š£ļø Journey Over Destination
Good morning friends! āļø
This week, we crossed theĀ 400Ā email subscriber mark! ā¤ļø
Thanks to all of you! I am still surprised that 400+ people want to hear my rambles every Monday, but I am glad you are enjoying it!
Today, I want to discuss an idea that is quite common but nonetheless very important:
Journey Over Destination
If you are unfamiliar with this quote, itās saying you shouldn't let the fact that you haven't reached your goal upset you. The real success lies in the steps taken towards that goal, and that's where you should find joy.
Focussing on the goal too much can limit the happiness you experience at various milestones. And once you reach your goal, you might have a brief period of euphoria, but then you will quickly have another goal in your sights. This is not a sustainable approach, and often the desired outcome is outside of your control.
However, if you focus more on the journey and the work than the outcome, you are much more likely to feel fulfilled. The work is something you can control.
For example, those of us who work in the tech industry are always, from personal experience, striving to get promoted every couple or few years. There is nothing wrong with trying to achieve this. However, being hyper-focused on this outcome often leads to a sense of longing. You donāt have complete control over whether you get promoted or not and it might take you four years instead of three.
It's better to focus on the present moment, your current work, and how you can make it better. Find pleasure in what you are currently doing. There's little point in working toward long-term, somewhat arbitrary goals if you don't enjoy the steps it takes to get there.
Below are three things that can help you be more ājourneyā than ādestinationā oriented:
Be patient and remember big goals come from loads of small steps.
Focus on things that are in your control.
Aim for small compounding improvements every day.
This is the approach I am taking for my YouTube channel. I am going to make 100 videos and try and improve each one. I donāt care about the views or subscribers because I canāt control them. I can control how many videos I make!
Whatās Been Cooking š„
Some tasty stories this week:
Google to Invest $2 Billion More in AnthropicĀ -Ā It seems Google is planning on another $2 billion to their initial $550 million investment in AI company Anthropic.
Predicting Proteins: Upgrade to DeepMindās AlphaFoldĀ -Ā In 2020, DeepMind releasedĀ AlphaFoldĀ 2, which is their AI algorithm that predicts the structure of proteins. This week, they have made upgrades to this algorithm and it can create predictions for nearly every molecule in theĀ Protein Data Bank.
ChatGPT All-In-One UpgradeĀ -Ā OpenAI is planning on releasing a new version of ChatGPT that allows users to access models such asĀ DALL-E 3Ā and Advanced Analytics without switching.
UK AI Safety SummitĀ -Ā The US, EU, and China all attended Rishi Sunakās AI safety summit in Bletchley Park. More than 25 countries signed aĀ declarationĀ to govern AI risks.
Weekly Favourites ā¤ļø
š¬Ā YouTube -Ā Why Neural Networks can learn (almost) anything.Ā I have never watched a better description and explanation of neural networks in my life. It captures many of the intricacies and intuition behind neural nets and all in 10 minutes!
š¬Ā YouTube -Ā Andrej Karpathy: Neural Networks Zero to Hero.Ā Andrej KarpathyĀ is a computer scientist researcher who was Senior Director of AI at Tesla and is now at OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT. Fair to say he knows quite a bit about neural networks and deep learning! I have been taking his course on YouTube and itās just purely fantastic. He walks you through from the building blocks of neural nets to making your own GPT.Ā
šĀ Blog -Ā Khouloud El Alami.Ā Unlike most data or computer science bloggers out there who post technical content (including me š), Khouloud writes about her journey as a Junior Data Scientist at Spotify and helpful tips on how to get there and the learning required. I particularly enjoyed herĀ thorough guide on the things you need to learn to be a Data Scientist.Ā
(PS: Some links are affiliate links that I get a kickback from with no extra cost to you š)