Q3 2017 Review

Q3 2017 passed by quickly with a couple of major events at work and family… Wait. Did I say that at the Q2 review? Déjà vu.

First, I left Conversion Logic, which I was part of the founding team since 2014, and joined Microsoft. While my team is in Redmond, WA, I work from home mostly. I will write about it with more details sometime later.

Second, my family moved from Torrance to Rancho Palos Verdes (RPV). My wife grew up and has lived in Torrance for 20 years. I moved to Torrance in 2007 when I started dating with her. We love Torrance, but thought that RPV would be better for our children.

Moving was challenging. It took 3 moving trucks and 2 full days. Even after two months, we still have lots of boxes to unpack and many things to fix. We hope that this is our last move.

Third, Joseph started kindergarten. The transition from preschool to kindergarten was a big deal for both Joseph and us. He needs to get to school by 8:30 am and be done between 3 and 4 pm. After coming home, he needs to finish his homework before any play time.

That means that we need to adjust our schedules to accommodate his (plus schedules of his three brothers). For us, it helps that I work from home with a flexible schedule, but I have no idea how other working parents manage to do so.

Fourth, our nanny found a full time job. Big congrats to her and we’re so happy for her. The downside is that we have even less time on our own.

So, setting aside all the excuses, let’s check the progress towards goals:

Yearly Goals

• Running 200 miles (53%) – I ran only 5 miles in Q3, and 105 miles in 2017 so far. Those 5 miles were done during my business trip. I couldn’t carve out even 30 minutes to hit the gym.
• Reading 24 books (79%) – I read 4 books in Q3, and 19 books so far.
  • Contact – Classic science fiction by Carl Sagan. Phenomenal. Different from the movie.
  • Algorithms to Live By – How to apply CS algorithms in real life. Very insightful and entertaining for those with CS background.
  • Judges for You – by Tim Keller. Brutal reality of humanity without God. “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes”.
  • The Language of God – by Francis Collins, Director of NIH and former head of the Human Genome Project. Scientist’s perspective on God and faith. “Mere Christianity” in 21st century.
• Winning 1 competition (x) – In Q3, I formed a team with 4 first time Kagglers at Microsoft and worked on Carvana Image Masking Challenge for a week as a hack project. We finished 130th out of 735 teams.
• Writing a book on Kaggle (x) – no progress
• Reading the Bible ✅

Weekly Goals

• Reading 1 paper – no progress
• Writing 1 blog post – 17% completion in Q3 with 2 articles
• Writing 5 pages of the Kaggle book – no progress

Daily Goals

• 20 pull-ups – 51% success with the average of 14.5 / day
• 100 push-ups – 32% success with the average of 47.6 / day
• 2 prayers – 1% success
• QT – 33% success
• Writing 1 article of any kinds – no progress

Q3 2017 was very challenging. For about a month around the move, I was in the survival mode, barely doing my duties at work and home.

Although, Q4 started with most of the same challenges outstanding, I’m positive that I can achieve more in Q4 – because I’ve become more effective than ever by going through the toughest quarter.

Let’s finish 2017 strong!