Full Transcript for Using GPT-3 To Automate Dating and Work (Dmitri Mirakyan) - KNN Ep.116

our own luck and I guess me putting some content into the world looked out for later me to have awesome guests on the show. 00:02:35.524 --> 00:02:38.849 So, it's funny, funny how everything pans out like that. 00:02:38.849 --> 00:02:51.284 You can probably take your data science chaps and extrapolate from like you running into me, how many other people have managed to get into data science via the sampling based on that same video, so who knows. 00:02:51.664 --> 00:02:59.534 Hey, if anyone wants to actually run that, that market sizing analysis and report back to me, they're more than welcome. 00:02:59.993 --> 00:03:08.264 In order to maybe get everyone a little bit more familiar with you, I really love to start with learning how you first got interested in data. 00:03:08.324 --> 00:03:09.914 You know, was that a pivotal moment? 00:03:09.919 --> 00:03:13.360 Did something happen or was it more of a slow progression over time? 00:03:14.099 --> 00:03:14.569 Yeah. 00:03:14.569 --> 00:03:18.740 So I think, I don't know. 00:03:19.004 --> 00:03:28.125 I've got this kind of annoying theory which is that most of the time people say that like, Oh, this is my life and this is what I've been destined to do my entire life. 00:03:29.365 --> 00:03:35.344 They're like doing revisionist history and kind of like modifying their resume to see how it all led up to this point. 00:03:35.344 --> 00:03:39.094 So I'm gonna do the opposite and say I got into data completely by accident. 00:03:39.835 --> 00:03:41.965 Which is to say I always wanted to build stuff. 00:03:42.234 --> 00:03:52.539 I studied mechanical engineering but didn't realize I didn't want to build stuff for a period or ExxonMobil, which seemed like what mechanical engineers in my school did at the time. 00:03:52.539 --> 00:03:58.814 And I got into consulting, which is what I think a lot of smart people do when they don't know what else to do. 00:03:59.155 --> 00:04:03.365 And there I built slides and that was something I did not enjoy doing. 00:04:04.205 --> 00:04:18.944 And then I started doing UX and graphic design, which was a fun thing to build that through more serendipity and getting people to like what I did, got me on a project where I actually finally started doing analytics. 00:04:18.944 --> 00:04:24.475 So we, we hosted this giant company wide conference called Deloitte Disrupt. 00:04:25.084 --> 00:04:29.024 And I had the idea of, Oh, we should run the numbers on it. 00:04:29.415 --> 00:04:30.165 And then I. 00:04:30.584 --> 00:04:35.264 Hacked some stuff together so that we could actually get tracking and started running the numbers on it. 00:04:35.264 --> 00:04:36.225 And that went awesome. 00:04:36.285 --> 00:04:37.334 And then we did it again. 00:04:37.754 --> 00:04:39.884 And that led to more projects doing analytics. 00:04:39.915 --> 00:04:51.375 And at some point it was just like, hmm, you know, it would be really funest to do this full time instead of spending most of my time making

slides and just doing this like in my free time. 00:04:52.995 --> 00:04:53.625 That's awesome. 00:04:53.675 --> 00:05:01.545 You know, it's, I think it's I view a lot of the decision decisions I make as a greedy algorithm, right? 00:05:01.545 --> 00:05:12.014 I look at what the best opportunity is for me based on the opportunities I currently have, and I just take the best one that I think has the largest total payoff in aggregate. 00:05:12.644 --> 00:05:27.134 And a lot of that time that leads me towards things that I'm very interested in, but also I have some aptitude for some exposure to, and if, at least from my perspective, when I look at it that way, it's not like super risky because there's no way to know. 00:05:27.704 --> 00:05:30.004 Which direction is better for or worse? 00:05:31.675 --> 00:05:43.305 Maybe it's some sort of modified greedy algorithm where I'm not just pursuing like hedonistic things, but like, it, it's like I view it as what is the largest upside long term for, for any of the decisions that I make. 00:05:43.365 --> 00:05:49.783 And I always am fascinated with people how they, they, you know, they, they had to have some sort of experience. 00:05:49.783 --> 00:05:54.343 They had to put these feelers out to be able to understand what you like. 00:05:54.464 --> 00:05:59.805 And then if you understand what you like a little bit more, you can make some decisions or you can move towards a specific goal. 00:06:00.014 --> 00:06:07.355 So what, what, in your consulting work, obviously we talked a little bit about how maybe it didn't start out as well as, as well as it could have. 00:06:07.360 --> 00:06:08.985 What, what pushed you towards that analytics? 00:06:08.985 --> 00:06:12.894 Or like, how'd you even get that I idea the start doing the analytics on that conference? 00:06:13.444 --> 00:06:14.024 Yeah. 00:06:14.305 --> 00:06:16.485 The, so like both a push and a pull. 00:06:16.485 --> 00:06:21.934 I think I'm very line on the perspective of greedy algorithm. 00:06:22.365 --> 00:06:25.625 I've thought about it as just like incre mentality over the next year or two. 00:06:26.295 --> 00:06:34.343 Cuz thinking 10 years out is kind of tough, like over the next year or two based on all of the things that I could see, like where could I throw my energy to propel myself forward. 00:06:34.843 --> 00:06:37.944 And so from the consulting angle, there are two things. 00:06:38.185 --> 00:06:41.144 One, it turns out that I actually sucked at the base job. 00:06:41.144 --> 00:06:44.834 Like I just, I did not do well on my first couple of projects. 00:06:44.834 --> 00:06:54.574 Turns out that like taking notes and meetings and making fancy presentations for clients was just something that was not fun. 00:06:54.894 --> 00:07:01.154 And actually did worse on that than like a lot of the peers that were around me before in school. 00:07:01.673 --> 00:07:20.509 And then two kind of taking a lot of projects and discovering actually like really a

year into my consulting career, discovering analytics of the thing that took advantage of my problem solving skills. 00:07:22.158 --> 00:07:37.860 Admittedly, in like one of the weirdest moments possible I was doing, I was doing analytics for a toxic waste management client, literally doing metrics around like, has biohazard waste. 00:07:39.038 --> 00:07:50.968 And had one of the, like you ever have one of those moments where you get so excited about an idea that like, you can't put it down and like you end up just staying where you're at and working on it until like 1:00 AM. 00:07:52.928 --> 00:07:52.988 Yeah. 00:07:53.488 --> 00:07:54.788 Oh, I've had plenty of this. 00:07:55.269 --> 00:07:55.548 Yeah. 00:07:55.718 --> 00:07:56.119 Yeah. 00:07:56.389 --> 00:08:04.999 Like I had that moment where this was for like a work project and I had this idea and I saw where this was going and I just could not put it down. 00:08:05.029 --> 00:08:06.559 And I just ran through it. 00:08:08.379 --> 00:08:14.149 Got something done in a couple of days that, yeah just feeling that rush. 00:08:15.928 --> 00:08:18.209 And then from there was a pretty straight shot. 00:08:19.379 --> 00:08:19.809 That's awesome. 00:08:19.829 --> 00:08:20.598 You know, so. 00:08:21.165 --> 00:08:21.555 Go ahead. 00:08:21.615 --> 00:08:21.855 Sorry. 00:08:21.975 --> 00:08:22.574 No, no, no. 00:08:22.574 --> 00:08:23.654 From there it was a strange shot. 00:08:23.714 --> 00:08:27.795 Like, I want to do this more, Let's do more of this. 00:08:27.904 --> 00:08:29.033 Let's do more of this. 00:08:29.254 --> 00:08:33.855 and searching for those types of experiences is something I love so much. 00:08:33.913 --> 00:08:42.825 I think that I didn't love my experience in consulting and granted, I still do consulting, but I have a lot more control over my projects than I... 00:08:42.975 --> 00:08:52.004 But there's a difference between you do consulting for like a big consulting firm and like you do consulting, like somebody hires you to do consulting and you doing good addressing problems. 00:08:52.245 --> 00:08:54.914 Biggest thing, like you get to pick your clients ... office.. 00:08:55.664 --> 00:08:57.320 That is a big, a massive one. 00:08:57.320 --> 00:09:05.955 I will say I really did like about it that I got to work with a lot of different clients and I got to figure out very quickly what I didn't like. 00:09:06.164 --> 00:09:16.784 And some of the things that I did like, well, I learned that I liked to code because when I had downtime, I would just go on freaking Code Academy and just do that all day and like kind of shook off some of my work. 00:09:16.784 --> 00:09:19.034 I wasn't the best employee when I was a consultant, but. 00:09:20.445 --> 00:09:29.835 You know, that, that to me is such a valuable experience of just getting these reps and seeing the things and building this model of the world that can guide your direction. 00:09:29.835 --> 00:09:35.205 So many people just like take the old philosophical approach if they think they can think their way into everything. 00:09:35.715 --> 00:09:37.634 And to me, that's simply not the case. 00:09:37.664 --> 00:09:39.544 You have to experiment your way into everything. 00:09:40.975 --> 00:09:50.445 You, so thinking and being introspective is important, but you have to have some framework to base those decisions off of rather than just going in it with like, Oh, the world is my oyster. 00:09:50.445 --> 00:09:52.664 I could do anything, could be paralysis. 00:09:52.695 --> 00:09:54.254 It exposes you to a lot of things. 00:09:54.254 --> 00:09:58.995 It also gives you a ton of optionality because for better or for worse, and bunch of people will hire X consultants. 00:09:59.695 --> 00:10:05.664 And it, it definitely showed me just a massive amount of things that I never wanted to do. 00:10:05.695 --> 00:10:18.644 Case in point, like experience of seeing most of the clients that I worked for is, Holy crap, I never wanna work in your average office in corporate America, this sounds like absolute hell. 00:10:18.725 --> 00:10:19.205 Yeah. 00:10:20.654 --> 00:10:22.894 Sorry, no disrespect to anybody in law along the way. 00:10:23.225 --> 00:10:23.485 No. 00:10:23.524 --> 00:10:26.144 Well, I, you know, I realized something about myself. 00:10:26.144 --> 00:10:32.985 I went into consulting, thinking about the exit opportunities, and I don't think you should go into a job. 00:10:32.990 --> 00:10:38.355 I wouldn't now go into a job thinking about how I would leave and what I could do afterwards. 00:10:38.355 --> 00:10:41.684 That's not necessarily the best, the best stepper process. 00:10:41.784 --> 00:11:01.585 It, it can have utility, but for me, I don't think I maximized on what I could have done if I had, if I had experimented more, maybe in school with internships or some of these other things, I really would've I think, been able the find something where I was more excited about it that would've li led to just as good exit opportunities. 00:11:01.955 --> 00:11:02.875 But I digress. 00:11:02.875 --> 00:11:08.325 I am interested in those analytic skills and like how you develop them. 00:11:08.414 --> 00:11:12.585 Were you just cranking things out in Excel, or what, what were you doing in these early projects? 00:11:15.024 --> 00:11:15.144 Yeah, so. 00:11:15.174 --> 00:11:20.470 I can talk about the fun stuff and I can talk about the real project work. 00:11:21.210 --> 00:11:28.438 And the fun stuff literally started with me first is like doing graphic design for people. 00:11:29.019 --> 00:11:33.940 It turns out that like if you're a builder and you're the kind of guy that likes making things, at some point you make just about every sort of thing. 00:11:34.360 --> 00:11:42.029 And at one point the thing that led me to this project was I was literally making custom graphics and an icon. 00:11:42.179 --> 00:11:53.639 The thing that like got me into the project was making a custom

camel icon for a project whose entire brand and theme was a camel. 00:11:53.639 --> 00:11:54.120 Somehow. 00:11:54.120 --> 00:12:01.809 It was like, it was an agile project and their mascot was a camel, and they were just so thrilled that I created this Deloitte custom camel icon for them. 00:12:02.299 --> 00:12:07.649 And then when we started doing the actual show, it was. 00:12:08.039 --> 00:12:09.419 Oh, I want to do analytics. 00:12:09.450 --> 00:12:11.220 Well, I guess I gotta get a Tableau license. 00:12:11.220 --> 00:12:12.480 And I got a Tableau license. 00:12:12.485 --> 00:12:16.559 So then I started doing different, different data visualizations. 00:12:16.600 --> 00:12:22.485 And when it came to my actual project work it ended up also still very much bi. 00:12:22.485 --> 00:12:37.259 But the question was how do we show operational analytics from like the lowest level of an individual to managers, to regional managers and how you design it in a, in a meaningful way. 00:12:37.590 --> 00:12:46.470 And then I ended up doing mockups at PowerPoint and then actually going and downloading the software and just seeing like, okay, cool, what's possible here? 00:12:46.470 --> 00:12:47.289 How does this work? 00:12:47.820 --> 00:12:49.149 How can we make this work? 00:12:49.720 --> 00:12:56.850 And then actually showing my mockups to the engineers when they disagreed with me and saying, This is what I want. 00:12:56.855 --> 00:12:58.169 This is how this needs to work. 00:12:58.529 --> 00:12:59.700 This is the mock data. 00:12:59.759 --> 00:13:02.274 This is, this is the thing. 00:13:02.644 --> 00:13:11.914 Because I think after a couple of long nights of banging your forehead against something and being really excited about it anyways. 00:13:13.384 --> 00:13:20.684 If you were one of those engineers now having that conversation with you, how much would you have hated yourself? 00:13:21.495 --> 00:13:22.544 I'd be really annoyed. 00:13:22.813 --> 00:13:36.644 I'd be like, There's nothing more aggravating, I imagine, to like any other human in the world than like an overly excited 21 year old that clearly has no idea what they're doing, but this is the hell that they're gonna die on. 00:13:38.125 --> 00:13:39.914 This realistically yeah. 00:13:41.214 --> 00:13:43.725 I don't know that that was the first time doing this stuff. 00:13:43.725 --> 00:13:45.644 I can't imagine it was actually a good idea. 00:13:47.235 --> 00:13:47.953 Yeah, you never know. 00:13:47.960 --> 00:13:55.063 We, we all, we all have some, some highlights from, from back in the day that you're like, I, like, I've read a paper I wrote and I was like, There's no way I wrote this. 00:13:55.453 --> 00:13:58.274 And then I've read other papers I've written and I was like, I definitely wrote this. 00:13:58.274 --> 00:13:58.934 This is trash. 00:13:59.394 --> 00:14:02.105 Like, it's a very hit or miss thing that. 00:14:02.669 --> 00:14:09.509 We look back in retrospect, I, you know, you

brought up the idea of the like builder mindset. 00:14:10.078 --> 00:14:12.359 I'm interested if you can expand upon that. 00:14:12.359 --> 00:14:14.729 Like how did you know that you were a builder? 00:14:14.938 --> 00:14:17.599 What is the alternative to being a builder? 00:14:18.089 --> 00:14:23.528 Because I also view myself as, as a builder now, but probably not in the conventional way. 00:14:25.078 --> 00:14:25.639 Sure. 00:14:26.139 --> 00:14:30.359 Being a builder versus the alternative to being a builder. 00:14:31.269 --> 00:14:44.229 So I think if I think about what makes me tick and what motivates me on any morning I think back to, and God, this is, this is gonna sound really ridiculous. 00:14:44.679 --> 00:15:00.115 This is, this is gonna be the paper that I look back on and I roll my eyes and I was like thinking about like myself as a four year old that just drew a picture and is running around showing it to everybody and showing it to my mom and my dad, and my grandma being so excited about this thing that I created. 00:15:00.514 --> 00:15:04.029 And so thrilled to show everybody this like thing that I made. 00:15:04.479 --> 00:15:10.889 So I started out as an art kid and then I discovered physics, and it turns out that like, Ooh, I'm really good at that too. 00:15:11.068 --> 00:15:14.740 And then I realized, Oh, what if I made like actual things? 00:15:15.269 --> 00:15:24.688 And there's a, I've heard this argument made before, I don't quite remember who says it. 00:15:24.693 --> 00:15:36.448 Maybe it was P Graham, maybe it was somebody else that was like, find the areas where you have an unnatural advantage and like find, find places where you have an unfair advantage. 00:15:36.479 --> 00:15:41.129 And I think I discovered at some point that my unfair advantage was I like to make things. 00:15:41.129 --> 00:15:42.299 I'm just like a creative person. 00:15:42.299 --> 00:15:43.529 I like putting things together. 00:15:43.529 --> 00:15:44.198 It gives me joy. 00:15:44.778 --> 00:15:51.659 And two, I happen to be better at understanding systems and like breaking things down and figuring out how to make things work. 00:15:51.659 --> 00:15:54.429 And a lot of people around me and. 00:15:56.339 --> 00:15:58.980 That naturally led to, Okay, cool. 00:15:59.009 --> 00:16:06.960 I can go into just about any space and get your joy out of figuring out how to disassemble something, put it back together, make it work better. 00:16:07.230 --> 00:16:16.549 Like not, not being the guy that discovers brand new ideas, but being the guy that takes a bunch of Lego bricks and puts it together into something useful. 00:16:16.578 --> 00:16:34.230 At some point that like expanded into like, Oh, I actually like building teams and I like building systems, but at the core level, at the like, core of what I do is still I love that like, feeling of getting so excited about something. 00:16:34.230 --> 00:16:42.450 You go into the zone and you stay up all night and in the morning you like get push and there's something like you've created life. 00:16:42.960 --> 00:16:49.159 Like there is something that exists in the ether that people are interacting with and people that are seeing that you created. 00:16:49.159 --> 00:17:04.394 And I honestly don't care what it is as long as it's like exciting to somebody else and exciting to me, just creating a thing is the most satisfying thing for me on like a near a level. 00:17:06.375 --> 00:17:17.203 You know, you made a relationship or connection between art and engineering or whatever it might be that I never would've made in the past. 00:17:17.505 --> 00:17:23.924 The idea that like both artists and programmers or data scientists, they're all, they're creators. 00:17:23.930 --> 00:17:34.305 Like they're buildings, they're builders, they're putting something into the world and I've always felt some sort of like connection to the art community or to the creative community maybe cuz. 00:17:34.859 --> 00:17:36.000 Freaking videos on the internet. 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:39.059 And that's like a product information that, that, that I put out there. 00:17:39.450 --> 00:17:43.920 But to me, I could never put a, put a finger on it, like, what was that relationship? 00:17:44.069 --> 00:17:51.059 And I think it is that those two groups are inherently interested in building and sharing things like we, we do data science. 00:17:51.059 --> 00:17:58.138 We, we work in this domain to build things and to share them, whether it's analysis, whether it's an algorithm, whatever it is. 00:17:58.470 --> 00:18:01.919 And I think that there's something really like special about that. 00:18:01.919 --> 00:18:11.049 And I also like that there is that relationship between the more purely creative side and the more what people would consider like systematic and engineering focused side. 00:18:11.589 --> 00:18:14.750 That maybe they're not as different as a lot of people make them out to be. 00:18:15.169 --> 00:18:19.079 But there's also something beautiful about the fact that you can do everything a million ways. 00:18:19.109 --> 00:18:30.539 I think the thing that first blew my mind about physics is like you can take every problem and it doesn't matter which steps along you took along the way as long as like, as long as you get it right, Like you can take the same thing, disassemble it in 20 different ways. 00:18:31.029 --> 00:18:35.128 And if the end result comes out correct, then you're still correct. 00:18:35.128 --> 00:18:41.878 And it's so, it's, it is so satisfying that you've got this entire canvas to work with. 00:18:41.959 --> 00:18:44.969 I dunno, it feels like a video game. 00:18:45.809 --> 00:18:45.989 Yeah. 00:18:45.989 --> 00:18:55.589 Well, you know, we talked a little bit about that offline, about how coding, in some sense, if you look at it the right way, it, it sort of does behave like a video game. 00:18:55.679 --> 00:19:00.849 Can you maybe expand on that a little bit

more and maybe your experience with coding? 00:19:00.888 --> 00:19:02.169 Sure. 00:19:02.388 --> 00:19:08.759 So maybe this was the piece where with Deloitte, when it first hit me, I was like, Oh, this is fun. 00:19:08.759 --> 00:19:09.859 I want to engage with this. 00:19:10.259 --> 00:19:16.679 Coding feels kind of addictive on almost a chemical level. 00:19:17.528 --> 00:19:17.679 Kinda. 00:19:17.679 --> 00:19:32.189 If you look at it in comparison to video games actually my, my first manager opened door and the person that got me into Python, which ultimately led me into data science described this as coding as like video games for adults. 00:19:32.819 --> 00:19:48.029 And this applies to sequel too, which is, it just compared to so much other creation, it just has that like instant dopamine drip of you run something and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't work, and you can build it very iteratively. 00:19:48.029 --> 00:19:51.659 There's no measure something 30 times to get an end result. 00:19:51.659 --> 00:19:58.969 You're like constantly building, constantly iterating and just able to like very quickly see something come to life. 00:19:59.588 --> 00:20:11.220 And it's kind of an incredible feeling that, like co corollary to that is that the reward is often variable, which I think on a certain level makes it more addictive. 00:20:11.250 --> 00:20:12.720 Cause you don't know if it's gonna work or not. 00:20:13.019 --> 00:20:15.959 And so you just keep on sitting there like pressing the lever. 00:20:17.589 --> 00:20:20.023 And every once in a while it spits out a reward. 00:20:20.115 --> 00:20:34.184 And finally at the end when you've created something useful and you deploy it just like all the entire rush at once it certainly feels like the most chemically addictive thing that I've ever done for work. 00:20:34.544 --> 00:20:38.805 Which feels like a wrong thing to say about something positive, but. 00:20:40.454 --> 00:20:42.044 Well, you know, I mean, I think that's okay. 00:20:42.044 --> 00:20:45.615 I think it's definitely a good thing if you perceive it and you view it that way. 00:20:46.214 --> 00:20:53.684 One of the challenges I think a lot of people have is the level of challenge that they're pursuing is either too easy or too difficult. 00:20:54.194 --> 00:21:01.753 And I think coding was very much a sweet spot for you because it met the level of challenge where you're succeeding at the right amount. 00:21:02.085 --> 00:21:14.295 Like if someone goes and they try to start, you know, they open a advanced Kaggle workbook, for example, and they'd never written a line of code, it's like, well, this is not gonna be fun because there is like, nothing works that I put in. 00:21:14.295 --> 00:21:14.384 Right. 00:21:14.384 --> 00:21:33.013 and building a system for yourself, especially when you're learning that matches what level you're on, is what gives it that addicting and sort of gamified level, which is something I strive to do is like, if the challenge is like a little too hard, I'm like, Oh man, I'm just gonna push this off. 00:21:33.284 --> 00:21:38.023 Or if it's a little too easy, I'm like, Man, I'll do this tomorrow. 00:21:38.084 --> 00:21:38.954 It's just so easy. 00:21:38.954 --> 00:21:40.454 I'll just like, it'll take me 10 minutes. 00:21:40.513 --> 00:21:41.654 And I'm like, Damn it. 00:21:41.714 --> 00:21:42.554 Why didn't I just do it? 00:21:42.634 --> 00:21:43.065 But... 00:21:43.065 --> 00:21:52.994 There's actually a data scientist at Opendoor that like said something that really stuck in my head, which is I asked him what kind of problems he like to work on when he first joined. 00:21:52.994 --> 00:21:56.974 And he said, Hard, Doesn't matter what kind of problems they are, they need to be hard. 00:21:57.624 --> 00:22:00.134 And that just really burned into my brain. 00:22:00.615 --> 00:22:06.355 Like interesting, critical thinking does correctly, needs to hurt a little bit, like a good workout. 00:22:06.794 --> 00:22:10.634 And if it's not, then I'll start trying harder problems. 00:22:10.694 --> 00:22:14.305 And that's a. 00:22:14.305 --> 00:22:15.025 Sorry, I didn't mean to... 00:22:15.025 --> 00:22:16.259 No, no, that was perfect though. 00:22:16.630 --> 00:22:26.130 That to me, that's really good advice, is to find the challenge that meets you and like your appetite for how difficult the problem is, is something that factors into that as well. 00:22:26.460 --> 00:22:33.660 Which is, which is I think something that, that we perceive, like, like what is hard? 00:22:33.664 --> 00:22:39.150 It's a subjective measure and my level of difficulty versus someone else's level of difficulty. 00:22:39.150 --> 00:22:41.880 That's something that I should be able to adjust in theory. 00:22:42.269 --> 00:22:42.450 Right? 00:22:42.450 --> 00:22:43.259 Like, why is it hard? 00:22:43.259 --> 00:22:43.650 Is it hard? 00:22:43.650 --> 00:22:44.759 Because it'll take a lot of time. 00:22:45.599 --> 00:22:48.509 Is it hard because it's complex and I have to do a lot of research? 00:22:48.515 --> 00:22:52.319 Like what, what are the factors that fall into that? 00:22:52.660 --> 00:23:03.539 And I personally believe that people that seek challenges like that are the ones that have the appetite or like that those challenges match their level of skill very, very evenly. 00:23:04.920 --> 00:23:07.259 It kind of goes back to the greedy algorithm thing. 00:23:07.319 --> 00:23:14.700 Like you figure out like, You push a rock up a hill and then you sit on top of the hill and then you look for the next hill to push it up. 00:23:15.299 --> 00:23:18.750 Like, like take a break for a tiny bit, like rest your arms. 00:23:18.750 --> 00:23:20.648 And then, and then you start pushing. 00:23:20.690 --> 00:23:24.390 At some point you look down and it's a long way down. 00:23:25.009 --> 00:23:30.819 And then you stop doing the self aggrandizing stuff and look for the next hill to bush or rock

up. 00:23:31.319 --> 00:23:32.519 I don't know. 00:23:33.279 --> 00:23:36.960 I really enjoy that metaphor. 00:23:37.049 --> 00:23:41.430 Something that you explicitly said is you look at the hill you've traversed. 00:23:41.759 --> 00:23:48.720 I guess that's not something a greedy algorithm does, but as humans, I think is really important is to look on the body of work that you've created. 00:23:48.724 --> 00:23:58.259 Because when we get sort of stuck in these, in my opinion, like the greedy algorithm loop, you feel like you haven't gone that far because you're always looking at what's in front of. 00:23:58.949 --> 00:24:03.929 But when you do take that perspective and you look back, you're like, Wow, I've actually done a whole lot. 00:24:03.934 --> 00:24:08.069 Like the other day I looked and I was like, Oh, I've done over a hundred podcast episodes. 00:24:08.069 --> 00:24:10.079 I've done over 200 YouTube videos. 00:24:10.559 --> 00:24:19.949 Like if you had asked me how many I'd done, I've done, I wouldn't have said that many, but I'm like, actually that's like, that's like hundreds of hours, maybe thousands of hours of content to me. 00:24:19.949 --> 00:24:31.378 Like I was astounded at the amount of, this isn't like me bragging, but it's like I was astounded at how many things I'd produced and it's like a nice feeling to be like, Wow, like I've done that much. 00:24:31.378 --> 00:24:32.549 Like what more could I do? 00:24:32.554 --> 00:24:34.409 There's so much more on the other side of this. 00:24:35.519 --> 00:24:35.909 Yeah. 00:24:35.939 --> 00:24:42.689 Also, like, I don't know, we're humans and humans have anxiety and anxiety turns out to be kind of counterproductive to pushing rocks up hills. 00:24:43.049 --> 00:24:46.545 So taking a quick break to look down and be like, Huh, I'm doing all right. 00:24:47.345 --> 00:24:48.585 Yeah, it is. 00:24:50.069 --> 00:24:52.294 It is a nice view. 00:24:52.294 --> 00:24:53.999 Yeah, especially years back there. 00:24:54.049 --> 00:24:54.339 Geez. 00:24:54.339 --> 00:24:56.439 Literally love New York. 00:24:57.699 --> 00:25:00.075 This episode is brought to you by Z by HP. 00:25:00.164 --> 00:25:03.494 HP's high compute, workstation-grade line of products and solutions. 00:25:03.914 --> 00:25:11.535 Z is specifically made for high performance data science solutions, and I personally use the ZBook Studio and the Z4 Workstation. 00:25:11.984 --> 00:25:18.105 I really love that Z workstations can come standard with Linux and they can be configured with the data science software stack. 00:25:18.434 --> 00:25:25.934 With the software stack, you can get right to work doing data science on day 1 without the overhead of having to completely reconfigure your new machine. 00:25:26.265 --> 00:25:27.345 Now back to our show. 00:25:28.785 --> 00:25:34.125 So, you know, talking about how far we've come, I'm interested in how you bridged that gap between. 00:25:34.769 --> 00:25:40.710 You know, consulting to data analysts, to data scientists, to now like managing a team. 00:25:40.710 --> 00:25:42.299 What is, what does that look like? 00:25:42.299 --> 00:25:46.615 How do you actually go and have that type of career growth? 00:25:47.035 --> 00:25:47.384 Yeah. 00:25:48.204 --> 00:25:56.849 So definitely I think who's been on your podcast twice now actually has a pretty good either blog post or video about this. 00:25:57.220 --> 00:26:05.519 I didn't see it at the time, but I had a friend that kind of explained this method to me, which is looked at all the places where I wanted to be. 00:26:05.640 --> 00:26:10.390 He, he's, he's at me down and said like, This is how you go recruit. 00:26:10.390 --> 00:26:13.500 So I looked at all the places that I wanted to be, like all the places that I could be. 00:26:13.980 --> 00:26:19.619 I actually like looked at everybody else that was a Deloitte consultant and I looked like where they went next. 00:26:19.920 --> 00:26:19.950 I. 00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:22.680 These things seem interesting to me. 00:26:22.769 --> 00:26:31.019 And then I just started sending out cold messages on LinkedIn first to like understand what it is that I wanted to do. 00:26:31.019 --> 00:26:36.809 I was just like asking for people's stories, asking them about their careers and trying to make sense of if this is what I wanted to do. 00:26:37.190 --> 00:26:45.180 And then following those stories I started essentially asking people for referrals into jobs that were available at the time. 00:26:45.569 --> 00:26:52.829 And I think the role that got me into Tech was reaching out to 15 different people at Opendoor via LinkedIn. 00:26:54.069 --> 00:26:59.660 Two of whom replied to my message, one of whom I talked to and who referred me into the role. 00:27:00.480 --> 00:27:06.869 There's a funny moment there where like actually after I talked to him, I applied for the role directly and within a half an hour I got rejected. 00:27:07.319 --> 00:27:13.950 I got like a polite rejection email and then 15 minutes later I got a follow up saying, Hey, actually this person sent your name. 00:27:14.700 --> 00:27:15.450 Let's talk. 00:27:16.049 --> 00:27:16.849 And. 00:27:17.519 --> 00:27:24.949 That got me that got me into my role at Opendoor where I started out as, as an analyst. 00:27:25.349 --> 00:27:30.845 About six months into being an analyst, I was like, you know, SQL is cool, but you know what else is cool? 00:27:30.845 --> 00:27:31.365 Python? 00:27:31.545 --> 00:27:35.289 I had a manager that explained to me that coding is like a video games. 00:27:35.319 --> 00:27:40.509 And also we used Mode Analytics, which had access to Python notebooks. 00:27:40.619 --> 00:27:45.839 So I just started building weird stuff like during work and outside of work with Python. 00:27:46.339 --> 00:27:53.763 And then at some point, again, serendipity, crazy stuff somebody was like, Well, you know Python and you can do this stuff. 00:27:53.763 --> 00:27:56.490 Why don't

you go be a data scientist? 00:27:56.839 --> 00:28:01.470 And they got me in touch with the data science team. 00:28:01.470 --> 00:28:05.039 They were like, You're not sure you wanna do this here, Just interview. 00:28:05.279 --> 00:28:06.444 Let's see how it goes. 00:28:06.795 --> 00:28:09.259 And they sent me some machine learning home. 00:28:10.219 --> 00:28:12.763 I discovered your videos online. 00:28:12.763 --> 00:28:18.164 Spent three days, took an extra day off, spent three days learning machine learning. 00:28:18.164 --> 00:28:23.474 Literally had the Python notebook side by side next to your YouTube videos and was learning it as I wrote it. 00:28:23.934 --> 00:28:31.255 And then managed to do well enough that I got into the data science team which was a blast. 00:28:32.263 --> 00:28:33.944 Spent a year doing data science. 00:28:34.284 --> 00:28:43.484 And then actually ended up having an opportunity to do something else that I thought was really cool. 00:28:43.654 --> 00:28:49.944 And then ended up asking myself like, what would it take for me to stay where I'm at? 00:28:49.944 --> 00:28:56.154 And the answer was managing the product analytics team. 00:28:56.154 --> 00:29:00.404 And I actually went back and I just asked, like, I didn't say I had anything else lined up. 00:29:00.674 --> 00:29:06.674 I just like put together a one page doc saying, Here's a thing that I think I should do. 00:29:07.079 --> 00:29:12.349 And here's why I think it's useful for you guys, and here's why I think I do really well at it. 00:29:13.009 --> 00:29:15.960 And was very surprised when the answer came back. 00:29:16.410 --> 00:29:17.789 Yeah, sure, you should give it a go. 00:29:18.289 --> 00:29:32.269 And now I manage the consumer product decision science team is a team of decision scientists that runs the consumer product analytics at Opendoor. 00:29:32.740 --> 00:29:43.625 Again, I absolutely don't trust any of the people that say my entire 20 year life was meticulously planned, and I had my vision from the start. 00:29:44.505 --> 00:29:56.369 Feels like everything happened by accident with the one exception being like constantly trying to push rocks uphill and doing weekend projects and building stuff, but, well. 00:29:58.140 --> 00:30:05.799 You know, I, well probably some of the best advice that I ever got from anyone, I don't remember who it was, which is a little bit of a shame. 00:30:06.210 --> 00:30:13.440 I'll attribute my dad and he probably stole it from somewhere else, but it's the worst that someone else can say is no. 00:30:14.220 --> 00:30:15.089 Like, why not ask? 00:30:15.089 --> 00:30:16.440 I mean, don't ask stupid questions. 00:30:16.440 --> 00:30:17.039 Do your homework. 00:30:17.039 --> 00:30:18.450 Yeah, do your research, whatever it is. 00:30:18.450 --> 00:30:25.440 But you know, if you ask for what you want, you'd be really surprised when people say yes. 00:30:25.500 --> 00:30:29.369 Like I had a friend every single time he went

Chipotle, he would just be like, Hey, can I have this for free? 00:30:30.059 --> 00:30:33.839 And one time he got it for free, actually, a couple times he's gotten it for free. 00:30:34.019 --> 00:30:35.460 Like, like, you know, what's the harm asking? 00:30:35.460 --> 00:30:37.109 Like, No, they laugh or whatever it is. 00:30:38.250 --> 00:30:40.140 You might get a day where the person's just like, you know what? 00:30:40.190 --> 00:30:40.609 Yeah, sure. 00:30:40.910 --> 00:30:42.750 Is this the life hack of the podcast? 00:30:42.750 --> 00:30:44.039 Always ask for free walk. 00:30:44.039 --> 00:30:45.569 And every once in a while you got free walk. 00:30:45.869 --> 00:30:46.349 Yeah, man. 00:30:46.900 --> 00:30:48.599 I mean, I mean, like, again, what is the downside? 00:30:48.599 --> 00:30:49.859 They're not gonna kick you outta the Chipotle. 00:30:50.460 --> 00:30:52.710 They're not, they're like, they'll probably just say no. 00:30:52.710 --> 00:30:57.180 And if you can handle rejection, if you handle the no's, I mean, why not? 00:30:57.180 --> 00:31:00.480 I mean, it's the same thing with, you know, dating or any of these other things. 00:31:00.480 --> 00:31:04.890 If you're like talking to someone, it's like, Oh, you know, like I want to talk to this person. 00:31:04.890 --> 00:31:07.140 I like their vibe or whatever it is. 00:31:08.130 --> 00:31:12.509 If I go up and talk to them, there's unlimited upside. 00:31:13.380 --> 00:31:16.289 Like, Oh, I, you know, I might date this person, I might, whatever it is. 00:31:16.650 --> 00:31:20.670 But on the downside they say no, I probably will literally never see them again. 00:31:21.089 --> 00:31:25.559 Like the downside is so hedged, unless you're making a complete fool yourself, but. 00:31:25.589 --> 00:31:32.519 The other plus is like, once you spend a lot of time asking people for free walk, you get really good at asking people for free walk. 00:31:32.519 --> 00:31:34.390 You like gonna increase... 00:31:35.400 --> 00:31:36.230 ... A/B tests. 00:31:37.753 --> 00:31:53.174 I came with a shot, man, it's especially a weird thing cause I feel like the average person in data science and analytics to the whole, like, if you had to plot a chart of like where people sat in the high school cafeteria, people doing data science are sitting around the far, far opposite corner of the people that end up doing sales. 00:31:53.355 --> 00:31:56.355 Like those people do not share a table at high school lunch. 00:31:56.355 --> 00:32:07.753 And I so this, I don't know, it definitely didn't come naturally to me, but yeah, it's frustrating how well the whole like, just ask, ask or ask, just ask. 00:32:07.753 --> 00:32:11.654 But thoughtfully and sometimes like a half pager of why you'd be really good at it helps. 00:32:11.654 --> 00:32:16.314 Yeah, I absolutely agree. 00:32:16.314 --> 00:32:20.384 Well the half pager is, is something that I really liked. 00:32:21.654 --> 00:32:25.550 Jeff actually talks about this, this is where I first got introduced to Jeff. 00:32:25.550 --> 00:32:28.994 He did a interview, I think it was on, like towards state of science. 00:32:29.503 --> 00:32:31.244 And he talked about the briefcase method. 00:32:31.605 --> 00:32:41.535 So you essentially go into an interview with a half pager, one pager, The projects you'd like to work on at the company and how you could fulfill them or whatever it is. 00:32:41.654 --> 00:32:47.815 But you're, you're coming in prepared to the interview, something you thought about, the problems I work on, whatever it is. 00:32:47.815 --> 00:32:53.744 That can really go a long way, you know, even if it's just a little bit, I mean, you forget that you're being compared against the baseline. 00:32:54.255 --> 00:33:08.023 And if literally no one else is doing something like that, or no one else is in the role, or no one else is eyeing position or trying to make advancements in that certain way, you stand out in a very aggressive way from, from the non-existent pack. 00:33:08.023 --> 00:33:08.085 Yeah. 00:33:08.253 --> 00:33:11.029 the extra effort goes a long way. 00:33:11.730 --> 00:33:13.994 I love the brief briefcase method. 00:33:13.994 --> 00:33:20.454 After watching that entire video, I feel like I stumbled upon the same thing kind of by accident. 00:33:20.454 --> 00:33:25.575 In a way it mirrors what I feel like a cover letter would've used to be, except cover letters are kind of useless now. 00:33:26.115 --> 00:33:29.625 Like, talk about the first thing that can be generated with ai. 00:33:31.230 --> 00:33:35.609 So I think everything is useless unless you make it useful. 00:33:36.029 --> 00:33:40.679 So I had a couple cover letters that I wrote that a hundred percent got me an interview. 00:33:41.069 --> 00:33:41.638 Really? 00:33:41.909 --> 00:33:42.269 Yeah. 00:33:42.269 --> 00:33:52.289 I wrote one I was applying the lead one of the data teams at, it was a big, essentially like like ski resort company. 00:33:53.039 --> 00:33:56.759 And I would go, I used to go skiing there every year when I was a kid. 00:33:56.909 --> 00:34:04.378 And so I wrote about the time where I like got lost on the mountain and like, like it was, it was like a short story. 00:34:04.378 --> 00:34:04.869 It was incredible. 00:34:04.940 --> 00:34:09.989 But I was not qualified for the role and I at least got a call back after that one. 00:34:10.280 --> 00:34:18.778 But you know, if it's fundamentally different from what people are, are seeing or viewing and not necessarily in a bad way, even if it's like unbelievably cringy, I think. 00:34:19.693 --> 00:34:23.144 You know, it's the same thing as like, why not ask, why not try, why not experiment? 00:34:23.563 --> 00:34:27.164 Maybe I wasted an hour of my time just like writing something weird. 00:34:27.463 --> 00:34:35.594 But like, I could probably find that now and publish it somewhere and like put it on LinkedIn and get some, some like traffic or something along

those lines. 00:34:35.804 --> 00:34:36.105 Who knows? 00:34:36.733 --> 00:34:38.653 . 00:34:36.733 --> 00:34:40.184 Yeah, it'll be a nice Maybe can like make an ink spray. 00:34:40.574 --> 00:34:40.875 Yeah. 00:34:40.903 --> 00:34:42.673 Inspirational LinkedIn post about how. 00:34:42.673 --> 00:34:46.605 Yeah, I mean, if I got the job it would've been a lot more inspirational, but. 00:34:47.315 --> 00:34:49.125 But nobody knows that. 00:34:49.125 --> 00:34:50.384 Like what percentage of length? 00:34:50.414 --> 00:34:53.429 Like I feel LinkedIn post has gotta be 90% made up. 00:34:53.769 --> 00:34:59.443 Probably at some point you just gotta add a kid in there and then a dog that says an inspirational quote. 00:34:59.443 --> 00:35:01.994 And then I had to do golf for like LinkedIn. 00:35:02.344 --> 00:35:04.784 I mean, I'm not sure if you're on the LinkedIn Lunatics page. 00:35:05.434 --> 00:35:06.063 Love it. 00:35:06.063 --> 00:35:06.943 It's, it, yeah. 00:35:07.244 --> 00:35:15.974 I've had quite a few friends featured on there and it's actually Zach Wilson who has been on the podcast was, has been on there pretty aggressively. 00:35:16.534 --> 00:35:25.320 ... you considered taking that direction for yourself, like becoming a LinkedIn influencer as opposed to giving people tutorials to get them into data science? 00:35:25.500 --> 00:35:27.389 What if you just inspire them instead? 00:35:28.920 --> 00:35:31.559 I mean, I could, I have almost a hundred thousand followers on LinkedIn. 00:35:31.590 --> 00:35:37.349 I just repost my YouTube stuff, but I'm not, I don't like the text medium. 00:35:37.349 --> 00:35:42.210 Personally, I don't like writing stuff because people can reread the stuff you write really easily. 00:35:42.929 --> 00:35:50.369 It's really tough for people to just re rewind, like to rewind a video five seconds to watch me fumble over words over and over again. 00:35:50.369 --> 00:35:50.639 Right. 00:35:51.000 --> 00:35:51.059 Yeah. 00:35:51.065 --> 00:35:57.780 Like, to me, that's just like some weird bear to entry or like some, some like mental hangup that I have. 00:35:57.784 --> 00:36:03.329 I've written some blog and stuff, but I'm, it takes me longer to write a blog then to record a YouTube video by a long shot. 00:36:03.360 --> 00:36:07.380 And so I try to focus on what my strength is in that case. 00:36:07.920 --> 00:36:08.099 Yeah. 00:36:08.105 --> 00:36:09.079 Maximizing would be roi. 00:36:09.079 --> 00:36:09.369 Yeah. 00:36:09.920 --> 00:36:15.480 I wonder what percentage of those, like LinkedIn and inspirational Twitter post are just procedurally generated. 00:36:16.588 --> 00:36:17.068 Like there's gotta... 00:36:17.068 --> 00:36:28.244 You could find, you should, that would be a good project for you to like create like BS, LinkedIn posts and make a LinkedIn bot that just like every, every week I'd go in on that with you. 00:36:29.244 --> 00:36:32.369 Somebody created the LinkedIn one. 00:36:32.369 --> 00:36:37.730

I kind of want to create a Twitter version, but there's a viral post generator.com. 00:36:37.730 --> 00:36:44.340 Did AI for a LinkedIn post and yeah, that honestly, it's kind of indistinguishable from the real stuff. 00:36:44.340 --> 00:36:55.710 Somebody posted an article to Hacker News the other day and it got a bunch of up votes and then two days later they posted an article saying, I published a procedurally, like an AI generated article to Hacker News. 00:36:55.710 --> 00:36:57.574 And it got upvotes, it's the hack on years and I got outputs. 00:36:57.574 --> 00:37:02.009 And it was like self-help like kind of inspirational. 00:37:02.190 --> 00:37:04.969 You should believe in yourself type of stuff. 00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:05.860 Interesting. 00:37:05.909 --> 00:37:12.119 Well, you know, on that note, I'd love to hear more about some of the projects that you're working on, some of the ones that you've done in the past. 00:37:12.329 --> 00:37:14.969 I know you, you have a knack for doing. 00:37:15.465 --> 00:37:22.335 Just like, I think the right word is quirky projects that are also fun and have some utility in your life. 00:37:22.724 --> 00:37:28.574 I would love to hear some of the details on those and what other people can maybe take away from them. 00:37:29.114 --> 00:37:29.594 Yeah. 00:37:29.594 --> 00:37:32.264 I like how you use the term quirky. 00:37:32.425 --> 00:37:47.324 I think I started out using the term value negative projects asterisk being that like I've done a ton of stuff like at work and otherwise that is useful to a bunch of people and that like, has helped generate value and increase profit and reduce costs. 00:37:47.324 --> 00:37:51.255 But like, but it's not funny and it's not, it's not nearly as entertaining. 00:37:51.414 --> 00:37:56.795 And it turns out that you can have a massive amount of fun when you're doing things that are abjectly useless. 00:37:57.554 --> 00:37:59.085 So some of my, my favorite. 00:37:59.355 --> 00:38:03.824 Is it useless if it creates utility and humor for yourself, though. 00:38:04.425 --> 00:38:10.045 It creates humor for myself and I like to think it improves retention within my team. 00:38:10.554 --> 00:38:22.409 By entertaining them and making them feel part of the community and also demonstrating a certain level of technical excellence, like, huh, this is utterly useless, but it actually works really well. 00:38:22.590 --> 00:38:22.829 Wow. 00:38:22.835 --> 00:38:24.150 You even wrote tests for it. 00:38:24.440 --> 00:38:25.048 Incredible. 00:38:25.489 --> 00:38:33.509 I think the first useless thing that I created, my current place was a a randomizer for internal links. 00:38:33.719 --> 00:38:36.389 You know how like a bunch of companies have like an internal links shortener. 00:38:36.840 --> 00:38:41.239 You type in like, like effectively tiny URL or go slash whatever. 00:38:41.239 --> 00:38:48.820 We had a proprietary version of that and I built a randomizer for it, so it would send you to a random internal link. 00:38:49.170 --> 00:38:58.530 Which is honestly utterly the worst thing that you can do for a corporate one, because you're just wind up seeing random documents from three years ago that have absolutely no context to you. 00:38:59.489 --> 00:39:05.460 But yeah went in, spoke to the engineers that ran the repo, told them, Hey, I want to do this. 00:39:05.460 --> 00:39:08.099 Here's a pull request, and they're like, Oh, this is great. 00:39:10.125 --> 00:39:11.324 And that got implemented. 00:39:11.474 --> 00:39:14.474 At some point I got tired of being a manager. 00:39:14.565 --> 00:39:24.585 And at that point I was playing around with G P T three, like some of the models that have come out recently that have generated that are used to generate things like fake LinkedIn posts. 00:39:24.943 --> 00:39:28.224 And I was like, Can I outsource myself being a manager? 00:39:28.853 --> 00:39:40.824 And so I found a way to plug it into a Slack bot and just host it an online and got it to answer questions for myself and my team. 00:39:41.914 --> 00:39:43.483 Had a lot of fun playing around with it. 00:39:43.574 --> 00:39:49.394 My grandparents got a massive kick out of it and testing it on my siblings turned out to be not very useful. 00:39:49.934 --> 00:39:51.264 As a reference. 00:39:51.284 --> 00:39:55.565 Anytime somebody asked it for pto, it would reply decisively with no. 00:39:56.193 --> 00:40:01.204 But it was, it was entertaining. 00:40:01.344 --> 00:40:01.653 I guess. 00:40:01.670 --> 00:40:05.144 That's what GPT-3 thinks a good manager does. 00:40:06.884 --> 00:40:08.184 I or the average manager does. 00:40:08.204 --> 00:40:08.534 Who knows. 00:40:08.894 --> 00:40:09.704 Honestly. 00:40:09.943 --> 00:40:13.094 Yeah, that's maybe, maybe that's the secret. 00:40:13.244 --> 00:40:19.673 And then what was I gonna say? 00:40:19.673 --> 00:40:25.534 The most recent thing that I built was I got tired of using dating apps and messaging people on dating apps. 00:40:25.534 --> 00:40:28.494 So I actually took some information from Jeff again in that regard. 00:40:28.494 --> 00:40:36.514 And I built an app online that uses AI to generate responses and openers for dating apps. 00:40:36.514 --> 00:40:40.574 Just launched it like a week or two ago on yourmove.ai. 00:40:40.594 --> 00:40:47.275 And that one's proven slightly more useful but still mostly just entertainment. 00:40:48.045 --> 00:40:50.184 I will link it in the description of the video. 00:40:50.275 --> 00:40:53.164 We'll run up through GPT-3 bill a little bit. 00:40:53.164 --> 00:40:55.304 I may or may not have used on people. 00:40:55.304 --> 00:40:55.634 We'll see. 00:40:57.054 --> 00:40:57.894 It's great. 00:40:58.193 --> 00:41:01.273 So how does someone respond when they realize or you just never tell them? 00:41:02.190 --> 00:41:03.960 I, they mostly just ghost me. 00:41:04.679 --> 00:41:19.079 So I've been seeing a person and I can't actually do anything

with these messages, which is fun fact, really great conversation to have with somebody that you're seeing is, Hey, sorry, but I need to have all of these dating apps and active conversations because I'm working on this stupid side project. 00:41:20.800 --> 00:41:30.070 But yeah, when I tell them I'm sorry, I'm not actually looking for anything, I was just testing this terrible ai I mostly just get ghosted. 00:41:31.219 --> 00:41:37.530 I mean, you could always just make an account for like one of your friends if they're too lazy or whatever it is, and just use it for them. 00:41:38.760 --> 00:41:43.469 I think a couple of my friends are actually using it every once in a while, which makes me kind of afraid. 00:41:43.530 --> 00:41:44.030 But yeah. 00:41:44.030 --> 00:41:47.880 It's been fun also at asterisk. 00:41:47.909 --> 00:41:49.860 Lots of useful projects along the way. 00:41:50.190 --> 00:41:54.420 Just feel like I shouldn't talk about those in way less fun. 00:41:55.750 --> 00:41:58.579 Is that the principle of. 00:41:58.605 --> 00:42:05.333 Spent twice as long automating something as it actually takes to do the think. 00:42:05.384 --> 00:42:06.943 And I've fallen for that quite a bit. 00:42:06.974 --> 00:42:14.614 Like, why do something manually in four hours when you can spend 12 hours finding a way to automate it? 00:42:14.614 --> 00:42:16.545 Hey, automation in theory scales. 00:42:16.963 --> 00:42:25.264 You know, if you're trying to date as many people as possible through dating apps, in theory, you're maximizing. 00:42:25.264 --> 00:42:30.425 I mean, you're the current person you're dating probably wouldn't love that, but just let her know you have options. 00:42:30.425 --> 00:42:31.815 If, ..., I'm just kidding. 00:42:33.704 --> 00:42:37.443 By the way, if this doesn't work out, I've got an ... got an algorithm. 00:42:38.603 --> 00:42:42.074 She does occasionally ask me when I send her a message that sounds dumb. 00:42:42.074 --> 00:42:44.563 Like, did you just use the AI for that? 00:42:45.875 --> 00:42:47.923 At which point I feel sad. 00:42:48.653 --> 00:42:51.704 And reply with, No, that was actually me. 00:42:52.994 --> 00:42:54.855 My girlfriend would just assume it was me. 00:42:55.483 --> 00:42:58.963 It's not, my, not texting is not my greatest strength. 00:42:59.625 --> 00:43:07.153 Maybe you, maybe the next one you do is you just build like a relationship bot rather than a dating bot. 00:43:07.184 --> 00:43:09.344 Cuz you're like slowly moving the progression. 00:43:09.349 --> 00:43:21.105 Soon you'll be able to automate your entire interaction with, from meeting the other person to actually maintaining the relationship the whatever it comes after that. 00:43:21.204 --> 00:43:21.364 Yeah. 00:43:22.105 --> 00:43:24.295 So two thoughts. 00:43:24.315 --> 00:43:32.005 One, at some point I thought about I ended up downloading all of my Facebook Messenger data from the past 10 years because you can do that. 00:43:32.634 --> 00:43:36.724 And I was planning to train the model on myself to sound like me. 00:43:37.235 --> 00:43:46.523 And then I realized the last thing that I want for a bot that flirts with people on dating apps is to have that bot sound anything like me, cuz I'm terrible at this. 00:43:46.954 --> 00:43:50.579 Second of all, this is a weird thought. 00:43:50.579 --> 00:43:56.820 At some point I was in a room with a ridge Carati, who is the Tesla data science guy. 00:43:56.940 --> 00:44:06.989 And I ran this idea past him before I built it, and his reaction was that like, Oh, what if everybody trains an AI model on themselves? 00:44:07.320 --> 00:44:24.980 And then you run those models past each other and then like evaluate the compatibility based on how different people's AI models like vibe versus them ever having to talk to each other and quote, unquote, find your ideal partner based on having your chat bots engage. 00:44:25.380 --> 00:44:28.980 Just a bunch of simulated conversations from different people. 00:44:29.318 --> 00:44:29.889 [Dmitri] Yeah. 00:44:29.889 --> 00:44:31.199 You ever watch Black Mirror? 00:44:32.130 --> 00:44:36.219 I mean, No, but I'm familiar with the concept. 00:44:36.244 --> 00:44:37.559 I mean, it makes sense. 00:44:37.559 --> 00:44:43.559 I've legitimately thought if I could like get all my text data and just see how I respond to certain things. 00:44:43.980 --> 00:44:48.389 I mean, I have what, like, like hundreds of thousands of texts that I've sent. 00:44:48.818 --> 00:44:49.199 Probably more. 00:44:49.829 --> 00:45:01.889 I mean, it'd be very interesting if I could just create a bottom myself where most questions I could answer or I would at least alert me with some good responses for what I would actually respond with. 00:45:02.548 --> 00:45:08.730 Do you think your reply guys would appreciate it if you if you plugged in an AI bot to respond to them? 00:45:11.130 --> 00:45:11.730 Probably. 00:45:12.750 --> 00:45:13.230 Who knows? 00:45:14.009 --> 00:45:16.858 They, they would, they would appreciate the thought. 00:45:16.858 --> 00:45:18.920 They probably wouldn't appreciate the utility. 00:45:19.610 --> 00:45:20.460 No. 00:45:20.889 --> 00:45:23.400 That, that would be pretty interesting. 00:45:23.639 --> 00:45:37.048 Like imagine a world where, like if you're somebody important, instead of everything going into a black hole or like going to your assistant first it goes through a chat bot that resembles you and then I don't know, people would pay for that service. 00:45:37.108 --> 00:45:37.619 I bet. 00:45:37.920 --> 00:45:38.298 Think about it. 00:45:39.375 --> 00:45:40.545 I mean, who was it? 00:45:40.635 --> 00:45:44.684 There's a couple people, I think Jim Quick is one, he's like a, you know, an author. 00:45:44.684 --> 00:45:54.105 He writes about personal improvement and he does this thing where you can text him and then it's obviously not him that's responding, but it's like a, some form of bot probably a

decent market for that. 00:45:55.215 --> 00:46:06.704 You imagine like all the people that are doing the like LinkedIn influencer stuff, the people that are just publishing like 30 pieces of content a day, they can't, they can't actually be writing all of that themselves, right? 00:46:08.204 --> 00:46:08.414 Maybe. 00:46:08.414 --> 00:46:10.125 Some are, some are, some aren't. 00:46:11.335 --> 00:46:32.474 I know a lot of people sort of in that, in that niche and it's, I mean it's interesting cuz it is text, so I would imagine some portion of it is, is fabricated, but at the same time all of it is based on, a lot of it's based on engagement and like commenting and those types of things. 00:46:32.474 --> 00:46:40.469 So it'd be tough to like, to have high confidence in what's going on. 00:46:40.469 --> 00:46:42.690 So this is going way too dark. 00:46:42.690 --> 00:46:47.099 But have you, and I'm not speaking for this, but have you ever heard of the dead internet theory? 00:46:47.969 --> 00:46:48.300 No. 00:46:49.050 --> 00:46:51.239 Was like the idea that, Oh, go ahead. 00:46:51.659 --> 00:46:52.210 No, no, no. 00:46:52.215 --> 00:46:53.275 Go ahead. 00:46:53.275 --> 00:47:01.199 It's this idea that like 95% of the content on the internet is just like bots talking to each other, and there's like 5% of humans in the mix. 00:47:01.559 --> 00:47:01.980 And like. 00:47:03.030 --> 00:47:09.590 I mean, from my YouTube comments, I can tell you, exactly what percent is bots and it's high. 00:47:09.679 --> 00:47:14.860 But I wouldn't say more than like 30% if If I had to guess. 00:47:15.409 --> 00:47:16.259 Probably not. 00:47:16.259 --> 00:47:17.969 I don't think it's actually anywhere. 00:47:18.438 --> 00:47:20.190 But video solves that problem. 00:47:20.219 --> 00:47:30.449 That's actually one of the reasons why I think there is so much more prevalence of video content is, at least right now, it's a lot harder to fabricate in a reliable fashion. 00:47:31.199 --> 00:47:31.409 Right. 00:47:33.449 --> 00:47:45.724 Well, there's actually a bunch of startups that launched over the last year that are trying to overcome that, which was like, they, they take your face and they take whatever text you've got typed up and they create a video of you saying some sort of speech. 00:47:45.784 --> 00:47:51.298 Apparently consulting companies are really big fans of this stuff cause it's a fancy version... 00:47:51.498 --> 00:47:57.148 but that American number one... 00:47:57.239 --> 00:48:02.898 Proponent of it, McKenzie, I probably shouldn't say that super publicly, but, eh, it's fine. 00:48:02.978 --> 00:48:05.739 They know what they're doing. 00:48:06.159 --> 00:48:06.369 Yeah. 00:48:07.059 --> 00:48:09.824 Don't, don't miss that life. 00:48:09.923 --> 00:48:14.869 I think it was actually KPMG that was big on this thing. 00:48:16.668 --> 00:48:21.349 Anyways I trust that you and this podcast is not procedurally generated. 00:48:21.608 --> 00:48:29.048 But I can certify for anybody listening that I so solemnly swear that my voice in this text was not generated by GPT-3. 00:48:29.338 --> 00:48:30.869 And that this is not a bot. 00:48:30.869 --> 00:48:31.619 And then this. 00:48:32.864 --> 00:48:35.614 That sounds like something a bot would say, but... 00:48:35.934 --> 00:48:38.954 Well, let's, let's change gears a little bit. 00:48:38.954 --> 00:48:42.945 You know, you did a lot of travel, you lived as a digital nomad for a period of time. 00:48:43.364 --> 00:48:48.945 I'm interested in how you got into that and what maybe your, some of your coolest experiences were like. 00:48:49.934 --> 00:48:50.445 Sure. 00:48:52.034 --> 00:48:56.905 Getting into that. 00:48:56.905 --> 00:48:56.965 Hmm. 00:48:57.474 --> 00:49:07.755 I'd say it started in college where there was a random moment where a friend of ours from Mexico and a few of our friends wanted to go to Cancun. 00:49:08.144 --> 00:49:09.405 And our friend was like, No, no, no. 00:49:09.405 --> 00:49:13.784 You shouldn't go to Cancun, you should go to .... And we're like, where? 00:49:13.784 --> 00:49:20.264 He was like, You go to ... and then you're in Chapas and then you drive up to San Krista the last Casa. 00:49:21.045 --> 00:49:22.155 And we're like, Okay, sure. 00:49:22.155 --> 00:49:22.545 You know what? 00:49:22.605 --> 00:49:23.025 Why not? 00:49:23.025 --> 00:49:23.565 Let's do it. 00:49:24.014 --> 00:49:25.315 We ended up showing up. 00:49:26.235 --> 00:49:28.304 Our friend showed up three days late. 00:49:28.829 --> 00:49:30.750 We couldn't get a car, We didn't know Spanish. 00:49:30.750 --> 00:49:32.039 We got completely lost. 00:49:32.039 --> 00:49:34.244 It was like a tiny town in a remote part of Mexico. 00:49:34.634 --> 00:49:37.005 But it was like one of the best experiences in my life. 00:49:38.065 --> 00:49:44.130 Just completely wild and insanely chaotic, just but really, really memorable. 00:49:44.639 --> 00:49:46.840 A lot of type two fun. 00:49:46.860 --> 00:49:56.298 A lot of like intense memorable moments of like crashing motorcycles and climbing mountains and meeting strangers. 00:49:56.739 --> 00:49:57.539 And so... 00:49:57.568 --> 00:49:59.309 Is, can you define type two fun? 00:49:59.309 --> 00:50:01.889 Is that fun that you realize it's fun after the fact? 00:50:02.639 --> 00:50:03.059 Oh, yeah. 00:50:03.548 --> 00:50:08.309 Things that seem like they absolutely suck in the moment and that are terrible. 00:50:08.309 --> 00:50:13.688 And after back you look at that fondly, they're like, Huh, yeah. 00:50:15.009 --> 00:50:15.289 Nice. 00:50:15.708 --> 00:50:22.769 Like climbing a mountain or like, I dunno, like going skiing or doing anything else really painful, but yeah. 00:50:23.630 --> 00:50:31.289 And then at some point I was remote and I was sitting and I was kind of bored. 00:50:31.349 --> 00:50:42.855 And I had this realization that if I am who I am based on my values, which one of those was like to live a good story

and I kind of needed to go travel for a bit. 00:50:42.855 --> 00:50:53.215 Cuz at the time there was very little downside for me to go travel besides just like, oh, it's a lot of work, it's a lot of planning, it's a lot of thought and it's kind of uncomfortable. 00:50:53.614 --> 00:51:00.000 And the upside was this seems like an interesting thing to do as a person and then I'll look back on fondly. 00:51:00.449 --> 00:51:08.409 And so I went first for a month and then I just ended up canceling my return flight, inviting some friends. 00:51:08.449 --> 00:51:11.860 And that lasted for a while. 00:51:12.849 --> 00:51:18.019 Most of those are still traveling and most of the people that I got into it are still kind of fully nomadic. 00:51:20.070 --> 00:51:20.309 Yeah. 00:51:20.309 --> 00:51:22.250 Highly recommend. 00:51:22.250 --> 00:51:22.489 Awesome. 00:51:23.184 --> 00:51:27.554 Definitely shades of Jeff, I think Jeff came out here for a month and they ended up staying six months. 00:51:28.215 --> 00:51:29.023 I was like, you know what? 00:51:30.284 --> 00:51:31.193 I respect it. 00:51:31.583 --> 00:51:34.315 That's usually how it goes over in Hawaii. 00:51:37.344 --> 00:51:38.704 Incredible. 00:51:38.764 --> 00:51:41.034 That's awesome. 00:51:41.094 --> 00:51:42.835 Was that your story there as well? 00:51:44.144 --> 00:51:48.085 No, to be honest, my story is a lot less exciting. 00:51:48.224 --> 00:51:49.800 I'll spark notes it. 00:51:50.260 --> 00:51:55.664 So I was in Chicago essentially during the pandemic and I was like dating this girl really? 00:51:55.664 --> 00:51:56.235 Seriously. 00:51:56.235 --> 00:51:58.275 She ended things, it felt like out of nowhere. 00:51:58.280 --> 00:51:58.934 Yeah, I know. 00:51:58.934 --> 00:51:59.324 It's alright. 00:51:59.324 --> 00:52:05.804 It was actually one of the best things that ever happened to me, but so I was like, Man, I don't wanna be in Chicago anymore. 00:52:05.804 --> 00:52:07.514 We were talking about moving somewhere else. 00:52:07.574 --> 00:52:09.394 We were like getting ready to make that step. 00:52:09.985 --> 00:52:12.405 We were, we were living together at the time and then I moved out. 00:52:12.409 --> 00:52:16.065 I moved in with a friend and I was just like, Man, I don't wanna be here. 00:52:16.304 --> 00:52:22.153 And coincidentally around the same time my parents bought, A retirement home in Hawaii that they weren't living in. 00:52:22.784 --> 00:52:24.523 And I was like, You know what? 00:52:24.554 --> 00:52:25.394 I'll be a good son. 00:52:25.394 --> 00:52:27.884 I'll go look after the place while they're gone. 00:52:28.784 --> 00:52:37.315 And just like, you know, make sure that the waters, the pipes don't freeze, you know, make sure like all the normal stuff happens. 00:52:37.333 --> 00:52:40.423 So the went, I loved it, enjoyed it. 00:52:40.514 --> 00:52:54.514 Started looking at places after a couple months and I just got completely priced out because the real estate prices

during the pandemic went through the roof just because everyone from San Francisco was like, Oh, I'll just move to Hawaii. 00:52:54.855 --> 00:52:54.943 Yep. 00:52:55.193 --> 00:52:58.364 And it was, yeah, it was pretty absurd. 00:52:58.753 --> 00:52:59.494 Damn it, Jeff. 00:52:59.903 --> 00:53:04.963 But but, you know, I'll probably move back to mainland at some point here soon. 00:53:05.054 --> 00:53:09.853 I'd like to do a year when I just travel the world and work from different locations. 00:53:11.355 --> 00:53:13.394 Figuring out the logistics of that. 00:53:13.394 --> 00:53:21.125 I mean, I quite am fond of my girlfriend now and she's working on some ways to be able to be more flexible with where she can work from and those types of things. 00:53:21.954 --> 00:53:28.045 So if I can organize that, that's something I think it's a hundred percent worth doing. 00:53:28.275 --> 00:53:38.264 If both people are fully mobile, it ends up being quite a lot easier than I think most people think. 00:53:38.664 --> 00:53:51.355 I feel like a lot of folks ask questions and you don't actually need to know the language because fun fact, you can find people in most places that speak English and you can learn enough things pretty quick to get by, but most places. 00:53:51.375 --> 00:53:54.585 Great excuse to learn a language too, if you're there for like three months. 00:53:54.675 --> 00:53:59.235 I mean, that's something I've always wanted to do and I've been putting it off, frankly, so. 00:54:00.105 --> 00:54:09.670 No better way to force yourself than to move to a remote town in Latin America where nobody speaks English. 00:54:10.539 --> 00:54:13.184 Super fun, Great way to force yourself. 00:54:13.844 --> 00:54:14.534 Type two. 00:54:14.534 --> 00:54:14.974 Imagine. 00:54:15.525 --> 00:54:16.255 Type two. 00:54:16.260 --> 00:54:16.304 Fun. 00:54:16.304 --> 00:54:16.875 There we go. 00:54:17.224 --> 00:54:20.704 Do you time where you're gonna go. 00:54:20.735 --> 00:54:22.934 So I have a bunch of friends in like Thailand now. 00:54:23.114 --> 00:54:25.820 I think it would be really cool to check there out. 00:54:27.019 --> 00:54:29.514 Like Cheng Mai, that, that seems to be the hub. 00:54:30.355 --> 00:54:34.244 Yeah, I'd go for, you know, a couple weeks, see if I like it. 00:54:34.335 --> 00:54:36.204 Put, see if I'd wanna stay longer. 00:54:37.724 --> 00:54:42.989 Also interested, I mean, Hawaii's pretty great from a tropical perspective. 00:54:43.514 --> 00:54:48.244 I think Puerto Rico could be interesting just because of tax reasons. 00:54:50.894 --> 00:54:54.644 And I'm absolutely shameless talking about that. 00:54:55.945 --> 00:54:57.315 I mean, that was crazy. 00:54:57.315 --> 00:55:06.155 Like you're basically doubling your income, like, not quite, but like multiplying it by like 1.6, 1.7, like if you can pull that off, then. 00:55:07.335 --> 00:55:09.824 Yeah, I mean, I travel like a ton for work. 00:55:09.824 --> 00:55:13.184 I was probably on the road for legitimately four and a half months this year. 00:55:13.753 --> 00:55:26.295 So, you know, it's not that much different from what I was doing, but I'd like to stay in a couple places more consistently rather than like traveling for a couple weeks every month or something like that, that's a lot. 00:55:26.434 --> 00:55:40.753 I did have a friend that like, so I've settled down now in New York for a little bit also after coming here for a month originally and then discovering that, oh, this is great. 00:55:40.753 --> 00:55:42.278 I think I'm gonna stay here for longer now. 00:55:42.278 --> 00:55:52.184 But I do have a friend that's still doing the hub thing where she's got like two or three cities that she really likes and she bounces around between them and occasionally goes on trips outside. 00:55:52.355 --> 00:55:56.355 The benefit is like you develop friend groups, you can keep a bunch of things there. 00:55:56.355 --> 00:55:58.958 Like you kind of know where everything is at and. 00:55:59.329 --> 00:56:00.789 That's true. 00:56:00.829 --> 00:56:02.670 That's very true. 00:56:02.769 --> 00:56:13.739 Well, we'll definitely talk more about this, you know, probably end of next year is when I'm thinking of kicking things off, and I'll want as many bits of advice as we can get into. 00:56:13.949 --> 00:56:24.090 So I have sort of one last question, which again, we've talked off a little bit online, and I, you know, you're a very introspective person. 00:56:24.090 --> 00:56:30.510 We talked a lot about happiness and we talked about our experiences and finding purpose in some sense. 00:56:31.679 --> 00:56:35.969 And I'm very interested in your thoughts on the trade off between fulfillment and achievement. 00:56:36.389 --> 00:56:42.449 So you've obviously have been successful in your career to date, you've also had a lot of life experience. 00:56:42.659 --> 00:56:49.548 But how do those things either work together or work in opposition, in your perspective. 00:56:50.550 --> 00:56:56.483 And in your definition, what's the precise definition, a difference between those two? 00:56:56.693 --> 00:57:03.028 I think fulfillment is like enjoyment of your life. 00:57:03.239 --> 00:57:07.668 Fulfillment is the sense that I could die and feel like I didn't leave anything. 00:57:08.699 --> 00:57:11.489 And achievement is however you define it. 00:57:11.548 --> 00:57:14.519 I think a lot of people, yeah, define it professionally. 00:57:14.608 --> 00:57:21.960 They define it in terms of usually in terms of income or in terms of a specific goal. 00:57:22.500 --> 00:57:31.500 But I guess in some circumstances, fulfillment and achievement could be the same thing, but I think that that's probably unrealistic for, for most people. 00:57:32.309 --> 00:57:33.369 Yeah. 00:57:36.380 --> 00:57:41.539 It's an interesting question, an interesting idea. 00:57:42.079 --> 00:57:45.269 I think people talk about different values. 00:57:45.269 --> 00:57:53.250 The one

thing that has really stuck with me is like, one unifying principle was live a good story. 00:57:53.309 --> 00:57:53.949 Like I. 00:57:55.894 --> 00:57:58.565 I live a good story, live an interesting life. 00:57:58.594 --> 00:58:07.844 I'm thinking about myself as like a 70 year old grandpa talking to my grandkids about the, like, the moments of my youth and the crazy cool things I did. 00:58:07.844 --> 00:58:12.030 And I've had some really, really cool grandpas. 00:58:12.340 --> 00:58:14.565 And so I've got a pretty high bar to live up to. 00:58:14.565 --> 00:58:18.385 I think one of them was in the KGB and one of them like ran the nuclear submarine program. 00:58:18.755 --> 00:58:30.195 And when it comes to the fulfillment, achievement trade off, there's a bunch of different things that you can do. 00:58:30.585 --> 00:58:35.875 And certain ones are cheap and certain ones are, are kind of crucial. 00:58:35.875 --> 00:58:47.335 I think cheap ones include like like go travel, like, like traveling and trying different foods. 00:58:48.449 --> 00:58:55.994 Like, just going to different places is a remarkably inexpensive way to broaden your life experiences in terms of time and cost. 00:58:56.474 --> 00:59:07.500 But then I guess when I, when I think about an aggregate that there was this class that I took in college that said that the things that make you happy aren't things. 00:59:07.500 --> 00:59:09.179 They're memories. 00:59:09.210 --> 00:59:11.880 What, what makes you happy at the end is like things that you remember. 00:59:12.239 --> 00:59:21.789 And so I've tried to do optimize for life experiences and like, like vivid moments in life. 00:59:22.829 --> 00:59:23.009 I know, right? 00:59:23.610 --> 00:59:29.230 Really revelationary stuff for, for millennial, optimizing for crazy who would do that. 00:59:29.230 --> 00:59:36.938 But at some point, once you've run through all the basic experiences, like you've gone bowling, you've taken a cooking class, you've gone to a few RAVs, you're like, what else is there? 00:59:37.259 --> 00:59:39.028 And then stuff starts getting more expensive. 00:59:39.034 --> 00:59:42.909 You climb a mountain or like you achieve something meaningful in your career. 00:59:43.458 --> 00:59:49.835 And achieving something meaningful in your career just happens to be something that you're already spending like 40 or 50 hours doing regardless. 00:59:50.315 --> 01:00:02.664 And it happens to be like one of your biggest sources of influence on your world, like your ability to push and see something happen and your ability to look back and say like, I've done this thing. 01:00:03.224 --> 01:00:31.900 And so I think I've done poorly in optimizing for individual happiness, but I think I've done a decent job of optimizing for looking back at having Latin interesting life which is to say I really enjoy optimizing and emphasizing achievement. 01:00:32.670 --> 01:00:41.375 But the one area where I'll sacrifice that is for opportunities

to do something that feels much more memorable and much more fulfilling. 01:00:41.824 --> 01:00:55.193 And just like one concrete example, consulting wasn't the highest paid job that I had lined up, but it did give me the opportunity to like, go all around the country and try a bunch of different things. 01:00:55.344 --> 01:01:04.304 And the, that seemed like, like an obvious trade off that I should take to like broaden my life experiences and broaden my, my memories and things that I can look back on. 01:01:06.614 --> 01:01:17.414 So I don't know if that was the, how that fits into the grand scheme of ansys to achievement versus fulfillment, but no, I think it, I think it fit really well into the grand scheme of things. 01:01:18.675 --> 01:01:29.804 You know, I am also a believer that experiences at a huge premium and we evaluate our lives based on the experiences that we've had, especially with other people. 01:01:29.923 --> 01:01:35.653 You know, like, yeah, when we sit in bed and when we're dying, we have probably a highlight reel of the things that we did and. 01:01:36.224 --> 01:01:39.074 That were memorable and a highlight reel, the things that we wish we did. 01:01:39.733 --> 01:01:45.744 And I would like the highlight reel of the things that I wish I did to be very short if not nonexistent. 01:01:46.603 --> 01:01:49.684 and to me, that's something I think is, is really important. 01:01:49.833 --> 01:01:54.994 I will also say on the other side of that I read this book a while ago called Story Worthy. 01:01:56.043 --> 01:01:59.114 And if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. 01:01:59.114 --> 01:02:00.134 It's an incredible book. 01:02:00.623 --> 01:02:06.764 But essentially the guy who wrote it, he wins this, It's like the moth storytelling competition. 01:02:06.764 --> 01:02:09.103 He's one at like an unprecedented 20 times. 01:02:09.824 --> 01:02:15.103 And the best stories aren't the ones that have the most action or the craziest things. 01:02:15.103 --> 01:02:16.514 They're the ones that have the most meaning. 01:02:17.233 --> 01:02:21.463 And he does this exercise where every day he writes what his story for the day is. 01:02:22.034 --> 01:02:24.853 And that's how he like, keeps track of every day of his life. 01:02:25.574 --> 01:02:31.184 And if you give every day meaning, if you give every experience meaning or some part of that day, meaning. 01:02:32.429 --> 01:02:38.594 Then it is part of that highlight reel then, then something special did happen in every day of your life, and that means you do have more memories. 01:02:38.925 --> 01:02:41.864 So I think to me, that was something that was completely groundbreaking. 01:02:41.864 --> 01:02:47.264 It was like, wow, like I don't wanna live any day that I felt like was monotonous. 01:02:47.355 --> 01:03:00.735 Like something should happen every single day where I felt like there was something special about it or that there was a story around it, or that like, I could tell it, you could probably take any day of your life and something happened. 01:03:00.914 --> 01:03:04.994 You could tell it at like a cocktail party and like, you know, get people interested. 01:03:04.994 --> 01:03:07.664 You, you, you can frame any day of your life like that. 01:03:08.025 --> 01:03:08.985 And to me that was like, wow. 01:03:08.985 --> 01:03:12.644 Like why don't I, like every day could be interesting if I made it that way. 01:03:14.344 --> 01:03:14.744 Interesting. 01:03:14.744 --> 01:03:20.914 You have, you found that, like, thinking about it that way actually makes your days more interesting when you look back on it? 01:03:20.914 --> 01:03:24.494 Yeah, I mean, there are very few days I have where I was like, well that was a waste. 01:03:24.764 --> 01:03:26.295 Like, yeah, I did my work. 01:03:26.295 --> 01:03:26.985 Yeah, whatever. 01:03:26.985 --> 01:03:31.500 But it was just like, like, You know, like it was wasted. 01:03:31.500 --> 01:03:40.139 Like I think if you're just sitting at home working and maybe you like made some progress on a project or whatever it is, I feel like that's, in some sense, a wasted day. 01:03:40.780 --> 01:03:41.710 Right? 01:03:42.650 --> 01:03:45.269 Yeah, I feel like something more has the be of it. 01:03:45.269 --> 01:03:47.219 Like something in in me can change. 01:03:47.219 --> 01:03:50.219 It doesn't have to be in my work or anything along those lines. 01:03:50.849 --> 01:04:02.219 It, it's one of those things that like, as an empiricist, it completely baffles me, but this idea that like you manifest something in your brain and that seems to like actually abjectly increase the chances of that happening. 01:04:02.519 --> 01:04:06.150 Like speaking as somebody that like looks at the world in data points and this is how this works. 01:04:06.150 --> 01:04:09.269 Saying like, you're gonna think something and then it's gonna happen more. 01:04:09.269 --> 01:04:10.820 Just makes zero sense. 01:04:11.090 --> 01:04:14.460 But it does seem to work pretty consistently well. 01:04:14.489 --> 01:04:18.298 Yeah, I think if you have that philosophy though, you can also make your own stories, right? 01:04:18.304 --> 01:04:20.818 So it's like, oh, you know, today was really freaking 01:04:20.818 --> 01:04:23.789 00 PM I was like, Screw this. 01:04:23.789 --> 01:04:25.798 And I jumped off the bridge into the water. 01:04:26.190 --> 01:04:27.809 I just like did something totally random. 01:04:28.409 --> 01:04:31.230 I'll remember that that's something, it's like, you know, why did I do that? 01:04:31.230 --> 01:04:31.858 Why, why? 01:04:31.858 --> 01:04:41.969 You know, like in telling someone, like why would you that it's like, oh yeah, you can, you can make up whatever your reasons are, but it was inherently against the monotony that you were working through that day. 01:04:41.974 --> 01:04:46.199 And you do have agency over your story that day, Right? 01:04:46.380 --> 01:04:47.579 So there's kind of two sides of

it. 01:04:47.639 --> 01:04:52.588 It's like you can do something or you can make something of it, which is an interesting paradigm. 01:04:53.190 --> 01:05:03.838 So then getting to the root of this question, I think the hard problem is like, let's say you've got two things in front of you and one of those things is something that like helps you achieve something that excites you about your career. 01:05:04.048 --> 01:05:12.568 And one of those things is like deepening a close relationship or going on some adventure that you think is gonna add to your collective story. 01:05:12.568 --> 01:05:15.059 How do you, how do you trade off between those two? 01:05:16.318 --> 01:05:18.420 Well, personally, I try to make those. 01:05:19.349 --> 01:05:20.250 In line with each other. 01:05:21.000 --> 01:05:21.610 do both. 01:05:21.610 --> 01:05:22.050 Yeah. 01:05:22.230 --> 01:05:22.440 Yeah. 01:05:22.570 --> 01:05:24.869 I mean, I mean, that's how I've hopefully designed my life. 01:05:24.869 --> 01:05:26.070 I mean, this podcast, right? 01:05:26.340 --> 01:05:30.210 I gotta have amazingly interesting conversations with people like yourself. 01:05:30.929 --> 01:05:35.400 And I also get to turn this into content that other people can see and view. 01:05:35.730 --> 01:05:40.469 And in theory, I also get, you know, get paid in some sense from sponsors and those types of things to do this. 01:05:40.469 --> 01:05:59.769 So it's like career alignment like philosophical and interest alignment, and also upside, like manufactured serendipity because other people will see this and it could lead to additional opportunities, additional guests, hopefully it pays dividends for my guests as well, where they get heard and there's value associated with that. 01:05:59.769 --> 01:06:02.760 So not everything can be like that. 01:06:03.300 --> 01:06:10.289 Like, you know, you don't wanna be one of those like family vloggers that's going around and it's like, Oh, we're doing all these cool stuff, but we have to record it the whole time. 01:06:11.010 --> 01:06:15.630 But I feel like there is a sweet spot where a lot of the things. 01:06:16.005 --> 01:06:21.914 That you want to do in this world today can be in line with the things that you also want to achieve. 01:06:22.574 --> 01:06:24.375 You can certainly make them closer. 01:06:24.375 --> 01:06:41.903 Just like figuring out like what's the, what's the overlap between the stuff that pays me dollars and the stuff that brings me joy as like a surprisingly, I don't know, surprisingly underappreciated way of iterating towards that. 01:06:42.384 --> 01:06:42.543 Yeah. 01:06:42.543 --> 01:06:53.050 I will say on the flip side, you can have too much where it's like when I was playing professional golf, it was like, I don't like this anymore because my livelihood is dependent on it. 01:06:53.050 --> 01:06:54.525 And you can fly too close to the sun. 01:06:54.525 --> 01:06:59.144 So I don't even know the answer to the, to that where it's like, how far is too far? 01:06:59.264 --> 01:07:00.344 When does it become not fun? 01:07:00.885 --> 01:07:02.775 It does make for an interesting memory though. 01:07:02.780 --> 01:07:04.639 You're a professional golfer. 01:07:04.750 --> 01:07:05.440 Also true. 01:07:05.744 --> 01:07:06.295 Also true. 01:07:07.795 --> 01:07:15.224 I am a big time believer in the philosophy of trying to live an interesting story. 01:07:15.780 --> 01:07:27.900 And making a memorable life, because to me that's something that, again, we have this agency over and it's all we're gonna be able to have when we're like on our death bed. 01:07:28.469 --> 01:07:28.679 Right. 01:07:28.679 --> 01:07:30.599 Maybe you'll have family in whatever it is. 01:07:30.599 --> 01:07:31.980 That's kind of part of it, right? 01:07:31.980 --> 01:07:35.679 That's part of an interesting life. 01:07:35.929 --> 01:07:36.710 Yeah. 01:07:37.010 --> 01:07:38.260 I yeah. 01:07:39.030 --> 01:07:45.329 Quality of your decisions multiplied by luck equals results and might as well optimize the quality of the decisions. 01:07:45.719 --> 01:07:45.989 Yeah. 01:07:45.994 --> 01:07:48.219 And have as much influence on the luck as you can too. 01:07:48.550 --> 01:08:04.759 You should take that idea that we just talked about for two minutes and then expand it into a LinkedIn post and maybe like a nice think book that you can put at like WA airport with a catch title so that other people can be inspired by an idea and then spend six hours reading about it in an audio book. 01:08:04.759 --> 01:08:05.389 There you go. 01:08:06.690 --> 01:08:08.128 And it all comes full circle. 01:08:08.190 --> 01:08:10.068 Well, Dimitri, this was awesome. 01:08:10.349 --> 01:08:11.670 I super enjoy talking to you. 01:08:11.670 --> 01:08:14.940 Is there anything you wanted to share about what you're working on? 01:08:15.239 --> 01:08:25.439 Any final message you have for the the people and you know, if you would like people to be able to get in contact you, what's the best way to do that? 01:08:25.439 --> 01:08:25.739 Sure. 01:08:25.779 --> 01:08:29.819 If you want to do interesting stuff and you want to be in data science, just build stuff. 01:08:29.819 --> 01:08:31.798 Literally go on the weekends and build stuff. 01:08:32.759 --> 01:08:37.000 If you're looking for a job, come apply for an analyst or data scientist role at Opendoor. 01:08:37.019 --> 01:08:41.489 It's an amazing place to do analytics and data science. 01:08:41.550 --> 01:08:43.029 I love, I love everybody here. 01:08:43.989 --> 01:08:55.289 Check out my project on yourmove.ai and if you wanna get in touch with me I think I'm on Instagram @dmitri_am or just find me on LinkedIn. 01:08:55.759 --> 01:08:56.009 Yeah. 01:08:56.639 --> 01:08:57.300 Hell yeah. 01:08:57.479 --> 01:08:58.229 Thank you so much again.