Joel Jean

I ran across these ”MIT Burnout Prevention and Recovery Tips” the other day:

• MIT VIEW: Work until the physical pain forces you into unconsciousness.

2) AVOID ISOLATION. Don’t do everything alone! Develop or renew intimacies with friends and loved ones. Closeness not only brings new insights, but also is anathema to agitation and depression.

• MIT VIEW: Shut your office door and lock it from the inside so no one will distract you. They’re just trying to hurt your productivity.

3) CHANGE YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES. If your job, your relationship, a situation, or a person is dragging you under, try to alter your circumstance, or if necessary, leave.

• MIT VIEW: If you feel something is dragging you down, suppress these thoughts. This is a weakness. Drink more coffee.

4) DIMINISH INTENSITY IN YOUR LIFE. Pinpoint those areas or aspects which summon up the most concentrated intensity and work toward alleviating that pressure.

• MIT VIEW: Increase intensity. Maximum intensity = maximum productivity. If you find yourself relaxed and with your mind wandering, you are probably having a detrimental effect on the recovery rate.

5) STOP OVERNURTURING. If you routinely take on other people’s problems and responsibilities, learn to gracefully disengage. Try to get some nurturing for yourself.

• MIT VIEW: Always attempt to do everything. You ARE responsible for it all. Perhaps you haven’t thoroughly read your job description.

6) LEARN TO SAY “NO”. You’ll help diminish intensity by speaking up for yourself. This means refusing additional requests or demands on your time or emotions.

• MIT VIEW: Never say no to anything. It shows weakness, and lowers the research volume. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do at midnight.

7) BEGIN TO BACK OFF AND DETACH. Learn to delegate, not only at work, but also at home and with friends. In this case, detachment means rescuing yourself for yourself.

• MIT VIEW: Delegating is a sign of weakness. If you want it done right, do it yourself (see #5).

8) REASSESS YOUR VALUES. Try to sort out the meaningful values from the temporary and fleeting, the essential from the nonessential. You’ll conserve energy and time, and begin to feel more centered.

• MIT VIEW: Stop thinking about your own problems. This is selfish. If your values change, we will make an announcement at the Corporation meeting. Until then, if someone calls you and questions your priorities, tell them that you are unable to comment on this and give them the number for Community and Government Relations. It will be taken care of.

9) LEARN TO PACE YOURSELF. Try to take life in moderation. You only have so much energy available. Ascertain what is wanted and needed in your life, then begin to balance work with love, pleasure, and relaxation.

• MIT VIEW: A balanced life is a myth perpetuated by liberal arts schools. Don’t be a fool: the only thing that matters is work and productivity.

10) TAKE CARE OF YOUR BODY. Don’t skip meals, abuse yourself with rigid diets, disregard your need for sleep, or break the doctor appointments. Take care of yourself nutritionally.

• MIT VIEW: Your body serves your mind, your mind serves the Institute. Push the mind and the body will follow. Drink Mountain Dew.

11) DIMINISH WORRY AND ANXIETY. Try to keep superstitious worrying to a minimum – it changes nothing. You’ll have a better grip on your situation if you spend less time worrying and more time taking care of your real needs.

• MIT VIEW: If you’re not worrying about work, you must not be very committed to it. We’ll find someone who is.

12) KEEP YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR. Begin to bring job and happy moments into your life. Very few people suffer burnout when they’re having fun.

• MIT VIEW: So you think your work is funny? We’ll discuss this with your director on Friday, at 7:00PM!

***Also… wow.

Related articles

• MIT Professor Provides a Vintage View of Boston’s Roads from the 1950s [Time-Lapse Video] (bostinno.com)
• Academic & Entrepreneurial Innovation Both on Display at the MIT Energy Showcase [Images] (bostinno.com)
• For the First Time in Their 112-Year History, MIT’s Basketball Team Dances to the Division III Final Four (bostinno.com)

One of the most self-damning flaws of scientific research is that, except in the rarest of cases, you don’t get to see the true impact of your current work until much, much later in life. Still. How awesome would it be to be Tim Berners-Lee right now? “I invented the Internet.” Or Thomas Edison: “I invented the light bulb.” Or Freud: “I invented sexy thoughts.”

Take Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web. Back in 1989, computers were clunky, command-line interfaces that couldn’t talk to each other, at least not in any significant way. Sir Tim Berners-Lee changed that. As a young scientist at CERN, he saw an opportunity to combine existing computer networking protocols—the Internet—with the newfangled concept of hypertext, and out popped the World Wide Web—the “Internet.” Now, at age 56, Berners-Lee gets industry awards, a knighthood, honorary doctorates left and right—but not enough to inspire the masses. Those who lack in age rarely recognize their deficiency, and the promise of unlimited speaking engagements at universities and conferences 20 years down the line won’t push today’s teenagers from TVs to test tubes. Maybe the prospect of being knighted will do the trick. But I doubt it. If professions were subject to natural selection, researchers would be extinct, for an ironic lack of reproducibility.

Other technical people are generally a bit quicker than the public to catch on to the significance of a scientific breakthrough—surprise—but even so, it’s only within the scientific community—a tiny fraction of it at that—that any such recognition resonates. Maybe that’s why relatively few young Americans today are excited about research. They don’t care about recognition from the scientific community—why should they? From the outside looking in, the community is small, quirky, and rarely produces a viral YouTube video or Top 10 hit.

While science only brings forever-delayed gratification, working at Apple, Google, or Intel lets you to point to an iPhone or new search feature or computer and say “I created that”—sure, with 100 other people, but what of it? Siri’s still pretty damn cool. Our current Internet-dominated era has that advantage, twofold: Anyone can learn to program and create an iPhone app or website—low barrier to creation—and anyone can find their work going viral via YouTube or Reddit—low barrier to recognition. It’s a simple feedback cycle—create, be recognized for creation—and few can resist its temptations. It’s hard to overstate how good it feels to be able to say “I created that”—for many people, it makes all the hard work worth it. That’s what drives them to work late nights and weekends. That’s what makes them say, “I love my job!” and truly mean it.

But imagine going to Google to work on Android, then finding out after a year on the job that it won’t be released for 20 more years, and even then with only 10% probability. You’ll have to wait two decades before anyone knows what the hell you’re talking about: “Hold on… You make androids? Is that ethical?” Until then, it’s all blank stares and polite smiles and changed subjects. I mean, it sure does look promising, but can I get it on Amazon?

Read any popular science article: “Scientists warned, ‘This is an extremely promising breakthrough, but it’s at least 5-10 years away from commercial deployment’” (see ScienceDaily or MIT’s Technology Review for more egregious real-world examples). And while it may be honest science journalism, Teenage Me hears that and thinks, “10 years—that’s half my life! Where did I put that Google offer letter?” That’s the burden of the scientific profession, the psychological barrier to entry that pushes many away from research careers, perhaps after a first unfulfilling undergrad research experience where feedback was lacking and progress was uncertain.

So what can we do about it?

Universities can encourage faculty and graduate students to take extended leave from their home institutions to work in the private sector, to start companies, to get involved in public policy. Research institutions can raise salaries for research scientists and other technical staff. Researchers can eradicate the academic superiority complex.

Government can fund more research, more education, more graduate and postdoctoral fellowships. Forward-thinking politicians can create more research jobs that don’t require a PhD.

The rest of us can learn some science—not Alka-Seltzer volcanoes and Coke-and-Mentos science, but real-world stuff: climate change, battery technology, the power grid, the Internet, DNA, neuroscience, medical imaging, computer hardware, energy conversion, programming, electric cars, wireless communications. We can figure out how the world around us works. It’s not magic, and when more than just technology creators understand how stuff works—when technology users get it too—innovative ideas emerge organically.

Science seems to be content with enabling, not creating, future technology. And that’s OK—the future is built on scientific progress. But the engineer in me can’t accept that. As a researcher in semiconductor devices, I straddle physics and chemistry and materials science and electrical engineering, and I can’t possibly divorce the science from the applications and still stay motivated enough to keep working on it. The thought of spending my life working on something that will never see the light of day—literally—terrifies me, and not a single day passes in which I don’t think about how I can best contribute—not just to my field, as is the nominal goal of the PhD, but to our daily lives.

Although the ivy has receded, particularly at startup-friendly institutions like Stanford and Berkeley and MIT, there’s still an unacceptably large divide between academic research and industry, between basic science and applied technology. We need researchers who are as comfortable talking to politicians and electricians and farmers as to colleagues and science reporters and the ever vague and ill-defined “general public.” We need researchers who can and will bring to market the incredible world-changing potential that every journal paper promises. And we need non-researchers—entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians—who innovate like researchers: logically, relentlessly, radically.

That could be you.

When you think about who you want to be when you grow up, imagine telling your kids in 30 years: ”I made you AND the world you live in.” Take that, Freud.

Related articles

• Father of the Web Takes Stand in Patent Case (blogs.wsj.com)
• Letter to Congress (joeljean.wordpress.com)
• NSF Tops Research Agencies With a $340-Million Boost (news.sciencemag.org)
• Where do successful PhD students come from? (gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com)
• 5 Reasons to Love Academia (ketyov.com)
• America’s Biggest Seed-Stage Investor on Start-up Success (forbes.com)

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,800 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Take a second to sign this letter to Congress in support of continued funding for scientific research. It’s worth it.

-Joel

THE LETTER

To: The United States Congress Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction

Dear Member:

America’s science and engineering graduate students need your help. Our country is on the precipice: with US finances in a desperate position, upcoming decisions will determine the shape of our nation for decades to come. We urge you to seek common ground in Congress to preserve the indispensable investments in science and engineering research that will drive our nation’s prosperity for generations. We urge you to avoid any cuts in federally funded research.

We could reiterate that scientific progress and technological innovation have kept the US at the head of the global economy for over half a century. We could remind you that rapid changes in health technology, information security, globalization, communications, artificial intelligence, and advanced materials make scientific and technological progress more critical than ever. We could warn you that our global competitors are ramping up investments in research and development, inspired by our own rise to economic superpower. But all this is well established[1][2][3][4][5][6]. Instead, we’d like to discuss a crucial element of research funding that is often overlooked: human capital.

Over half a million graduate students and postdoctoral associates study science and engineering in the US[7]. These researchers form the bedrock labor force of the world’s best university R&D community. The value of these graduate students is not limited to the experiments they run and the papers they publish. Researchers in science and engineering learn to develop and implement long-term strategies, monitor progress, adapt to unexpected findings, evaluate their work and others’, collaborate across disciplines, acquire new skills, and communicate to a wide audience. Scientists and engineers don’t just get good jobs; they create good jobs, enabling their employers to produce the innovative products and services that drive our economic growth. Every science and engineering graduate represents a high-return investment in human capital, one impossible without federal support.

Federal research funding is essential to graduate education because research is our education. Over 60% of university research is federally funded; private industry, although it dominates the development stage, accounts for only 6% of university research[8]. America must remain competitive in the global economy, and we cannot hope to do that by paying the lowest wages. We will never win a race to the bottom. Instead, we must innovate, and train the next generation of innovators. Innovation drives 60% of US growth[9]. Economists estimate that if our economy grew just half a percent faster than forecast for 20 years, the country would face half the deficit cutting it faces today[10].

Does federal research funding promote innovative technology and groundbreaking scientific progress? Absolutely. It also provides our economy with the most versatile, skilled, motivated, and creative workers in the world. We graduate students understand the severity of the fiscal crisis facing our country. Our sleeves are rolled up; we’re ready to be part of the solution. But we need your help. Congress’s goal in controlling our deficit is to protect America’s future prosperity; healthy federal research funding is essential to that prosperity. In the difficult months ahead, we ask you to look to the future and protect our crucial investments in R&D.

Sincerely,

America’s Science and Engineering Graduate Students

—

[1] National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine: Rising Above the Gathering Storm http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11463

[2] National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine: Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5 http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12999

[3] National Science Board: Science and Engineering Indicators 2010 http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/sei/

[4] American Association for the Advancement of Science: The US Research and Development Investment http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/presentations/

[5] National Science Foundation: Science and Engineering Indicators: 2010 http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/

[6] American Association for the Advancement of Science et al.: Letter to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction http://www.aau.edu/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=12780

[7] National Science Foundation: Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering. http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf11311/

[8] National Science Foundation: Science and Engineering Indicators: 2010, page 5-14 http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/

[9] Robert M. Solow (Prof. of Economics, MIT), Growth Theory, An Exposition (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, Oxford, 2nd edition 2000), pp. ix-xxvi (Nobel Prize Lecture, Dec. 8, 1987)

[10] David Leonhardt, “One Way to Trim the Debt, Cultivate Growth”, NY Times, Nov. 10, 2010 (see also work by economists Alan Auerbach and William Gale)

My friend Patrick showed me this website on Friday. It’s a collection of real front-page (table of content, or TOC) figures from scientific papers. Click on the images to see it in situ on the journal’s website.

I can’t believe people manage to publish this stuff…

-Joel

I was asked to answer a question on Quora about grad school and preparing for a career in photovoltaics and device engineering—presumably because I’m going to grad school and preparing for a career in photovoltaics and device engineering—and I thought the question and answer might be helpful for those considering going to grad school in engineering.

Here’s the question and context:

How do I choose a graduate program and prepare for a career in solid-state device engineering?

I have a B. Sc. in Electrical Engineering and I would like to work with photovoltaics / solid state device physics. My undergraduate degree is not quite enough to let me work in that field outright. So I’m looking to do a graduate degree.

I applied for a 2-year M. Sc. in Physics program and I was assessed for 2 years’ worth of bridging subjects, for a total of 4 years of study. I think that 4 years is quite a long time. The good thing is that I’ve been talking to a professor who does condensed matter physics and photovoltaics and he’s willing to let me join his group.

On the other hand, I have an option to do a 2-year M. Sc. in EE in the field of Microelectronics or Power Electronics. Which one will be a good way to bridge into photovoltaics?

At this university, the Physics department is the more prolific publisher of research output, both locally and internationally. Not that I’m super rich (or else I wouldn’t be asking this question), let’s take the issue of finances out of the equation. Let’s focus on the time investment (I’m 25) and academic learning benefits.

Time-wise, I’m inclined towards EE; but personally, Physics is more appealing to me. Short term, I’d like to know (with an M. Sc. in Physics) if I can compete with microelectronics engineers for solid state device engineering jobs. Long term, I’d like to do a PhD (for which I’ll need publications to get into a program) in photovoltaics. My professional outlook right after finishing my M. Sc. is that I’ll need to work for a while first before I can proceed to do my PhD. An industry job is preferable since it usually pays more. On the subject of publications, I will have achieved that during my stint in the M. Sc. program.

Conversely, I think that doing the Microelectronics track would let me focus with just the necessary training for solid state device physics and do away with the unnecessary physics topics. I would also have a wider range of career choices, not just in photovoltaics.

What are your thought processes when faced with a dilemma like this? What other factors do you consider?

And here’s my answer:

Simple answer: Go with EE.

Let me explain.

Consider these questions:

“Do I want to go to grad school?”

For you, the answer is clearly “Yes.” But if it’s not 100% clear, stop now and think hard.

“Masters or PhD?”

It sounds like you want to pursue a masters degree now and a PhD eventually. Keep that in mind.

“Do I want to go into industry or academia?”

When you’re deciding whether and where to go to grad school, pondering the industry vs. academia fork in the road will guide your decision and give you a lot of insight into your own ambitions. If you want to go the academic route, I strongly suggest pursuing a PhD as soon as possible—jointly with or immediately after your MSc. But from your question, it sounds like you’re preparing for an industry career in device engineering rather than academic research.

“Where do I want to be in 10 years?”

Suppose in a decade from now you want to be doing innovative engineering work in the photovoltaics or microelectronics industry.

“How do I get there?”

Work backwards.

• How many years of industry experience do I need before I can reach my goal? As many as possible. It can take the better part of a year to get acclimated and truly integrated in a new work environment, be it company or school, and it’s hard to innovate before you know the existing system and the current state of the art.
• What academic background do I need? At least a couple terms of related engineering coursework beyond the BSc level. Preferably the experience with cutting-edge research that accompanies PhD-level work in any science or engineering discipline.
• How long will it take to get a PhD? Around four years (after the MSc).
• How long will it take to get a MSc? Two to four years, in your case.

Simple math gives you 10 – 4 – (2 to 4) = AMAP (as many as possible).

Simple math tells you to choose the 2-year masters program in EE.

“Am I committed to getting a PhD?”

If there’s a chance that you might stop after the masters and forgo a PhD—and that’s quite likely if you enter a 4-year MS-only program—go for a masters in engineering, not physics. A masters degree alone in physics is often considered to be impractical at best and useless at worst. Although physical intuition is extremely valuable, you’ll end up taking a lot of required classes that would be useful for academic research but not-so-useful for engineering in industry. The key realization is that if your ultimate goal is to work in engineering, you should work in engineering environments (e.g.,, academic or industry research labs) as much as possible. Sure, classes are invaluable preparation, but extra classes often yield diminishing returns while extra engineering experience yields increasing returns, at least at these time scales. Given a fixed amount of time in grad school, then, minimize the length of your MSc program in favor of the PhD.

This line of reasoning suggests that if you’re committed to following through with the PhD, it might be logical to pursue a MSc in physics first. But in your case, however committed you may be, that still may not be true. Those two extra years of “bridging subjects”—and tuition payments—are a deal-breaker.

***Caveat: If you can stretch that MSc in physics into a PhD with the same group (i.e., overlap the 4 years of MSc classes with the ~4 extra years for the PhD, for a total of ~6-7 years)—AND you’re committed to working in photovoltaics—go for it and don’t look back.

“Did I choose the right field?”

If you’re going to do research and work in photovoltaics eventually anyway, does it matter? The only difference this makes in a grad student’s life is where you turn in your forms and where you get your free food. And in practice, there’s very little difference between solid-state physics and EE semiconductor device physics. In either case, you can and will take classes in quantum physics, statistical mechanics, and solid-state, and as long as you find a research advisor working in photovoltaics or a related area, you’ll get the experience you need to be successful in the field. Research groups in solid-state devices are often highly interdisciplinary anyway: My group in the MIT EECS department has students and researchers from EE, physics, materials science, chemical engineering, chemistry, and mechanical engineering.

“Which area will best prepare me for a career in photovoltaics: Microelectronics or Power Electronics?”

Microelectronics. Like photovoltaics, micro/nanoelectronics is deeply rooted in semiconductor device physics, and you’ll find that many processing technologies and techniques are shared between the two fields. That said, if you want to work on developing utility-scale photovoltaic systems, taking some power electronics classes would be very useful.

***Here are a couple other things to keep in mind as you decide your future:

1) I don’t believe that you need to work in industry after your MSc before you can start on your PhD.

• I went straight into a MS/PhD program in EE immediately after graduating from undergrad. Many grad programs in EE and other engineering disciplines have combined MSc/PhD programs—less so in physics—so pursuing both at once would save you a round of applications and up to a year of total time to graduation. But if getting admitted to PhD programs directly is a concern, consider applying to a MSc program that offers the possibility of continuing on for the PhD (e.g., by taking qualifying exams or petitioning). At many schools, it’s easier to stay in than to get in.
• If you don’t apply to grad school while you’re still in school, it will be difficult to get the required recommendation letters from professors—note that letters from professors are the most important part of your application and carry much more weight than letters from engineers or managers in industry. Besides, you can often do internships if you want industry experience.
• Many engineers in industry have told me that it’s very difficult to go back to school (for a PhD) after working for a while—you get used to a certain lifestyle (e.g., predictable work schedule, weekends off, no classes, a solid paycheck) that you won’t be able to maintain as a grad student. And once you get married and have a kid or two running around the house, it will become even more difficult to go back to school.

2) I think it’s incredibly valuable for anyone involved in science and engineering—both in industry and in academia—to be exposed to the microelectronics industry and Moore’s Law (the self-fulfilling prophecy driving transistor density in integrated circuits to double every two years). The former touches nearly every aspect of our lives today, and the latter represents a historical upper limit on the time derivative of innovation—pure exponential growth for 4 decades. And although very few (if any) other sectors have growth potential anywhere near that afforded by transistor scaling, I can think of no industry that would not benefit from the relentless driving force of a Moore-esque imperative.

Related articles

• Google: From Grad School to $150 Billion Company (businesspundit.com)
• So You Want To Be An Astrophysicist? Part 1.5: thinking about grad school [Dynamics of Cats] (scienceblogs.com)
• Chemist stars in “Piled Higher and Deeper” The Movie (cenblog.org)
• Why Being Realistic is Not Being Defeatist: Applying to Grad School in 2012 (dameswhodish.wordpress.com)
• Choosing a Ph.D. program – what’s important and what’s not (sociobiology.wordpress.com)

My friend Dean just launched a startup called DC Revolutions, and it’s NOT a website. Crazy, right?

Dean and his co-founders (all recent Stanford grads) are using their awesome Stanford engineering skills to design a vertical wind turbine that integrates into city streetlights and plays nicely with the existing grid. And it’s a treat to look at, which is the whole point—apparently Americans don’t want big scary windmills anywhere near their homes and neighborhoods, and DC’s new design is anything but scary. It actually looks kinda cute.

Now I don’t know if DC Revolutions will actually revolutionize the energy landscape—you know I’m more of a solar guy myself—but I’m happy to support any effort towards that end, and these guys are making a hell of an effort.

You can support their efforts by giving any amount of money at this site. Do it for the future. Do it for the tax deductions. Whatever. Just do it. Dean will personally thank you if you do. And if he doesn’t, feel free to send him an angry email at deanyoung@dcrevolutions.com.

-Joel

Related articles

• FounderSoup: Stanford and Andreessen’s New Startup Generator (rupallithacker.wordpress.com)
• In The Future, The Business Founder Will Not Be Ignored (shaqqs.wordpress.com)
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• New Edison Energy, Vertical Axis Wind Turbines, VAWT, Renewable Energy Technology (alternativeenergy.onlineempirebizone.com)

What are some important things to know about (life) that most people haven’t been told?

That was a question I came across on Quora today. For the uninitiated, Quora lets you ask and answer questions about anything, kind of like a custom Wikipedia with community voting. I highly recommend checking it out.

Anyway, one guy’s answer to the question above was so intriguing and honest that I had to share it with you. Here are the first 3 points that Marcus Geduld brought up (read the other 8 on Quora here):

1) Marry your best friend.

I am truly amazed that I have the most successful marriage of all my friends — going strong after fifteen years. Most of my friends are amazed, too, because, growing up, I was the geek who couldn’t get a girlfriend. I had almost no relationships until I was in my mid-twenties. I got married at 29. I’m now 45 and still deeply in love. Meanwhile, I have seen so many of my friends get divorces and/or grind their teeth through loveless, combative relationships.

What I’ve noticed about these people is that, 90% of the time, (a) they got married really young and (b) they mistakenly thought that long-term romances work best when when they’re based entirely on lust and trivial shared tastes (e.g. “We both like the same bands.”)

Sometimes, I hear people say things like, “I’ve been dating this guy for a year. We get along okay, but sometimes I think about leaving… How do I know if he’s ‘the one’?” This makes me really sad, because it’s SO obvious to me that my wife is ‘the one.’ Why? Because she’s my best friend. Whenever anything good or bad happens to me, she’s the person I want to tell! When I need advice, she’s the person I run to! When I need to laugh, she’s the person I joke around with!

If you don’t KNOW that the other person is ‘the one,’ he’s not (or she’s not). And though it SUCKS to be alone — believe me, I know. I was alone for YEARS — it’s better than settling. DON’T settle. You’ll STILL be alone. It is very possible to be alone while being in a relationship. Many people are.

(Let me be really clear about what I mean by “don’t settle.” I don’t mean “look for someone who is perfect.” No one is perfect. I mean that if you feel luke-warm about someone, he’s not the one. If the person you’re with makes you continually unhappy, she’s not the one. Don’t settle for THAT because “it beats being alone.” It doesn’t. You evolved to think it does. Your brain will continually tell you that it does. It doesn’t.)

The other sad thing I hear is “Bill is my best friend. We have so much in common. He’s always there for me. We talk for hours. I completely trust him and we have the exact same sense of humor … but … I don’t know … the spark isn’t there…”

When I hear this, I don’t say anything, because it’s none of my business, but I want to scream “GET OVER THIS ‘SPARK’ THING! STOP BELIEVING IN HOLLYWOOD VISIONS OF CATCHING SOMEONE’S EYE ACROSS A CROWDED ROOM! Jesus Christ! You found someone you connect with on SO many levels, and you’re not getting down on your knees and proposing?!? Do you think you’re going to find 30 more people like that in your life?!?”

The “spark” doesn’t last, anyway. I’m not saying that sex dies or anything. I’m just saying that incredibly exciting, new romance feeling inevitably fades. But, if you’re lucky, what comes next is much, much better. You spend years in that loving, warm place with the person you know you want to grow old with. And if you have good communication with someone, the spark can come later, even if it’s not there at first.

Lots of people seem to learn this after a long time and a lot of pain. They marry the “bad boy” or the “hot chick” instead of their best friends, because doing so is more exciting. Then those marriages — which are based on nothing — fail. Sometimes, if these people are lucky, they later marry those best friends who they should have married in the first place. If they’re unlucky, they can’t, because the best friends have moved on.

2) There’s no such thing as a “grown up,” and if you try to be one, you’ll wind up becoming a poser at best and a killjoy at worst.

First of all, if you’re waiting for that magic time when you’re finally THERE, give it up. As I ease into the middle age, I can see it will never happen. I will never have learned what I need to lean in order to be a grownup. I will never be 100% confident. I will never stop failing…

People who seem like they have it all together are either faking it or living such incredibly boring lives that they they never face any challenges.

Let me be clear that I am a responsible person. So if all “grownup” means to you is “someone who does the dishes,” then — yes — I’m a grown up. But it’s not like when I was younger, I was a child … a child … a child … a child … and then I reached some particular birthday and — BOING — I was an adult.

God, I HATE people who think it’s important to be grown up. They are no fun at all. They are the people who, if you show any enthusiasm that goes beyond what you have to do at your job, inevitably say, “Looks like someone has too much time on his hands!”

Don’t be that guy!

As you go through life — especially when you pass through your 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s — continually ask yourself this: “When was the last time I played in the mud?”

It is VITAL that you play in the mud! You MUST do this or you’ll lose your soul! I am somewhat speaking in metaphor. If you don’t like mud, that’s fine. But when did you last finger paint? When did you last get into a pillow fight with your friends (or with your spouse?) When did you last sing a loud, off-key song where all the lyrics were nonsense words? What was the last time you did something utterly POINTLESS that was great fun?

Playing Scrabble doesn’t count. (I say that as a huge Scrabble fan.) Playing tennis doesn’t count. Those activities are great, but they’re too regimented. They are too much about rules. They don’t involve CUTTING LOOSE, LETTING GO and being VULNERABLE. (By vulnerable, I mean doing stuff that may lead other people to say “Act your age!”)

Getting drunk or high doesn’t count, either. If you can only dance around in your underwear when you’ve had three (or ten) drinks, you’re doing it wrong. One of the reason drugs don’t count, is because they put you in an altered state that is disconnected from who you are when you’re not drunk or high. Your goal should be to become someone who always has a little bit of play in him — not someone who is super-stern and serious and needs chemicals to unwind.

I know that letting go this way is really, really hard for some people. If it’s hard for you, ease into it. No matter how hard it is, surely you can finger paint when you’re alone in your room! Make yourself do it until you can do it without shame — until you can let go and enjoy getting paint on your nose. You will wind up living longer and having less stress in your life.

And though you can start this in private, try to work towards doing it in the company of someone else. Play is fundamentally a social activity. You will never feel as close to another person as you will when you roll in the mud with him.

Despite the way I sound, I am a very shy person. I don’t, as a rule, go dancing in the streets. But I have a few close friends (and a really fun spouse) with whom I CAN do those things. Those friends keep me alive! I wouldn’t trade them for ten million dollars!

One last thing: if you have kids, what’s your relationship to them? Are you very much the MOM or the DAD. Do you feel like they are the KIDS and you are the GROWN UP? Or do you feel like they’re your friends and you enjoy playing on the floor with them? Of course it’s important to be the grownup for them sometimes. But see if you can ease yourself into a different kind of relationship with them? When did you and your kids last have a snowball fight?

3) Most grownups stop learning. Don’t.

I spent many years as a teacher, mostly teaching computer classes to adults. These were folks who were being forced to adopt new technologies for their jobs. They were very unhappy. They would say, “I don’t understand this stuff! I’m just not one of those computer people.”

What I gradually learned, via long discussions with many, many students from many different occupations, is that this wasn’t true at all. Their problem — though very real — had nothing to do with computers. It had to do with the fact that this was the first time they’d been ask to learn anything new in years. They would have had just as much trouble if their boss had forced them to learn how to knit, juggle or play the guitar.

Even many people we think of as smart do very few new things every day — things that stretch them. Here’s an example: I used to work for a large auction company (think Sotheby’s or Chirstie’s.) This company employed a lot of “experts.” An expert was, say, someone who had spent decades studying French ceramics. Having done a lot of studying, he can now look at a vase and instantly tell you when and where it was made, what it’s worth, and whether it’s an original or a reproduction. I am not making light of this skill. I certainly couldn’t do it.

But let’s take a look at what it involves: the expert had to spend decades cramming information into his brain. He had to get to a point where that information wasn’t just in his brain but also instantly accessible. Doing all that grunt work was an incredible feat, and the expert has good reason to be proud of what he accomplished.

But if he’s like most of us, he learned most of his knowledge in his 20s. Starting in his 30s, he began coasting. Coasting feels really good and most jobs are built to let experts coast. You know you’re coasting when you can go to work and instantly know how to fix any problem. You’re coasting when you can look at the vase and instantly know when and where it was made.

You’re coasting if all your problems at work are things like annoying co-workers and long hours. If you never (or rarely) need to do exhaustive research or work out complex problems on paper or white boards, you’re coasting.

I’m a computer programmer, which means my job is pretty intellectual, and I coast way less than a lot of people: but I STILL coast about 75% of the time. A lot of the code I write is boilerplate stuff. I’m “solving” problems that have already been solved before, and all I need to do is copy, paste and make a few tweaks.

Doctors coast a lot of the time (at least general practitioners do). They hear the same symptoms over and over again, and in most cases, they can do their jobs very well by doing mental “database searches” and regurgitating answers that worked in the past. This is also the case for non-trial lawyers.

If you’re a “smart person” like me, and if you work in an “intellectual” field, it’s humbling to ask yourself, at each point in your day, “Am I stretching my intellect? Am I coming up with a new solution? Am I facing a new problem that I’ve never faced before?” How much of the time do you do this? 10% of the time? 5% of the time? 1% of the time? How many years have gone by without you having to face a REAL intellectual challenge?

Incidentally, the jobs that we think of as intellectual tend to be the least intellectually demanding (with some exceptions, such as Mathematician and Brain Surgeon). The “dumb jobs,” such as auto-mechanic and football player tend to involve a lot of continual, on-your-feet thinking.

What’s wrong with coasting? Nothing, necessarily, if it makes you happy. But we’re moving into a time period where it’s harder to get away with it. The pace of change has quadrupled and we’re getting hit with new technologies daily.

But the bigger problem is that “if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it.” You need to continually give your brain a workout or it will grow sluggish. We all know those people who have retired at 65 and then spent twenty years sitting in front of the TV. What’s sad is that we accept that people in their 80s are going to be sluggish. But that’s not a given. They don’t have to be! YOU don’t have to be. If your job isn’t challenging you, find ways to challenge yourself.

Note: most people get frustrated when they fail. This is one of the reasons why they quit trying new things. Trying new things inevitably leads to failure. But understand that, if you’re trying anything challenging, it’s going to take you at least a month to succeed at it. A month is the MINIMUM. It’s more likely that it will take you six months.

So if you, say, try to learn the guitar but “fail” at it after a few hours, you haven’t failed. You can only fail at the guitar if you try to play it for six months and, during all that time, make no progress.

Read the rest of this response on Quora here. And comment below if you have any thoughts on the advice!

-Joel

I have a bad habit.

Whenever I hear about some cool Mac-friendly program, I immediately download it, then never use it again. The result? When I look in my Applications folder, I find all kinds of random iCrap with completely useless names like Switch, Tofu, and iSquint. That said, there are a few apps whose names (and functionality) I do remember, because I use them almost every day.

Here are 7 Mac apps that I’ve found useful over the last 4 years:

7) Cloud - This app is just a cloud-shaped icon that sits in your toolbar (up by the system clock and volume control) and lets you easily share folders, files, and links. You just drag whatever you want to share onto the icon (or press a hotkey or simply take a screenshot with Cmd-Shift-3), and the app puts a shortened URL to the content on your clipboard, ready to paste.

6) coconutBattery - Very, VERY simple app that shows you the health and number of charge cycles of your laptop battery.

5) Papers (I cheated, this one’s not free: ~$50 for students) – Tried and true app for reading and organizing research papers. It lets you search a bunch of databases, syncs with all Apple iDevices, and imports just about any file format. The new version seems to have a kickass citation manager and other cool features too.

4) Caffeine - Another toolbar icon, just a coffee cup. You can click on it and watch it magically fill up. Click again and it empties. That’s it. Oh yeah, it also keeps your Mac awake (no screen dimming or screensaver) when it’s full, which makes it extremely useful for presentations or movies or long SSH sessions, you know, the ones where you really, really have to go to the bathroom but don’t want your Macbook to go idle and drop your connection and destroy your last 5 hours of work, so you end up wetting your pants. You know, those times. Never again.

3) TwoUp - Lets you move and resize any window into exactly one half of the screen (any half: top, bottom, left, right) with a simple hotkey. This is really helpful when you need to see an email to add an event into your iCal, or when you have two versions of a file open and need to see both at once. This useful feature is built into Windows 7, and it surprises me that Apple hasn’t yet implemented it in OS X (if anyone knows how to do this, please let me know).

2) xPad - This is my go-to app for inputting text. Nearly everything I type into my computer goes into xPad first, including research data, to do lists, grocery lists, blog posts, assignments, everything. It’s basically TextEdit with tabs and autosave, which means (1) you don’t have to worry about choosing a filename and save location each time you want to create a new document, and therefore (2) organization ensues. xPad backs up all your documents/tabs every few minutes and before it quits, and you can export any or all of them to .rtf whenever you want. Super useful app.

1) Alfred - The best app launcher out there, much better than the popular Quicksilver. Press a hotkey and enter the name of an app/document/video/whatever and it will launch immediately. But Alfred does much more than just launching apps: Type “google/wiki/gmail/docs/bing/youtube/facebook/twitter/wolfram ____” and it will search any of those sites for ____. Type in a math problem and it will solve it. The only thing it won’t do is justify dropping $2000 on a Mac, but you’ve already done that yourself, so you might as well download Alfred and make Apple’s UI even easier to use.

Leave a comment below with your top app picks!

-Joel

0) Angry Birds - Just kidding. It is stupidly addicting, though.

Ever wonder how many Asians there really are at Stanford? Here are some numbers I threw together last year about the Farm and its people and culture. All statistics are accurate to within an order of magnitude. Feel free to contribute your own Stanford stats!

The Basics

Opening day: October 1, 1891

Tuition (1891-92): $0

Tuition (2010-11): $39,000

Endowment: $14 billion

Faculty: 1100 (Student-faculty ratio: 6:1)

Student Body

Undergrads: 6,900

Grad students: 8,800

Californians: 40%

Asians: 25%

Transfer admission rate: 2% (Respect…)

From international/public/private high schools: 10/60/30%

Science & Humanities/Engineering majors: 70/30%

5-Year Graduation Rate: 92%

Student groups: 630 (Nearly one for every 10 undergrads!)

Greek: 13%

Phi Psi techie proportion: 75%

Sports

Daily gym-goers (Arrillaga): 2,000

Miles run by Stanford students each year: 1,000,000 (est.)

Average height, Men’s Crew: 6’3″

Average height, Men’s Basketball: 6’5″

Average height, Women’s Gymnastics: 5’2“

Stanford Football day game record (since 2008): 6-9

Stanford Football night game record: 7-2

YouTube views of Andrew Luck’s hit against USC: 1.3 million (as of 3/11)

For Techies

Apple fanboys (i.e., Mac users): 60%

SUNet <=> external network traffic: 10TB/day = 116MB/s

RAM on Corn cluster: 32GB

Annual revenue of 3 of Stanford’s biggest start-ups (G+C+HP): $190 billion (Egypt’s GDP: $188 billion)

Continuous energy use: 22MW/11000 people living on-campus = 2000W/person

After Graduation

Average starting salary (Engineering): $70,000 (Bachelors), $84,000 (Masters)

Average starting salary (Humanities & Sciences): $51,000 (Bachelors), $66,000 (Masters)

Number of living alumni: 188,000

Weather

Average temperature: 59ºF

Warmest month: July (78ºF average)

Coldest month: December (39ºF)

Rainiest month: January (3.24″)

Avery Aquatic Centers filled up by annual rainfall (16″) on Stanford land: 1200

Around Campus

Area: 8180 acres = 12.8 square miles

Undergrad residences: 77

Undergrad residences with air conditioning: 0

When the party ends: 1AM

Square feet of cacti: 17,000 (Average Palo Alto home: 1,600 sq. ft.)

Bikes: ~13,000 (Bike parking cops: ~13,000)

Palm trees on Palm Drive: 150

Length of Campus Drive: 3.8 miles

Length of Dish loop: 3.25 miles

Dish elevation change: 500 feet

Caterpillars on campus (pre-2008, est.): 5,000,000

Dining options you’ve never explored but should: Russo Cafe (in Munger), Alumni Cafe (takes meal plan dollars), Thai Cafe (basement of Psych building), Axe & Palm (just kidding)

Distance from Stanford to…

San Jose: 20 miles (Driving: 30 min.)

San Francisco: 35 miles (45 min.)

Berkeley: 40 miles (1:00)

Santa Cruz: 40 miles (1:00)

Monterey: 80 miles (1:30)

Yosemite: 190 miles (4:00)

Lake Tahoe: 220 miles (4:15)

LA: 350 miles (6:00)

Las Vegas: 540 miles (9:00)

Beavercreek, OH: 2400 miles (38:00)

Hawaii: 2400 miles (∞)