Apart from work, I spend considerable time in juggling, hiking, badminton, coding, puzzle solving, reading, mentoring, and occasionally blogging as described below –

Juggling –

Several friends have asked me, what do I get out of juggling. Retroactively, I justify this hobby in three ways –

• Increases hand-eye coordination and all benefits to the brain that follow (example see here).
• Since a considerable time is spent on trying to get the pattern, picking up the dropped balls is a huge part, and leads to a great workout.
• It helps destress and unwind after the long workday.

Of course, all these reasons are a clever façade and proactively I do it to show off on Instagram :).

But honestly, I didn’t start this hobby with any grand plans. I just wanted to know if I’m capable to learn a new skill on my own. As is true with learning any skill, I struggled for the initial few months. Frustration built up when I didn’t seem to get anywhere. After 6 weeks or so since starting, I saw tiny improvements. Little sequences of catches, but it was undeniable progress. It was enough to motivate me to keep up the grind. Soon after that I was able to do the basic pattern.

I’ve come a long way since and shifted my goal posts to learn more patterns and increase the number of balls.

Juggling has taught me several lessons that I hope to always remember and keep applying repeatedly –

• Any skill could be learnt if enough time and deliberate effort is put consistently. The only requirement is believing in yourself.
• Patience is hard in short term but exponentially rewarding in long term. Always focus on long term.
• Every failure teaches something new. This sounds cliché, but if applied in every aspect of life, this appears to be the single key differentiator between insanely successful people and everyone else.
• Be humble and curious about everything in life. Anything could be achieved with enough humility and child-like curiosity.

The math behind juggling is very interesting to me since it closely relates to networks of states, something that related to my research during PhD. Refer to this talk by Alan Knutson for a mind-blowing explanation of how juggling community explains these patterns through numbers.

Currently, I’m trying to learn three patterns –

• Practicing the 4-ball fountain.
• Modulating dwell time in 3-ball cascade which is a prerequisite for 5-ball cascade.
• Siteswap 441.

Coding –

Like majority of people in tech, I come from a non-CS background. I’ve always felt out of place, like I’m missing a key piece of the knowledge needed to survive in the tech industry. Also I’ve realized albeit late, being good at coding/problem-solving could give incredible leverage in the tech career growth. This was demonstrated by many of my friends with CS background time and again.

To overcome this underlying imposter syndrome, I did what an ordinary tech nerd would do, I started leetcoding. Here is my Leetcode journey. I’m still a novice and it’s a long path ahead but getting better slowly with the help of the amazing community.

What started as a need to improve, actually became fun at some point. I love the immersive feeling of solving problems for several hours at a stretch.

Reading –

I’m a proud bookworm! I think reading is the only way to grow sustainably. I’ll be glad to recommend books that significantly changed my approach to life. Currently, I’m reading the following books –

• Godel, Escher and Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid.
• The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains
• We are Legion (a sci-fi novel)
• The Power of Vulnerability

Mentoring –

I’ve helped several people prepare for interviews and break into the data science/ analytics career. I offer a broad range of topics in my online tutoring sessions. The topics could range across disciplines such as statistics, machine learning, economics, game theory, etc. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you are struggling with preparing for a job interview/ completing coursework and want an online tutoring session. Please reach out and give me a chance to make a difference. For details see Mentoring.

Writing –

Besides maintaining a blog on this website, I occasionally answer questions on Quora related to Statistics, Artificial Intelligence, Physics, and the Great Filter Theory. Here is my Quora profile link.