Rnjai LambaAboutEssaysNotes
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About

Hi! I'm Rnjai ("run-jay").

Current

  • Running in the Bosque de Chapultepec park in Mexico City (it covers 1,695 acres - just over double the size of Central Park). Began running again this year after 2015.
DistanceTimeDate
16.5 km130 min10/26/23
16 km136 min10/19/23
12.3 km92 min10/31/23
11.1 km92 min09/26/23
10.1 km82 min09/21/23
10 km84 min09/15/23
8.2 km60 min09/08/23
6.2 km46 min04/28/23
5.5 km42 min07/14/23
5.1 km39 min07/17/23
4 km29 min07/12/23
3.8 km29 min08/27/23
3.2 km23 min08/20/23
2.8 km23 min08/10/23
  • Mathematics For Computer Science
  • Deep Learning
  • Acoustics
  • Logic

Archived

  • Speed Reading
  • Writing - Converting a 35K word journal into coherent pieces
  • Spanish - Reading and improving my Spanish
  • Physics
  • Memory - Tools for memory (Revisiting after >1 decade)
  • Chess - Revisiting after >2 decades and reading some classic books to ramp up
  • Wordle

Past

  • I was the CTO at a Series B Mexican FinTech, where I joined as employee #3, growing the team to 80 engineers managing 5M+ customers and 15M+ annual transactions.

Questions

  • Are conformity, expectations of consistency and the concept of happiness the biggest addictions?
  • Are distractions, procrastination "natural" ways to cope with the consistency attempted by education/ societal expectations?
  • Sleep wipes off memory daily. Society (science, politics etc.) is built by holding onto memory. What's happening here?
  • Is adversity the most reliable way we get good at things. Several top musicians, founders and biographers have emphasized this, how can we do better?
  • Is it possible to transfer capability from one domain to another? (live experiment being done above ^)
  • Are companies the most efficient way to build complex systems of people producing leverage in the form of technology?
  • When is fit between entities a recursive solution to a problem, without getting lost in long potentially lossy multiplication chains? (market-product, product-founder, founder-culture, culture-employee, question-answer)
  • Are current forms of communication (even language) the most effective and accurate way of communicating? How can each mode of communication be optimized for effectiveness?
  • What makes good books, companies or work good? More with less or expressiveness (concision, semantics) are the common themes but there's a pinch of magic and intelligence beyond any reductionism.
  • What is interest in an activity? The general systems of society (education itself in addition to inflexible education formats) lead to passive engagement for most individuals.
  • Does the entity that makes a decision exist after the decision? Judging by the time it takes people to correct mistaken decisions, it seems no.
  • Progress of time should grow a team's (individual's, technology's) effectiveness and efficiency. This seldom happens. Why?
  • How should we make the whole greater than sum of the parts, every second or is there a limit up to which this can be done?
  • Setting goals often leads to underperformance or self destruction in many cases. Why?

If you're interested in discussing, feel free to DM me on Twitter!

Interests

Some things I enjoy learning and talking about:

  • Individual-location and location-home fit - Mexico has been my most conducive location, leading to the most productive period in my life. Weather and environment do determine alot. Similarly, moving to Queretaro within Mexico in 2021 has been the most serene and uncluttered place I've lived in, marking a period of subtle discovery in life. Cumulatively, I've moved 30 homes over the last 5 years.
  • Education theory - Every individual component of education ex. writing, reading etc. has a range of outcomes. At the highest range this activity would be characterised as intelligence or something that cannot be taught. Education then becomes forcing hundreds of things ex. writing an essay, reciting a poem etc. mostly with a mediocre outcome leading to confused motivations. Should one do something if the output is just about equal to input, for example? Everyone does and then this is labeled as an opportunity to say no or learn from mistakes or being ruthlessly selective. But the foundational mistaken actions over a decade still remain and continue to effect people's actions for years. Let's look as the roots not the leaves.

Interesting

  • Shifted 30 homes over 5 years in Mexico, eventually building a 60 point house selection criteria
  • Missed 5+ flights between 2018-22. Reasons include deployment to AWS (twice), misreading 11 am as pm, not having a transit visa, misreading COVID test results etc.
  • Have 4500+ books in my reading list
  • Did a 2 month 10 hours a day Yoga course in 2017 in India, while working and waiting for my Mexican visa
  • Gave GMAT 6 times, ending up with 770
  • Have single-handedly run large in-person hiring drives ex. evaluating 3000 candidates from ~30 Indian colleges in 2 months