I started listening to a summary of this podcast “Truth Be Told“. As a man of color, there are topics that struck a chord with me. Including whether we should name our kids with our ethnic names & why people of color marry the dominate race.
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Grammarly – Premium version to help me to correct grammar before I hit that Send button. https://www.grammarly.com Others have recommended (yet to try) https://undraw.co/illustrations – Open-source illustrations for every project you can imagine and create. Free photos https://unsplash.com/
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I started reading the book The Pragmatic Programmer, published In 1999! It is such a fantastic book with very relevant tips for professional software engineers. I am just on chapter 2 now, but I have already marked up the book about important ideas that I need to follow up. How did I skip this vital […]
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For note taking, I optimize for 3 things Being able to quickly create a document and worry about categorization later. Having access to the notes on any of my 3 machines, and phone Being able to find my notes later To do this, I’ve tried the following. Evernote, Google Docs, Google Keep, One Note. Several […]
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Happy mother’s day. Today, my sister and I told my mom things she never knew. We hung out with kids who had a bad influence on us. Teaching us to smoke elementary school in China. Getting into fights in middle school with kids who bullied me. I bullied kids and was angry. I shoplifted with […]
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In the last few weeks, I’ve learned the power of the following Reciprocate I asked a team of 6 people for help. They have commit 2 weeks of work and 5 hours of time to do face to face presentations. In return, I give them what they really want, direct access to people who can […]
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Person X: “I don’t know why my kids would choose UC LA when they’ve been accepted at UC Berkeley!” Tony: “Where do you live?” Person X: “10 minutes away from the Berkeley campus” Tony: “Well, what do you think?” Person X: “uhhhh”
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This BTS enamel pin is made by ceikzero ( Instagram @ceik0 ). Thoughtfully designed, meticulously refined. Shipping to you from San Francisco and soon to be from Boston. If you have to ask what is BTS, this pin is not for you.
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I’m coming to the end of the book “Skin In The Game”. It’s not an easy book to read but I find the author is able to make some arguments that are not mainstream but very convincingly. Page :217 “you will not have an idea about what people really think, what predicts people’s action, merely […]
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I know I am an introvert. I relish the solitude of reading, writing, thinking by myself. Solitude doesn’t mean I like to be alone all the time. Just some span of time, where I am by myself with my own thoughts. When I can get these thoughts out on paper, I feel energized. This seems […]
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Asking people to change is hard. The person asking for change might be asking others to move 10 steps ahead. The people being asked to change 1) Might not be convinced 2) Think it’s too hard and unknown 3) They don’t trust the person asking them. My experience in pursuation is to first build that […]
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Another way to think about “everything in it’s place” is to look at “What does not belong?” You can apply this simply in organizing a drawer in your home. You can also apply this in backlog grooming at work. Out of 50 things on my plate, what doesn’t belong? What is extra that I’m […]
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While reading the book “Skin in the Game”, I saw several negative references to Barack Obama. At first I chalked it up for something for me to think about. After the latest reference on pg 156, I thought for brief moment to brush it off as a conservative author taking shots at a democratic president. […]
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I have listened to every episodes of Design Matters with Debbie Millman. One of the episodes I bookmarked is the one with Scott Stowell. I really enjoy hearing from people in different fields than the high tech industry in which I work. Scott talked about how as a small child, he learned the craft of […]
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6 offices in San Francisco, Santana Row, Vancouver, Seattle, United Kingdom, Boulder and Sydney are received 145 copies of 3 books. Pragmatic Programmer, The Code Complete & 97 Things Every Architect Should Know. Happy reading fellow engineers!
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Everyone needs maker time at work. Otherwise either you work more at home, or you often feel unaccomplished. My maker time is about 60%.
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(The photo is one of my favorite pencils I borrow from my daughter. I finally used up all the lead in the pencil) 20 minutes, that’s all it takes. “Could you show me how you work?” Let’s turn on screen capture. Oh, interesting, what else? Why do you like this over, let’s say this other […]
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It’s a fact, we will all die. What is important for you? learn more about the app http://www.wecroak.com Or listen to the co founder on Recode Decode podcast. You can find it.
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Last week, a highly analytical person at my company demonstrated how he used Splunk to deep dive into customer issues. The level of sophistication and depth was truly inspiring. In our life, I am reminded to always look for someone who operates at world class, level 10. Who set the bar for us to want […]
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This week I picked up the book Dear Data by Giorgia Lupi, Stefanie Posavec. In this color and wimsicle book, the 2 authors who live across the Atlantic write weekly hand draw postcards to each other, using inforgraphics to tell each other a data centric view of a weekly topic. During my 10 page a day […]
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When there are stakeholders, there is a deadline and you are uniquely capable to do it.
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(This post is not for you, it’s for me) It started out as 5% of my time. Just a 4-hour hands-on workshop with new hires once a month. Now it’s the following 1 engineer working on developing a hands-on workshop that will track start, finish, and verification. Able to track usage, validate answers and replace […]
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It is often not possible to get all three 1. job satisfaction and meaning 2. money 3. lifestyle Most jobs can give you 2 out of 3. You may have to adopt a side hustle to fullfil the missing piece.
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I am a cat person. My personality matches a cat. I like people watching and lazying in the sun. I move slowly, only pouncing when there is something that intensely interests me. I have a deep-seated fear of dogs biting me randomly. I also raised a cat person and now she is 18!
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It’s an odd time to tell someone else to meet. Why not 5:30 or 5:35? It is a lot more precise and shows that I have planned it out. I mean what I say. It’s odd, I know. But it’s precise, exact and intended. Let’s meet at 5:37. See you in 9 minutes. Could you […]
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Getting There The Merced Branch of the San Francisco Public Library system is 1/2 block from the 28, K buses. Right acrossed from the Stonestown mall. There is plenty of street parking with 2 car parking for 10 minutes. What is different? One standout of this library is the central garden space with maple trees […]
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(The photo was posted in the Chinese section of the SF Public Library near Stonestown shopping mall, written in simplified Chinese. It takes a lot of effort for me to read in the simple form. It basically says that it’s up to us as individuals to learn and thrive in a democratic society. There are […]
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In the book Skin In The Game, the author (pg. 61) stated a saying by the brothers Geoff and Vince Graham: I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist. The author’s argument is that we cannot apply […]
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In 2019, I wanted try something a bit different than 2018. In 2018, I didn’t buy anything that was not a consumable. In 2019, I wanted to be less extreme and only buy non consumables once every quarter. In Q1 2019 – I have bought 2 pairs of shoes and that is it. Something else […]
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I remember my mom tried to teach me this when I was young. Put things back in it’s place. Of course she said it in Chinese. She was not very successful in teaching me. I was not a great listener when I was young. I am still struggling with this at home, everything back in […]
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Take a company like Facebook. They leave millions of passwords in plain text, they created the news feed where dictators use the various Facebook products (Instagram, FB, Whatsapp) to spread fake propaganda, they violate our privacy repeatedly (even those of us who don’t use it, but are connected to people who do) and hijack our […]
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Target audience: Female engineers at the 2, 3, 4 levels Purpose Introduce them to engineers, at least 2 levels beyond, who can help them with Expanding their technical breath, depth and quality. Review their work and help them think about ways to increase their impact. Improve their problem solving skills. Expose them to opportunities they […]
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(follow up to part 2 of tech mentorship) What does a success mentorship look like? Both mentor and mentee are getting something out of the experience. They meet regularly, or the mentee feels free to reach out when they have issues/questions to work out. They hold themselves accountable to each other, if their are action […]
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Continue from Part 1 https://tonytam.org/2019/04/07/proposal-for-technical-mentorship-draft-1/ Target audience : P2, P3, P4 Guidelines for matching : 2 levels separation Why be a mentee ? Ask question of someone who have been where you are at, give you a perspective that you normally don’t see, spend time with you to help you grow technically in a safe […]
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The goal of this proposal is to define how we build a culture of career growth for our technical staff in any individual contributor level. During the career of a software engineers, several key factors contributes to their career growth Innate skills and self motivation The type of projects they are exposed to and have […]
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One my favorite movie scenes is when Sydney P., in the movie”Guess who is coming to dinner?” said to his father, something like “It’s your job to raise me, you brought me into this world”. “When it’s my time, I will do the same for my children”. There is no need for children to thank […]
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Dear daughter, For your 18th birthday, and on my 48th year, I wish to write down something for you to refer back to in the next 30 years. I wish to tell you a few simple thoughts to help you to build a life for yourself that 30 years later, you would look back and […]
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For the last 18 years, my identity is primarily a father and a software engineer. My daughter is going to be 18 years old in a few days and I wanted to remind myself that a large part of my identity is not lost, but changed. In order for her to be a fully formed […]
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I loved this book and will keep and re-read again in a year. Each chapter is about 10 pages, which fits very nicely with my “read 10 pages of a book” habit in the morning. It gives a little bit of science with each advice given on how to build long lasting good habits and […]
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(The photo is of a parking ticket paying machine, it wants to do a lot in terms of payment, but very confusing) Last week, I decided to leave my smartphone at my desk with only a sharp pencil and my notebook. Yes, I did feel more engaged during the meeting, but I also felt like […]
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This week I checked myself during a conversation where I let my own pride, fear and stubbornness get in the way of hearing the opinion of someone else. My fear of doing something uncomfortable. My pride of asking for help. My stubbornness in thinking that my way is the only correct path forward. I accept […]
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Could it be that simply to calculate the value of my backlog at work? I once heard on a podcast that a simple way for a startup founder to prioritize all the product backlog in order to focus is via a spreadsheet and do hard ranking. Difficulty x cost x quantity == value? While […]
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My plan is to visit every San Francisco Public library by having my reserved books delivered there and write down what is different and new that I learn there. At Ocean View, the library is super friendly and when I mentioned I’m trying to see all the libraries, he said they get mostly neighbor folks […]
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Last week a senior software engineer who has deep knowledge in a very specialized and high value skill (Machine Learning) for our company asked me for advice on getting more exposure and impact for her work. She was in a situation where her skills and opinions are sought after by senior leaders in engineering, product […]
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As an engineer, I’ll give you 4 attributes to define your work to choose from Ownership Customer focus Data driven Cadance You have to chose at least one of these to drive your work. Pick one and focus.
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(The art piece is done by a SF local artist of migrant workers working in California central valley) Yesterday, my direct report, a principal software engineer who is an expert in our C++ code base presented to over 150 engineers on a piece of code walk through of a “Life of a single data event […]
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(The photo is a piece of in store made of thick bacon from Luke’s, Cole Valley, San Francisco) A potential engineer doesn’t have to like math, abstract thinking, typing on the computer all day creating software. I head an interview with a IBM Fellow, who happens to be a woman say that she didn’t fit […]
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James Clear’s book Atomic Habits – During the early phases of forming a good habit (going to the gym, eating healthier, saving for retirement) there is no immediate reward. However with bad habits (eating ice cream, watching Netlifx, scrolling through Instagram), we get immediate reward. Unfortunately humans are flawed, we tend to avoid things that […]
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We can talk about what we value but until we put our time and our money as wagers, talk is cheap. In the book Atomic Habits, the author James Clear suggest that repetition is the key to forming habits. Doing 5 minutes of reading every day, is way better than spending 6 hours reading a […]
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Put yourself in the shoes of the other. When was the last time you put yourself out there and you asked for help and was rejected? Regardless of how nice the rejecting was, how did you feel about yourself? Now look at the person asking for help. How much of your ‘precious’ time and energy […]
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Last week at work, I learned that an executive has been working on a diversity and inclusion effort monthly. They really care about moving the needed to increase the gender and under represented diversity in our engineering ranks. I was pleasantly surprised that they are so active in this area. I personally have not heard […]
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Yesterday, one member of my badminton group reinjured his knee which was already hurting from a skiing accident. He wanted to play yesterday because he loved the sport and thought he could still play and take it easy. Unfortunately, we pushed him pretty hard on court, and he collapsed in pain when he twisted his […]
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Today, I picked up a strawberry muffin and coffee from Bello Coffee and Tea in Glen Park. When I first saw the total bill was $5, I was taken aback. $2.5 for a coffee and $2.5 for a muffin. Was it ringed up incorrectly? It was so much lower than I would expect. My usual […]
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I’ve been thinking about why we trust certain people but keep others at arms length. This was inspired by seeing how a colleague navigates their interactions with meeting new people in the company. For people (other) in our work and personal life who we don’t feel an increase in trust – Our intuition tells us […]
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I also deleted Facebook, stop using any apps that are personalized infinite scroll apps, but did not add tracker blocker. It is interesting to see this person actually bought less online as a result of not getting personalized ads. I Deleted Facebook Last Year. Here’s What Changed (and What Didn’t). https://nyti.ms/2YdvvKk
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( my opinions are my own and not my employer) I just read this article: NY Times: Facebook Did Not Securely Store Passwords. Here’s What You Need to Know. https://nyti.ms/2YdyAKj As an engineer, I don’t understand how it could happen to a company like Facebook. They have engineers and security folks who audit designs and […]
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I write a lot of internal documentation, blogs to convey ideas for my future self as well as for engineers internally to reference. Younger engineers often are reluctant to write anything other than code. Here are reasons to write Writing something down clarifies your own understanding of the topic It’s one of the highest leverage […]
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Our VP Of Engineering asked us to think about this at work. We are all busy at work, but are we adding value to our customers with what we are doing now? What is the next most important item on our backlog that add value to our customer immediately? It’s a great way to prioritize […]
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How do you know when a training is effective? NPS score is a measure of whether the participants would high recommend someone else to take the training. But I wanted to switch up the metrics to measure outcome and confidence. At work, we are delivering a deep dive training to engineers to teach them about […]
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For my direct report 1:1’s, I’m trying a new structure. I open up a Google Doc that we both have access to for our 1:1’s Hearing from them what’s on their mind and discussing I bounce some ideas of future work to put on their backlog, some updates that are interesting for them and give […]
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If you send an email to me, it’s very likely (95% chance) I will reply If you are recruiting me for a position at company X – You will get a polite / canned response that “I am extremely happy at Splunk and want to be there for 4 years to help the company grow”. […]
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My full time job is to work on engineering productivity. Often folks ask me what I do every day / every week? I often tell them what I’m working on this quarter. Quarterly Focus Well, the first quarter in 2019, my focus is on creating coding labs and content for new engineers that join Splunk […]
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I was fortunate to attend a talk by BD Wong in San Francisco and the playwright Lauren Yee promoting her play “Great Leap Forward”. BD Wong is an openly gay Asian man. He talked about how as an adult, he finally announcing to the world about being gay and being very proud to be gay […]
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Two and a half years ago, when I joined my current company I was attending a new hire training and the last slide showed a very long URL to a document that we were suppose to remember for more information. I asked the presenter whether there is a URL shortener so that we URLs are […]
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By accident I stumbled upon a method to start changing behaviors. 2018 In 2018 I wanted to not buy anything that was not perishable. I wanted to learn to pratice self control. As the year passed, I wrote down as few rules as I realized the gap between a very strict rule and what else […]
Read morehttps://nyti.ms/2R7ovxI Mr. Mossberg, a veteran of The Wall Street Journal, The Verge and Recode, said on Monday he would be deactivating his Facebook account, along with the Facebook-owned Messenger and Instagram apps.
Read moreNetflix’s Journey moving to GraphQL: The visual graphs of the level of abstraction was useful. Seeing Netflix move to GraphQL gives the technology more weight. https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/our-learnings-from-adopting-graphql-f099de39ae5f Wow, how did I miss a competitor to React for a multi-platform mobile development platform from Google? Flutter.io Looking forward to GoLang finally trying to solve the modules issue. […]
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Goodbye Quora, you leak my data and I delete my account on your services. Goodbye Yahoo, you leak my data and I delete my account. Anyone else?
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Raw notes from the book : The Person You Mean To Be: How Good People Fight Bias Not a binary notion, bounded ethicality Important to us that we are a good person, we feel threaten when we don’t hit the bar. We have blind spots, as a good person, if there is no room from […]
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Recently I have been running dry on my personal motivation on important projects such as transcribing Impactful Engineer. I have not been able to diagnose what the root cause is. Some possible reasons could be Transcription is not what motivates me and hence I’m putting it off The overall project and goals is not current […]
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An effective engineering team is highly collaborative, focused on delivering high quality code with velocity. The team sets the standard for other teams to follow in how they design software, write and test their software and ultimately delivering business value to the customer. The team functions as a coherent group, helping each other succeed, having […]
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If you are a leader and/or a manager of people, go read You Can’t Be a Great Manager If You’re Not a Good Coach – HBR.org
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This week I practiced what Lyn Campbell recommended during our interview on Impactful Engineer (read here). I asked for feedback from someone I work with. I asked her how she thinks I can improve in meetings. She generously took the time to give me the following feedback During one of our meetings about a previous […]
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This YouTube video really cracked me up. An immigrant kid from Hong Kong, born in Shanghai, immigrated to L.A, went to UC San Diego, majored in economics, told his parents he would rather disappoint them for a few years than disappoint himself for life, did standup, drove for Uber, auditioned 100+ times for small parts […]
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So Far I’ve deleted all my infinite scrolling apps (FB, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter). I’ve stopped reading online news and only read a printed Sunday paper. I’ve paid for products to remove ads (Cruncy Roll, YouTube, Pandora). Call To Action To Take Back Attention & Time Today, I listened to the founder of Center For Humane […]
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Dear future self: Today, you were frustrated at your teenage daughter that she was 10 minutes later in leaving the house for high school. Even though she is the only one affected, you felt that it reflected on your personal value to be early or on time. You expressed to your daughter that you were […]
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Who Is On Your Team? Taking a journey alone is not only difficult, lonely but also not sustainable. Starting with simple personal goals such as exercising. If I am only accountable to myself, I can skip a day, skip a week, skip a month, I only have to answer to my nagging self. If I […]
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I have recently started a media detox program of not reading online news, online blogs, social networks (Twitter, LinkedIn, FB, Instagram). Instead I am focusing on listening to interview based podcasts and reading physical books. During this journey of reassessing how I spend my attention and time, I also started powering off my cell phone […]
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Seth Godin writes with the smallest number of words to convey the clearest of messages. Here he explains GDPR and the market’s dilemma “Talk to people who want to be talked to. Market to people who want to be marketed to. Because anticipated, personal and relevant messages will always outperform spam. And spam is in […]
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The myth of ‘good timing’ from Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2018/04/the-moment-of-maximum-leverage.html
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Systemic problems in our society, by definition, seem impossible to fix. Part of the reason is that systemic problems are rooted in how our lives are structured and it’s not under the control of one person, one organization or sometimes even one government. When I was doing a bit or searching around Google, there was […]
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In June, the two engineers will formally accept a Turing Award, the computer science equivalent of the Nobel Prize, in recognition of their work. Hennessy later became president of Stanford University and is now the chair of Alphabet; Patterson is a professor emeritus at U.C. Berkeley and a distinguished engineer at Google Listen to the […]
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I learned something new today. From page 160 of the book “Everybody Lies”. A great reminder to “Never compare your insides to everyone else’s outsides” You can read more here from author Seth Stephens – Davidowtiz (bio) and the op-ed pieces he wrote for NYTimes Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable
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@Tony Tam That’s right! It gives you more control and racket speed if you relax the fingers before you hit, but for power, you still need to figure out how to do the weights transfer! Weight transfer has something to do with the body, shoulder, forearm, and wrist rotation. You used to have problem with the […]
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Recently I’m experimenting with starting up bookclubs at work in order to meet new people and helping to instill the habit of book reading into my own life. Here is what I’m doing Create a #bookclub channel on Slack Create a document with a list of books that anyone can propose Once there are 5 […]
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Give this a read, virtues of print news instead of online and breaking news. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/technology/two-months-news-newspapers.html?
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I’m celebrating a milestone for a personal 10 year project and I’m seeking your time and attention. Impactful Engineer shares the stories and journeys of women and men who are making significant impact in the software industry. The purpose of Impactful Engineer is to inspire young software engineers to see that are many paths they can take to […]
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Taking Back Control Of My Privacy Goodbye Infinite Scroll Media : LinkedIn App Goodbye Twitter @ tonytam Friends Don’t Let Friends’ Data Be Stolen #deleteAllFacebook (Instagram,WhatsApp) Life Strategy #1: Why I Am Only Reading Long Articles and Books Google Activities This is the hardest one yet. I love the convenience of Google maps, suggestion browsing […]
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There is a Chinese proverb 難得糊塗 that my dad put up on the wall of our home which he wrote the calligraphy with Chinese ink and paper. Every day at home, I would see it. When I was younger, my dad was very angry and frustrated with life. And I like to be believe that he stared […]
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Recently I have made choices on how I spend my time and this has helped me decide what I say YES to and more importantly what I say NO to Optimize for time over money If I had to choose between taking muni or Lyft to work, I choose Lyft. Muni takes 45 minutes for […]
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My daughter loves watching anime (Haikyuu, Yuri on Ice), she adores owning physical books, she loves drawing anime characters. She is sometimes quiet about other things, but never about these unmistakable passions in her life. She is unwavering, unapologetic and ever in love with these passions in her life. It is infectious, because of her, […]
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I loved this book (Tell Me More, by Kelly Corrigan). Once started, I couldn’t put it down. It is a book about the author’s journey to learn to do and say the hardest things in life. To learn to listen to her daughter and her dying father. I will just quote from her website instead. […]
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Taking Back Attention I’m going on a detox program with media Goodbye Infinite Scroll Media : LinkedIn App Goodbye Twitter @ tonytam Friends Don’t Let Friends’ Data Be Stolen #deleteAllFacebook (Instagram,WhatsApp) Thank you brain trust member : Seth Godin After I have done my detox, I find this gem in my email Your kitchen table […]
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I have removed Facebook I have removed Twitter Feb 8th, 2018 – Today I have removed the LinkedIn app from my phone. It was a difficult decision because I have been using the LinkedIn app to catch up posting from my professional connections as well as messaging people on LinkedIn. Why? I’m trying to read […]
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On Saturday April 8th, 2018 12:15am I decided to make my twitter.com account @tonytam protected. It is one of the many steps of media detoxification. Once in a while, I do get exposed to something of value from the 250+ people I follow on Twitter. But the price of admission for these nuggets of information […]
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This podcast episode from one of My ‘Virtual Brain Trust’, Seth Godin, has given me a framework to talk about how I’ve structured my life around longer term vision leading to the right short term actions. Seth Godin’s Akimbo Podcast Finite and Infinite Games The idea is that there are finite games and infinite games. […]
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This post is not meant for you, it’s meant for me; So no need to read. Start With “What” People ask for advice. “What should I do, I’m running into this situation where I don’t know whether I should choose A or B?” Rather than telling them what they should do, I have been realizing […]
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On March 27th, 2018, I’ve decided to remove all my accounts on the following Facebook-owned apps: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Facebook.com – This is easy because I only have 1 connection. Instagram – This is a little harder because I use the message feature to talk to 2 people on iOS devices. So now we […]
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