As I continue to transition into a seasoned professional and forget more and more about my days as a math student I keep thinking about how to ensure I do not get more and more stupid by the day. Long gone are the days when I'd pick-up a book on some high level piece of number theory to read for hours every day. I simply feel useless learning stuff I won't even be able to talk about with other people as I am no longer in an academic setting and most of my peers are engineers, economists and finance people.
However my weekends are mostly untouched and if I find the right simple topics to focus on I could study heavily for short periods of time while also getting a return on it then that'd be the perfect fit. I want to find simple and useful pieces of math I can learn in a single weekend and then apply in my daily life. My first idea is that I should pick up one of those meme books on mental math and actually learn how to do insane mental calculations. My past self would have laughed at this idea (and I did) but one of the top executives at the bank I work at is really good at mental math and everyone sucks his dick for it. Maybe I can impress a couple of people by doing quick calculations in the middle of a presentation.
I am making this thread mostly to get feedback on this idea (I'm pretty sure it is not original at all so maybe some of you do something similar) and hopefully get some other potential topics I could learn in a weekend while managing my other personal responsibilities (i.e. I won't actually be just reading for 48 hours straight). I also say 'math' but it could really be anything related to math and useful. I.e. programming languages, a programming trick, an Excel trick, the inner workings of one of those meme theorems/formulas that people think work in real life, etc. The range of usefulness is also variable, from 'can immediately be applied in a real setting' to 'can probably talk to girls about it and they'll think it is interesting'.
However my weekends are mostly untouched and if I find the right simple topics to focus on I could study heavily for short periods of time while also getting a return on it then that'd be the perfect fit. I want to find simple and useful pieces of math I can learn in a single weekend and then apply in my daily life. My first idea is that I should pick up one of those meme books on mental math and actually learn how to do insane mental calculations. My past self would have laughed at this idea (and I did) but one of the top executives at the bank I work at is really good at mental math and everyone sucks his dick for it. Maybe I can impress a couple of people by doing quick calculations in the middle of a presentation.
I am making this thread mostly to get feedback on this idea (I'm pretty sure it is not original at all so maybe some of you do something similar) and hopefully get some other potential topics I could learn in a weekend while managing my other personal responsibilities (i.e. I won't actually be just reading for 48 hours straight). I also say 'math' but it could really be anything related to math and useful. I.e. programming languages, a programming trick, an Excel trick, the inner workings of one of those meme theorems/formulas that people think work in real life, etc. The range of usefulness is also variable, from 'can immediately be applied in a real setting' to 'can probably talk to girls about it and they'll think it is interesting'.
