85: Answering One Question Every Week
This morning I had an idea which sounds simple, but I think could be impactful for me:
I'm going to answer one question every week.
I think it could be a solution to some challenges I'm facing, and a helpful mechanism for maximising the utility of my brain cells 🧠.
Let me explain.
Micro-startup building so far
At the start of the year, I set the ambitious target of building a micro-startup every week. Within a few weeks, I realised that was a bad idea and updated it to one every month.
Since then, I've shipped a few web products:
And I've built a few others, but decided not to ship them publicly yet.
The focus has been on shipping a minimally-functioning product out of the door, and see the reaction.
This has been helpful. I've improved my tech skills and built a shipping habit.
However, I've found that during the process of building, I'm coming to realise what some of the key differentiating features of these specific ideas are. And these differentiating aspects are all quite non-trivial to build.
To really go deep on any of these ideas, I'd need to set that as the specific focus and spend a decent amount of time on it.
I think there's a few tactical improvements I could make here: I could do more to validate ideas with the market before I start to code, I could use low-code/no-code tools to get simpler versions out, or I could work on building even simpler ideas.
But more fundamentally, I realise, I want to take a step back and do more first-principles deep thinking before building anything.
I'm still not sure what this mailing list is
I first started this mailing list in 2019. I had written my book on learning medicine and was running courses on machine learning for healthcare - and I wanted a way to keep in touch with the people I was meeting.
I also wanted a way to keep interested friends and relatives updated on what I'm doing and thinking about.
So I decided to start a mailing list, without any real subject constraint, and share what I'm working on and thinking about.
This hasn’t really changed since then. I've never concretely defined what the mailing list is, beyond being ‘my personal mailing list’.
I know that the main goal is not to grow the mailing list. If it was, I'd definitely be taking a different strategy. I'd probably be sharing "the ten best AI tools I found this week" or something like that.
(Maybe this reflects some kind of deeper challenge of putting things out on the internet - around balancing authenticity with what-gets-attention-and-grows-your-following. I have ideas for how I could do the latter without the former, but I wouldn't want to do it.)
Answering one question every week
So what exactly do I mean by this?
I want to define a single, non-trivial question each week, focus my research and intellectual efforts throughout the week towards answering it as best possible, and sharing the outcome at the end of the week.
I have a hunch that this could help in a bunch of ways.
Firstly, it triages intellectual efforts. I have a bunch of ideas I'd love to research. Some are less important than others. If I actively screen and select questions (and involve input from others), then I'll focus on answering questions that matter. I want to focus on questions with practically-useful answers, not just theoretical.
Secondly, it provides focus. I think I may have ADHD, and I need to exert effort telling my brain what it should and shouldn't focus on. Having a clear north star for each week provides a clear boundary for what is in and outside of scope. While the weekly cadence enables me to keep it fresh, wrapping up one piece of analysis and starting an entirely new one (while always retaining the option to loop back to a previous area).
Thirdly, it plays to my strengths. One of my top 'super powers' is powering through large amounts of content and systematically extracting the key points. Well, mostly, I just like doing it. And if done properly, many of the questions will involving analysing data, which is also something I love.
It would be a bit of a dream life for me if I could just ask people what questions they want me to answer, I spend all my time researching them and sharing the output, and somehow get paid for this. (Does a platform exist that already enables this?)
I think it could be a way in which I level up my written output, too, given that one of my aims is to write a prolific amount in my lifetime.
Hopefully, over time, I improve both my ability to ask the right questions and to answer them.
So this is what I'll start doing. Time will tell if it's a helpful approach. Weekly could be the cadence I need. And maybe that's what this mailing list becomes.
P.S.
I'm planning to set up a cool way for tracking these questions publicly (and enabling people to vote on them). For now, I've just set up this page with some of the initial top-of-mind questions that I have.
Our Imperial Course is now live
We've officially launched our 2023-24 course at Imperial College London, called "Python for Data Science and Machine Learning in Healthcare".
If you're not at Imperial and want to access the material:
About Me
👋 Hi, I'm Chris Lovejoy.
I'm a medical doctor 🩺 -> machine learning engineer 👨💻 -> start-up founder 💡
I'm on a mission to improve how we manage our health - and share my learnings and experiences here, on my personal website and on YouTube.
I also throw in my favourite things from the internet, and the occasional joke (humour is work-in-progress).