I found inspirations from this Q/A session between Sam Altman and Michael Moritz not only for startups but anyone who needs to deal with an ever changing environment: do not sit on the past, keep a fresh team, and change with the future.
2016-03-17
2016-03-11
Why it is fun to review journal papers
After kindly agreeing to review a journal revision for the N-th time, the guy commented that “it’s the gift that keeps on giving!” 🙂
Conversation with collaborator X prior to a SIGGRAPH rebuttal
X: I’m really eager to see what the SIGGRAPH reviewers have in store for us this time… The suspense is killing me. =o
Li-Yi: I just assume they will screw me, and I am never disappointed. 🙂
X: Yes, that’s what I do as well, but I’m always amazed about how they always find ways to complain about the stuff you don’t expect. 😮
Li-Yi: If I can expect what others will think, I will be like some sort of x-men or superman. 🙂
2016-03-08
一葉知秋
“You can observe a lot by just watching” – Yogi Berra
Sometimes some very little things can reveal a lot of useful information. Just watch carefully.
2016-03-06
About time management
A collaborator asked me about time management, in particular how to toggle between multiple projects.
I am not sure if I am any good at time management or more general if I am a normal person, but here is what I do.
Rule 1: do not block your collaborators.
Rule 2: do whatever you like otherwise.
During my NVIDIA days I belonged to a tight-knit group of around 40 to 50 GPU architects. GPU design was (and likely still is) tremendously complex, so anyone could potentially block everyone. When that happened, ATI got a chance to kill NVIDIA, and my colleagues got a chance to kill me. That is how and where I learned rule 1.
In general, prioritize your collaborators over yourself. It may sound counter-intuitive, but making others happier and more productive will make the entire team, including yourself, happier and more productive as well.
Rule 2 reflects my personal style: after making my collaborators happy, I make myself happy. I cannot be productive otherwise, and life is too short anyway. I believe most people over-plan, especially for creative and non-deterministic tasks like research. This is one main reason why I never schedule regular meetings or daily routines. If you have a hard time deciding what to do first, they are probably equally important, so just pick one and do it. Trust your instincts, and you will gradually learn how best to schedule your time (this could help, which I also learned from NVIDIA).
I am not familiar with other time management techniques like Pomodoro. I just took a quick look at that and found myself violating it badly. For example, if a distraction pops into my head, I follow it, to allow serendipitous encounters (unless I am right in front of a major deadline). My distraction stack is probably around 4 layers deep, i.e. I could recurse around 4 layers of inception without getting lost.
2016-02-29
Professors vs Jedi
Only the second applies to me (unless hoodie is counted as “robe”) 🙂
2016-02-25
Repeating mistake
$ svn log . | less
————————————————————————
r2449 | liyiwei | 2016-02-24 17:28:39 -0800 (Wed, 24 Feb 2016) | 1 line
fix a type; shouldn’t type while moving my thoughts to the next thing =D
2016-02-10
It might not be good to be a good student
It is usually not too hard for smart kids to perform well in schools; just excel in what you are told to do, such as taking courses.
This is a deterministic process with well-defined goals and tasks that reward smartness and hard working.
However, real world is chaotic and ambiguous. You have to figure out what to do, with shifting targets and ever-changing environments.
This is why school performance does not directly translate to real-life performance: the required mentality and skills are not the same.
This is also why being a good student might not be a good thing for you. You are so used to this deterministic input-output process that you might be very frustrated by the non-deterministic nature of the real world, when starting your first job or research project.
In contrast, not-so good students might adapt better to the real world, because they already have enough failure experiences and are not yet cast into conformity.
PS
I was lucky to be a student who was considered good in performance and bad in behavior.
🙂
2016-02-02
Clinton versus Rubio
Barring major unexpected events, I could not see any other way for the 2016 US presidential election, and this will be a very interesting match-up.
🙂