Author David Goggins Summary The personal story of former Navy SEAL David Goggins who overcame traumatic experiences to become a successful soldier and athlete. Takeaways Most people do not know what they are truly capable of and resist challenging themselves physically and mentally to stretch the limits of their potential. Unlocking this potential requires hard work and dedicated exposure to uncomfortable experiences and pain to “callous” the mind and become mentally strong....

Author Ray Dalio Summary The life and work principles of Ray Dalio, founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates. Takeaways An idea meritocracy is the best way to make decisions in a company. An idea meritocracy requires a commitment to truth and transparency. It can be achieved if people are open minded and ideas are evaluated based on the track record of the people who contribute them. The process can be supported by writing down and refining principles that support decision making and reflect learnings from the past....

Author Vincent A. W. J. Marchau, Warren E. Walker, Pieter J. T. M. Bloemen, Steven W. Popper Summary A review of methods and applications for decision making under deep uncertainty. Takeaways Situations with deep uncertainty are characterized by a lack of knowledge about how future events will unfold. In complex systems, the predictability of potential outcomes is low. When confronted with deep uncertainty, decision makers are advised to shift from a predict-then-act paradigm to a monitor-and-adapt strategy....

Author Brendan Reid Summary Advice for a more strategic approach to career planning. Takeaways Corporations typically don’t operate rationally as they consist of people who have their own benefits in mind. Career progression requires a strategic approach and tactical steps contrary to commonly accepted practices. Don’t be overly passionate about your ideas and rather be objective in providing optionality Embrace the changes everyone else hates Learn to promote your ideas instead of refining them without feedback Avoid a too strong focus on result orientation and instead spend time expanding your skill set Don’t be a part of the heard, and don’t gossip about peers and superiors Find big problems to solve Don’t hold peers accountable and mentor them wherever possible Quotes “People inherently want to work with people similar to themselves and who they like....

Author Carl Anderson Summary A blueprint to create a data-driven and analytics focused organization. Takeaways Data-driven organizations are more successful and generate more value through better decision making. For a company to be data-driven it must have the right culture and talent in place to use data effctively along the so called analytics value chain. Sponsorship from high profile positions in the organization is needed to implement a culture that values testing and experimentation to derive insights that can give a competitive advantage....

Author Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer Summary The story of establishing a culture of freedom and resonsponsibility at Netflix. Takeaways Netflix leadership has identified two key ingredients for a creative and innovative culture: candor and talent density. Employees are empowered to contribute their opinions and ideas. They need to get enough context about the business priorities to take ownership and make informed decisions without the burden of a buerocratic approval process. Netflix aims to attract top talent and rather pays for one highly capable employee than for ten mediocre ones....

To test relative imports before installing a package, add the source code directory to the path. For example, import code from a file functions.py in src/mypackage/ import sys sys.path.append('/Users/username/project/src/') import mypackage.functions as f ...

Author Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein Summary A summary of decision hygiene practices to reduce noise in judgments. Takeaways Noise is ubiquitous in situations that require judgment and leads to unwanted and costly variability and unfairness in decisions. The reasons for noise in judgments are manifold. People have cognitive biases and a natural preference for causal thinking that finds comfort in finding coherent explanations even if the reality is more complex and less predictable....

Author Bob Joseph Summary A sample of 21 of the destructive and damaging statues and policies that constitute the Indian Act. Takeaways The Indian Act, passed in 1876, regulated and still regulates the lives of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. One of the most damaging and destructive parts of the act was the introduction of residential schools that forced children to move away from their families and forbade them to speak their home language and practice their traditional religion....

Author Russel Jurney Summary Instructions for a technical setup to iteratively develop practical Data Science applications. Takeaways Many Data Science applications fail because of a missing feedback loop between the Data Scientists developing the solutions and the business stakeholders and users. To avoid a disconnect, Data Scientists need to share work in progress frequently. Software development methodolodies like Scrum need to be adapted to account for the larger uncertainty of data exploration....