Professional Velocity: Speed and Direction

Today, I sat down with a friend and colleague and had a long conversation about his professional growth. In doing so, I ended up realizing that I needed to write down what I mean about "professional velocity", because it's a framework that I frequently use when helping others think through their professional (and personal) development, and it's something that I consistently think about when I reflect on my life.

Unlike speed, velocity is a vector, which means that it also includes a component of direction. For myself and others, it's easy to spend too much time focusing on either speed or direction, to the detriment of overall velocity.

The example that feels the most relevant in my own life is how I ended up choosing a major in college. I remember having a huge argument with my father about why I was majoring in chemistry (not so impractical of a major, I might add) over Christmas break my Junior year. The truth was, I was good at chemistry. I started doing it my freshman year, and by my sophomore year, I was ahead, taking graduate classes and advanced courses that most people took in their junior or senior years. Going back to taking something like introductory economics felt like it would have been a regression, and so I continued to take chemistry courses. It was a particularly unintentional choice - I happened to be a chemistry major because I happened to have taken advanced chemistry in my freshman year.

This was my most egregious example of focusing too heavily on speed. In the race to become a famous chemist, I was ahead. Indeed, I was probably years ahead of people my age. However, I wasn't spending a lot of time interrogating that goal. While I was getting further ahead of the cohort of budding chemists, I was actually getting behind people who wanted to do software development or who wanted to become writers. In fact, when I started working as a professional developer, I found myself paradoxically behind everyone around me!

At other points in life, I've focused too heavily on direction. I spent a lot of time when I started work trying to figure out what I wanted to do - did I want to do testing, development, be a manager, do product work? At the end of the day, thinking abstractly about things without any concrete output doesn't feel great if you don't back it up with action, and paradoxically, it's caused me to be less directed, because it doesn't generate a lot of new information about what you like doing or could be good at.

There's definitely a tension between moving forward and figuring out what the right direction is overall, and that's never going away. Thinking about where you're going doesn't get you there, but it definitely helps prevent you from getting completely lost, and if you can produce dozens of artifacts that other people can consume along the way, then you're not really wasting that time anyway!

When Narratives Lie

As you may know from reading my blog, I’m on a bit of a quantified self binge right now. In particular, I’ve set some relatively ambitious goals with respect to fitness and health. As I've reflected on the first month of the process, I was struck by the way in which I repeatedly attempted to delude myself when I was clearly missing my goals.

One of my goals is to increase my physical fitness, as measured by resting heart rate, body fat, and weight. Because of [insert_list_of_excuses], I’m currently not tracking towards achieving this goal. I certainly need to be better, but I also need to be more honest with myself. With a goal like weight loss, there are inevitably fluctuations around a trend. If I weigh myself every day, there are often natural fluctuations of a couple pounds as a result of differing levels of hydration and how recently I’ve eaten. When I’m behind on my goal, however, I’ve found myself much more loathe to step on the scale when I know I’ve been bad. I don’t want to see the quantitive metric that shows that I’m failing. Even though I know in my head that my weight probably went up, actually stepping on the scale and logging it feels like a failure. Instead, I’m tempted to tell myself that I'll be better the next day and then step on when I’m tracking. Unfortunately, things come up, and all of the sudden I’ve lost 3 days.

On the other hand, I'm ahead of my goal for reading. I'm tearing through books, and keep adding more and more to my list. I know that I'm ahead of my goal, but I still, irrationally, want to read ever more. Having the tracking system in place has helped me consciously slow myself down, allowing me to reallocate time towards some of my other aspirations - writing a simple iPhone app, for example. Having metrics to check in with week over week has provided me with the structure to manage myself, and I think that it has been one more step towards becoming an effective human. 

In reality, just stepping on the scale is the action that allows me to reset. Having that metric, locking in at a new number, that's what forces me to come to terms with my progress, or lack thereof. At this point, I'm tracking 10 discrete goals via Beeminder via a complex network of applications, triggers, and feedback loops. The simple act of looking at my landing page every day gives me the data I need to plan, move forward, and adjust my behavior. 

I'm Joining PGP

As of today, I'm an official participant in the Personal Genome Project (PGP). Ever since reading an article about the program last fall, I've been fascinated about the potential of PGP. Given my professional interest in large-scale data analysis and my personal interests in data liberation and the quantified self movement, PGP is the perfect program for me to contribute to. For over a decade, since first reading about DNA replication in AP Biology, I've been fascinated by the limitations of traditional genetics and the promise of epigenetic research. I had a couple friends who were twins, and I can still remember asking my high school biology teacher about why genetically identical organisms weren't always phenotypically the same. It seems like we're not that much closer to the answer ten years later.

For people unfamiliar with the program, it's the spiritual successor to the Human Genome Project, focused specifically on producing a publicly available database of genomic, phenotypic and environmental information with the intent of providing a rich source of input data for epigenetic research. However, unlike most similar programs, PGP's data is available to the public. George Church, the lead researcher in the study, has his data here; mine is available here. While I don't have any professional experience in the space, the narrative of researchers having to spend most of their time recruiting participants for a single study resonated with me. Research is tough enough when you can collect data reliably - I can't imagine having to spend time recruiting human subjects for every new study.

In addition to my general curiosity about altruistic participation in genetic research, the program had a couple of other fascinating attributes.

1) The organizers decided against locking down data and opted to make it publicly available. 

In order to get this program approved by Harvard's Institutional Review Board, the researchers made the choice to opt for a program that emphasizes informed consent as opposed to data protection. In order to enroll, I had to spend an hour reading about possible risks associated with participation and answer dozens of questions about the consent process. The most interesting risks felt like they were coming right out of science fiction:

• Someone could use my genetic information to create clones.
• I could be convicted of crimes based on synthetic DNA that matches mine.
• In the future, insurance companies might be able to discriminate based on my genome to charge me higher, risk-adjusted rates

2) I was required me to talk with my parents and siblings before finalizing my application.

The application process required me to certify that I had talked with my nuclear family about the risks that my participation would expose them to; because I share my genetic information with my parents and siblings, making my genome public would implicitly release some of their personal genetic information. 

3) Going through the application forced me to think about what the future of genetic research might hold.

The eventual use of the data is complete unregulated and impossible to predict. We have no way of knowing what we will be able to do with genetic data in a decade, and participation now exposes me to a number of completely unknowable risks that may arise in the future.

4) Many genetic studies aren't performed on representative human populations.

Though it's obvious after thinking about how most human genetic research is performed, I was surprised to discover that many participants are recruited from the community around the research center, often a university campus. As such, we don't have many of genetic studies that analyze longitudinal differences across demographic and regional groups, the precise studies required to make any serious breakthroughs in epigenetics. 

Finally, in the course of evaluating the program, I've come to the conclusion that it's surprisingly difficult to do effective longitudinal genetic research. This type of research doesn't generate results quickly, and it requires a coordinated effort from funding organizations, study participants and researchers. Documenting every aspect of the study, especially variables that may only be relevant in hindsight, is an arduous task, but one that has proven effective in the past; the Framingham Heart Study, which has been running for close to 70 years, has spawned over 1,000 research papers and dramatically changed our understanding of the relationships between diet, exercise, and heart disease. I hope that the data made available as part of PGP will yield similarly impressive results.

In either case, next time I'm in Boston, MA, I'll be getting blood work done and making my genome available to any of you weirdos who want to check it out! Hope to hear from some other people who decide that this is an interesting way to become a naked mole rat and altruistically contribute to the future of human genetic knowledge!

Economist Redux #5: February

The past three weeks have been pretty wild for me, and so I'm falling a bit behind on my blogging goal and my goal of reading The Economist every week. I spent today catching up on the past few weeks, and here are some articles I enjoyed!

• Some interesting point/counter-points about teaching recruitment and how teacher's unions in the US make it difficult to attract really high-performing students. There was also a good follow-up piece about different methods of training teachers that focused on TFA specifically.
• Starting the piece about the alfalfa farmer in Catch 22, this piece about farm subsidies was a pretty good analysis of different ways in which the current programs are generally wasteful and inefficient. Nothing really new here, but a good piece.
• This article about crowdfunding was focused on a game called Star Citizen (Kickstarter here), that's raised over $72 million. Cool thoughts about how this could be an effective way to pay for blockbuster films, with a pithy quote about an example that's near and dear to my heart: "if Joss Whedon wanted to do another series of ‘Firefly’, I bet he could raise a hell of a lot of cash.”
• Gentrification is a huge part of the national dialogue about urbanization, with most people assuming that it's a hugely negative trend. This article talks a lot about the positives of gentrification, which, whether or not you agree with them, are worth considering.
• Totally agree with this article; shutting down the DHS is definitionally bad for national security and is a lame attempt at governance. 
• Generally good article about Apple's risky plan to enter the car market, but I think the line about how "the technology firms have no manufacturing culture" falls pretty flat in the face of any basic interrogation of the complex supply chains and manufacturing requirements of complex modern electronics.
• An awesome article about Kaspersky Labs, an organization that has time and time again been ahead in the digital arms race over cyber security
• In an article very close to my heart, the newspaper tackles the furious battle for talent in Silicon Valley. Nothing particularly novel here, but I will say that I was disappointed that they didn't mention anything about the way developers at tech firms are in the front office, not the back office. I think that's also a huge part of why it's so hard to attract tech talent in more traditional industries.
• Cool article about the Supreme Court, and how it's the final frontier of grey, distinguished politics where disagreement doesn't make anyone enemies. Having been listening to Amicus, a podcast from Slate, I think there's a lot that I have to learn about the court.
• I highly recommend this article about North Korea's economic policies and how they end up making their economy chug along (albeit terribly). There are a couple of really interesting discussions about the differences between the North and South and some good commentary on the damage that the nuclear arms program has on the North Korean economy.
• Not particularly interesting on its own, but this article about bottled water in China resonated with me after having just finished reading How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.
• This article, about how eyelashes actually create aerodynamic turbulence that prevents eye infection, was just a great reminder that science is always moving forward, and that very few things evolve for no reason. 
• My college roommate and I used to talk for hours about using viral methods to attack antibiotic-resistant bacteria, as well as a ton of other tactics, but it sounds like we might be getting closer to this actually becoming a reality.

Tomorrow May Not Be Better

As you may know from reading my blog, I’m on a bit of a quantified self binge right now. In particular, I’ve set some relatively ambitious goals with respect to fitness and health. As I've reflected on the first month of the process, I was struck by the way in which I repeatedly attempted to delude myself when I was clearly missing my goals.

One of my goals is to increase my physical fitness, as measured by resting heart rate, body fat, and weight. Because of [insert_list_of_excuses], I’m currently not tracking towards achieving this goal. I certainly need to be better, but I also need to be more honest with myself. With a goal like weight loss, there are inevitably fluctuations around a trend. If I weigh myself every day, there are often natural fluctuations of a couple pounds as a result of differing levels of hydration and how recently I’ve eaten. When I’m behind on my goal, however, I’ve found myself much more loathe to step on the scale when I know I’ve been bad. I don’t want to see the quantitive metric that shows that I’m failing. Even though I know  in my head that my weight probably went up, actually stepping on the scale and logging it feels like a failure. Instead, I’m tempted to tell myself that I'll be better the next day and then step on when I’m tracking. Unfortunately, things come up, and all of the sudden I’ve lost 3 days.

On the other hand, I'm ahead of my goal for reading. I'm tearing through books, and keep adding more and more to my list. I know that I'm ahead of my goal, but I still, irrationally, want to read ever more. Having the tracking system in place has helped me consciously slow myself down, allowing me to reallocate time towards some of my other aspirations - writing a simple iPhone app, for example. Having metrics to check in with week over week has provided me with the structure to manage myself, and I think that it has been one more step towards becoming an effective human adult male. 

In reality, just stepping on the scale is the action that allows me to reset. Having that metric, locking in at a new number, that's what forces me to come to terms with my progress, or lack thereof. At this point, I'm tracking 10 discrete goals via Beeminder via a complex network of applications, triggers, and feedback loops. The simple act of looking at my landing page every day gives me the data I need to plan, move forward, and adjust my behavior.

The saddest business book I've ever read

Put simply, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a stunning novel masquerading as a parody of a canned business self-help book. With twelve chapters spanning the unnamed main characters ~80 year life, the book is loaded with humor, meaning, and more than a small amount of tear-jerking emotion.

The trite early chapters (with titles like "Don't Fall In Love" and "Move to the City") slowly deepen in complexity, eventually transforming from the unabashed chronicle of a rising business titan into a touching reflection on aging, love, and finding meaning in life. It was a novel that made me cry, and its generic voice (none of the characters have names, for example) only serves to heighten the universal resonance of the story that unfolds.

To get a sense for the prose, I think that this quote is just so poignant, funny, and indicative of the entire novel: "And where moneymaking is concerned, nothing compresses the time frame needed to leap from my-shit-just-sits-there-until-it-rains poverty to which-of-my-toilets-shall-I-use affluence like an apprenticeship with someone who already has the angles all figured out."

Going into the novel, I really didn't know what to expect, but whatever my expectations, they were unquestionably surpassed. This is a book that I will likely return to later in life and experience in a totally new way as my youth fades and I, like the protagonist, become old.

Economist Redux #4: January 2015

OK, so I'll admit that I'm falling a bit behind; quarterly planning at work has killed me a bit, as has some fun ski trips up to the arid hills of Tahoe. Let's get down to business though; you guys are here for reposts of Economist articles, and I would hate to disappoint.

• An article about freedom of speech resonated with me. A good friend of mine from college was routinely attacked for making similar claims, but I tend to agree with the notion that attempts to regulate speech are often misguided. 
• Having finished the Twilight of the Elite last year, not much in either of these articles about dangers of meritocracy really surprised me, although the specific quantification of the degree to which associative mating actually increases inequality (25%) was interesting to me. Generally just a good thing to keep a mental note of.
• Apparently we're going to be able to save the fishies with big data! Hooray! 
• An interesting take on how to use low oil prices as a way to impose a carbon tax and reduce subsidies for alternative energies in one fell swoop. I need to read more about carbon taxes, but the more I hear, the more it sounds pretty awesome!
• Close to home, this was a relatively hawkish take on some of the risks that counterterrorism agencies face when dealing with more independent, commando-style attacks.
• I've actually worked on this a bit professionally, and it would be interesting to see if the President's ideas about data sharing for cyber security take off. It really could be a powerful way to combat persistent cyber threats.
• This article makes some pretty optimistic claims that even with low oil prices, innovation in the energy space is improving the lot of people everywhere! In particular, some of the stories about specific technological improvements in efficiency and production were pretty inspiring. 
• Interesting take on BP, specifically from the perspective of whether it could get eaten up by another big oil company now that crude prices are low, even though management has done a pretty good job with the company.
• Similar article about McDonald's - the downsides of being the biggest fast food company in an era of healthy food and more diversity at the slightly higher end of the market makes this a particularly tough time. 
• Really interesting article about bitcoin mining - did you know that mining for bitcoins takes more electricity than 130,000 US homes? Especially given the recent volatility, it also has some interesting parallels with the oil industry right now.
• Some cool thoughts about platform companies and the complex economics of trying to balance supply and demand, as well as some of the more traditional areas of ad optimization and whatnot. 
• Maybe things will be better in Congress than the Economist thinks, but I won't be holding my breath. This article has a particularly depressing juxtaposition of the workers fixing up the physical capital building and the people who end up working inside it.
• Crazy article about some dude who basically had the job of running a wild future think-tank for the Pentagon. Sounds like he either crushed it or sucked, but in either case, it's probably classified. 

And that's it. Here's to increased consistency in upcoming weeks!