thursday at home
I’ve been feeling super drained this whole week so far, I assume it’s because the recklessly packed weekends and travels I’ve gone on for the past ... month? I always tried to live my life and days fully, and I think my physical robustness has hit a cool down button and forces me softly to slow down on the ever-running treadmill.
I chose to work from home today, and slowly rose up and started my morning with a 20 minutes swimming and 15 minutes of sauna. For the past few times, I’ve tried working out in the gym (and ofc in the sauna after) without bringing any of my digital devices (most notably, my phone), and I don’t care what other side benefits it will bring me (and I’m pretty sure there are plenty, but they are not the priorities now), the feeling of being in the moment itself and the pride I felt of being able to focus in my workout feel so rewarding, the endorphin rises to a level that’s so enriching and joyful.
This morning I continued watching the Google DeepMind documentary talking about how the founder Demis Hassabis started as a pro chess player and somehow resigned in the middle of a game, “waking up” to the call from a bigger world, decided to fully utilize his intelligence and network to tackle real life-changing problems in the world, such as....folding a protein using computational methods for scientists to understand the structure and thus quickly carry on the follow-up research, protein folding was known to be one of the hardest challenges in biology and now he is onto his next AGI challenge. The documentary struck me in three ways: 1. “We are all sort of connected and we are all parts of a bigger world that’s way beyond ourselves”. 2. The seemingly most ordinary man walking on an Oxford street could be thinking about tackling the hardest scientific challenges, we are all so ordinary while so exceptional at the same time. 3. A response from Elon Musk towards folks who questioned how could a man unknowledgeable in aerospace engineering and rockets build SpaceX and he said it’s exactly why he could be the one who created SpaceX, being ”clueless" can be a blessing as it allowed him to bring "first principles" thinking to the industry, rather than following the traditional "leaves/details" of established aerospace engineering.
I am very glad that the day started in a very positive and mind-opening way and I started appreciating the human mind even more and with more genuine curiosity about the exceptional and ordinary people surrounding me.