Glenn’s Blog

Twitter lessons from 2022

2022-07-04T05:30:00+00:00

22 Lessons from early half of 2022

Taken from twitter thread of Sahil Bloom link here

Parent Time You’ll only see your loved ones a few more times. The time we have with our parents is limited – the vast majority of it behind you by the time you leave school. Don’t hide from the scary math – make changes to prioritize time with loved ones.
5 Types of wealth
- Financial (money)
- Social (relationships)
- Physical (health)
- Mental (knowledge, faith)
- Time (freedom) The pursuit of financial wealth can rob you of the others. Do not let that happen.
Intellectual Chemistry Agreement doesn’t create growth—disagreement does. Build a circle of friends with whom you have intellectual chemistry—the ability to enjoy disagreements with one another. Active tension sharpens thinking.
Flywheels A flywheel is a positive momentum loop. Once it gets going, its momentum helps, increasinig the impact of the applied effort. To get it moving, you need:
- Force (intensity)
- Duration (consistency)
- Angle (intelligent)
The Power of Tiny Gains Compounding is one of the most beautiful tings in the world. But it can work for or against you. Extraordinary achievements are often just the end result of a large volume of consistent tiny actions. Small things become big things.
The Advice Paradox Taking more advice leaves you less well-equipped. It’s well-intentioned, but it’s dangerous to use someone else’s map of reality to navigate yours. Winners learn to filter and selectively implement advice - take the signal, skip the noise.
Intellectual Sparring Partners Most of us need fewer friends and more intellectual sparring partners. Friends are easy to come by - intellectual sparring partners are harder to find. They are willing to call you on your BS, questions your assumptions, and push you to think deeply.
The Regret Razor When choosing how to spend your time, choose to spend it on time you never regret. A few things I never regret:
- Creative sprint
- Talking to smart friends
- Calling my parents
- Tech-free walks
- Exercising Make your list - then spend more time on it!
Identity Capital Identity capital is the base of experiences and traits that make us unique. When you are young, seek to build identity capital - pursue interesting experiences as much as you can. As you grow, leverage your identity capital to accelerate your career and life.
Question-Action Matrix Asking great questions uncovers the truth - bias for action builds upon it. The four quadrants:
- Q1: World-changers (rare!)
- Q2: Grinders/hustlers
- Q3: Philosophers/thinkers
- Q4: Dead Zone Invest behind Q1s, hire more Q2s, spend time with Q3s, and avoid Q4s.
The Brakes Paradox What allows a F1driver to fly around the track? It’s not the engine, the tires or the suspension. It is the brakes. Strong, reliable brakes unlock the driver. Build brakes into your life that allow you to accelerate and hit turns without fear.
Creative Boredom Experiencing regular periods of boredom is a competitive advantage. Your most creative moments come duringg bouts of boredom. Try the creative boredom challenges:
- 5 days, 30 min per day
- No tech
- No books
- Alone, walking or static You won’t regret it.
Darkest Hour Friends Most of your friends aren’t really your friends. They’re just along for the ride when it’s fun or valuable - they’ll disappear when it’s not. Your real friends are there when you have nothing to offer in return.
Luck Surface Area Your habits put you in a position where luck is more likely to strike. It’s hard to get lucky watching TV at home. If you want to get lucky, increase your luck surface area. Open up the aperature to let more luck in- eliminate “black holes” that block it.
The Writing Knife Block Writing is the ultimate tool to sharpen thinking. When you write, you expose the gaps that exist in your logic and thinking. Use writing as a “knife block”: When you think you understand something, write it out and put your understanding to the test.
30-for-30 Plan If you want to improve at anything, follow this simple approach:
- 30 days
- 30 min per day 30 days of effort is a real commitment but small enough that you can mentally take it on. 900 minutes of accumulated effort yeilds surprisingly significant results.
The Rooms Razor If you have a choice between entering two rooms, choose the room where you are more likely to be the dumbest one in the room. Once you’re in the room, talk less and listen more. Pretty bad for your ego—pretty great for your learning, luck, and growth.
Build vs Sell To be successful, you either need to learn how to build or you need to learn how to sell. If you aren’t technically-gifted, that’s ok - just learn to sell. If you can sell, you’ll always make it. People who know how to build AND sell are unbeatable.
The Feynman Technique
- Step 1: Identify a topic
- Step 2: Try to explain it to a 5-year-old
- Step 3: Study to fill in knowledge gaps
- Step 4: Organize, convey, and review True genius is the ability to simplify, not complicate. Simple is beautiful.
Memento Mori Memento Mori is a Stoic reminder of the certainty and inescapability of death. It is not intended to be morbid - but to clarify, illuminate, and inspire. Time is our most precious asset - it’s all we have. Know your death is order to truly live your life.
The Jerk Razor If you meet a jerk once a month, you’ve met a jerk. If you meet jerk everyday, you’re a jerk.
Anti-Goals With traditional goals, we envision the optimal outcome. Anti-goals are the things we don’t want to happen. Anti-goals are about avoiding the Pyrrhic victory - they prevent you from winning the battle but losing the war.
Personal Board of Advisors The concept of “mentorship” has become too formal. Asking someone to be your mentor feels like a big commitment. Instead, build a personal board of advisors. A diverse group of 5-10 people you can go to for questions, advice, or feedback.

Century - My resolution to write for next 100 days

2022-03-02T05:30:00+00:00

Topic for Today’s Discussion - talent and hardwork

Blue Period.
Calling someone talented undermines the long hours of hardwork that they put in to achieve something. It disrespects the amount of time and effort they have put into achieving or mastering something. Some people on the other hand, are naturally talented for something. This maybe the result of their conditioning, upbringing or their genetic make up. This induces some level of healthy competitive jealousy among the hardworking overachievers. They plan to work so hard that no one would be able to tell the different between the work of a hardworker and a talented individual.
This is the major takeaway of blue period.

Century - My resolution to write for next 100 days

2022-02-02T05:30:00+00:00

Atari Games
Reinforcement learning used for learning Atari games and countering these methods.

Century - My resolution to write for next 100 days

2021-12-11T06:30:00+00:00

Today is my first day of writing. I will write at least 500 words for the next 100 days. I am sure I will be able to achieve this goal. A major aim of this exercise is to get into a habit of writing and potentially improve it further, while also having fun and just churning out some interesting pieces. In this way, I also get an opportunity to document some snapshots of my life.

Today, Koala messaged me asking if I got an email from GT’s program. Initially, I went in a defensive mode, asserting the fact that both of us are applying to different programs. She said that the program committee wants to have an “informal chat” with her. Following this, her replies included justifications for her actions and that she was only planning to prepare for the interviews. My response later was kind. I congratulated and wished her good luck for whatever followed. I also messaged chu and tried justifying my actions. He felt too important and I acted like a fuckin simp. I should have taken a stand. Maybe it’s fine, I am just being kind to people. KN proposed that we meet at the citadel on nine tails adding to the ten teeth. Most of the replies were negative. Let’s see what follows.

On the academic front, I am learning IML. I covered linear models and will probably be done with decision trees. I think I feel a bit more confident after looking at GAM. Maybe I can model the gene expression data and make some interesting clean methods for single-cell. Woah, I am thinking everything in the light of single-cell datasets lol. Okay, I need to stay away from social media lingo.

One man's thrash is other man's treasure

I am thinking of including the latex plugin here too. I can bang out equations here and save it handy. I can even use this website as my personal notes storage space for free! No one really care if the website is listed. Anyways, most of the website out there are thrash. It would be an online treasure for me, with almost complete annonymity. Now I see why Prof. bhondoo created his anonymous blog.

\[\bar{x} = \frac{\sum(x_i)}{n}\]

If by mistake, you happen to read this blog, do email and let me know! I would love to know my dedicated fan club. Till then, stick around and never stop learning!

Navigating through JoSAA and the IIT system right after JEE Advanced

2021-10-15T06:30:00+00:00

Navigating through JoSAA and the IIT system right after JEE Advanced

As the JEE season has come to an end, we IITians are flooded with messages from friends and family from people seeking advice. Most of the content of the advice is quite similar and therefore, I was advised to write a blog to put out all the general content a person would need to navigate through JoSAA and the IIT system.

Now, for all the IIT aspirants who have clear JEE Advanced, congratulations on clearing JEE Mains and JEE Advanced. These two combined are definitely among the toughest exams in the world, especially, among the tough COVID-19 pandemic times. So, congratulate yourself, give yourself a treat and relax for a bit.

Disclaimer: My article is naturally biased towards IIT Madras and its programs. Also, if you want me to cover some more topics, let me know in the comments.

Resources that I used

Back in 2017, when I had appeared for JEE Advanced, there were not a lot of resources to make a proper decision. I was connected to only one IITian a family friend. He had graduated from IIT KGP long back in 2008 and has been in US since then. I come from a business family. Everyone that I know around me has been doing business and hasn’t really ventured into corporate India. I had no clue on which branch to select or which IIT to select except for maybe the top 5 IITs. Thus, I needed some serious mentoring to make a good decision about my future. I am listing the resources that helped me in making my decision.

JEE Counselling guide by Prof Dheeraj Sanghi written in 2015 - link here
Industries of the Future by Alec Ross written in 2016 - link here

Now, as you select your branch, you need to think if whatever you are planning to pursue will be relevant to the world 5–10 years from now. Anticipating the future is an extremely difficult task. However, it is not entirely impossible. This is where reading the second book would help. According to Alec Ross, these five industries are going to make it big, rather they are making it big.

Robotics (including drones)
Advanced Life Sciences
Cryptocurrency
Cybersecurity
Big Data

Should I select IIT over a branch that I really love hoping for a branch change?

My answer to the above question is no. Most of the first-year courses that you end up taking in your first year are largely taken by everyone irrespective of the branch. Most IITs also follow a relative grading system. Therefore, you will be competing with all the students at the IIT irrespective of their branch for grades. You would have been at odds at the JEE exams, however, beating the odds in IIT classrooms in your first year is quite difficult. The competition is cutthroat. It only starts to cool down after the branch change season gets over. In a nutshell, don’t pin your hopes on branch change. You are unlikely to beat the odds at IITs. Everyone who comes there is hoping for one.

However, some IITs such as IIT Madras have dual degree programs in cutting edge, industry-relevant programs as I have mentioned earlier. There are several criteria to get in, such as projects, CGPA, or approval from professors. If you think that you can manage to get into these programs, then you should definitely opt for IIT over the program. Nonetheless, you can’t escape the workload of your parent branch. It may reduce but it certainly won’t go away.

I don’t have any particular preferences. I don’t know much about the branches too. How do I pick which IIT would work for me?

I’ll answer this question by breaking it into different options that people take in-around their final year and later on in their life. If you do not have any particular preferences, then purely going by payscale is not a good idea. The first salaries are not the best way to judge a person’s success. IITs offer you a lot of different opportunities to achieve success. Let me just outline some of them.

Startups: Let me just cite one recent example of Aether Energy that is transforming the two-wheeler electric vehicle scenario of Bangalore and Chennai. Its founders are the alumni of -Engineering Design Department of IIT Madras. Similarly, there are so many others like UrbanMatrix, Sea6Energy, ePlane, Solinas, and HyperVerge to name a few. These start-ups are transforming India with their cutting-edge technology. These are not merely companies that just make apps, these companies are solving real-world problems efficiently and effectively. IITians are not merely job-seekers, they are opportunity creators. This is definitely an important outcome that you should be looking at rather than only the placements statistics.

There are several IITs (mostly old ones), such as IIT Bombay and IIT Madras which foster and celebrate the start-up ecosystem. If you think, that you want to explore the start-up space, transform our beautiful country and benefit humanity, you should definitely look for IITs that have a healthy start-up ecosystem. Some compromise on the branch is fine in this case. The founders of the start-ups that I mentioned are from departments such as Engineering Design, Mechanical Engineering, Biotechnology, Chemical Engineering, and Metallurgical and Material Science Engineering. Just to give you one contrasting example, the founder of the ePlane company is from the Metallurgy department, and he has teamed up with a Professor from the Aerospace department.

Research: IITs are by far among the best research institutes in India. Most IITs have world-class facilities. With the distinction between the domains becoming less and less relevant and interdisciplinary research on rising, in my opinion, it is important that you should select an IIT that fosters interdisciplinary research. Your research profile is highly dependent on the quality of research projects that you pursue. To my knowledge, old IITs are the safest. IIT Hyderabad, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Mandi are also good options. I would advise against very new IITs. They sometimes face a chronic faculty crunch. Profs from old IITs visit the new IITs to teach some courses. Naturally, your research options are limited and you might not be able to develop a good research profile.

If you are not 100% sure about research, then IITs are definitely better options than IISERs. IISERs offer you great research opportunities, however, they only offer research opportunities. IITs on the other hand, offer a lot of flexibility. If you don’t find yourself interested in research, then you can switch to other options. Such options are not available at IISERs. The only option you are left with is MBA.

Placements: This is probably the most awaited part of the article. There are several placement options. Some of them are management consulting, fintech, data analytics, software development, and the core domain jobs.

Your placement options are highly dependent on which IIT you are from. For example, management consulting companies are considered to be among the most lucrative options. Companies such as Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, and Bain only recruit from IIT Bombay, Delhi, and Madras for on-campus recruitments. These companies do offer off-campus applications from IIT Kanpur, KGP, Roorkee, and Guwahati too. But that’s it! I haven’t heard of these companies recruiting from other IITs. These companies recruit mainly based on your profile at the IIT. Your branch does not matter. Data analytics and fintech roles are also dependent on which IIT you come from. This is because a lot of analytics companies and banks mainly prefer to come to the old IITs.

Software development jobs are only dependent on your coding abilities. A lot of the recruitment for soft dev jobs also happens off-campus and therefore, it relies purely on your abilities. To develop such skills and abilities, having less academic pressure and strong coding culture at the IIT is inevitable. Thus, if you are looking for such roles, then IIT KGP & IIT Roorkee have the ideal coding culture. New IITs also have decent coding culture as well. A good marker of which IIT would have strong coding culture would be look at how many students have been selected in Google Summer of Code. link here

Core domain jobs depend on which branch you belong to, your CGPA, your skills, and expertise, your projects, etc. However, unless you are in CSE, EE, Mechanical, Engineering Design, or Chemical (some Pharma companies), there aren’t many lucrative core options in India’s industrial sector. Oftentimes, non-core companies tend to offer a higher pay scale than the core companies.

I have developed XYZ app in 10th Standard. I love coding. I want CSE and I don’t care about the IIT.

Congratulations on developing something so cool at such an early age! If you have a natural aptitude for coding then you should definitely pursue it. However, don’t go too low for the branch. Your college education should be good enough to challenge you at each step. Otherwise, you will get bored. If you are choosing IIIT Hyderabad over IITs then it makes sense. However, choosing private colleges over IITs only for CSE does not really make sense. You are rather better off taking an easy branch at an IIT that has a strong coding culture. At IITs, you will likely have access to a better pool of companies that come for recruitments. Moreover, if you stumble across an interesting startup idea, you can pursue it at IITs that have a good startup culture. Additionally, you will also have access to the CSE professors of these IITs. You can also take their courses are free electives and even graduate with a minor in computer science or artificial intelligence.

Different Flavours of each IITs

Different old IITs have small sub-cultures of their own. These are my opinions based on the countless IITians I have met throughout my time at IIT Madras. IIT Madras- Strong research culture, great with consult companies, strong start-up culture as well. IIT Bombay- Strong placement culture, great with almost everything, strong start-up culture as well. IIT Delhi- Strong academics, strong consulting culture. IIT Kharagpur and IIT Roorkee- Very strong coding culture IIT Kanpur- Good with academics, research.

About the author

A natural question that you might have is who am I to offer my two cents. I’ll try answering it in the best possible capacity. At the time of writing this blog, I am a final year student at IIT Madras in the field of Biotechnology. My JEE Advanced rank was 5345 in 2017. I got a CGPA of 9.1 at the end of my first semester. This was enough for me to branch change into any branch of my choice other than Computer Science and Electrical. However, I chose not to and continue with Biotech as I was keenly interested in understanding the science of l. Later, IIT Madras announced their InterDisciplinary Dual Degree (IDDD) programs in Advanced material science and nanotechnology, Biomedical Engineering, Computational Engineering, Data Science, Energy Systems, Robotics, and tech-MBA. Data Science became the most competitive IDDD program because of obvious reasons. I am currently in the IDDD data science program. I am seeking to pursue research in bioinformatics. I am doing my final year project with a professor in the CSE department of IIT Madras.

Personal Finance - PF101

2021-05-12T06:30:00+00:00

Personal Finance 101 Notes

Active Income: You get the money for spending your time.
Passive Income: You get the money for lending your savings for a period of time.

Key Equation

Income (100%) - Investments(30-40%) - Savings(20-30%) = Expenses(30-50%)

Assets and Liabilities

Keep your liabilities as low as possible
Keep your assets as high as possible

Assets

Real Estate - high value - low risk
Gold - high value - high risk
Digital Gold - high value - high risk
On-paper Assets

On-paper Assets

Systematic Investment Plans
Government Bonds
Fixed Deposits
Bank bonds
Shares/Stocks

Scheduling Tips and Tricks - And what I learnt from these jugglery

2021-04-23T20:28:02+00:00

Scheduling for Dummies

Other existing productivity methods:

David Allen’s Getting things done
Productivity tools
Power of Checklist - Checklist Manifesto (Dr. Arjun Gawande)

Objectives

Knowing what you are meant to be doing and when
Create a sense of purpose, meaning and focus in your life
Systemically ensure that you avoid procastination, stay motivated and manage your time well

Method

Solution: Follow a daily Schedule template

Breif Overview of the method

Start your day with the most important work.
Map out your perfect daily schedule according to your personal productivity curve.
Use time blocking to switch from being reactive to be in control of your time.
Set availability to minimum.
Follow your flow of tasks and energy.
Perform Regular Calender audits and check out your past data.

1. Starting your day with the most important work

The main idea is to set your own work rather than triggers, emotional distractions and stress govern your day. Avoid looking at Email, twitter, whatsapp, etc. to avoid these triggers.

2. Map out your perfect daily schedule according to your personal productivity curve

ABC

3. Time Blocking method

DEF

4. Minimal availability

GHI

5. Maintain your flow of task and energy

JKL

6. Regular Calender audits and checking past data

MNO

Test Post (Yeah, I use Jekyll)

2021-04-20T10:28:02+00:00

Like, Share and Subscribe Jekyll for making our lives easier.

You’ll find this post in your _posts directory. Go ahead and edit it and re-build the site to see your changes. You can rebuild the site in many different ways, but the most common way is to run jekyll serve, which launches a web server and auto-regenerates your site when a file is updated.

Jekyll requires blog post files to be named according to the following format:

YEAR-MONTH-DAY-title.MARKUP

Where YEAR is a four-digit number, MONTH and DAY are both two-digit numbers, and MARKUP is the file extension representing the format used in the file. After that, include the necessary front matter. Take a look at the source for this post to get an idea about how it works.

Jekyll also offers powerful support for code snippets:

def print_hi(name)
  puts "Hi, #{name}"
end
print_hi('Tom')
#=> prints 'Hi, Tom' to STDOUT.

Check out the Jekyll docs for more info on how to get the most out of Jekyll. File all bugs/feature requests at Jekyll’s GitHub repo. If you have questions, you can ask them on Jekyll Talk.