#50 Do You Feel Stuck? Here is What You Can Learn from Ants

If you are reading this, you might feel, to some extent, stuck. You might feel stuck in career, in school, in life situation. And you want to unstuck. I hope this blog will help you. First of all, I would like to emphasize the importance of awareness, and the different level of awareness: Level 1:...

#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...

#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...

#32 How to be happy and successful as an introvert in an extroverted workplace

I am an introvert. Source: https://www.yaoyaomavanas.com People don't know it or don't believe it. Cofounder of the consulting club in college; management consultant; MBA; marketing: my entire resume says capital E Extroversion. I have done--and love doing "extroverted" things: Public speaking: in grad school, I spoke once about why we should do less small talk...

#27 The Bright Side: It’s OK to Not Know What Exactly You Should Do

…As long as you don’t let go the goal and keep pushing the fuzzy front end. A few weeks ago my manager introduced a phrase to me: Fuzzy front end. It means the unclear path of actions to get to a goal. Here are some of my personal examples. They may seem to all be...

#24 First Principles Thinking: Balance between Career and Family

Last week I had one thought about why some people decide to put more effort on family when they get older. This blog is about my attempt to use first principles thinking to make career / family prioritization decision. There are great days and ok days at work. One day last week, I felt frustrated...

#23 First Principles Thinking: How to Have a Point of View

Recently I discovered a problem. I have become a very agreeable person. I don’t have strong opinions on most things: At work, what model should be applied to the problem; At home, where should we go for dinner; On internet, do you think we should advocate vegetarian to protect the environment. This blog is my...

#22 First Principles Thinking: What is “Bigger” Impact and How to Make it

Last week I had a career conversation with my manager. He said that in order to be promoted, I need to make “bigger” impact. The title of this blog is the literal question that came to my mind right in my manager’s office: “What is bigger impact and how to make it?” Other than asking...