Head Start

A timeline of December and January. In the first half of December, you finish the last-minute projects. But in the second half, you get a head start for the new year.

I do this all the time with my reading goals. Do you do this for any area of your life?

01 Jan 2024

Santa Supply Chain Efficiency

A chart of "Gift delivery time per child (microseconds)" as a function of year. The curve starts off high at 400 in 1950, decreases to around 200 over 50 years, and then slowly starts decreasing again. The label on the curve reads, "Santa knows how to keep improving".

In the last few years, many of us have come to appreciate the supply chain infrastructure that undergirds much of our world. We notice when it breaks, but not when it gets better. May Santa’s supply chain efficiency gains over time be a shining example of progress during your holidays!

Methodological details: I assumed 34 hours of delivery time (which is roughly in the ballpark from moving between time zones and having a long night), roughly 1/3 of the population being Christian, and children being 0-14 years old. I then took 34 hours and divided by one third of the children population for my estimate over time. You can change the 34 hours figure, but the shape of the curve will stay the same.

25 Dec 2023

Cornering

A map of contiguous subjects in physics and mathematics. Your initial problem begins in the "Quantum" area, sneaks over to "Condensed Matter", hops to "Statistical Physics", and then finishes in "Mathematics", where you're able to corner it.

What has the longest journey been for you?

20 Dec 2023

Satisfaction

A bar graph of "Satisfaction" for two different activities. For "Personal success", the bar is low. For "Helping others", the bar is much higher.

Maybe not for everyone, but definitely for me.

13 Dec 2023

Abstraction Tolerance

A mathematician and her physicist friend are talking. She says, "And now we can generalize--" A machine goes *Beep*! She continues, "--to higher dimensions and --" The machine goes *Beep, beep, beep!* She sighs. "Are abstraction levels even a real health concern you need to monitor?" Her friend says, "With you, yes."

My abstraction tolerance is proportional to the number of mathematician friends I have who can patiently explain concepts to me.

Hat tip to John Cook’s blog post on the topic.

06 Dec 2023

Discovery

A Venn diagram of "What you know" and "What you like". In the non-overlapping section of "What you like" is the region "Opportunity for exploration".

A reminder for myself to not get stuck in doing the same things forever.

29 Nov 2023

Drag

A person tries walking forward, but a large parachute behind slows them down due to air drag. The person asks, "Why is it so hard to move forward?" The parachute has the label, "Never-ending projects".

There’s a reason why most projects last for a finite time. (By the way, I’m inspired by Craig Mod’s pop-up newsletters.)

22 Nov 2023

Stress Decay

A graph of "How much I care about X after it happens" versus time. High stress decays to low stress very quickly, and an arrow points to the decayed curve and says, "Why was I even stressed about this!?"

It’s crazy how this describes so many of my worries.

15 Nov 2023

Hard Landing

A scientist and his friend are flying a plane called The Last Minute. The scientist says, "Brace yourself. We're going down hard!" Caption: When you realize you're rapidly approaching your presentation's time limit.

The friend: “You do realize we passed our destination about twenty minutes ago, right?”

08 Nov 2023

Comfy

A professor stands at the front of their class with a raised hand and says, "Welcome to my class. Please give the front row seats to those who will stay awake and want to see the board." (Pause) "Don't worry, I have comfy chairs in the back for those who are sleepy and came to hear my soothing voice."

The teacher evaluations are uniformly positive, even from those who fail.

01 Nov 2023

To the past To the present