Deep work only happens before lunch

bag boop

🐈‍⬛ Life

Hi friends! How’s it going?

It was crazy hot this week 38C (or 100 freedom units) and I don’t have AC in my apartment. 🥲 I feel so bad for the kitties - especially Boop because she’s so fluffy. She keeps trying to go into the fridge.

(๑*ᗜ*) Anime

Scrolling through my Crunchyroll history, I am yet again shocked and slightly ashamed of how much anime I watched. I finished watching Kotoru Lives Alone, binge-watched all of Ranking of Kings, and am now watching Space Brothers. THEY ARE ALL SO GOOD!! I’m going to talk about Kotoru Lives Alone because it’s so unique but I highly recommend all three!

art is very interesting

I was kinda thrown off by the art style of Kotoru Lives Alone. Like idk why they all have serpent eyes? It’s about this four-year-old boy called Kotarou Satoou who moves next door to Shin Karino, a washed-up manga artist. Kotarou has no parents and lives alone, but he quickly becomes friends with his neighbours in the apartment complex.

What makes this anime so unique is that it all starts off with this weird kid that is trying to act like an adult. But as the story unfolds, we learn about his past and the way he behaves starts making sense. It touches on very heavy themes of child abuse, negligence, and the long-lasting impact it has on children.

It’s an anime that somehow manages to be lighthearted but at the same time breaks your heart. 💔

📖 Books

I’m currently reading Eric Barker’s new book called Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong. I picked this up because several of y’all recommended it and I did really like his previous book: Barking Up the Wrong Tree. Also, I figured I should try to be less antisocial. 🥺

I haven’t read much of this book yet so I’ll share more in the next newsletter. I do really like his style of evaluating hackneyed and often contradictory advice through scientific evidence, so fingers crossed that it lives up to the hype!

For those of you who are also reading this book, lmk in the comments what you think!

🌻 Learning & Productivity

This has been my daily routine for the past few weeks (except filming days and Saturdays):

~8:30 - 12pm: Study with Tina + meetings (sometimes)

~12 - 2pm: Eat + watch anime

~2 - 7pm: Sit in the library and do stuff that requires fewer brain cells

~7 - 8pm: Gym/bike

~9pm: Dinner + watch more anime + talk to friends

~12pm: Sleep

I’ve definitely had times that I end up sleeping at 2 am because I procrastinated or could not control my anime watching tho.

Important lessons I learned about myself:

🤔 Focused deep work happens before lunch

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Being around people (library) makes me feel like I have social interaction even if I don’t talk to anyone lol

🏋️ Gym is good if I’m feeling tired

🚲 Bike is good when I want to be in diffuse thinking mode - most of my videos are conceptualized when biking

🤝 I cannot manage more than a handful of meetings a week

🍥 I HAVE to watch anime

It took me years to know myself to this point. I’m extremely grateful for having the luxury of being able to plan my time around what works the best for me.

What does your daily routine look like? Is there one thing that if you can change, would make a huge difference? Mine was cutting out meetings.

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👨‍💻 What I’m Learning

I’m focused on business stuff this week. It’s definitely a lot to learn! In particular, marketing and user experience are areas in that I have the least experience. When I say I am the least experienced in marketing, I mean I have literally no idea what I’m doing lol.

But it’s cool! I got to learn lots of different marketing styles and the reasoning that goes into them. I was a bit concerned that I HAVE to do heavy in-your-face marketing techniques to be successful, but I’m relieved to know that it doesn’t have to be that way. I think I’d like to focus on transparency and always providing value, even if people don’t buy the thing. In the end, I think our thing solves a valid problem so if we’re just honest and explain the value proposition clearly, then people would be interested (hopefully). 🤞

is it helpful?

In terms of user experience, it all made a lot of sense in my head that people would behave how I would behave. But I talked to one of my amazing mentors and he pointed out that people really do behave very differently and we need to think about lots of edge cases and scenarios. This was extremely helpful because it helped me think about how I can build processes to help prevent poor user experience and how to deal with problems when they inevitably arise.

I learned so much this week and it’s been so much fun to implement!

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💻 Today’s coding challenge (SQL/Python)

🪟 Active Goldman Sachs question - window function practice!

You are given a day worth of scheduled departure and arrival times of trains at one train station. One platform can only accommodate one train from the beginning of the minute it's scheduled to arrive until the end of the minute it's scheduled to depart. Find the minimum number of platforms necessary to accommodate the entire scheduled traffic.

train_arrivals:

train_departures:

Head on over here to answer the question!

*Btw if you’re prepping for data science interviews or just want to keep yourself sharp, Stratascratch is a great platform with 10k+ real interview questions on SQL and python coding, probability, product sense etc. You can use my code ‘tinahuang’ at checkout for 20% off ❤️

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PS: Reply to this email about what you’d like to see in future editions of Boop’s Keyboard! I’m super new to writing a newsletter and I know there’s a lot for me to learn. ALL constructive feedback is greatly appreciated :)

-Tina