In PE in middle and high school, I always remember taking my pulse and having a very high resting heart rate relative to others.  I forget the exact number, but it might have reached 80 beats per minute or higher.  I always thought I counted incorrectly or double-counted.

I’ve started running and walking almost daily recently.  I feel better and more energized, especially after a run.  I would like to know if my overall health improved since I started about 4-6 weeks ago.  The first days, I could barely go around the block.  I would come back into the house and gulp down a gallon of water in between deep panting heaves.  After a couple of weeks I could run/walk a mile or two without gasping for breath by the end.  Yesterday, I estimate I ran/walked 5 miles (I know that I walk 4 miles an hour) without a problem.

So, in terms of endurance, my fitness improved.  But what about my heart rate?  I check yesterday and today.  It’s down to about 63 beats per minute.  I made a graph using a short Python script, pygooglechart, and the Google Chart API.  I will be plotting more data points every day:

Lance Armstrong has a resting heart rate of 32 beats per minute!  On the other hand, some quick research online tells me that resting heart rate poorly correlates to fitness, although recovery rate would be a better measure.  I’ll start charting my recovery rate once I figure out how to measure it easily.

YCombinator, a kind of mini-venture capital firm, invests tens of thousands of dollars ($$$) into very early seed stage start-up companies run by smart technology hackers.  They wanted to fund me in Summer 2008.

I applied to YCombinator two times.  The first time, when I applied with my friend Mason for the Summer 2007 round,  I arrogantly presumed that Paul would lavish on us praise and beg us to fly to California to work with him.  I spent no more than an hour on the application.  We had no passion in the idea we presented.  Our projects list hinted at nothing particularly remarkable or unique.  Our analysis of the idea and our competitors delved only into the shallowest parts of a deep lagoon.

The second time, when I applied alone in Summer 2008, in an inspired moment I sat down in Starbucks for a solid few hours to work on the application.  I strived for excellence, not perfection.  A few months prior, I had briefly glimpsed the semi-successful application of Liz Jobson and Danielle Fong.  I recalled their deep detail and thoughtful writing, so I imitated that kind of deep analysis which shows off one’s mastery of logic and breadth of experience.

I wish I had known how to write a good application the first time.  So, taking my cue from Brian Lash’s recent question on Hacker News, I helped him out.  I write here a slightly expanded version to help out anybody else who wants Paul Graham & co. to fund his or her startup.

If I were to advise myself in 2007, I would recommend that I write briefly but write a lot.  This advice seems contradictory, but I mean it in a very specific way.  My first application, I kept brief.  I did not want to swamp YC with a tome of text. I saved many of my accomplishments for the interview.  Do not do this.  Write, write, and write some more.  Write everything interesting and unique about yourself.  If you have doubts about a statement you made about a competitor, qualify it.  Don’t vacillate, but at the same time don’t seem shallow, ignorant, and inexperienced.

Of course, once you’ve written all that, you have a very long application.  Now, take out filler words.  Compress ideas that take up two sentences when you can use just one. If you waste two words in a sentence, delete the whole sentence and write it again from scratch.  If you see a phrase that you think an investment banker might use on his resume, nuke it.  Achieve a high density.  In my experience, the YC crew truly pores over these applications to understand all of the meat of it.  They do not skim your application when it has rich content.  Cut, cut, and cut some more.

Now, step back and look at your application.  If you have very little writing left, real content, then you may not be the best fit for YCombinator this year.  That’s okay.  It’s good you know now.  Take this year off and work on some interesting, hard projects that nobody has done before.  Bounce your idea off of the smartest person you know.  Hell, micro-test the idea.  Then, repeat this process.

Step back, look at your tight list of accomplishments.  If it’s long, that’s great, since reading something long but rich in content everyone loves to do.  The length indicates strength.  In my limited experience, I think this is how I made my application successful.

Here’s some of my application below (I elided some less relevant parts). I was accepted for Summer ‘08 2008 but decided to pass this time for a variety of reasons.

—————————————-

What is your company going to make?

I’m open to anything. Here’s one idea:

————–

Have you ever scanned a document before? How was that experience?

It was terrible for me, too. Everyone I have ever asked has agreed that it is physically painful. But, there is a solution, one based on understanding actual human needs. What is wrong with the scanners of today?:

* slow (takes time to heat up)

* slow (scanning at a high dpi takes a long time)

* complicated (please select the dpi, now select bla, now bal[sic]…)

* cumbersome (files generated at high dpi are huge, slow down system)

* cumbersome (OCR’ing a document is a whole other rigamarole)

What do people really need?  Simply a decent, readable scan of the document. This should be as easy as holding the paper up to face the monitor.

Imagine that.

I propose that I sell a device which is basically just a decent-resolution CCD chip with a special lens which connects to a computer (wired at first, but v2 wireless). Scanning a document is as simple as holding the camera up to a document and clicking. In my tests, scanning a whole text books takes 5-10 minutes. This is a game-changer. I’ve worked with an ip lawyer to file the provisional patent on this and a few other aspects of the designs.

[BY THE WAY, IF ONE OF YOU WANTS TO HELP ME BUILD THIS, I'M ALL EARS. I'M AN AI HACKER NOT A HARDWARE HACKER. OH, BY THE WAY, I USED A DIFFERENT IDEA IN THE INTERVIEW ROUND, NOT THIS ONE SINCE I'M SKEPTICAL OF THE MARKET FOR THIS PRODUCT AT THIS POINT. NEVERTHELESS, IT'S VERY COOL. I WANT TO BUILD THIS FOR MYSELF!]

For each founder, please list: name, age, YC username, email address, personal url (if any), and current employer and title or school and major. List the main contact first. Separate founders with blank lines. Put an asterisk before the name of anyone not able to move to Boston June through August.

….. [Be sure to put your blog here. Don't have a blog? Make one. Blog about whatever is on your mind. Blog about your hacking.

To be honest, an Ivy League pedigree probably helped.  Also, my computer science degree (as opposed to Economics or Business one) probably encouraged YC's faith in me.]

Please tell us in one or two sentences about something impressive that each founder has built or achieved.

Looking at some things in ~/projects folder: ……..

[Here I mention a few of my projects, with links to open source code, web pages, anything I can publicly show. I didn't spend more than one or two sentences describing any one project, but I listed many of my most interesting projects and why I worked on them. YC likes to see you working on real problems, so I talked about problems I solved for myself and for others directly

They want to see that you think creatively and that you actually finish things.

It goes without saying that you should list projects which uniquely describe you.  Building a toy language in Programming Languages class many people probably do.  Yes, it may have taken you a long time, and you may have learned a lot, but you do not necessarily stand out.  Writing a CAPTCHA solver to hack Digg few people do or can do.]

Please tell us about the time you, ljlolel, most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.

…… [I talked about my shotgun email to dozens of startups here in Silicon Valley which gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of cool entrepreneurs.  I'll probably blog about this at some point in the future.]

Please tell us about an interesting project, preferably outside of class or work, that two or more of you created together. Include urls if possible.

(see above) [I applied alone, so group projects inapplicable.]

How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet? Have any of the founders not met in person?

n/a [Again, I was a sole founder.]

What’s new about what you’re doing? What are people forced to do now because what you plan to make doesn’t exist yet?

(see above) Basically, nobody ever scans anything because it takes forever, doesn’t really do what you want (you just want a readable, small image and for the document to be searchable),

What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don’t get?

Scanner manufacturers try to pack in the highest dpi they possibly can. They focus on resolution, when they should be focusing on the user experience. Speed is what they should optimize, but I see no scanner manufacturer doing that.

Who are your competitors, and who might become competitors? Who do you fear most?

HP, Xerox, etc, also ScanR, Qipit, Evernote …… [I go on to be brutally honest about the difficulty and vulnerability of my position as a hardware startup in a crowded field. Remember, you are writing for some very, very smart people. They want to see your analytical thinking skills here. They want to see you be realistic, not delusional.]

……. more questions, answer analytically deeply, answer honestly to the best of your ability ……

If you had any other ideas you considered applying with, feel free to list them. One may be something we’ve been waiting for.

…….. [I always think of new ideas and discuss them with friends. I chose 4 and listed them here. I crisply described each in no more than 2 brief sentences.]

Tim Ferriss popularized the idea that you should limit the amount of time you spend checking email every day.  He espouses a philosophy of life called the low-information diet.  By following these guidelines, you get more done and, more importantly, feel less stressed.

One of his suggestions about email spread across the blogosphere very quickly because of its simplicity and practicality.  He recommends that you check email only twice a day (or preferably less often) and strictly adhere to that rule.  I started following these guidelines a few days ago, but I easily relapse.  Nevertheless, I do a few things to try to stay on the wagon:

• Add a message to all outgoing emails:

EXPERIMENT: I will be checking email 2 times a day at 1pm and 6pm pacific time.

If you need me earlier, then please contact me below.

And of course I put my contact information below.  With this signature, I do not worry about missing out on important and urgent information or replies.

• Delete all links, shortcuts, and bookmarks to GMail

• Set up a script to automatically open up GMail at 1pm and 6pm every day.  In Ubuntu, I write just one line in crontab:

0 13,18 * * *  export DISPLAY=:0 && firefox https://mail.google.com/

Linux makes hard things easy.

Dried Pineapple is Crazy Delicious

Overcoming Bias is the best blog on the Internet today. You should subscribe to it immediately. Whether you are a student, engineer, waitress, philosopher, or as long as you have and use a brain, you should read this blog regularly.

Overcoming Bias explains wrong thinking in science and everyday life. They often point to an article or cite personal examples, then they explain the intellectual mistakes that led to the false conclusion. More importantly, they explain why people so easily make these intellectual mistakes. The authors suggest new ways to think about the world to prevent you from making the same kinds of mistakes.

They point to peer-reviewed research to compare the systematic biases that people have discovered over time. The articles are information-rich, focused, poignant, and valuable. They are not always right, but never are they shallow. They always think deeply about the topic. If, while reading one of their articles, you can construct a simple counterexample to disprove the claim, then you are misreading it. Read it again until you understand.

The authors write amazingly clearly and unambiguously. I was surprised by this, given the range of topics. The comments are of an unusually high-quality (when reddit doesn’t link to them). I’m lucky to have come across the blog. I’ll look forward to every post, especially to those written by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

and you will do them well. If you don’t like something, then you are doing it wrong, thinking about it wrong.

Paul Graham:
“If you think something’s supposed to hurt, you’re less likely to notice if you’re doing it wrong.”

Stuff sucks life out of you. Americans are brainwashed to consume more and more every day. Unfortunately, this consumerism is spreading around the world. It should stop. Although I’ve wanted to describe it here, I could not figure out a clear way to express the weightlessness I feel after having eliminated nearly all my stuff.

Someone has written a fairly good article describing these ideas for me:

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/11/21/the-hidden-costs-of-stuff/

Paul Graham wrote about this very topic recently as well. He does not seem to follow the idea to its conclusion, nor is the writing particularly well suited for the non-technical, but it’s another opinion:

http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html

From Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach:

That is, it seems to me, a general principle: you get bored with something not when you have exhausted its repertoire of behavior, but when you have mapped out the limits of the space that contains its behavior.

I’ll call it Hofstadter’s Law. I think that Hofstadter wanted to call something else his law, but it wasn’t as interesting as this.

In Godel, Escher, Bach’s chapter on Zen:

Here is another koan which aims to break the mind of logic:

The student Doko came to a Zen master, and said: “I am seeking the truth. In what state of mind should I train myself, so as to find it?”

     Said the master, “There is no mind, so you cannot put it in any state. There is no truth, so you cannot train yourself for it.”

     ”If there is no mind to train, and no truth to find, why do you have these monks gather before you every day to study Zen and train themselves for this study?”

     ”But I haven’t an inch of room here,” said the master, “so how could the monks gather? I have no tongue, so how could I call them together or teach them?”

     ”Oh, how can you lie like this?” asked Doko.

     ”But if I have no tongue to talk to others, how can I lie to you?” asked the master.

     Then Doko said sadly, “I cannot follow you. I cannot understand you.”

     ”I cannot understand myself,” said the master.

From a NextJump survey:
“”"
12. Visualize a rosy scenario where the company you are working for goes through a wildly profitable public offering, and you personally make enough money from your equity share to enjoy lifetime financial independence. Freed from the need to hold down a job just to meet the financial obligations of your chosen lifestyle, what would you do with your time and money?
“”"

That’s kind of a frightening question. For a lot of people I know, their sole goal is to become fantastically wealthy. That dream is so far away, they don’t even think of considering what they would do with the money once they have it. They don’t even realize that they desire money as merely a means to an end.

I like Tim Ferriss’s example. He asked his friend, what will you do after years of toil at your investment bank, after making millions as a vice president working eighty-hour weeks? His friend answered, I’ll finally get to take a long vacation riding a motorcycle through Thailand. Tim just chuckled, telling him, he can do that right now and for a lot less than a million dollars.

I’ve always wanted to get money to achieve my ends. Now, I’m just looking for my ends. As I do what I like, as I do good work, I’ll just get paid enough (or much more than enough) for it. I know that money, more money than I’ll ever need, will simply follow.

The Art of Happiness is a great book. It juxtaposes recent psychological research with deep, ancient Buddhist philosophical principles.

I will quote all of the italicized portions of the book:

Chapter 1: Purpose of life
The purpose of existence is to seek happiness.

Chapter 2: Sources of happiness
Whether we are feeling happy or unhappy is a function of how we perceive our situation, how satsified we are with what we have.

Our feelings of contentment are strongly influenced by our tendency to compare.

Your state of mind is key.

The true antidote of greed is contentment [not wealth].

You can relate to them [anyone: friends, strangers, enemies] because you are still a human being, within the human community. You share that bond. And that human bond is enough to give rise to a sense of worth and dignity. That bond can become a source of consolation in the event that you lose everything.

Chapter 3: Training the mind for happiness
We don’t need more money, we don’t need greater success or fame, we don’t need the perfect body or even the perfect mate– right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness.

The first step in seeking happiness is learning.

If you maintain a feeling of compassion, loving kindness, then something automatically opens your inner door. Through that, you can communicate much more easily with other people. Through that, you can communicate much more easily with other people. And that feeling of warmth creates a kind of openness. You’ll find that all human beings are just like you, so you’ll be able to relate to them more easily.

Bringing about discipline withine one’s mind is the essence of the Buddha’s teaching.

We must also develop an appreciation and awareness of that fact [human nature is fundamentally gentle and compassionate]. And changing how we perceive ourselves, through learning and understanding, can have a very real impact on how we interact with others and how we conduct our daily lives.

Chapter 4: Reclaiming our innate state of happiness
It is still my firm conviction that human nature is essentially compassionate, gentle. That is the predominant feature of human nature.

It is scientifically incorrect to say that we have an inherited tendency to make war or act violently. That behavior is not genetically programmed into human nature.

The turning-toward happiness as a valid goal and the conscious decision to seek happiness in a systematic manner can profoundly change the rest of our lives.

Chapter 5: A new model for intimacy
The Dalai Lama’s strategy, however, seemed to bypass working on social skills or external behaviors, in favor of an approach that cut directly to the heart–realizing the value of compassion and then cultivating it.

Chapter 6: Deepening our connection to others
So, when we are dealing with trying to understand relationship problems, the first stage in this process involves deliberately reflecting on the underlying nature and basis of that relationship.

I think that if one is seeking to build a truly satisfying relationship, the best way of bringing this about is to get to know the deeper nature of the person and relate to her or him on that level, instead of merely on the basis of superficial characteristics.

Chapter 7: The value and benefits of compassion

Chapter 8: Facing suffering
Our attitude towards suffering becomes very important because it can affect how we cope with suffering when it arises.

However, if we can transform our attitude towards suffering, adopt an attitude that allows us greater tolerance of it, then this can do much to help counteract feelings of mental unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and discontent.

There is a possibility of freedom from suffering

Chapter 9: Self-created suffering
We also often add to our pain and suffering by being overly sensitive, overreacting to minor things, and sometimes taking things too personally.

Chapter 10: Shifting perspectives
Generally speaking, once you’re already in a difficult situation, it isn’t possible to change your attitude simply by adopting a particular thought once or twice. Rather it’s through a process of learning, training, and getting used to new viewpoints that enables you to deal with the difficulty.

In fact, the enemy is the necessary condition for practicing patience.

1. I am a human being. 2. I want to be happy and I don’t want to suffer. 3. Other human beings, like myself, also want to be happy and don’t want to suffer.

Chapter 11: Finding meaning in pain and suffering
Then your suffering takes on new meaning as it is used as the basis for a religious or spiritual practice.

We convert pain into suffering in our mind.

Pain not only warns us and protects us, but it unifies us.

It is our suffering that is the most basic element that we share with others, the factor that unifies us with all living creatures.

Chapter 12: Bringing about change
The first step involves learning.

The next step is developing conviction.

This conviction to change then develops into determination. Next, one transforms determination into action.

The final factor of effort is critical.

You need to generate great enthusiasm. And, here, a sense of urgency is a key factor.

Through constant familiarity, we can definitely establish new behavior patterns. [habits]

If I encounter some obstacles or problems, I find it helpful to stand back and take the long-term view rather than the short-term view.

As long as space endures / As long as sentient beings remain / May I too live / To dispel the miseries of the world

Because of this capacity to adopt a different perspective, we can isolate parts of ourselves that we seek to eliminate and do battle with them.

This premise is based on the fact that our positive states of mind can act as antidotes to our negative tendnecies and delusory states of mind. So, the second premise is that as you enhance the capacity of these antidotal factors, the greater their force, the more you will be able to reduce the force of the mental and emotional afflictions.

Positive states of mind can act as direct antidotes to negative states of mind.

Chapter 13: Dealing with anger and hatred
The only factor that can give you refuge or protection from the destructive effects of anger and hatred is your practice of tolerance and patience.

An end result, or a product of patience and tolerance, is forgiveness. When you are truly patient and tolerance, then forgiveness comes naturally.

Chapter 14: Dealing with anxiety and building self-esteem
If the situation or problem is such that it can be remedied, then there is no need to worry about it.

Alternatively, if there is no way out, no solution, no possibility of resolution, then there is also no point in being worried about it, because you can’t do anything about it anyway.

I’ve found that sincere motivation acts as an antidote to reduce fear and anxiety.

If there is a solution to the problem, then there is no need to worry. If there is no solution, thenre is no sense in worrying either.

The closer one gets to being motivated by altruism, the more fearless one becomes in the face of even extremely anxiety-provoking circumstances.

I think perhaps honesty and self-confidence are closely linked.

I think that, generally, being honest with oneself and others about what you are or are not capable of doing can counteract that feeling of lack of self-confidence.

[Self-hatred] is not an intrinsic part of the human mind.

So, if our definition of love is based on a genuine wish for someone’s happiness, then each of us does in fact love himself or herself–every one of us sincerely wishes for his or her own happiness.

Similarly, so long as we know and maintain an awareness that we have this marvelous gift of human intelligence and a capacity to develop determination and use it in positive ways, in some sense we have this underlying mental health. An underlying strength, that comes from realizing we have this great human potential.

Chapter 15: Basic spiritual values
True spirituality is a mental attitude that you can practice at any time.