Recording more takes to get a terrific movie
#140 - eating wonderful food with people
Hi there,
How are things? The shine of 2025 is slowly dispersing, leaving us in terrible temperatures (unless you’re in the Southern hemisphere - I’m jealous). Let’s take a positive position though - the outside being uninviting presents the excuse to focus inwards, improving ourselves, our thoughts, our intentions and our actions.
Last week was a well-balanced week - a good (not perfect) amount of studying, calls, chores and cooking1. Sorry to miss our weekly catch-up last week: I wasn’t able to get a good enough conclusion to our post. However, I am a very lucky man because this week has offered a couple of super examples that allow me to round off the post I started. 🙌
Highlight of the week: having 3 friends round, the guys I would like to live with next year. We enjoyed a wonderful jerk chicken (2nd time eating, 1st ever making) over music, Uno and chat, lovely company.
I. One of my modules is ‘Introduction to Computation’, covering a good amount of Python through maths problems. It has been a good mid-effort module, worth half the credits as my 4 heavy-duty bigger ones, and I’ve welcomed the excuse/opportunity to do more coding.
My first-term reflections concluded that, despite the reduced credits, I should give the module a bit more respect, leading to some flow-state coding yesterday.
As with any pursuit which requires skill, there comes a point in the journey where you get stuck. Where you need to pause, reassess and go again. Here, it was a Python function which wasn’t giving the desired output, according to the auto-grader.
I kept making small edits to the code, in the hope it would fix the error but it wasn’t to be. Eventually, I thought, “Why not make it print an output, to actually see what the mistake is?”. As if by magic, I immediately spotted the error this way and was able to progress. 🙌
This story provides inspiration for today’s post - “test the code out, there is no point just repeatedly bashing it in” reads my notebook. It reminds me of the post before Christmas below, encouraging us to increase the rate at which we learn by iterating more.
II. This week, I went to a unique event in Central London - the launch event of Grads Building Companies. It is a community of young people of all stripes - university grads, apprentices, business owners, gap year students - who want to succeed in the start-up and business world of 2025.
The guest speaker at the event, Tom Foster-Carter, defined success in a thought-provoking way: “The speed of learning from your customers”. He emphasised the importance of speed, sending products out into the world and listening to the signal.
It is only through producing the work, getting feedback, thinking about the feedback and going again that you can make steady improvement.
Practice with feedback makes you better - who knew? I do encourage you, however, to pause. Consider the areas in your life where you would like to improve - can you clearly identify where you’re testing out your level and gaining feedback? If not, what systems can you set up to gain feedback?
Arguably, my writing of a blog is a similar story - I have these interesting thoughts, I try to explore their merit and logic by scribing about them and I see how you react, measured with the number of likes, reads and people who get in touch.
A few useful things to consider:
Are you making observable changes and progress between tests? Einstein is famously quoted as stating “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” It is important that the reps are meaningful and not forced.
Who are you getting feedback from? Make sure to incorporate a wide range of views. What does ‘wide’ mean? People with different life backgrounds and roles, who think differently and offer valuable alternative insights.
Are you getting too much feedback? It is important to take action on the feedback you receive - the ultimate form of respecting someone’s thoughts on your work is listening carefully to what they said, making improvements inspired by them and showing them your work.
You might need to be patient too. Consider the example of lifting weights in the gym: there’s only so fast you can progress, no matter the advice you get. Remember to look at the broader picture, see how far you’ve come, gain confidence from that and keep working hard.
A lot of life’s problems are like coding. Identify the variables, what you need to input into them and work out (through trial and error) the process which leads to the desired outcome. This trial and error is crucial, built into the process, and can only deliver true learnings if you fully test it out. There are very few original ideas (left) in the world, and no one is going to steal your idea - so what are you waiting for? The skill is in how you uniquely approach the issue/problem and how you tackle it.
Podcast of the week🎙️
I haven’t listened to any of Big Sean’s music but he’s got a warming positive energy about him and said things I needed to hear. Might that be the case for you too?
What I’m grateful for this week 🙏
Prezzo Kensington’s Polish waitress - a lovely host to a wonderful dinner with two good friends (and blog readers 😊)
Quote of the week 💬
The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence. Roy T. Bennett
Well, well, it’s the end of January, already? Time to look back at what the more energetic, ambitious and inspired you wanted to accomplish this year and revive the journey. If you’ve stuck with it, congratulations - this is your sign to keep going. Remember to test it for feedback too: if you match your consistency with improved methods, who knows what you could become?
Adi
If only I did just calculus instead of the other modules, then that could have been a whopping quadr-alliteration. Boo, analysis.
Big up Adi