My name is Omar Bohsali. I like to build things.

Is it better to be intelligent or diligent? Put differently, should you wish that you had a higher IQ, or should you make sure you spend your time in a productive way?

I’ve spent some time thinking through this and found a simple metaphor to financial investments. IQ is your principal investment and your ability to work hard is the investment’s growth rate.

Let’s compare two simple scenarios, both done over a 20 year time horizon:

Scenario 1: Intelligent – invest $10,000 at a 5% growth rate. You’re born with a high IQ and learn at a normal pace, growing intellectually 5% each year.

Scenario 2: Diligent – invest $2,500 at a 20% growth rate. You’re born with an average IQ (1/4 of that in Scenario 1) but are focused on self-growth so you spend your spare time doing things that enhance your abilities.

At the end of 20 years in scenario 1, your investment will be worth $26,533. At the end of 20 years in scenario 2, you end up with $95,844, which is $69,311 more than the final value of scenario 1.

Obviously the two are not zero sum so it would be optimal to have high IQ and high productivity, but in absence of both I think working hard regardless of where you start is the winning strategy.

Great TED talk by Susan Cain on the power of introverts.

For more, have a look at her recent book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.

def cache(func):
""" A thin middleware that caches based on function name and arguments. """
    def _inner(*args, **kwargs):
        a_str = "&".join([str(a) or None for a in args])
        kw_str = "&".join(["%s=%s" for key, val in kwargs.iteritems()])
        key_name = slugify("%s:%s:%s" % (func.__name__, a_str, kw_str))
        cached = cache.get(key_name)
        if not cached:
            cached = func(*args, **kwargs)
            cache.set(key_name, cached)
        return cached
    return _inner

This is designed with django in mind, but you can replace cache.set and cache.get with any cache cache framework of your choice. Also, I use slugify because many cache frameworks don’t like spaces in cache key names. Slugify replaces them with dashes.

Usage is simple:

@cache
def expensive_method(a,b=True):
    ...

Third, meditation can help a man “be his own man” and feel comfortable in his own skin.  That constant stream of input we face each day often carries messages of what we’re supposed to think or feel.  Talking-heads spout off opinions as if they were facts. Advertisers try to convince us that buying such-and-such product will make us feel more virile and manly. Meditation allows us to be alone with our own thoughts and discover what we really think about the world and ourselves.

via Art of Manliness