What are you passionate about?

In my work life I am passionate about deep work. It’s important to me to be able to dig into whatever I'm working on. Something that resonated with me recently is the concept of the “5 whys”. Asking the question “why?” over and over will reveal more and more depth to the problem at hand. I think that's a simple and powerful tool.

 In my personal life I’m passionate about learning music, power lifting, and reading. I’ve also developed a somewhat un-healthy addiction to Youtube.

What was the last book you read?

I’m currently reading, “Garden of Rama” by Arthur C. Clark and Gentry Lee.

How do you deal with criticism?

I went to art school for university. When I was there (and ever since) I’ve had all kinds of criticism leveled at me. It’s important to know when to take criticism constructively and when to take it personally. That's right, I do sometimes take criticism personally, but to me that’s ok. The important thing is to understand context and learn regardless. Other people aren’t always on the same wavelength.

What motivates you to do a good job?

I love solving problems. It really drives me to thoroughly understand an issue and to aggressively work to solve it.

Are you better at planning or implementing?

I would say that I am evenly matched between the two. It wasn’t always this way. It’s taken me a long time to improve my planning abilities and to take a measured approach to things. Research, introspection, discussion, these are all as important as the actual building of a thing. Without adequate work up-front the final product will suffer in the long run.