I finally have a home again 🥺
🍥 Life
Hey friend! How’s it going??
I’m happy to report that I finally have a bit of stability in my life. Never again will I complain that my life is boring. 😅 After about 8 months of roaming the world, I’ve finally found a home base in downtown San Francisco!!
I think I’m still going to travel a significant amount because I love exploring new places, but having a home base makes a HUGE difference. For one, having a place to put your things instead of carrying all of your belongings in 3 suitcases is something I will never take for granted again. 🙈
🌻 Learning & Productivity
There’s this Huberman Lab podcast episode that I recently listened to on Spotify called Leverage Dopamine to Overcome Procrastination & Optimize Effort. I’ll also link the Youtube version here in case you don’t have Spotify.
The episode is a deep dive into how dopamine works in relation to driving our cravings and sense of motivation. There is A LOT of detail and I had to slow down from my usual listening speed and relisten to some places, but understanding the full dopamine system was very insightful. After he covers how the system naturally works, he explains things you can do in order to optimize both baseline and peak dopamine levels to get yourself into a state of motivation and stay in it.
One of my biggest takeaways from the episode is how to get yourself out of a state of degeneracy, as I like to call it. Like, say you have a thing you’re supposed to do but you really don’t want to do it so you do stuff like watch anime, cook, or even clean the entire house, just not the thing itself lol.
You do those other things because it requires less motivation and hence dopamine than THE thing. Apparently, you could wait it out until you have enough dopamine to eventually get around to doing the thing, usually as the deadline approaches and spikes the dopamine. Or you could do something that you perceive as even more painful/hard, which would then spike your dopamine to get you out of a rut. The more painful/hard thing he recommends for most people is taking a cold shower.
I highly recommend you check out the episode, especially if like me, procrastination is the bane of your existence. 🥹
👨💻 What I’m Working On
The Lonely Octopus team and I have been working hard 🐙🐙🐙🐙 (there are 4 of us on the core team - comment if you can guess who 😉)
Here’s a sneak peek of a Lonely Octopus part-time schedule!
The career goal for this person here is to learn to code with a data focus to take advantage of remote work and the developments of AI. Also, as we go into the recession, companies are once again following the trend of laying people off and hiring contractors and freelancers. This is why her study plan is catered towards building up a portfolio to eventually build diversified income streams through freelance jobs to supplement her full-time job as a physician’s assistant. 😊
Of course, your study plan will be custom based on your experience level, time commitment, lifestyle, interests, career goals etc. Some people may want to focus on landing a traditional 9-5 data job. Some people may want to upskill at their current job or for their own company. Some people are most excited about learning AI tools. 🤖 Do let me know in the comments what your thoughts are about this study plan and your own career!
In any case, regardless of your current job or your interest in coding, data science, or anything else - I highly recommend everyone spend some time thinking about what their dream career (and lifestyle) looks like. Here is the video of when I made my first vision board. ⭐
I genuinely believe that knowing how to self-study and executing a well-thought-out career plan can take you places you couldn’t even imagine. Like seriously, I quit my job a year ago and made this video when I quit Meta. I’m still terrified and ngl there have been really hard times (ref old newsletters lol) but I think I’ve come a long way and am excited to keep leveling up with you guys. 💜
P.S. All constructive feedback is greatly appreciated :)
-Tina
How do I get onto one of these Lonely Octopus Part-time schedule? I have the same goal as this person but like a deeper focus on ML and DL.))
Having lived as a digital nomad for several months now, I can completely empathize with the experience of lugging around your possessions in a suitcase. But since you have a home now, I'm sure it feels great to have a stability in your life. 😃