# Victories

This is a document that will contain the victories that I've had, things that I'm proud of. It will contain both major and minor victories.

Checkout my [failures](https://matthandzel.com/failures) as well!

## Victories

September 2025: Kicked off the Longevity Biotech Fellowship, solo-traveled to Spain.
August 2025: Became a research assistant for [TIMAN](https://timan.cs.illinois.edu/)
August 2025: Started the Masters of Computer Science degree program UIUC.
August 2025: Solo-traveled the bay area for 2 weeks.
August 2025: Completed my internship, got highly positive feedback from managers.
July 2025: My team placed first at [[chicago-startup-weekend]]!
June 2025: I sky-dived! I was completely terrified
May 2025: I completed my undergraduate degree requirements with a 4.0.
May 2025: I went to a party felt extremely confident, I was an accidental rizzler, I made people laugh and felt connected.
April 2025: I stopped my addictive phone usage and consumption!
April 23rd 2025: I gave my speech on lifelogging and I spoke clearly.
April 25th 2025: I ran and completed a marathon!
Spring 2025: I did salsa classes and got out of my comfort zone.
Spring 2025: I won a dance competition at the Zagłoba bal.
Spring 2025: I gave my ice breaker speech for toastmasters
Spring 2025: Declared myself President of SIGAIDA and successfully ran engaging meetings
Winter 2024: Ran 17.5 miles!
Winter 2024: Ran a half-marathon in 2:28 hours after waking up at 4:45 and traveling home with 2 weeks of training.
Fall 2024: Zagloba club I went outside my comfort zone and did karaoke, I also danced for them for Wigilia.
Fall 2024: Started being an undergraduate research assistant
Fall 2024: Project manager for Universum
Fall 2024: 4.0 GPA when taking 6 computer science courses, 3 graduate courses, 3 other cs courses, 21 credit hours. Machine Learning for Signal Processing, Machine Learning for Bioinformatics, Advanced Computational Topics in Robotics, Wireless IoT, Numerical Methods, and Ethics for Computer Science.
Summer 2024: After break-up and being burnt out, I gained weight to 208 lbs. I was visibly fat. I then lost weight and got down to 192 lbs before college started. I did this in a month and a half from fasting and discipline.
Summer 2024: I took 12 credit hours over the summer (Data Visualization, Programing Languages and Compilers, ANTH 105, and JJC HIST 172), while working a full time job (40+ hours/week) at Argonne National Labs
Spring 2024: 4.0 GPA taking 18 credit hours, 5 CS courses + 1 psyc course. CS446, 341, 374, 361, 222, and PSYC 250
Fall 2023: I self studied for Calc 3, Comp Sci 1 & 2, Linear Algebra, Discrete Math and passed the proficiency exams.
Spring 2023: In one year, I studied for AP Bio, AP Calc BC, AP Physics C, AP Comp Sci A & Principles, AP French. I got a 5 on all of them (except for principles).
Spring 2023: Made it to the world championships for VEX Robotics
Spring 2023: Got accepted into UIUC for Computer Science
Spring 2023: Lead my high school's ESRP team. A girl asked for my instagram after I presented our project.
Spring 2022: Was in Orchesis and performed in front of school as the only boy in my group.
Spring 2022: For my FIRST Tech Challenge team I was the lead programmer and our team got the "highest scoring rookie award" in Illinois.
Spring 2022: Got an internship as a software developer intern at WM International.
Summer 2020: I started reading self-help books, "How to Win Friends and Influence People", "Mastery", "The Magic of Thinking Big".
Spring 2020: I taught myself how to program in Python and made my first project https://github.com/MattHandzel/findValueOfInvestmentsOverTime
Spring 2019: I lost around 40 lbs before high school, and continued to lose weight until I hit my lowest of 145 lbs during water polo of spring 2020.
<2017-2019>: I started thinking for myself and got out of my born-into religion.

Victories

# Communities I Am a Part of

The purpose of this document is to list out the communities I identify with, participate in, or am interested in.

### Personal Affiliation Scale

1- I am barely affiliated, know about it, I might have a friend or two that is part of it
5- I am interested, would describe myself as that label
10- I actively participate in that community

- Personal affiliation: a 1 means barely affiliated, know about it, a 5 is interested, would describe myself as that label, a 10 is actively participate in that community

### Communities Table

| Community               | Description                                                                                        | Personal Affiliation                                                        | What I've Done                                                                                                                                                       |
| ----------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Neovim                  | People that use Neovim for as their text editor and enjoy configuring it                           | 7                                                                           | [dotfiles](https://github.com/MattHandzel/dotfiles/tree/main/nvim/.config/nvim) ![nvim_setup_screenshot.png]                                                         |
| Polish Community        | People that speak Polish and are interested in Polish culture                                      | 8.5                                                                         | Trip to Poland ; Member of [Zagłoba Polish Club](https://www.instagram.com/zaglobapolishclub/) ; Performed at [Wigilia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv3IAm9zr40) |
| Keyboards               | People that use or are interested in ergonomic keyboards, mechanical keyboard, split keyboard      | 8                                                                           | [Corne](www.github.com/MattHandzel/Corne)                                                                                                                            |
| Line Dancing            | People that enjoy line dancing and want to learn more about it                                     | 5                                                                           | Favorite Songs: American Kids, Creepin, Levels ; I went to Red Rock Saloon every Tuesday from June-July at Madison Wisconsin                                         |
| Running                 | People that run                                                                                    | 3.5                                                                         | Ran in the Christie Clinic Race Weekend Marathon on April 24th 2025                                                                                                  |
| Quantified Self         | People that record information about themselves so they can improve it                             | 6                                                                           | my [website](matthandzel.com), [text-mining on Obsidian Vault](https://x.com/handzelmatt/status/1975176252840624156)...                                              |
| Lifelogging             | People that record everything about themselves                                                     | 5                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Rationalism             | People that are interested in rationality and improving their thinking                             | 4                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| AI Safety               | People that are interested in AI safety and ensuring AI is safe for humanity                       | 4                                                                           | Frequent Robert Miles content consumer ; visited FAR Labs in Berkeley ; I have a few friends who are into AI safety                                                  |
| Founders                | People that start companies and have interests in entrepreneurship                                 | 3.5                                                                         |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Longevity               | People that are interested in living a long life and improving their health                        | 9                                                                           | (Longevity Biotech Fellowship 7), (TransVision Madrid 2025)                                                                                                          |
| Readers                 | People that read books and want to discuss them                                                    | 10                                                                          |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Second Brain            | People that are interested in building a second brain and using tools like Obsidian                | 9                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| The Residency           | People that want to build impressive and cool things without being limited by the public           | 3                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Writers                 | People that write online and publish online                                                        | 4                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Neuroscience            | People that are interested in neuroscience and how the brain works                                 | 3                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Longtermism             | People that are interested in longtermism and ensuring the future is good for humanity             | 5                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Y Combinator            | People that are interested in Y Combinator and the startup world                                   | 3                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Philosophy              | People that are interested in philosophy and discussing philosophical ideas                        | 4                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Bio Technology          | People that are interested in biotechnology and how it can be used to improve health and longevity | 3                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| UIUC Alumni             | People that went to UIUC and want to connect with other alumni                                     | 7                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Skydivers               | People that skydive and want to connect with other skydivers                                       | 3                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Atheists                | People that don't believe in a religion                                                            | 8                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Linux/GNU               | People that use Linux and GNU operating systems and want to connect with other users               | 6                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| NixOS                   | People that use NixOS                                                                              | 5                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Effective Altruism      | People that want to do the most good with their life and resources                                 | 5                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| French-speaking         | People that speak French or are learning French                                                    |                                                                             |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Traveling               | People that enjoy traveling and exploring new places                                               |                                                                             |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Severance-watcher       | People that watch and discuss the show _Severance_                                                 |                                                                             | I watched seasons 1 and 2 as soon as they came out. Half way through season 2 I became extremely confused. I hate the ending.                                        |
| Biking                  | People that enjoy biking for commuting, exercise, or leisure                                       |                                                                             |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Dancers                 | People that enjoy dancing in general                                                               |                                                                             |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Ball-room dancers       | People that are interested in ballroom dancing                                                     |                                                                             |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Mark Manson             | People that read or follow Mark Manson’s work on self-development                                  |                                                                             |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Cayden Pierce           | People that follow Cayden Pierce and his ideas/projects                                            |                                                                             |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Optimizing productivity | People that enjoy optimizing their productivity                                                    | 2                                                                           |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Voidstar Labs           | People that are part of or interested in Voidstar Labs projects                                    |                                                                             |                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Neurotech               |                                                                                                    | People that are interested in neurotechnology and brain-computer interfaces | 5                                                                                                                                                                    | Part of [Neurotech](https://uiucneurotech.web.illinois.edu/team/) August 2023 - May 2025 |

Communities I Am A Part Of

# Technical Portfolio

How can I create a remarkable technical portfolio?

I need to learn what makes something remarkable
I need to learn what makes a good technical portfolio

Technical Portfolio

# Things Ive Done

Maybe I should have a "Thing I've Done" section that contains _everything_ I've done. This includes dancing, running marathon, taking certain classes, reading books, etc. and then from there I can tag it with certain attributes to be used elsewhere (for example, if it has the "Employement" attribute then it will be in the `matthandzel.com/work` page, if it's a hobby it will be in the `matthandzel.com/hobbies` page, if it's a book, it will have a "amount done" and be in the `matthandzel.com/reading-list` page.

Things Ive Done

# Technical Approach

This is an outline technically how I will do this website.

- Oracle free-tier machine for hosting, if this is not beefy enough I can have my personal machine host this or buy cloud compute
- Supabase for storing my personal vault data as well as user data
- Buy website domain name on namecheap. Also, perhaps, buy email domain on there as well.

### Synchronizing Personal Website With My Data

I have many data sources, each data source has it's own method of synchronization. For every method, do that synchronization. If that data source is public, then copy its data to a database on supabase, oracle, etc.

#### Data Mining

For each 'different type' of data, (dailies, relationships, etc.) create a separate function that takes in the directory the data is stored, does processing on it, normalizes it, and stores it in a database.

Depending on the folder, specify data mining techniques, prompts, etc.

### Website

The website will be made up of many different components, the components are defined either as separate files, or in [[components]]. Each component should be atomic and it will source data from my obsidian vault.

I want all of the copy to be a function of markdown documents. For example, the "About This Site" section should be populated by a preprocessing stage, where the pre-processor looks into my obsidian vault, finds a markdown file called about-this-site.md, parses the contents of that file, puts it into a database, and then the website reads from that database.

### Architecture

So the architecture of this application is that there's going to be an obsidian vault on my like laptop, computer, whatever. And then, whenever I want to update the data on or for my website, I will run. Program. This is probably a python script, and it will. The python script will have many different functions that will look at my obsidian Vault and like, find files and do processing of.

It'll do processing of the data that I have. And then it will take all that information and then put that into a database. For development that databases will be local in the future of the database will be online. And then. When a user? Right. When a user opens my website, it will use the information from.

Though, like the website, when it's being rendered. It'll use information from my database. That is online.

So that? My webs. My personal website can be updated in somewhat real time. Whenever I run this data processing script.

My obsidian Vault is.

Tilda slash obsidian/ main/. And this is obsidian Vault and. And then the python script. I'll make specific functions that point to specific files, and then does parsing on them.

Technical Approach

# Security

Add a Captcha to the contact form to prevent spam submissions. This will help ensure that only legitimate messages are sent through the form, reducing the risk of spam and unwanted content on the website.

Security

# Resume

Include my resume, buff it up with _everything_ I did from the employement, project, etc.

Resume

# Relationships

On my website I can store things such as:

1. For each (consenting) person, when was the last time we were in contact?
2. What did we talk about
3. How "close" are we
4. Their information

Relationships

# Purpose

My online website should be my entire online brand. It should have everything anyone would need to know about me on there. It should combine all of instagram, linkedin, etc.

For example, my internship at epic I should have on there, all of my adventures, accomplishments, periods in my life

My online website should use data about my life from my obsidian vault.

From this website, someone can get a hollistic view of who I am as a person.

By building this so that it is available on my website, anything I put on there I implicitly build a tracking system.

My website is me "living in public"

For most of my areas of my life, my systems, interests, have them be visible on my website

A principle for this website is the idea of others being able to quickly and easily interact with my ideas, leave me notes. This can be component specific. For example, in the physiological health metrics component, someone can select a part of the chart and give me a suggestion for that. For the map component, someone can highlight a section and tell me about how there is something very cool there. They can also highlight it and say they will be there in the future. Give a lot of interactivity to this. Allow the user to login and write their name on my personal website, by going on my personal website, they are personally interacting with me.

I want to record how people interact with my website, using something like posthog.

Purpose

# Projects

Put _all_ of my projects on my website, including writing projects, home improvement projects, programming projects, etc.

Projects

# Map

The purpose of this map is so that anyone can look on my personal website and see where I'll be in the future. I can embed this into an email, a footer for an email, my personal newsletter, etc. With this, I can "create" luck, (my network can give me ideas about trips I plan on going. If they plan on being in the same area at the time they can say hi). I can imagine this becoming generalized so that everyone has a map like this so their network can see where they will be.

Maybe for my network, other people can write when and where they will be in the future and then I can see this on my map. I imagine this being in an email, someone is going on a trip to Spain in September, and then they can click on the map, a date, and then it will send me an email where they will be in the future. This is just me getting more value from my network. This should be accessible to anyone on my website. They also should be able to write a description of what they're doing there, why they are going, etc. This means my website won't be just a static website.

On a map I can visualize a lot of things, specifically my travels, where I've been and where I intend on being in the future. I image a map with a timeline where the user can scrub forward and backwards to see how I have traveled, they can maybe select a range of time (example October 2024-January 2025) and then see where I've been during that time.

This system can perhaps interact with my personal network? It can show events in my life, such as when and where I met specific people during my travels.

I can/want to do something like this: https://aaronparecki.com/2012/03/06/7/everywhere-ive-been-gps-data-portraits

# Lifelog

In this page, I will include my lifelog from my Looki, or other thing. I will curate it for the public to see :)

Lifelog

# Introduction

On `matthandzel.com/introduction`, I will have a video that will introduce who I am, how I am doing

Introduction

# Inspiration

https://kylejeong.com/
https://aidanjs.com/
https://jeremykintana.com
https://caydenpierce.com
https://howisfelix.today/?

---

# Digital gardens / note-graphs

- **Andy Matuschak — evergreen notes / public notebook.** Great example of notes-as-thinking-space (bi-directional links, evergreen notes). ([Andyʼs working notes][1])
  _What to borrow:_ the “notes as UI” approach and minimal metadata for each note.

- **Maggie Appleton — visual digital garden & “historical trails.”** Beautiful visual essays and patterns (good examples of showing journeys & trails through ideas). ([maggieappleton.com][2])
  _What to borrow:_ visual/illustrated essays and the “trail” metaphor for showing where you’ve been intellectually or physically.

- **Joel Hooks — “your friend Joel’s digital garden.”** Clean digital-garden layout + a NOW page. ([joelhooks.com][3])
  _What to borrow:_ simple garden index, tag filters, and a readable “now” summary.

- **Sindhu (sindhu.live) — personal garden + now/guestbook.** Compact, readable garden with a “now” and garden/lore split. ([sindhu.live][4])
  _What to borrow:_ approachable “garden” UI and season/now updates.

# Travel / maps / location timelines

- **Aaron Parecki — GPS logs, “Everywhere I’ve Been” maps, monthly summaries.** Aaron publishes GPS-derived maps and monthly travel summaries — a direct model for your travel timeline/map idea. ([aaronparecki.com][5])
  _What to borrow:_ ingest GPS/GPX logs to build animated “where I was” timelines and monthly map views.

- **Simon Willison — geospatial experiments, mapping infrastructure & examples.** Lots of practical mapping work and demos — useful when you build custom map features (isochrones, map tiles). ([Simon Willison’s Weblog][6])
  _What to borrow:_ pragmatic approach to self-hosting map data and building performant interactive maps.

# Quantified-self / life metrics / dashboards

- **howisFelix.today (Felix Krause) — full personal metrics site.** Tracks \~100 data types (fitness, social, computer use, weather) and visualizes them. Great example of a personal dashboard / life database. ([howisfelix.today][7], [GitHub][8])
  _What to borrow:_ data model for cross-domain metrics and the dashboard layout for asking questions of your life.

- **Maggie Delano — quantified-self projects & reports.** Longstanding QS contributor with projects and data visualizations (pomodoro tracking, talks). ([Maggie Delano][9])
  _What to borrow:_ how to present self-tracking as narrative reports and conference talks.

- **Buster Benson — notes + “life in weeks” and yearly reviews.** Great examples of periodic life reviews and compact visualizations. ([Buster’s Notes][10])
  _What to borrow:_ how to structure annual / weekly retrospectives as shareable pages.

# Now-pages, timelines & “what I’m doing”

- **Aaron Parecki — /now and “monthly summaries” (map + stats).** Simple, machine-friendly now page plus monthly summary with travel map. ([aaronparecki.com][11])
  _What to borrow:_ automated now/monthly pages powered by scripts.

- **Joel Hooks — now + digital-garden entries for narrative timeline feel.** Good for blending “now” with longer-term notes. ([main--joelhooks-com.netlify.app][12])

# Community / memberships / “semantic map of communities”

- **Maggie Appleton — patterns about gatherings & “gathering structures.”** Useful design patterns for visualizing communities and events in context. ([maggieappleton.com][13])
  _What to borrow:_ pattern language for representing communities and events.

- **Rach Smith — accessible digital garden + “month notes & numbers.”** A practical example of a garden that includes periodic summary pages and tags for community topics. ([rachsmith.com][14])

# One-stop collections (to mine more live personal sites)

- **A Digital Garden Inventory (Medium)** — curated list of \~50 real personal digital gardens (handy for finding more live personal sites to copy). ([Medium][15])

---

If you want, next I can do one of these _concrete_ follow-ups (pick one and I’ll run it right now):

1. **Deep dive: top 6 live sites** — take screenshots of the 6 best matches (map, quantified, garden, timeline) and write a 1-paragraph “lift/steal” plan for each (layout + components + minimal tech).
2. **Prototype checklist** — pick 3 live examples and produce a tiny page wireframe (which components go where + data fields to store).
3. **Starter repo** — a minimal Next.js starter that includes: Obsidian markdown import, a simple map page (Leaflet/Mapbox), and a demo quantified-data dashboard (mock data).

Which of those would you like me to do next?

[1]: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "About these notes - Andy Matuschak"
[2]: https://maggieappleton.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Maggie Appleton"
[3]: https://joelhooks.com/digital-garden/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "My blog is a digital garden, not a blog - Joel Hooks"
[4]: https://sindhu.live/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "sindhu.live — a digital garden"
[5]: https://aaronparecki.com/2012/03/06/7/everywhere-ive-been-gps-data-portraits?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Everywhere I've Been: Data Portraits Powered by 3.5 years of"
[6]: https://simonwillison.net/tags/maps/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Simon Willison on maps"
[7]: https://howisfelix.today/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "howisFelix.today? · Felix Krause"
[8]: https://github.com/KrauseFx/FxLifeSheet?utm_source=chatgpt.com "KrauseFx/FxLifeSheet: Tracking the key metrics of my life - GitHub"
[9]: https://www.maggiedelano.com/garden/quantified-self?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Quantified Self - Maggie Delano"
[10]: https://busterbenson.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Buster's Notes - Notes"
[11]: https://aaronparecki.com/now/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Now - Aaron Parecki"
[12]: https://main--joelhooks-com.netlify.app/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "your friend Joel's digital garden"
[13]: https://maggieappleton.com/garden/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "The Garden of Maggie Appleton"
[14]: https://rachsmith.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Home | Rach Smith's digital garden"
[15]: https://medium.com/%40raysims/a-digital-garden-inventory-d6450fe74b4 "A Digital Garden Inventory. Nearly fifty Digital Garden examples… | by Raymond D Sims | Medium"

Inspiration

# Interests

I want to show my interests page, some of my specific interests I have, what content I've consumed related to that interest, and what projects I've done related to that interest.

Interests

# Design

I want this design to look unique, somewhat futuristic but not cringy. I want it to represent me as a person, I'm into quantified self, transhumanism, rationalism, etc. I want you to make something unique.

Design

# Content Ive Consumed

Similar to [[jeremy-kintana|jeremy-kintana's]] substack, I want to show what articles, books, etc. I've consumed and my thoughts on them. I think this is extremely important to publish my thoughts and it allows me to interact with the content more, which improes my recall, and others can talk to me about it.

Content Ive Consumed

# Cost of an Injury

What happened:

Directly after:
Had to clean up the blood from my sheets
Had to repair my bike

Got a concussion
Bruises on the left side of my body
Limited elbow mobility, minor fracture, cellulitis

The cost of falling off my bike:

2 poor nights of sleep
1.5 hours for docker visit, traveling, wait
20.60 for medicine
X for X-ray

I'm assuming I am half as productive because of 1. the pain i experiencem aking it difficult to think, 2. it is more difficult to type, 3. needing to take more frequent breaks.
I worked X total hours in this state

Sept. 8.
$25, 2 hours of time at doctors.

Sept 9
$0, 1 hour going to doctor

~5 other hours informing family and asking for advice, taking photos, keeping tabs on progression, taking medicine,

Not to mention all of the pain that I went through.

Cost Of An Injury

# Components

- Went skydiving
- Ran a marathon
- Ran to work

[[victory-jar]]
"Ideal job"

### "Organizational affiliations"

I have a timeline of the organizations I have affiliated myself with, photos, things I've done there, accomplishments.

### Incongruent beliefs/insecurities

There might be value to putting up my insecurities on my website. I can make this have nice graphics for each insecurity and my personal progress as to how I feel I am doing with each of them

### Habit Tracker

Take the habits from my journal and then visualize them.

### How I spend my time

Take my calendar and visualize how I am spending my time. Do rough categorization.

### Fashion

Best fits, all my clothes I have (in case someone wants to borrow them)

### Financial snapshot

Looking at my network, my budget, my spending habits (by taking my bank statements, credit card statements, etc. and visualizing them). Visualize income, expenses

### Random videos with me

Some random vidoes of me in public, talking with friends, recording conversations, similar to what [[jeremy-kintana]] does.

### Physiological metrics

My physiological metrics, such as my heart rate, sleep, etc. I can visualize this in a way that is easy to understand. Anyone can query it from my smartwatch

### Metrics

All other metrics for other systems I track should be visualized

### Learning

My anki desks, my status, what I've reviewed

### CBT

Some thoughts I am having, what types of cognitive distortions are plaguing me

### People interactions

If i interact with/mention a person in my journal and they publically want to be shown on my website, note that I interacted with that person on that day.

### Capture data

Take ideas from my capture, quotes, images, etc. the ones that have `is_public` to be true can be displayed and searched through on my website.

### Relationships

View who my friends are, what they do, their socials, all in a searchable semantic web/graph.

### Time management visualization

[[100-blocks]] For a given month, visualize what I do at any given day.

### Content I consume (can use capture fo rthis)

### Victory and failure jars

Display some of my victories and successes from my victory and failure jar.

### Life audits, best and ideal versions of myself.

Write up what my life audits are, what I think about my life, share it with others.

### Skill tree

a skill tree of the skills I have, how well i think i do, evidence for them, related to TalentOS

### Projects

For some of my projects, like marathon, uiuc, each semester, moving, san francisco trip, write up information about them, what I've learned, reflection, etc. Something like a progress bar.

### Values

Write up what my values are

### Interests

### Goals

Components

# Communities

The purpose of this is so that others can see what communities I am a part of. I want them to be able to search semantically and by keywords.

I want others to know what communities I am a part of. I have a markdown document [[communities-i-am-a-part-of]] that lists the communities I am a part of, how much I identify with that community, as well as a description. I want others to be able to visualize it. I am thinking about a component at "matthandzel.com/communities" that is a semantic map of the communities I am a part of.

What are some better ways to visualize what communities I am a part of?

- I can have a photo of me at every community gathering/"in the outfit" of the community
  - for example, polish community I can be at the Polish club
  - running community I can be on a run, etc.

Communities

# Blog

I want it so that all of my ideas in my second brain are markdown viewable, but I also want to have a more structured place for reading longer-form essays.

Blog

# Accomplishments and Failures

As part of my goal to not be a people pleaser anymore. I want to publish an extensive list of my accomplishments and failures.

I have a tendency to diminish my successes because I want people to like me, and jealous takes away space from liking people.
I also have a tendency to hide my failures (as most people do). By publishing them online, I hope I can "heal". (plus I won't have to worry about people finding anything out, if everything is already out there).

Accomplishments And Failures

1757029741 Fzvx

Bucket List

# About This Site

Hi! I'm Matt Handzel. I'm running an experiment where I'm trying to put the 'personal' in personal website. I want this website to entirely represent who I am, what I care about, how I think, what are my "inputs", and "outputs".

## What You Can Find Here

Here you can get a glimpse into my life through various lenses. You can explore my [bucket list](/bucket-list), see my active [to-do list](/todos), and browse the [projects](/projects) I'm working on, including my [project ideas](/project-ideas).

I also share the [principles](/principles) that guide me, my daily [habits](/dailies), and the [communities](/communities) I'm a part of.

If you're interested in what I'm consuming, you can see the [books I've read](/content-consumed) and other interesting [links](/links) I've found. I also have dedicated pages for my [line dancing](/line-dancing).

For a more direct look into my mind, you can read my captured [thoughts](/thoughts), or even check out my [failures](/failures) and [victories](/victories). I also document my personal [standards](/standards) and, for the curious, there's even a page about [dating me](/date-me).

## Why Am I Doing This?

I'm very much into quantified self and I have a fear of posting myself online.

For those that know me, this is a place where you can check in and see how I'm doing.
For those that don't know me, this is a place for you to get an authentic understanding of who I am.

## How It Works

All content originates from markdown files in my Obsidian vault, which gets processed by Python scripts, stored in a database, and then rendered through atomic React components.

Feel free to explore, interact, and let me know your thoughts at matt [at] matthandzel.com

About This Site

Scrum

To work with the [[backlog]], use the [[ooda-loop]]

- create a list of everything your project needs to be done.
- take the list and sort it based on priority. [[deciding-priority]]

- decide what you are going to work on
- act on that decision

- get feedback from your environment
- redo the above steps with your new information

If you know your velocity, you can take your "point" budget and decide what tasks to do using that point budget

Remember, you probably will never finish your backlog.

Working With The Backlog

# Waterfall Method

The waterfall method is a product management methodology where you develop the product in explicit steps. You start with product specifications, design, development, testing, and then release.

The author of SCRUM thinks this waterfall methodology doesn't work for a number of reasons:

- specifications and requirements are not stable
- there are inherent problems with product estimations that make a plan less effective as time goes on
- there is not iterative improvement, you finish the whole project at the end, little feedback during the process to see if you're on track.

Waterfall Method

There's a claim in the book that around 85% of effort in a company is wasted. That struck me—how does that apply at Epic? One common reason for waste is market misalignment or shifting direction, which is really frustrating for employees.

It also got me wondering: in other areas of life, how much effort is wasted? Is inefficiency just a human trait? I think so. I want to spend more time reflecting on this deeply.

I'm also curious about the relationship between my phone usage—or lack of it—and my productivity. Does not using my phone help me focus more?

The book presents an idea that waste is a crime, breaking it down into three types: waste through unreasonableness, inconsistency, and poor outcomes. Examples include inventory waste, not doing it right the first time, overexertion, and emotional waste from unrealistic expectations.

Wasted Effort

# Valve Company Example of Employee Empowerment

Valve would be agreat company to work in. Their employees feel empowered and are all on the same "level"

Valve Company Example Of Employee Empowerment

The book outlines types of waste, starting with multitasking. Multitasking leads to failure—it's a myth. What we call multitasking is actually task switching, and each switch erodes focus.

People talking on the phone (even hands-free) are statistically more likely to get into car accidents. More passengers in the car also increase accident risk. We often overestimate our ability to multitask. Ironically, those who multitask most tend to be the worst at it.

This makes me think: are there tasks that _don’t_ suffer from multitasking? Like walking or breathing—these are automatic. So maybe the problem is attention-bound tasks, not background ones.

Multitasking might be more a symptom of poor systems than a necessity. If your workplace demands multitasking to stay productive, something’s broken. There's huge cognitive effort involved in switching contexts.

Waste Through Multitasking

Criteria for creating a user story is INVEST:

- Independent
- Negotiable
- Valuable
- Estimable
- Small
- Testable

User Story

The way the world works is broken.

The majority of companies do work in a way that is fundamentally inefficient. This leads to huge waste of human time, effort, and money.

An example given in the book was the FBI computer system. They were working with paper and people had to make paper copies of their reports. The previous projects were extremely over budget and over deadline.

The Scrum methodology aims to solve these inefficiencies.

The Way The World Works Is Broken

The daily stand-up is a core Scrum practice, held every day and limited to a maximum of 15 minutes. Its purpose is to align the team and surface any blockers quickly. Three essential questions guide this meeting:

1. What did you do yesterday to help the team finish the sprint?
2. What will you do today to help the team finish the sprint?
3. What obstacles are getting in the team’s way?

There’s a question about whether these three questions are truly optimal. For example, asking “What could have gotten in your way but didn’t?” could lead to proactive learning and sharing of tips among teammates.

Team members choose their own tasks collaboratively each day. The Scrum Master, who facilitates these meetings, does not assign tasks.

[[stand-up-meeting-philosophy]]

Stand Up

# Team Size
The magic number for the size of teams are 7 plus or minus 2 but even three could be functional Velocity slows down when you have more people this is related to Brooks Law and software development where adding more manpower to A project makes it later the reason is because these people hold you behind because you do re explain the project and there's more people that need to talk during meetings etcetera A large scheme takes about five times the amount of hours and a small team would groups made up of three to seven people require 25% of the effort of nine to 20 to get the same amount of work done Another reason why this is so another reason why large teams really to more work being done is because the more people involved the more brainpower is required The are there more communication channels so you can't know who is talking to what and this grows when every person you add increases the amount almost quadratically this leads to the reason that everyone on the team should know what everyone else is doing at all times this minimizes waste it keeps things efficiency it keeps cross functionality because that if not then teams become split into smaller teams and meetings take hours instead of minutes.

Team Size

The stand-up should not be treated as a simple status update. Instead, it should function like a football huddle—where team members dynamically coordinate actions to address problems and move toward their goal.

Example from the book: A wide receiver reports an issue with a defensive lineman, prompting a blocker to offer help. The team rapidly adjusts tactics. Similarly, in Scrum, the goal is quick alignment and decisive collaboration.

Passivity in these meetings is not just unproductive; it actively harms team performance. Scrum Masters should address and correct this immediately.

Effective teams leave the meeting knowing the most important task to accomplish next. Collaboration can dramatically speed up work—what one person estimates as a day’s effort might be completed in an hour with help.

Stand Up Meeting Philosophy

The Sprint is a core idea in Scrum.

- The purpose of a scrim is that you make visible progress as soon as possible and you show it to stakeholders as soon as possible to get [[feedback]]

In sprint planning, tasks are organized into columns like "Backlog," "Doing," "Done," and "Tested." These columns should be tailored to the specific project. Crucially, nothing should be moved to "Done" unless it's usable by the customer.

For example, with Wikispeed, if a car's turn signals are sticking, the related task isn't marked as "Done" until the issue is resolved and the user has verified it.

This implies that for an app, if a user story states they want to see their notes, the application must fully support that before marking the task as complete.

Once sprint tests are defined, nothing should be added mid-sprint. Introducing a new high-priority task during a sprint causes distraction and slows down the team due to context switching and lack of planning.

Sprint

# Sprint Retrospective
At the end of every Sprint there's a retrospective and in this the team looks closely at itself and asks questions it tries it questions interactions practices and processes it asks what can we change about how we work and what's our biggest sticking point.

Sprint Retrospective

# Simple Rules Create Emergent Behavior
This is shown in the book where the idea of Scrum is very very simple where you have weekly meetings you have tasks that you do and you have a lot of teams that eventually learn to self organize and be very productive .

Simple Rules Create Emergent Behavior

# Shu Ha Ri

Shuhari is an example from the book where the shoe phase is where you learn the rules and the forms then once you've mastered them you make innovations finally in the last state of mastery you discard forms and you just be everything is unconscious

Shu Ha Ri

The role of the Scrubmaster is that person that facilitates all meetings ensures there's transparency and helps the team discover what is getting in their way they accelerate other people as well the job of the Scrum Master is to guide the team towards continuous improvement how can we do better?

The scrum master decides _how_ to accomplish the vision.

[[ideal-scrum-team-qualities]] [[feedback-on-the-process]]

Scrum Master

Scrum For Education

# Self Optimizing System
It is better to design a system that self optimizes than it is to design a "perfect" system. This is why feedback works well?

Self Optimizing System

# Reflection on Epic Doing Waterfall

I have been using the waterfall methodology instead of scrum and it has not been succssful because of me not making it on time, and then me getting frusturated when I don't hit the goal. What I do need is to try and hit a goal, fail, see how to improve, and start over again.

Reflection On Epic Doing Waterfall

# Purpose of Scrum Master

In scrum, there is a scrum master, who's sole purpose is facilitate scrum.

Their purpose is to keep everyone's goal aligned, ask for reflection, unblock their blockers, and speed them up.

Purpose Of Scrum Master

Raw Text Speech Of Book Notes

# Product Vision

The product vision is the ideal version of the product. The product vision should be something that you can do, something that the world wants, and something your team wants to do.

Product Vision

Product risk is minimized with fast feedback.

There's different types of risks market risks, technical risks, and financial risks

- Market risks are eliminated by delivering fast
- Technical risks are also mitigated by delivery and prototyping fast

Product Risk

The product owner is the person that is ultimately responsible for converting effort from the team into value in the real world.
They do this by knowing the product, having a breadth of skills, understanding the technical domain, talking to customers.

The product owner is not the boss or the CEO. They don't give performance reviews.
The product owner should spend half their time talking with customers and the other half developing the backlog.
Product owner needs to be able to get into the mind of the customer.

Product owner characteristics:

- They know the technical domain. They need to know what can and can't be done. They need to know what will and won't bring value.
- Have to be empowered to make decisions. Should be able to balance from all stakeholders
- They need to be available to the team. Reliable, consistent avaliability.
- They need to be accountable for value (i.e. revenue, # of people coming to meetings)

They own the [[product-vision]] and the [[backlog]].

The private governor also needs to keep in mind the future of the project so where they'll be in a quarter or a year.

Product Owner

# Principle Behind Scrum

The main reason Scrum works is because of the ability to discover new information quickly, it's ability to keep you aligned with your goal.

Principle Behind Scrum

# Planning Poker

Planning poker is a technique used in Agile software development to estimate the effort or complexity of tasks. It involves team members using cards with numbers to represent their estimates, which are then revealed simultaneously to avoid bias.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker

Planning Poker

# Patterns and Rythms

People naturally fall into rhythms and patterns. Scrum leverages this by establishing daily and weekly rhythms that promote positive behaviors and discourage negative ones. The aim is to create a self-reinforcing cycle that fosters improvement and motivation.

Patterns And Rythms

# Oracle of Delphi

The Delphi method is a way to get expert opinions on a topic by asking them to answer questions anonymous and then iterating on those answers until a consensus is reached.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_method

Oracle Of Delphi

# Optimizing Teams Are More Effective Than Optimizing Individuals
There is an example in the book where they saw the difference in performers for Yale students in the computer science course and the disparity between the highest and the worst performance was about 10 times however the difference in disparity between the worst performing teams and the best performing teams was 2000 times This means that you can gain a lot more performance by improving your teams than you can by just hiring the best people or improving individuals takes much longer to improve individuals than it does simpler teams.

Optimizing Teams Are More Effective Than Optimizing Individuals

OODA is defined as:

- Orient See outcomes capableThis is a loop on making decisions:
- Observe: see the sitation as it is, not just through your perspective
- Decide: Decide on an outcome you want
- Act: Do the decision, get feedback from the environment.

This is a loop that should be done at every sprint, every incremental prodfuct release.

Ooda Loop

A minimal viable product is the bare minimum needed to extract even just a little bit of value. It should barely have any features. It is used to update the [[backlog]] and [[product vision]].

It should be laughably bad, only serve a small segment of the market, but it should just deliver value. It should be released to the customers as much as possible. If it is not ready, release it to the product owner to get their opinion on it.

Deliver your product to the public once you hit 20% of the features at the latest.

Minimal Viable Product

# No Bad People Only Bad Systems
There are no such thing as bad people only bad systems So for example a lot of us think that there are people that aren't pulling their weight to make stupid decisions or slow the people down but this is just the [[fundamental-attribution-error]]

No Bad People Only Bad Systems

The Milgram experiment was a psychological experiment where there were there was an experimenter participant in the experiment as well as an actor the experimenter told the participant to give shocks to the actor and the actor pretended to be shocked but in reality there was no no one being shot and the experiment wanted to see how participants would react to authority telling them to do something that in their consciously obviously know something wrong andWhat they found was that almost everyone gave a final shots that would've killed the participant even though they heard the participants screaming.

This shows that our environment shapes us and causes our behavior much more than we think. [[free-will]]

Milgram Experiment

# Measure Velocity

Being able to measure velocity is a key principal in Scrum, once you can measure something you can see how you can change it. You can measure your progress with [[planning-poker]], do a reflection, and see how doing that reflection increases your performance in the next sprint.

Measure Velocity

Information sharing is critical for having a successful organization.

If there are people that are hoarding information then you are actively losing productivity and it's also important that you are able to share information through individuals as well as throughout time.For example if someone has spent five hours to understand some pieces of information and you can query them in 2 minutes for that piece of information then it will save you five hours that's why sharing information is extremely important and being able to get information you want is very important.

This could be highly beneficial.Not only does the saving efficiency but it also improves the decisions made when you don't have information then it can lead to disaster

For example of this success for Bell Labs: In one team, the information sharing metric reached 90%, compared to a typical 20% in most companies. Everyone essentially knew what everyone else was doing. This level of transparency was a major asset.

The core product of modern businesses is knowledge. Therefore, maximizing shared, accessible information is crucial. It raises the question: Could a software tool be created to enhance information sharing within teams?

Information Sharing

# Ideal Scrum Team Qualities
So some qualities of an ideal screens that they should mimic that of the All Blacks rugby team Scrum teams have intense focus on the goal they're built up and energized by some chant the second is a radical collaboration between each other the 3rd is that they have a hunger to crush anything in the way and the 4th is at the universal excitement whenever anyone in the team does anything good People are not selfish on this team.

Ideal Scrum Team Qualities

# How to Do Scrum

Sprint

Show progress to stakeholder

How To Do Scrum

Great teams are cross functional autonomous empowered and they have a transcendent purpose Their cross functional meaning they do a lot of the things of the organization because they have a lot of people from accounting to marketing they're able to move very fast and they're also be able to live somewhere independently for the rest of the company.

Great teams were transcended meaning that they have a sense of purpose beyond the ordinary this is a self realized goal that allows them to move into the extraordinary in a very real way the decision to not be average to be great changes the way they view themselves and what they're capable of

-A story of this is from the author where the author was was a cadet at a Military Academy and he was part of the worst team but that team got together and they work together to try to improve themselves week after week eventually they became the best team. They all work together and eventually they marched at some guy's funeral.

Teams are also autonomous meaning that their self organizing and self managing they have the power to make their own decisions about how they do their jobs and are empowered to make those decisions stick.

- The reason why being empowered and acting autonomously is that only a single team is able to exactly understand what's the best thing to do for them in the next moment this is a little bit of a slippery slope because it assumes that everyone there is confident and working towards the same goal therefore if you have confident people and if you are all aligning your goal then being autonomous is the best way to do things

Finally cross function meaning that they have all the skills needed to complete the project planning design production sales distribution and those skills feed and reinforce each other. If you have all these people in one team then when you're making decisions you could think about it from everyone's perspective meaning the whole team's perspective instead of just your own.

- The main reason why having a cross functional team is so powerful is that you have everybody in some team meaning that there's less information lost if everyone attends every stand up meeting then people know exactly where the project is and you don't need to communicate as much Moreover when having a more diverse set of skills there's more creativity that you have.

Great Teams

Because creating and following plans will inherently cause you to move in the wrong direction, it is important to inspect where you are going and ask yourself if what you are doing is the right thing to do.

If it is, great, if it is not, pivot.

Goal Alignment

fundamental attribution error We we miss we underestimate how much impact your environment has on ourselves so fundamentally the fundamental attribution error states that we tend to underestimate the impact of the environment on other people's behavior and we and so so we think that people are person responsible for their behavior but they are like relate to this is that we don't know how much of an impact the system has our own on our own behavior. Because the environment has a humongous impact on ourselves that means that if we improve the system by a lot then we can get better outcoming behaviors from people.

When people do bad things we attribute to their personalities but the Milgram experiment proves that this is incorrect.

REFLECTION:: Think about how the fundamental attribution error relates with being split brain and how humans don't know why they make their own decisions.

PRINCIPAL: live and work hard for the future do what's hard and good for the long term not just for the short term
PRINCIPAL: Environmental change trump's personal efforts by a humongous margin we are completely blind to how our environment shapes our behavior

Fundamental Attribution Error

The act of planning is very useful, it helps you take a large project, break it down into manageable chunks, and then work on those.

There is a problem with planning, when you create a plan you know the least you will know about the problem, so if you try and create a plan that has "everything" you are sure to fail.

Therefore, you need to assume your plans will change and make it easy to make those changes. In fact, your goal _should_ be to make your plans change, as that would mean you are learning the most. This is related to the scientific method and the general principal questioning yourself. Questioning yourself and assuming you don't have all the information will lead to success.

Following Plans

# Feedback

Feedback as soon as possible is very important for everything in life because you can only grow if you give some sort of feedback either you're giving feedback to yourself or external stakeholders giving you feedback the only way to grow is by getting feedback and growth is the most important thing in life

Feedback

Getting feedback on the process is a very powerful concept. For example, in the book the author does an experiment to teach Scrum. They put people in a team and they have them explicitly spend time creating paper airplanes, then they spend time thinking about how they can improve their processes. After a few iterations of this, they are producing at 3x the original rate.

An example of this in my own life is during my epic internship where at some point in time after reading this scrum book I would spend maybe half an hour at the end of the day looking at my work day and seeing how I can improve from this I immediately found humongous benefits for example I saw that I was spending a lot of time typing when I said I could be just speaking messages so from that 30 minutes I was able to save like multiple hours of typing in the future.

Feedback On The Process

# Fear Framework

When in fear: Observer, orient, decide, and act. This is a framework on what to do when afraid

Fear Framework

# Example of Wasting Value By Not Knowing the Customer

Here is an example of wasting a lot of time and effort by not knowing the customer.There are many cases where Americans come to Iraq or Afghanistan and they try to give aid. but instead of asking the residents what they want, they just make something they think they want. This ends up wasting millions of dollars instead of solving the real problems.

Example Of Wasting Value By Not Knowing The Customer

# Deciding Priority

When deciding what task to get done, think about what item is the most imortant for the customer, what will have the largest business impact, what will make the most money, what is the easiest thing to do, what is the least risky thing to do?

Deciding Priority

A study in the book illustrates context-switching costs with a task: write numbers 1–10 in Arabic numerals, Roman numerals, and letters. Doing each set separately is fast. Switching between them slows you down—takes about twice as long.

That’s a huge loss: half your effort is wasted just because of context switching. Across millions of people, that’s a staggering productivity drain.

There’s also a chart: with one project, you have 100% attention and no context-switching loss. Two projects mean 40% per project, 20% loss. With five projects, only 5% per project and 75% is lost. You’re doing more but achieving less.

That doesn’t mean multiple projects are bad. If you're blocked on one, switching can be useful. But this isn't about total efficiency—it’s about knowing the tradeoffs.

Cost Of Context Switching

# Company Information Flow

Good companies try to flow information as fast as possible and do self optimiaziotn. This was talke dabout in the book built to last.

Company Information Flow

If you do not change the way you do things, you and your business will die in irrelevancy. The world is constantly changing. This is a truism that I don't think most people internalize. The world is always changing every day, so you need to be in alignment with that change.

PRINCIPAL: Adaptation is just as important as goal setting, the world is always changing, so one must adapt to it.

Change Or Die

# Change for Free

Because plans and contracts are bound to change, it is a waste of time and effort trying to prevent changes. In quality companies, they have clauses that say the client has `n` amount of points to spend, if they want to change something, they can do it for free. This maximizes the value produced by the company, makes the client happy.

Change For Free

# Change for Free Example

There's an example in the book of change for free where there's a company that has a contract with their clients where if they their client concerning the contract at any time in time and pay the company just start meeting 20% of the worth of the contract they can scrub and they allowed the committee changes to their priorities and the complications are being software 9 months earlier and making 40% more profit. they saved their own time and they saved the Pacific time and to produce more valuable society. This is the value of delivering fast.

Change For Free Example

# Better for Agents to Make Their Own Decisions

This is a genera idea and that is individual agents know best how to achieve their goals. This is somewhat of a fallacy because it assumes rationality and intelligence of agents, but especially at the large management and governmental level, it is best to have smaller teams make their decisions.

Better For Agents To Make Their Own Decisions

# Beginners Mind

Story about cocky fighter pilots getting their asses kicked during training reminds me about having a beggineer mind.

Beginners Mind

# Backlog

A backlog is a list of items you think your product needs. It can contain every requirement or just the first few.

Backlog

# Authority Shouldn't Correlate with Responsibility

"An individual's responsability for leadership is not dependent on authority. This deep-rooted assumption that authority should equal responsability is the root of much organizational evil. I believe misunderstanding around this issue is rampant, problematic, and runs so deep in our consciousness that we don't even realize it."

Authority Shouldn'T Correlate With Responsibility

# Applying Prioritizing and Releasing to My Own Life

I can apply everything here about projects and product development to my own life. Discover the activities that give 80% of the value "deliver them", do the [[ooda-loop]], repeat. Maximizng value for future self.

Applying Prioritizing And Releasing To My Own Life

So Good They Cant Ignore You

The idea of finding a mission is similar to the principle of exploration one should do exploration if you do not know what you want to do specifically you should do a systematic exploration .

Something that's about the book is a story by a student who wanted to go back to grad school. However when she went to grad school she did not find herself to be very passionate about it she did not feel a mission that her life was revolving around So that leads to the question how you can actually find a mission that you should revolve your life around .

The author thinks finding a compelling missian is only possible in the adjacent possible in your field. Why is this the case?

Because you can only find a compelling mission at the adjacent possible, it is a smart move to try and get there extremely quickly.

Q: What cutting edge field do I want to get to? What is the adjacent possible I want to discover?

Having career capital is necessary, not just sufficient, to have a mission. This makes very intuitive sense, because a part of having a mission is the uniqueness that you have in it. If you don't have that uniqueness, and anyone in the world can do your mission, why are you doing it? [[ikigai]]

PRINCIPLE: You should gain career capital above all else

Finding A Mission

# Finding a Mission Doesn't Require a Lot of Direction

People that are currently on a good path, working on their life's mission, definitely did not have a straight path for this

In the example of Paradis, she wanted to study math, then bio, then she went on a trip and learned more about biollogical anthropolgy.

The general idea is that [[your-true-calling-doesn't-exist]]

Q: What are other equample of ppl that were at the cutting edge of their fields and _then_ found their missions.

Finding A Mission Doesn'T Require A Lot Of Direction

# Dream Job Elixer

Dream job elixer is what you want in your job. It is highly related to the principles in [[drive]].

### Control

Having more control is what you want. In an ideal job, you want a good combination of control, pristige, passion, money, but be conscious of the balance. It might be better to become a free-lance software developer then a VP. But in order to make this decision, you need the career capital to afford it. to be a free-lance software developer

#### Vying for Control w/o capital

Vying for control without career capital is a mistake, and you will end up homeless like the yoga woman.

#### Wanting Control Means Resistance

In the book, there is a story of Lulu, who is a freelancer. Everytime she tried to gain more control there was always more resistence. People want to control you.

Dream Job Elixer

# Difficulty Popularity Graph

The more difficult it is to do or get something (more time, and effort) the less people would have done it. There are HUGE gaps in this, though, after every "mandatory-ish" training. To get from the middle 50 percent to the middle 75 percent takes more effort than 75 to 99. I think this is the case because a lot of people have done college or high school, so they have those skills, a lot have done coding boot camps or read papres. Always try to do something hard. This is th eprnicples.

Mental strain is good for you, it is something to prpouse, not avaid.

Difficulty Popularity Graph

# Deliberate Practice

Deliberate practice should be a daily routine.

Q: How can I apply deliberate practice to my own work?

When it comes to deliberate pracitce the author talks about him doing delibmerate practice, which was reading a paer and understading it fully.
REFLECTION: Think about this in relateion to my time in 598KKH

Deliberate Practice

# Craftsman Mindset

Deliberate practice is the metric you want to maximize for. By maximizing deliberate practice you will become so good they cant ignore you.

A vibrant image from the book is that of Jordan, the bluegrass player. Every day he spends 3-4 hours practciing etremely diffeDifficult chords. This is painful and he is working at his limit. By doing this every day for a decode he becomes an outlier [[outliers]].

Focusing on the clear metric of success--whatever that be in your field--is all you need to be successful. Don't worry about this or that. Focus on the essential [[essentialism]]

Focusing on the output you do and nothing else is called this craftsman mindset. For the feild of music a poweful idea is that of "the tape doesn't lie". It shows exactly how you good you practiced and nothing else matters. In programming, it could be that "your code doesn't lie" or "your algorithm doesn't lie". In terms of finance, it could be your deals don't lie.

ACTION: Find what the "obvious" metric of high quality is and maximize it.

The author has an interesting idea, that is to keep track of the amount of deliberate practice he works on every week. This mentis helpful for a couplen of reasons. One of them is that this metric is all in his cnotrol.

### When does the craftsman mindset fail?

he craftsman mindset won't grant you a great career if the following aren't met. [[traits-that-define-great-work]]

- The job doesn't allow mastery. Few opportunities to work
- The job doesn't have impact. It is on something you don't think matters in the world or actively harms the world
- You work with people you don't like

[[drive]]

Craftsman Mindset

# Control Requires Capital

There's an idea in this book that control requires capital meaning that if you want to have a career that gives you a lot of control then you need to acquire career capital in order to get that control.

Control Requires Capital

# Control Creates Resistence

In your career whenever you want to gain more control that typically is met with some resistance which is in general because people want to be able to control you and tell you what to do. you don't want to do this of course so that creates this conflict in order to get through this you need to obtain enough career capital so that you can do what you want to do .

Once people want to pay you for what you want to do or once other people have given you feedback that you can do what you want to do that you can gain more economy .

### Law of Financial Viablitiy

when deciding whether to follow an appealing pursuit that will introduce more control into your work life seek evidence of whether people are willing to pay for it if you find this evidence continue if not move on

Control Creates Resistence

# Career Capital

Career capital is all of the skills, networks, knowledge, and assets you have. The higher your career capital in one field is, the more successful you'll be in that field and the more opportunity you'll have.

Career capital:

- Skills (proof of skills)
- Knowledge
- Network
- Credentials?

Career Capital

- The traits that define great work are rare and valuable.This is a theory posed in this book that states:
- Because these are highly saught after, you need to offer something valuable to get a career like this
- In order to becomes this valuable, you should adopt an intentional mindset of increasing your vaule for the career ([[career-capital]])

Career Capital Theory Of Great Work

# Ask Questions Down to Fundamentals

This is an idea that came up while reading "so good they cant ignore you". That idea comes from an example where there was a blogger that would write blogs and he would try to optimize his metrics, shower his readers with appreciation, etc. but he missed the mark. In order to write a good blog, you need to identify exactly what you want to give your readers. The typical reader wants something of value from you, like an insight or inspiration, so you need to dig down and find this "principle" of the field.

Ask Questions Down To Fundamentals

Story of Alex Berger, he was someone that wanted to try to get into the TV industry. It is aparently very difficult to get into because everyone wants to get in. After 2 years of trying to master his craft(which in the TV industry is mastering writing his sccripts), he took charge of opportunities and got a lucrative job.

    !t is important to notee that you can only take charge of opportunities if you have enough career capital to take them on. Another thing that's Important to note is he was able to work in the industries where he could see exactly what matters to be successful as a television guy he moved careers and jobs just so that he could be closer to what real people do

Alex Berger Career Capital Story

There's a story from the book that comes from another book called [[Where Good Ideas Come From]]. In this book there are actually a lot of examples of where people from several places discover the same thing so for example people from four different countries identified sunspots in the year 1611 Oxygen was isolated independently in 1772 and 1774.

why did these simultaneous discoveries happen Well these big ideas are often discovered in the adjacent possible adjacent possible is an idea where in order for you to get to a new idea you need to So that's why these ideas are only capable of being seen was other ideas are popularized

New, big ideas only yhappen when you take existing ideas and jiggle them into a new shape.

Adjacent Possible

# Act Small Think Big

This is an idea in the book, you should think "narrowly" by just focusing on the narrow niche you are in, and then act big once you gain enough career capital to identify a mission.

Act Small Think Big

The Anxious Generation

# Social Media Is a Conformity Engine

Social media is a conformity engine, you see other people and see how their doing and you follow this. This explains my own behavior, I would copy what the people I watched did. I would play the games they played, I would pick up on the same language as them.
WOOW! Can I use this to my benefit?

Suppose I want to adopt behavior X, I want to adopt this belief but I don't already do so. One way of doing this is to fill my experiences with evidences that support belief X. [[beliefs-to-change]]

Social Media Is A Conformity Engine

# Rites of Passage

In most societies there are rites of passage so people know their new roles.

This is interesting to me because it shows that we have less autonomy. It shows the impact culture has more prescisely. For example, rites of passage tell you \*as the agent) your new roles (as a woman or man in the society). when yo uare toled these roles, you enact onto them. This is why ceremonies are imporant. They don't make ayo you feel different, but you embody different roles.

Rites Of Passage

# Sleep Deprivation

Sleep deprivation is caused directly by having something stimulating before going to bed. It causes truncated sleep times, longer onset to sleep, and more disturbances. To improve sleep, prevent the usage of stimulating activities (such as music, videos, social medias, interactions, etc.) 1 hour before bed.

About This Site

What You Can Find Here

Why Am I Doing This?

How It Works

Anonymous Feedback Welcomed!