Daniel Bourke reflects on his obsession with learning AI while juggling work, workouts, and social life. He shares the law of thirds: spend time equally with people more skilled than you, peers, and those you can teach. The podcast continues weekly after his 100-day experiment.
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What is going on, everyone? Welcome back to day 87 of the Daniel Bourke Show. Thank you all so much for tuning in YouTube, tuning in on the podcast, whatever you're up to. I hope you're having an awesome day, but I'm going to have to keep this one relatively short. I'm holding everyone up for dinner right now. Well, not really. I think, I think they won't matter too much. It's a fairly large party and it's not like I'm the star attraction of the party. But where am I right now? I'm at Noosa, which is a coastal town about 2 hours drive from where I live. I'm actually here for a family friend's wedding. And, but I'm still going to keep the podcast going over the next few days, no matter what. That's a non-negotiable for me. I can't give up now within the last 2 weeks of the 100-day experiment. I sort of decided after the 100 days, it's going to be once a week. That way I can, well, the podcast that is, and the YouTube videos, don't get me wrong, we're going to keep that going. It's going to be once a week. And I'm sort of tossing up a few topics of what I can talk about. I definitely want to talk more about artificial intelligence because that's something that I'm studying right now. I mean, I'm so addicted to work. I've got my laptop here with me and I was just studying before, while I'm supposed to be getting ready for dinner. I've sort of pushed the podcast right back to the, I don't know, the last minute to do sort of thing because I was so, I don't know, at the moment I'm addicted to studying. I'm addicted to work and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Like any sort of addiction in my opinion It can be dangerous at times and I've been trying to think about how I can get more balance and whatnot, because I'll be, as I said in previous episodes, I'll be— I'm going to go to this dinner right now and I'm going to be thinking about what I could be learning, what I could be studying. I'm sort of— I'm always in that driven mode at the moment. Maybe I should fully embrace that and just follow it, but I know if I keep going at a pace that I would— at a pace that if I don't limit myself, like I just keep going, studying, studying, studying into the hours of the night, not getting much sleep, then I'll I'll burn out and any study that I end up doing won't be effective. So, I think it's important with everything to get some sort of balance. I mean, I had to drive up here, a 2-hour drive, and I was trying to— I was actually on my— not doing a good thing. I was on my phone while I was driving trying to find an audiobook on artificial intelligence to study, to listen to while I was driving. And so, it's called Superintelligence by, I think, Nick Bostrom. Or I might be getting the name wrong, but it's called Superintelligence. I want to check it out. A lot of people recommend it, but don't do that. Don't use your phone and drive. Don't be like me. I was an absolute idiot. I should not have done that. But nonetheless, I think it's just me trying to fuel that addiction. I had a workout break today actually though. I worked out with my mate Jay at Raw Training Australia. We had a really good session. He's got an awesome gym there. Check it out. Instagram @raw_trainingaustralia. @training_australia. Actually filmed the training session we did. We did a whole lot of mobility work rather than lifting some heavy weights. Yesterday was my friend's birthday and the gym session that we did was, because he was turning 22, we did 22 deadlifts, 22 bench press, 22 squats all in a row of his body weight, which was 78 kilos, so he rounded it to 80. And it took me about 6 minutes and I almost threw up. I was in a very a very nauseous state after finishing that. I haven't— you know when you're in that group environment and you sort of push yourself harder than you've ever, ever thought you would go? If I was by myself, I don't know if I would have ever done that sort of workout. But because I was with other people, I just pushed myself to the next limit. And I think that brings it back to something I've been preaching so much, like preaching a fair few, like on the previous episodes of the podcast, let's just say that. And in just in general conversation, surround yourself with those that have got to put you up. As well as, what's the law? The law of thirds, actually. It's like, be around 33% of the time, of your time spent with people who are better than you, 33% of your time spent with people who are on the same level as you, and 33% of your time spent with people who are below you. The idea is that the people above you, you'll learn from them. That's what I'm doing right now with the Deep Learning course that I'm involved in. There's so many smart people. I'm definitely the bottom of the, bottom of the team right there, but nonetheless, I'm learning, I'm learning a phenomenal amount, and that's why I'm, that's probably why I'm addicted to studying right now because I want to catch up to everyone else. I'm trying to— I'm learning so much, it's like giving me hits of dopamine here and there, and I don't know, triggering that addiction mechanism that we've all got in the brain, the one that gets triggered by anything that hits us with dopamine, right? And so, yeah, 33% of the time with people above you, 33% of the time with people on the same level as you, that way you can feed off each other and be competitive, be competitive with one another. And then 3% with people who are less skilled than you so that you can teach them. Because I definitely believe that you don't fully understand a skill unless you can teach it to someone else. Just knowing the name of something doesn't mean you really understand it. And I've been like that in the past. I don't know a lot of things. The more you learn, the more you find out you don't know. And I've— knowing the name of something is not knowing it. And so, unless you can sort of look at a bird and say, the name of it, you don't really know that bird, you just know the name of the bird. I'm using a bird as an example. I think I read this in Richard Feynman's book, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, and that's what his dad used to teach him, that saying. Just knowing the name of something doesn't mean you actually know it. It's not until you can sort of teach someone about the actual thing that you really gather a deep understanding. So, what's the daily challenge? Hmm. Daily challenge is Learn something new. You learn something new every day. So, whatever it is, learn something new. Let me know what it is. I'd love to hear it out. You can follow me on any social media @MrDeBurke, M-R-D-B-O-U-R-K-E, or my website, MrDeBurke.com. Contact me wherever you want. I'm happy to sort of hear about what you're learning. If you want to find out more about what I'm learning, I'm going to be releasing content over the next few weeks of how I'm learning to program, how I'm learning artificial intelligence, how I'm making the podcast, how I'm making YouTube videos, it's cooking, you name it. I'm going to try broadcast it. How am I going to do it? I don't know yet, so you'll see the whole process. Nonetheless, thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for watching. Love you all. Call someone, tell them you love them, and we'll see you tomorrow.
