What I'm stopping, continuing, and starting
Onward to 2023. The best is yet to come!
👋 It’s the new year, and I’m finally back at home. While I might be a tad bit late, I’ve decided to do a quick wrap up of 2022 before things pick up the pace.
I would call it a reset than New Year’s resolutions because honestly I’ve never been so good at keeping them. While December is a special time of the year for me to reflect on my actions (and my inactions), what matters is learning, experimenting and iterating along the way that makes me incrementally better every day. There will inevitably be failures but they’re natural as long as they don’t end up life-threatening.
Here’s my non-exhaustive list of things I’m stopping, continuing, and (re-)starting:
Having a plan B
Stopping. Having a plan B often sabotages my plan A. I tend to spend so much time and effort designing a flawless plan B when my focus should be on plan A1. I must2
Giving *free* advice
Stopping. I’ve never been so fond of giving any kind of advice, be it unsolicited or not, for I know it’s a selfish thing to do that rarely works. All advice is highly context dependent, but most people don’t realize it until they encounter a different context. Making explicit every caveat and exception is difficult to a degree it exceeds the giver’s bandwidth of expression and the receiver’s of acquisition. The receiver of the advice also tends to relate to the advice that confirms their existing beliefs and thoughts (confirmation bias) and tends to blame advice for a bad outcome (and not sufficiently attribute to the advice for a good outcome).
We know that the act of giving advice is already controversial. But giving it for free? It’s a disaster. People usually don’t value what they get for free.
If you must ask for my advice still and I agree to giving you one, I’ll start asking you a bunch of clarifying questions to help you think more critically and more holistically about the assumptions you are perhaps unknowingly making and the question you ultimately want answered3. This is because I respect you (that is, if you respect me) and I want to give you the autonomy to come up with the different choices yourself and be responsible for your action. Know that I’ll never settle on one solution, otherwise it will limit your curiosity and creativity to craft a unique solution that works best for you. My job is to guide you, not do the work for you.
Taking control
Continuing. Stress often comes from your inaction for things you can control. We tend to blame others (e.g. race, culture, people, environment) for even the wrong choices we make. Understanding what you can control and what you cannot can free yourself from the stress for the big and the little things that happen around you.
Keep things open-ended
Continuing. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had an aversion towards strongly opinionated, stubborn folks that don't listen. They think they have the answer and everyone else is wrong. There’s no truth that always remains true4. Similarly, there will seldom be a right answer that always remains right—we should continuously optimize the existing way of doing things while exploring potentially better options. I question many things in life5, not because I don't like them but because I'm genuinely interested in them. It's natural for me to arrive at more than one conclusion because things are rarely so certain even when they seem like they are.
More content
Starting. If you’d been following my technical blog I no longer actively maintain, I first started writing regularly back in 2015 and took an indefinite break in 2017 when the pace of life accelerated. I started writing again in 2022, and this time, I want to make a good habit out of it for as long as I can. I have quite a few topics in mind to write about if you’re curious. My goal is to get my thoughts out there to as many people as possible organically, and so I’ll write more frequently in 2023.
Getting out there
Restarting. I’ve spent more time this month out in the wild than at home at my desk and thoroughly enjoyed it. How much fun have I been missing out! COVID is still around but some part of my life can move on.
I’m looking forward to the new year.
Cheers to 2️⃣ 0️⃣ 2️⃣ 3️⃣ 🎉 ❗️
About this newsletter
I’m Seong Hyun Hwang, and I’m a data scientist, machine learning engineer, and software engineer. Casual Inference is a newsletter about data science, machine learning, tech startups, management and career, with occasional excursions into other fun topics that come to my mind. All opinions in this newsletter are my own.
That said, does anything ever go according to plan? How much does planning matter vs execution? At which point should you stopping planning? I won’t get to these because frankly the answers lie within you.
For some reason I failed to finish my sentence (I forget), and I didn’t have a plan B for it. Is writing this footnote considered my plan B then? Can I call it a plan when I’m aware of it only after executing the plan? Depends on what your definition of plan is.
Perhaps for a small fee or a pay what you want (PWYW) model? 🥺
Most people are taught and believe that 1 + 1 is always equal to 2, but the answer really depends. It can be the square root of 2 if we assume a vector space. It can be 3 too if early in your childhood you were brainwashed that is the answer. Uncovering hidden assumptions and understanding the context behind every problem helps you discover a missing link and hone in on what really matters.
Random questions like why do some people behave the way they do.