rumination

I’ve realized why people burn out now. I always used to be skeptical of this term.

“Don’t put too on your plate, you don’t want to burn yourself out.”

That doesn’t happen. I always thought it was just a matter of people being lazy to do more, but that’s not true at all. The reason why people burn out is because there’s not enough of those little rewards to keep you going. You’re not really making any significant progress when you take on too much, rather, you’re making extremely trivial progress on many things, and you become tireless, thinking, “Why am i working so hard, yet nothing is coming out of it?”

It’s interesting, how effective the small strides we make can be at pushing us forward. I was reading an interesting article the other day about how a guy came up with a curriculum called Jump Math. There’s this notion that you’re either good at math or you aren’t, you’re either a humanities major or a science major. That notion of “I’m not good at math” or “I can’t write well” perpetuates into many students’ lives from elementary school to university. There’s a lot of debate as to whether this is attributed to innate abilities or exposure (e.g. was poorly taught the subject, no support network) — as there is with a plethora of other topics (nature vs nurture) — but this guy came up with a strategy to make every single person good at math. His curriculum was effective because when it teaches things, it breaks it up into steps, really mini steps, so that you’re rewarded for getting through every step when you’re trying to solve a math problem — even teeny tiny steps. And that pushes you to keep going forward until you’ve finished solving the problem. Brilliant.

“Want a Job? Go to College, and Don’t Major in Architecture”
- Catherine Rampbell, NYTimes article

There have been so many articles like this, comparing major, employment rates, income. Why be so fixated on security? Go to college and major in what you’re fascinated by, quit letting your standards be pegged by society, and do something amazing. Of course, easier said than done.

Space can transforms the way people interact, and the difference between life and death. Monique Guimond from MASS Design Group came to speak today, and told us about her org’s work building hospitals for Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health and the Clinton Global Health Initiative.

MASS Design Group formed out of the realization that despite the expectation that hospitals should heal patients, many hospitals in the developing world are places where people become sicker. Some of this is attributed to the way hospitals are physically designed.

70% world’s architects and planners are in “developed” world.

70% projects are in the developing world.

In designing a hospital, one must be cognizant of the spread of airborne disease. Hallways, for example, are poorly ventilated, easily clog with people, and create contagion.

After hearing Paul Farmer give a talk, MASS Design Founder Michael Murphy approached him and asked to partner with him to design hospitals at Partners In Health’s next project in Rwanda.

“I’ve never used an architect. I drew the last hospital on a napkin.”
- Paul Farmer 

Successful, it was.

Additionally, a lesson learned: Approach people with impossible requests.

Success takes 1) luck, 2) timing, and 3) taking action.

Like any other young girl growing up, my mother was a heavy influence in my life — and although I admired some of her characteristics- she was fantastically hard-working with great self discipline, very giving too, there was something about some of the things she said that always bothered me.

I’d ask her why she always had to speak to me like she was angry, why things that people did irritated her, and why she couldn’t just ignore them — why was change was so immutable? She’d respond exhaustingly, “That was just the way I was born, Adrienne. I can’t do anything about it.”

It was frustrating, this notion of not being able to change yourself, your situations, to hold your emotions. I only grew more frustrated through the years, until a realization came to me — much of my agency comes from the internet.

I was always impatient when I’d come home for break, and every break I’d have to once again teach my mom how to log onto her online banking account, how to send a text message, how to pay her bills online (somehow, she managed to forget her password every time).

I realized how much liberation the internet has given me. For sure, it has changed the mindsets of what I feel capable of doing. The internet lets anyone do almost anything — read up on a favorite architect, pick up a new programming language, learn to juggle a soccer ball, find a date, sublet a house, even life advice in troubled times — I was on Quora the other day and came upon the question, “How do I know the right time to criticize someone?” Now, anyone can build something on the internet and create a profitable business model. Whenever I feel any curiosity, any desire, any discomfort, I can just type it into Google and I’ll find an answer. In no other generation, is the emphasis of being able to do anything, or find anything, so underscored. And what an empowering notion it is.

Learning about splay trees and networks in CS. I was reading this slide on algorithm design, and just realized, what a great metaphor for life it is.

1. Define the problem
2. Find a (simple) algorithm to solve it
3. Analyze performance.
4. Not fast enough? Find out why, construct and study hard instances
5. Find a way to overcome the problem
6. Iterate

Whether it be troubleshooting that problem in how to acquire more customers, or how to solve darn proof — figure out what you’re trying to solve, find a simple way to solve it, measure performance, and quickly re-do it better.

There’s something about conversation in dimly-lit spaces over beer and wine. I met Jason Shah, Founder of INeedAPencil.com and PM at Yammer yesterday.

Three takeaways:

1. Quantification

The logical path may not always be the most sensical. This is something I struggle with. I love Computer Science because it forces such a logical mode of thinking. “If this method is applied, then this happens, if it is is true then this happens, but if it’s false then it’s not.” It’s a good framework for problem-solving and getting to the root causes of problems. (I’ve recently become a fan of Ken Watanabe’s logic trees and have been using them for taking notes and mapping out conversations, chains of thought). But it’s important to realize that even though y may follow from x, there are other considerations are not in that equation that must be taken into account.

Jason spoke of impact and how it can be quantified. 

It’s easy to think of money as a measure of wealth, as value creation, but more money doesn’t always mean more value.

Tyler Gage, President of Runa Tea isn’t making a lot of money right now, his salary is $20,000, but he is improving the lives of hundreds of farmers in Ecuadorean communities, empowering them through promoting democracy and transparency.

Had you not been there, would the impact have been the same?

e.g. Had Tony Hsieh not run Zappos, and it had been a different person, would the company ethos and culture at Zappos still be the same, propogating through their excellent customer service and satisfaction?

Startups are impactful because they’re disruptive, there hasn’t been anything like it before and the successful ones end up generating value that wouldn’t have been generated otherwise.

2. Do things for yourself. 

Why is prestige so important? You only have so many years to live, so why spend it to doing something someone else thinks is important?

3. Life is short.

If you only had three years left to live, what would you spend it doing? Doing something for a few years for “security”? Or going out there, getting your hands dirty, and building your dream, with full confidence and agency that if you fuck up, you’re perfectly capable of getting back up again?

One of my TAs commented the other day that he wanted a pair of paisley pants. I’ve never seen paisley-print pants, only paisley-print tights. I wonder why men don’t wear tights; I love the push and pull of masculinity bordering on femininity.

I was reading Jeffrey Sachs’ End of Poverty today, and the part about women garment factory workers in Bangladesh piqued my interest. These women walk several miles a day from the outskirts of Dhaka and into the city to get to the factory, only to begin sewing away for hours on end, with the labels of Polo, Yves Saint Laurent, and Old Navy being stitched onto fabric.

Sachs asserts that these garment factory jobs have actually improved the livelihoods of women, as they otherwise would have been living meagerly in impoverished rural areas. With these opportunities, women are able to save up money and rent their own rooms, bringing a new sense of freedom. In fact, this garment factory work is one the first stages of industrialization, and all currently developed countries have undergone a similar process (think garment factory workers in New York).

[Although I think he errs in his reasoning- although other countries may have precedent, that does not necessarily guarantee the same results.]

Perception.

I was speaking to Professor Chris Bull- amazing man, and inspiring, having been at Brown for so long yet not being at all jaded by the torpidity of bureaucracy. He was speaking about the notion of spending 10,000 hours to become an expert in the field

Had a fantastic lunch with Jonah Fisher the other day. Made me realize the importance of physical spaces, and community. He was talking about the project he was working on, and how the productivity didn’t come from “we’re going to have a team meeting every week on monday at x time,” but rather, from when they met brushing their teeth on the 2nd floor Keeney bathroom, and started hashing out strategy. In fact, that’s where their best work came from.

It brought me to realize how important physical proximity is. When I observe whose good friends with who, in what way are the groups of people sitting in the V-Dub dining hall connected, how do they know each other, I’ve realized its often people who have lived in the same freshmen dorms, and it’s not because brown is really good at pairing floor mates- its a random process — but rather because those people have been forced to live next to one another for a long period of time, close bonds form — those bonds when you’re brushing your teeth in the bathroom, or studying in the kitchen.

Physical spaces can transform relationships.

*start tangent*

Architectural Designer Bjarke Ingels came to speak at brown today and it was phenomenal. One of his works he was describing, the 8 House, a residential housing complex, particularly struck me. He calls it “architectural alchemy” — his blase and flowery term for integration. The complex is known for the way it creates a lively urban neighborhood inside a complex, allowing business and housing to co-exist and social life to thrive (something I believe is very lacking in suburban neighborhoods today). One tenet to its success is its horizontal organization of functionalities, in which there are variously sized houses and apartment complexes weaved between courtyards, views to open spaces, and retail stores facing the street.

There’s no reason why this should be such a new concept of organizing spaces.

Jane Jacobs wrote long ago, in 1961, that the compartmentalization of city functions don’t work — dividing up a city between factories, housing, parks, and “civic centers”, only create opportunities for crime when those spaces aren’t being used at different times of the day. She elaborates on this idea of there being “eyes” on the street. Why do people always regard “the streets,” as a dangerous place, when they are in fact one of the safest? After all, nobody would attack another person on a busy intersection. and intersections are busy because they serve so much functionality- there are usually cars passing by, people walking their dogs on the side walk, or going to the grocery store to pick up food, and people going back to their houses above the grocery store. Horizontal organization works.

*end tangent*

In a co-working space, the collaborative style of work fostered allows the people participating to not only share space, but also to share ideas. Co-working spaces increase the randomness of concept combinations, allowing new ideas to emerge, and problems to be solved more creatively. I’m a big proponent of space for Brown Venture Labs. We’re going to get it. Some time before I graduate.