Quant trading is like anything - time and effort. You read a few sites, play with some data, read a few books, test and continually refine your strategies, learn more and brainstorm of new approaches. It can be pretty fun depending on who you are. But in the end I think enjoyment comes down to a love of problem solving, the difference with quant trading is it's financially self-sustainable and rewarding. Other projects lack the immediate pay-off, but take my word for it, will be more rewarding in the long run. Stick to your programming, your research, your show HN.
Also, the first cited site is Ernie Chan's which provides a similar established perspective
- Used to engage in a range of behaviors such as procrastination to keep a whole catalog of anxiety-producing thoughts tamped down and below the conscious mental radar screen. By now, the anxiety-producing thoughts have by and large come to the surface and evaporated, rendering those avoidance behaviors unnecessary.
For a couple years I practiced Bikram Yoga regularly, a practice I gradually found to overlap with mediation and led to my current involvement with a meditation group and development of my own practice.
A Dharma master spoke at my school and said we should strive to meditate for an hour twice a day. I'm up to roughly a half hour twice-a-day on my own, and 2 or 3 times a week I sit for an hour thirty with a group (three session of ~25min with walking/kin-kin in between, which really helps stretch out the legs). I've only stepped up my practice regularly, but after the group sessions generally end up feeling amazing, both exhausted and refreshed. The sleep, oh my god my sleep.
I'm a pretty busy thinker with a degree of anxiety as I've always been somewhat of a perfectionist with high-expectations of myself. Lots of internal pressure with a high caffeine intake. The benefits of a practice cannot be overestimated.
before I even got to the part about being a writer, I was reading the post thinking "damn, this guy is a good writer. Smooth, clear, and to the point, while still letting the ideas manifest within the reader." Literary writers can get too engrossed in their prose, I like to think this style comes from a great engineer and designer. No surprise the writer worked with Apple
love it when a business professor analyzes why something like this game is so successful