Context: Devi Parikh (Meta/Georgia Tech) hosted a podcast to chat with AI researchers about not just their work but also their life in general. She had a fixed set of questions so I noted them down and (since nobody’s interviewing me) decided to answer them anyway.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-cTPJ4MbkdSEnK1lJGYempvigPfCJaPC&si=Mu_oA8Cr0mQAsfPz
What were you doing just before the call? Having lunch, and chatting with my brother. I tend to keep non-work but also non-mundane activity scheduled for the post-lunch pre-tea period. That way, I can convince my body to not nap, which is hard, since all my meetings these days are late night IST = early morning PST.
What is your daily routine like? Pandemic days: I'm in India at home with my family. I wake at 9 am, have tea or light breakfast while chatting with my brother, mother, father, and sister-in-law. Then me, my brother, and my sister-in-law, all go to the flat next door which we've rented for work. I work in the hall, and try hard to not do the easy tasks (checking mail, etc.) but instead having at least a 2-hour streak of focussed coding/writing. At 12/12:30, we (or mostly me alone) work out using Cult.fit live sessions of dancing cardio or weights, for half an hour. Then I wait for a few minutes before bath, possibly trimming my beard or just sitting in the sun. Post-lunch, I try writing or reading non-tech stuff like Chinese history or D3.js currently. 12:30pm-4:30pm is the only time when social media is allowed on my chrome browser, so I scroll twitter and read news. Then, post tea at 4/4:30, there's a longer streak of focussed work till 8/9, including hopefully a half-an-hour call with my girlfriend. Then, the three of us return from the other flat and watch TV or play Uno or chat around. We sometimes take a stroll after dinner. Lastly, I have meetings and/or classes typically 10pm-1am, after which I go to bed.
What is your favourite part of your day? Long streaks of work, as long as I can productively do something rather than procrastinating and doing something not useful enough. I love strolling around in the balcony (or on campus before pandemic) in every 10 minute break, while thinking about some research problem.
What is your least favourite part of your day? Post-dinner, unless I have classes jam packed, because then I'll spend it scrolling on twitter, or watching tv, which I hate later on.
What one chore do you dislike the most and why is that? Not been doing many chores these days, just sweeping the floor thrice a week. Back in LA, I hated bathroom cleaning the worst, maybe because I share it with two other flatmates. But I also hated cooking food since it took too long to make healthy food. I don't hate laundry or cleaning utensils.
Do you struggle with procrastination? Yes, loads. I sometimes use it to my advantage, as another speaker said on the podcast, by ensuring that I have the minimal amount of time to do something. Eg. I must fill my PhD screening form tonight and now that I have only a dozen hours to go, I can never spend more than a few hours on it! I like the quote "If you've never missed a flight, you're spending too much time at the airport".
Do you struggle with time management? Yes. I've been following Prof Devi Parikh's calendar blogpost by jampacking everything and not maintaining to-do lists, so that helps. But I struggle with estimating how long will I take to do certain stuff. I particularly lack in long-term planning, e.g. I underestimate how many weeks I'll take to write a paper.
If I ask your friends, “What is Avijit like?”, what 3 adjectives they’d use? Nerd. Creative. Boring.
How much of that is true? Is anything exaggerated or missing? It's all true. I'm studious, and quite analytical so that makes me a little boring. I'm seen as creative because I have broad interests, like cartooning and writing alongside computer science, but I don't have a lot of original ideas - they all come from reading/watching lots of stuff. Another adjective I'd use for myself is thoughtful, like a philosopher but in Adam Smith's definition, i.e. a person who doesn't have technical expertise but observes others and tries to understand the world.
Are you happy with the number of close friends you have? I'd say not. India is a dense place so you're forced to be living/studying with several people - which made it easy for me to make friends. I mean I'm fun and caring so people like me but I'm not very outspoken. Those batchmates and classmates have mostly fallen off the radar since I started my PhD. I'd want some more like-minded friends, e.g. Harsh from CMU, who'd pick me up from bed for midnight tea or to discuss some random idea he just had.
What is one thing you’re worse at than people around you? Empathy, but I'm improving. Well actually that's not for my professional vicinity. In academia, people around me are much more technically sound and disciplined.
What is your single biggest strength? I have a natural affinity for new and diverse knowledge. I like building stuff too, like a website or an app, but not more than reading/learning. I enjoy the natural high that I get when I realize a connection between two disparate ideas or figure out a way to solve a problem. It helps in research, but of course you also need discipline to code these ideas into experiments, and then communication skills to write them into papers.
What is a recurring moral conflict? Recently, it's collectivism vs individualism. It's everywhere. It's in Communism vs Democracy. It's in Chinese history: Confucianism vs Westernism. It's in my family: my mother vs my brother. My biggest weakness is a lack of assertiveness, which could have been solved if I had an individualistic upbringing. But I also find my biggest strength is flexibility and self-doubt, which comes from my collective background.
Is there a specific instance where you distinctly recall feeling privileged? Yes, definitely. Everything I've achieved post my IIT-JEE undergrad is a privilege. I was fortunate enough to get coaching for this exam, thanks to my brother having felt the need for it when he gave the exam 4 years earlier. I liked Physics and may have opted for Mechanical Engineering but my brother and our family friends convinced me to go for Computer Science instead. That IIT+CS tag is such a huge safety net that I could sustain my whole life in a great job with minimal effort. That helps me take many more risks, like going for a PhD.
What are you insecure about? My relationship, sometimes, since it's been through troublesome phases. I'm not sure I understand the question, but if it's "what do you feel you might lose", well I fear everything, e.g. why invest in savings or a house when tomorrow there could be WW3 and/or another pandemic and/or a catastrophic climate disaster.
Do you feel like an impostor? All the time. It's improving day by day. I thought it'd never go, but when I saw that I felt less of an impostor about my coding and applied machine learning skills after quite some practice, I felt like "wow, this can be beaten!" I still feel like an impostor in fundamental machine learning, maths, computer science, etc. I liked how a 600 class (PhD-level) on machine learning started with a primer on probability. This taught me that not everybody assumes you know all such stuff already, so it's easier to ask questions.
What is something you’re trying out these days, and how is that going? I'm on fellowship so I'm taking weird classes, like "history of China since 1800s" and "coding for journalists". Both of them are amazing! I'm brushing up my web dev skills and learning a lot about the rising superpower.
What is your favourite tool/trick/hack that makes your life more efficient or fun? I call it wanderlusting. When I'm tired or bored or depressed, I could literally just take a walk or a bus ride to anywhere, and come back fresh and optimistic. I learned this during my first international internship, since just typical residential streets were also new for an outsider like me. But when I returned to India, I was seeing my own country in a very different way, like how a firangi tourist would see. The vibrant hoardings, the people on the street, the animals (cows, dogs, monkeys), the smell of food at stalls, the rusting buildings - everything looks so glamorous!