As an independent consultant the majority of my work is about solving novel problems faced by my clients. At a basic level, a client has a question they need answered or a problem they'd like solved and my job is to develop something that meets their needs (given the time and budget available to them). While the novel problems I'm often presented with is part of what makes my job fun. The ad-hoc nature of each project has sometimes meant past projects were organized in an ad-hoc fashion. For some of my past analysis projects I'd output everything to a…
Can I Learn Anything From Listening to Podcasts?
A couple of years ago I realized that I had amassed a large backlog of podcast episodes that I hadn't listened to. Clearly, past me thought listening to each of these episodes should be a priority for the intellectual development of future me, but future me was undisciplined and intransigent. At first glance, it seemed that my appetite for podcast-based learning was larger than my stomach. But, given I'm a big fan of listening to academics argue about esoteric ideas, I concluded that the backlog had accrued from an implementation problem, rather than a lack of motivation. My chosen solution…