth of existing customers. Actionable insights are...

#34 Amazing Art: Ten Lessons from Ten Illustrations by Yaoyao (6-10)

Today I discovered an artist Yaoyao Ma Van As. Amazing is such a overly and inappropriately used word. People say this is amazing that is amazing. I often question, "Do you really mean it? Do you understand what amazing means?" When I found her work, I have to say, they are AMAZING. Her work makes...

#33 Amazing Art: Ten Lessons from Ten Illustrations by Yaoyao (1-5)

Today I discovered an artist Yaoyao Ma Van As. Amazing is such a overly, inappropriately used word. People say this is amazing, that is amazing. I often question, "Do you really mean it? Do you understand what amazing means?" When I found her work, I have to say, they are AMAZING. Her work makes me...