This picture of Kiwi being miffed that Lorena was trying to sit on her chair does not have a whole lot to do with what I want to write about today, but it was pretty fun. Every time Lorena sat down, Kiwi pushed her away and then sat back with a look of irritation. I needed a picture for the post, this was available, and I wanted to have an excuse to put it up.

The whole family has been inspired to talk about some of the things we do to contribute and to get ahead. A lot of it has to do with the whole concept of life-long learning that Charles Murray talked about fairly frequently. In that context, I have almost always had a project on which I actively worked that contributed to something. I earned money on some of them, but a lot of the time I just worked because the project helped in some way and I was able to learn new stuff. The reality is that I did a lot of this work with now expectation of learning anything, but it happened anyway. Examples of these projects include work on the water level measurement camera (GaugeCam), sickle cell disease diagnostics, labor and delivery management, cataract surgery, water particle measurement in flowing water, and several others.

I think the things they all had in common were that they were hard projects (in the technical sense), they required a longitudinal effort of more than a year, a bunch of non-compensated (monetarily) work was required at the front end, and I had the ability to uniquely contribute because of my technical skills. Virtually every one of those kinds of projects turned into a significant amount of money–maybe not significant for some people, but surely significant for me. In addition, every one of them opened new opportunities. The work I am doing right now would not have been possible had I not learned a bunch of new stuff about embedded programming, web programming, machine learning, etc., etc. that I never would have gotten in my day job. More important than the money is the fact that I am doing invention daily. I know it is critical to have dedicated people to perform the mechanical tasks of daily life like farming, medicine, manufacturing, etc., but it is a gift to have spent a career at the bleeding edge of invention. There is always something new and interesting to learn and use that requires all the mental faculties to even understand, let alone exploit. I know that is not for everyone, but I am certainly grateful and humbled to have had this kind of work.

Christian has been thinking about what he wants to do next. His PhD adviser is a luminary in Christian’s research area and one of the best PhD advisers I have ever seen–he takes great care of his students, is inspirational, pushes them to do hard stuff, and demands quality in every aspect of their research. He gets the very best students because of that, so Christian rubs shoulders with a great group of fellow students every day. The get great jobs in a variety of places and one of them has an idea to start a business. That is a perfect setting to find the exact kind of projects that can lead to life-long learning. One buddy even wants them to start a business together–a highly technical business that requires the kind of preparation one can only receive in a math intensive PhD program. I say go for it!