7 super simple ways to stay awake and maximize consciousness

Gotta stay up? Here's what has been working for me the past few weeks:

  • Push ups. No really, do 10 pushups and really get the blood pumping.
  • Turn up some angry Alice in Chains or Nirvana. Even 30 seconds of headbanging will wake you right up. Draw on that long forgotten and locked away teenage angst from the early 90's.
  • Chug a red bull. Sugarfree ideally. Fast and effective.
  • Sit up straight. Slouching in your chair will make you lazy and you'll end up watching hulu.com for half an hour. Sit up straight, and your whole mindset will be different.
  • Don't forget to eat. Eating is the #1 driver for energy. Have some nuts or wasabi peas around. Eat them a handful an hour.
  • Drink more water. If you're thirsty at all, it will affect your ability to think.
  • Take a nap. If all else fails, take a 20 minute nap. It's easy to be a zombie and waste time, so know when to say when.

Whether you need to cram for your next final, watch one more hour of Gossip Girl, or code to obliterate your competitors, I've found these simple actions can go a long way. You got any tips to share? Would love to hear it in the comments!

I love prime rib.

Me and ten of my friends got together on New Years Eve at my place in San Francisco for a great dinner party. The main attraction: an 11 pound 18-day dry-aged prime standing rib roast, accompanied by an incredible array of creamy sides. Think House of Prime Rib, but way more high quality because you can control the ingredients 100%. Many thanks to my friends Sushmita, Theo, Molly and Grace for cooking, and for everyone coming out to hang out and celebrate the new year in style.

Here are the recipes, courtesy of Tyler Florence's Ultimate cooking show on Food Network. I saw this on Christmas day and was absolutely inspired -- I just had to make it right away!
I highly recommend these recipes, and I also highly recommend having great friends come over to help cook, especially if cooking for 11.

Happy New Year!

On how to pick goats from cars: The Monty Hall Problem

Back in my days at Palantir Technologies, I distinctly remember being befuddled by the Monty Hall problem. And I also remember distinctly being an utter skeptic when it came to the actual solution. I've since come around. Here's the succinct version:

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

Now you'd think it wouldn't matter whether or not you switched, after all, you already made the choice, right? Probability holds constant, regardless of whether someone knows about it, right?

Wrong! You should always switch doors. And there's a simple intuitive explanation. While you made a choice initially with no information, the HOST always has to reveal one of the doors that has a goat behind it, and he essentially has more information than you do, which also affects the outcome.

There are two scenarios here:

  • 1 out of 3 times, you'll select a door with the car. In this case, the host will have a choice between two doors that both have goats. In this case, if you switch, you'll lose every time. If you don't switch, you win.
  • 2 out of 3 times, you'll select a door with a goat. In this case, the host will ALWAYS open the other door with a goat. In this case, if you switch, you win every time. If you don't switch, you always lose.

So there you have it. Switching will cause you to win 2 out of 3 times.

Interestingly, the intuitive thing to do is to not switch. Out of 228 subjects in one study, only 13% chose to switch according to the wikipedia article, which is excellent by the way.

And if you still don't believe it, here's some monte carlo simulations by Antonio Cangiano to prove it. Code proves everything!