V2 Tina

🐈‍⬛ Life

Hi friend! How’s the week going for you?

I’m still in Seoul, South Korea! I met up with one of my high school friends who I hadn’t seen in 10 years! There’s something about high school friends that even though we hadn’t talked for years, we bonded again immediately. We have all matured so much and reconnecting has been amazing. It’s like this really strong support system with no questions asked despite whatever the fuck happened. 👀

So I said this on stream at some point, but V2 Tina does not wear black anymore. For reals. 😂 I’ve actually been wearing a lot of white!

Tina V1

Tina V2

(๑*ᗜ*) Anime

I may no longer be a weeb.

📖 Books

I’m almost done listening to the David and Goliath audiobook!

For every Goliath, there is also a David.

Gladwell talks about this theory called remote misses. The theory was developed by Canadian psychiatrist J.T. MacCurdy when he was reviewing the aftermath of World War II.

During the war, Germans wanted to overtake London by bombing the entire city, which was predicted to kill hundreds of thousands of people and leave millions injured. The British military feared that this would cause mass chaos which would subsequently lead to an economic catastrophe. The bombing did kill hundreds of thousands of people and left millions injured. Yet, they observed that the majority of Londoners seemed unfazed.

life goes on.

So why were most Londoners unfazed? The answer is that there are 3 groups of people:

💀 people who were killed

😱 near misses

😓 remote misses

People who were killed were…well dead. Many people who were near misses felt the blast and horror and were left traumatized. But people who were remote misses actually began to feel invincible. People are often afraid of fear itself, and conquering such fear produces a sense of exhilaration. This feeling of exhilaration and relief in turn promotes self-confidence, which is the precursor of courage. Since there were more remote misses than near misses, most Londoners were remote misses, explaining why most of them were quite unfazed and became the backbone of rebuilding London again.

Now in addition to this:

For every remote miss who becomes stronger, there are countless near misses who are crushed by what they have been through. There are times and places, however, when all of us depend on people who have been hardened by their experiences.

The point that Gladwell is trying to make is that when something terrible happens, society will go on because most people are remote misses. But even those who are near misses are not doomed. Most will be crushed, but some may actually be better off. IMO you have more agency than you think. ❤️

Too often, we make the same mistake as the British did and jump to the conclusion that there is only one kind of response to something terrible and traumatic. There isn’t. There are two.

* This article helped me summarize things and gets lots of credit!

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🌻 Learning & Productivity

What I’m starting to appreciate more is minimalistic productivity. Core productivity? Don’t know if there’s a term for it but what I mean is that now that I’m on the move and my lifestyle is not as stable as it used to be, I can’t go through my intricate productivity routines. Like this timed lockbox I talked about in an earlier newsletter, I’m not going to haul it across continents.

I used to put my phone in here and the keys to my fridge.

Instead, I went back to the principles. Really from everything I’ve read and learned about productivity, what it came down to is:

1️⃣ Figuring out what are the most important things for my personal productivity and happiness.

2️⃣ How to incorporate those things into my daily life.

Like many things in life, sounds super simple, but it required a lot of introspection and experimentation. For me, it’s all about structure and consistency in 4 major parts of my life:

📅 I need defined times for learning and work, or else I spiral into degeneracy.

🍔 I need to do intermittent fasting or else I feel sluggish.

🤾‍♀️ I need to get in 3 - 4 workouts a week or else I have no energy.

👥 I need to have at least 1 meaningful social interaction a day or else I feel depressed and isolated. Unfortunately talking to the person at the grocery store does not count.

Everything else is nice but not necessary. Although I don’t have as many things and a less predictable schedule, I make sure to fit these 4 things into my schedule. No negotiations. Some days I study and work less, fast for fewer hours, work out for a shorter amount of time, have a shorter conversation etc. But I have to do these things, or else I know shit will hit the fan, and it’s so not worth it.

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👨‍💻 What I’m Working On

OKOK I LIED. I said Lonely Octopus would be ready by today AND WE DID ACTUALLY GET A FULL DRAFT DONE. But then I realized that there were a couple of things I really wanted to include…so next week Tuesday 09/06!

The soft launch will be emailed to newsletter subs first. ❤️ We’re only looking for 16 - 24 octopi for the beta, and I know some of y’all here are interested. We’re doing first come first serve if it’s a good fit, so I wanted to give y’all first dibs! 🐙

In the meantime, here’s a diagram that our designer Rex did that shows how Lonely Octopus works from a high level:

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💻 Today’s coding challenge (SQL/Python)

🤔 For people who don’t pay attention the first time

Display a list of users who took the same training lessons more than once on the same day. Output their usernames, training IDs, dates and the number of times they took the same lesson.

users_training

training_details

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! ALL constructive feedback is greatly appreciated! I also wanted to make a note that I’m so sorry if I didn’t get a chance to answer your email because there are just not enough hours in a day. 😭 I read every single one, and I’m genuinely so grateful for everybody that emails me their stories.

-Tina