Joram Mutenge

Want to support me?

The older you grow, the smarter your parents become

Yes, you read that title correctly. I know it sounds a weird. I thought so too when I first heard it from David Foster Wallace.

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When humility becomes doubt

Which would you rather be?

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Stimulus stacking: The 21st century addiction

The other day in the library, I noticed a teenage girl — probably in high school — reading a book. But she wasn’t just reading. Every few lines, she glanced at her phone and…

Joram Mutenge

Is the journey really better than the destination?

We often accept motivational quotes from the internet as universal truths without questioning them. I’ve been guilty of that too. But occasionally, it’s worth pausing to…

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Don’t try to know too much before doing something

As a teenager, I had a habit of over-researching everything before I took the first step. I believed that the more I knew in advance, the more prepared I’d be. I thought…

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Obsess over aesthetics, because they matter!

Beauty isn’t just surface-level. It has power. It draws people in, holds their attention, and even changes their behavior. A well-designed product, a visually striking slide…

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The magic of small compounding

I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times.

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There’s no such thing as an even playing field

Imagine playing the game of life on an even playing field. That’s about all you can do—imagine it. The game of life will always be uneven despite our attempts to make it…

Joram Mutenge

The two dimensions of authenticity

Everyone working on a personal brand today claims to be authentic because it’s fashionable to say you are. Authenticity is a buzzword, and everyone jumps on it, left and…

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Feeling pain and suffering is a moment of truth

Would you want to live in a world without pain?

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The types of lies we tell

The singer Drake has a line that says:

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To teach is to learn

When it comes to knowledge acquisition, teaching is undoubtedly one of the most effective hacks I’ve come across. I’ve discovered that when I learn something for my own use…

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Be clever when times are good

Have you ever noticed that you almost always come to your senses when things go wrong? There’s something about being in trouble—when things aren’t going your way—that forces…

Joram Mutenge

Advice to young Zambians wanting to study abroad

If you wrote your Grade 12 exams last year, you’ve likely received your results by now. If they’re strong, you may be considering studying abroad—a goal shared by many young…

Joram Mutenge

The smartest dumb kid in a dumb class

I grew up in a shanty compound and went to primary school in the ghetto. Most of the kids at my primary school were not book smart. They didn’t care about education and were…

Joram Mutenge

What you can learn from my experience watching The Social Network

movie

In 2014, as a young teenager, I watched The Social Network for the first time. I know the movie had come out four years earlier, but that’s beside the point. The point is…

Joram Mutenge

Do they know they’re competing with everyone in the world?

I haven’t lived in Zambia for many years now, but I grew up there. That’s why I feel a deep sense of connection to the circumstances of young people there, particularly…

Joram Mutenge

Don’t live your life on autopilot

The challenge of the modern world is to live a life of purpose. Many people today live their lives on autopilot. They give very little planning to their day or the…

Joram Mutenge

A lesson every young career person should know

career

This is meant for people just starting their careers or holding junior positions. Navigating work life can be challenging, especially when you want to make an impact. We all…

Joram Mutenge

Acquired podcast host Ben reveals the secret source behind their massive success

A few days ago, I had the privilege of attending the last LP call hosted by the Acquired podcast. For those unfamiliar with this podcast—what planet are you from? But…

Joram Mutenge

I keep learning new things from Jeff Bezos

business

Jeff Bezos rarely gives interviews, but whenever he does one, I drop everything and listen. So when the YouTube algorithm showed me an interview of him with Andrew Ross…

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Why pain is good for you

Anyone who has experienced pain in any form never misses it when it’s gone. Pain is one of those unavoidable aspects of life, even though we dislike experiencing it.…

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Did you win the genetic lottery?

essay

If there were a perfect human, that human would do no wrong. But since we’ve all done wrong things knowingly or unknowingly, it follows that none of us is perfect. And it’s…

Joram Mutenge

The three groups of people in the world

Having spent some time thinking about how the world works, I’ve come to believe there are three groups of people.

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The two types of assholes in your working career

career

Tony Fadell is a well-known figure in Silicon Valley, but what really put him on the map was the invention of the iPod. If you’re into entrepreneurship, specifically product…

Joram Mutenge

How to create an Economist-style chart with plotly

visualization

When it comes to static visualizations you can use in print, no publication does a better job creating them than The Economist. That’s because their charts are simple, yet…

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For men, the secret to longevity is marrying a wife much younger than you

visualization

Pop culture and the business world are full of older men marrying women who are way younger than them.

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Unicorn dropout founders are rare

visualization

Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates all dropped out of college and founded companies that are now among the most valuable companies in the world. There is nothing…

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On golf and machine learning

machine learning

A few weeks ago, I played golf for the first time. It’s an interesting sport, but it’s definitely not a sport for the impatient.

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Using variance in product development

data

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The scramble for .ai domain names

visualization

Before ChatGPT came out, AI was a joke. No one paid attention to it. In fact, the majority of people thought virtual reality (VR) was going to happen sooner. Remember the…

Joram Mutenge

A simple viz is all you need

data

visualization

When I was a kid, I was a phone fanatic. I couldn’t get enough of phones because they were the most advanced technology I could afford.

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Dream big, because dreams are free

Zambia is unquestionably a beautiful country, but it is poverty-stricken. However, my aim in this article isn’t to state the obvious. I want to make a contrarian case that…

Joram Mutenge

Why you should make your time love you

We all have 24 hours in a day, yet some people accomplish more amazing things than others. What is it with time that makes it an obedient servant to some people and a…

Joram Mutenge

Why loops are frowned upon in data science

pandas

technical

In computer science, looping is one of the most fundamental operations. It saves you from manually doing the same thing over and over.

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There is so much to see in Chicago

travel

Last week I visited my friend in Chicago. I hadn’t seen him since we left university. It was also a convenient excuse for me to explore the city.

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Freemium is not a business strategy

business

The classic mistake most entrepreneurs make is attributing the growth from offering their service or product for free to having an effective business strategy. Freemium as a…

Joram Mutenge

Effective table presentation with code

technical

data

Most people don’t think about tables when they think about data visualization. But tables deserve as much attention as you put in your charts. To effectively communicate the…

Joram Mutenge

Why you should learn polars for data analysis

polars

Datasets used to be small and Pandas was a good tool for your analysis. Now datasets are big and Pandas struggles to handle them. This is where Polars shines. Not only can…

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Creating a pareto chart with plotly

technical

polars

Picture yourself in the 1980s. You own a software store where you sell software in disks by the unit.

Joram Mutenge

Formatting the information displayed in the tooltip of your plotly chats

technical

polars

My data visualization journey started with ggplot, followed by a brief stint with seaborn. After that, I fell in love with matplotlib and used it for a long time. But now my…

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Advanced styling in pandas

technical

pandas

I am a sucker for visually appealing things, and I try as much as I can to embody that in my data analysis work. In this article, I’ll show you how you can style your pandas…

Joram Mutenge

The many ways to rename columns in polars

technical

polars

Dataframes that have column names with spaces in them can be annoying to work with. I like to remove any spaces or unusual characters from column names. This makes it easier…

Joram Mutenge

Poor finishing is worse than not getting started

Getting started is the main thing most people complain about when undertaking a project. Intellectually, they may understand the significance of that project but somehow or…

Joram Mutenge

Should you have a business partner?

business

While the idea of running a business by yourself and pocketing all the profits in your big fat pockets sounds appealing, it’s worth noting that such an endeavor is more…

Joram Mutenge

Remember these two functions of business

business

Keeping track of every aspect of your business can be difficult. Sometimes it can feel like the business is running you instead of you running it.

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Stand for something

business

In the olden days, you could run a business without worrying about building a brand. Today, having a brand is a requirement to run a successful business.

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How to spend your hard-earned money

Easy come, easy go applies to money more than to anything else. Money earned with your blood, sweat, and tears is spent wisely. Money handed to you is spent carelessly.

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Is success taking too long to come to you?

For someone like me who’s been working very hard to be successful, it can be very frustrating to realize that you are in your late 20s and have yet to achieve a modicum of…

Joram Mutenge

Getting month and day names from datetime with polars

technical

polars

When you have timeseries data, you may want to extract the day and month names from the date. Polars makes it easy to do that but the default way doesn’t get you the actual…

Joram Mutenge

Timing is everything, but be prepared

Sometimes, it’s not the best person who wins, but the one with the best timing.

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Busy people get things done

If you want something done then go, if not then send.

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My thoughts on The Americans

tv show

I’m a huge fan of the podcast Not So Standard Deviations. Hilary, one of the hosts, has mentioned the TV show The Americans several times. Of course, I had heard about the…

Joram Mutenge

Help your struggling two

book

It’s easy for smart people who have made it in life to forget about those who are struggling. This is common among smart, successful people who started from the bottom and…

Joram Mutenge

Ideas are a dime a dozen

business

Most people have business ideas, but few have businesses. People with only business ideas are convinced that what’s standing in the way between their idea and it being a…

Joram Mutenge

The fantasy of poverty is toxic

The media loves rags-to-riches stories because they capture a lot of eyeballs on TV, the Internet, or in newspapers and magazines. The reason they capture many eyeballs is…

Joram Mutenge

What were the popular names in the decade you were born?

technical

I downloaded baby names from the US Social Security database and thought creating a chart showing the top 10 popular names in a decade would be fun for my Technical Tuesday…

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Who is your number one fan?

In a world where everyone constantly seeks attention, getting people to pay attention to you has become very difficult. We all feel the need to be noticed.

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Things move at the speed of trust

It’s not impossible to run a business alone but doing it with others makes it much easier.

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Double down on your effort

In business, many things are beyond your control. Sometimes the best product doesn’t sell the most.

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Failing is not losing

Let’s face it, no one wakes up in the morning saying, “I’m looking forward to failing more today!” It just never happens. But even if we don’t like it, failure has a way of…

Joram Mutenge

Different for the sake of it

Being different scares a lot of people. Think about the time when you were in middle school. Being different from your peers was the worst thing to happen to you.

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Winners of the posit table contest are announced!

A few weeks ago, I participated in the Posit Table contest where I submitted this table. I was proud of the work I did. Two days ago, the winners for various categories were…

Joram Mutenge

Filling the glass

It’s said that the world can be divided into two groups of people. Those who see the glass half-full and those who see it half-empty.

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Nothing is as good as it seems

It’s okay to have expectations but don’t keep them too high.

Joram Mutenge

Making beautiful bar charts with matplotlib

technical

polars

Bar charts are one of the most common and informative ways to represent it. They’re also easy to create. But to make them more informative and beautiful, you must spend some…

Joram Mutenge

The myth of motivation

If we all waited to have the motivation to do something, none of us would do anything productive.

Joram Mutenge

The day your dream came true

In eighth grade, a senior student gave me advice that has been living in my head rent-free ever since. I was standing next to the notice board, enviously staring at the…

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Time for preparation is over

Don’t stop doing the work to wait for your chance to come. Don’t make whining about things not going your way a habit.

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A familiar surprise is all you need

Daniel Pink said that to sell is human. I don’t disagree. The question is how can you sell successfully? To be successful at selling, you must consider the following points.

Joram Mutenge

Ask for forgiveness, not permission

Are you afraid of taking action? Do you usually wait for someone to tell you to go ahead? This is a common situation many people find themselves in.

Joram Mutenge

How I fell in love with the semi-colon

It’s perhaps the most underused punctuation in the English language; the semi-colon has fallen out of favor. Fewer and fewer people use it mainly because most people don’t…

Joram Mutenge

Dress for success — especially if you’re not successful

Dressing down is one of the defining features of our time. We see it in Silicon Valley startup founders all the time. Take Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg or Evan Speigel’s…

Joram Mutenge

What is sales?

Selling is an important skill that we must all learn. Most people think of it as a talent; you either have it or you don’t. I did too. Not anymore.

Joram Mutenge

My reading journey with the Libby app

technical

polars

I’m a huge fan of the Libby App by the company OverDrive, Inc. I have used it exclusively for my digital book consumption since 2022.

Joram Mutenge

Native plotting with polars

technical

polars

Visualizations simplify data comprehension. A glance at a graph or chart conveys the data’s message, saving you time compared to analyzing a table without visuals.

Unless you have sales, there’s no business

business

There’s no greater validation for your business idea than for someone to remove money from their purse or wallet and pay for your service or product. When a sale happens…

Read directly from HTML with polars

technical

polars

Suits was the most-watched TV show in 2023, even though the last episode aired in December 2019. For this reason, I thought I’d use it as an example to show how you can use…

Loss aversion

Failure may be a stepping stone to success, but most people hate it. I do too. Sometimes failure can be so devastating that you don’t know how to recover.

Practice doesn’t make perfect

If practice truly makes perfect, we would be experts at things we do every day like talking. Very few people speak without using filler words, so we know that the practice…

How to be the world’s best boss

tv show

In the TV show The Office, the boss Michael Scott had a coffee mug with the words “The world’s best boss” written on it. This, of course, was meant to be a joke, but there’s…

Yesterday, you said tomorrow

Nike owns the slogan, “Just do it”, but you can use it for your own motivation. Moreover, the slogan applies to more than just athletes. Anyone can use it. I’ve used the…

My submission to the posit table contest

technical

polars

This year, I decided to participate in the Posit Table Contest. Because I’m a fan of the great tables Python library I thought it would be great to enhance my mastery of…

Don’t wake up in the morning to be average

book

Every time you wake up in the morning, it’s a whole new day. You can reinvent yourself into something good or something bad.

Create your own dream

There is no limit to how much you can dream, yet other people still want to lump themselves with other people’s dreams.

Do something or make an excuse

We each live our own lives and we like different things. We also encounter different opportunities and the way we prioritize those opportunities differs. What ranks high on…

Is unrequited love a glitch in the human system?

book

If you’ve never experienced unrequited love, you may be the luckiest person in the world regarding matters of the heart.

Five business questions you must answer

business

Having read several books about entrepreneurs and listened to many interviews about business founders, I’ve concluded that if you want to start and run a successful…

Other people think your beliefs are silly

tv show

The other day, I watched the TV show The Americans and it made me think about the beliefs we hold on to in our lives.

On riding a bicycle with a flat tire

If a bell curve were plotted showing the number of miles each human has cycled throughout their life, I would be on the right side of that bell curve. I’ve spent most of my…

Dealing with past failures

You can deal with your past failures in two ways. You can either wallow in regret, reminiscing about what might have been if you had taken that chance or hadn’t done that.…

Cash flow: the blood of business

business

Cash flow is one of the most misunderstood aspects of business, yet it’s one of the things you need to get right if you want to run a successful business.

Don’t follow your passion

When picking a career, the most common advice is to follow your passion. Unfortunately, passion isn’t enough to make a living.

Be hard on ideas and soft on people

Running a business is challenging because it involves managing the business’s affairs and managing people.

A funny little thing about humans

Human beings are funny creatures. Not funny ha-ha, but funny peculiar.

Make work your friend

book

In the modern world, working is part of survival. To put food on your table, you have to work.

You shouldn’t be punished forever for your mistake

tv show

We all make mistakes, which is good because we learn from them.

Is evil innate or learned?

tv show

The question: “Are people naturally good or bad?” has plagued humans for ages.

So you want to be in charge?

tv show

Being in charge is attractive to most people because it gives them the power to boss people around.

Create dataframe from clipboard content

technical

polars

It’s amazing how much the Polars library has improved! I remember sandwiching my polars code with pandas code to perform some operations. Even though the library was…

Are the links on your resume hurting your chances of landing an interview?

data

We can all agree that it’s bad to have a resume that does not have links to projects or products you’ve built, particularly if you’re seeking a job in a technical role.

RIP data science projects

data

When I was a Data Science graduate student, the emphasis, when it comes to making yourself attractive to employers, was having a portfolio of projects.

When does it hurt the most?

tv show

In 2023, I watched The Office for the first time. I know I’m late to the party, but I had to watch it because I was missing out on the references that people I encountered…

A life lesson from fashion

movie

In my early teens, I had to wear a bootcut to be cool. In my late teens, skinny jeans were all the rage.

Genius is no guarantee of wisdom

movie

If you are a genius who can solve complex problems, does it also follow that you will be wise? I’ve always wondered about this question and whenever I ask people, I get…

A piano-playing dog

tv show

The TV show Young Sheldon is one of my favorite shows. I especially enjoy Sheldon’s lines which can be funny sometimes and out of context most of the time.