Getting Back on the Horse

Ok, one more time. I know there have been lots of one more times before, but I am going to keep at this until I get proficient enough at this to land a job :) And while I may not be brainy enough, the one thing I can do is be persistent enough to show up. This time, I will focus on building tiny projects. I realise my life is too chaotic for #100DaysofCode. But I can do this, one tiny thing at a time. ...

November 11, 2020 · Mario Jason Braganza

You are Awesome

I want to keep reading books and stories about how folks pick themselves up. It helps me deal with the storms in my life better. It assures me I am not alone. And people often have it worse. Neil Pasricha shares his story in You are Awesome. Most of which are relates with everything we face in our lives. And I was meh. But he also shares his parents stories. And those are really, really inspiring. ...

September 27, 2020 · Mario Jason Braganza

9

Now we are here at home, in the little nation of our marriage, swearing allegiance to the table we set for lunch or the windchime on the porch, its easy dissonance. Even in our shared country, the afternoon allots its golden lines so that we’re seated, both in shadow, on opposite ends of a couch and two gray dogs between us. There are acres of opinions in this house. I make two cups of tea, two bowls of soup, ...

September 10, 2020 · Mario Jason Braganza

The Undoing Project

It’s a Michael Lewis book. That alone, is enough for me to tell you to go read it. Kahneman and Tversky’s work has probably been the biggest influence on my life in recent years, since Taleb.1 We cannot think in probabilities in our daily lives. We keep fooling ourselves, with various biases. And the intuition we have, is because we are really amazing biological machines. And even that is subject to error. Unless the intuition is backed by extensive experience. And even then we can easily be fooled. That basically is the gist of their work (to me, so far). I flunked nearly every experiment in Danny Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow.2 We need to think slowly, through every implication, when it comes to the few big decisions in life. ...

August 20, 2020 · Mario Jason Braganza

The Biggest Bluff

Really good book. Gave me a new set of mental models. Notes follow. “Focus on the process, not the luck” “Attention is a powerful mitigator to overconfidence: it forces you to constantly reevaluate your knowledge and your game plan, lest you become too tied to a certain course of action. And if you lose? Well, it allows you to admit when it’s actually your fault and not a bad beat” ...

August 6, 2020 · Mario Jason Braganza

Tiny Habits

In a world where Atomic Habits, did not exist, I’d call Tiny Habits the best book on behavioural change and habit building. Or maybe, I am biased because I read James Clear’s book first. Just like Cal Newport took Anders Ericsson’s work and ran with it; so did James build on BJ Fogg’s. Tiny Habits is lovely, has pretty tables and is a lovely engaging read. If you want to change your behaviour, you simply cannot go wrong by learning from the man, who has taught many of our modern day influencers like Ramit Sethi or Instagram founder, Mike Kreiger. ...

July 6, 2020 · Mario Jason Braganza