Hi, I'm Susan, data scientist and writer. I write about career development, data science/ML, productivity, and more.


Browse categories


The learning curve for long term goals

Over the past 2 years or so, (2021, 2022) I had this strange feeling I couldn’t shake off. It was a feeling that my relationship with my personal goals had changed, but not being able to identify what exactly had changed. I didn’t feel the same satisfaction as before from hitting goals, even if my goals had only gotten larger and more complex.

It’s taken a long time to adapt to this feeling, and I still feel that I don’t have an answer. But here are some reflections from my ongoing attempt at understanding.


[Read more...]

Your personal board of directors

My general response to the question, "How do I get a mentor?"


Quick guide to customize your resume for different machine learning roles

Tailor your resume effectively and find the machine learning role that matches you the best.

How I triage Slack messages

How to organize Slack messages so that most important ones are seen at a glance, and that joining many channels doesn't become overwhelming.

The Data Scientist Show - Reinforcement Learning, Productivity, and more (Podcast)

Chatted about career and life with host Daliana Liu

5 lessons I learned from writing online, for over a year

5 lessons from writing online in public for over a year.

What I Learned from Writing Online - For Fellow Non-Writers (Guest post by Eugene Yan)

Write before you're ready, write for yourself, quantity over quality, and a few other lessons. (Guest post by Eugene Yan)

A new season of learning

Work in progress of new endeavors, direction, and life.

The importance of taking breaks in the pomodoro technique

In this post I walk through experiments to optimize my break time to focus time ratio, by changing their lengths and frequency, and how they impacted my overall productivity.

Applying Machine Learning - favorite lessons I've learned (Interview)

I share what I've learned in the applied ML field, especially in production, and enabling data science/machine learning to integrate with real products.