Madhav Malhotra

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I had a slump of boredom when learning AI theory. So I remotivated myself by adding the style of The Scream by Edvard Munch onto this photo!
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I'm a student training to solve neglected global problems

I would describe myself as an immigrant. Immigrating to Canada created lots of challenges growing up. But it also taught me my three core values: helpfulness, resourcefulness, and reliability. Everything I do, I do because of these values.

Currently, I'm a computer engineering student at the University of Waterloo. I'm learning about accelerated AI hardware at a design team I'm running. Professionally, I've been building RAG systems for startups and Health Canada.

On the side, I'm ALWAYS learning. About law, meteorology, coding, nature... anything I find! And I publish everything I learn, so learn along with me 😉 And if you want to get in touch, here are some useful links:

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AI Design Team Blog

Grade 8 Math to AI

The Knowledge Archives

The Plastic Shift

Opportunities in Carbon Capture

Animated Annual Reflection

Kidogo Consultation Deck

Legal CRM Mockup

52 Weeks of Speaking

Recent Progress

Every month, I send an update!

Coming Soon!

What I Learned

  • Learned to value my family more after I fell ill for a while and really needed to stay at home and depend on their support.
  • To that end, good heatlh is prerequisite to a) a productive career, b) keeping up with education, c) meaningful social relationships, d) a comfortable family life, e) ... It's easy to underestimate how much it matters until it gives out on you.
  • I've been thinking about what drives me and what I want to work towards in life. One thing I concluded was that a life without adventure doesn't seem well-lived to me. Adventure doesn't necessarily mean travelling, but it does mean newness and uniqueness. I don't see adventure in an around-the-world cruise. But it may be aventure to fly a handmade kite in a nearby park on a sunny afternoon. To me, adventure refers to those shocks that break me out of the routine in life. (Routine and adventure are both valuable, but it's easy to get routine in modern society while I have to try very intentionally to get adventure.)

What I Did

  • Published a paper on how to evaluate chatbots for political analysis. Also attended a conference for the first time. It was a lot of fun, including a team dinner at the end with delegates I met from across Canada!
  • Learned quite a bit from the fourth year capstone projects at my university! It's always my favourite time of the year, despite a few inconveniently-timed health issues :/ Video showcasing some cool projects coming soon.
  • Started preparing to head to the Yukon. It's a pretty big jump in terms of adventures since I didn't even know how to change a tire on a car before I started preparations this month :O
  • Finished a course on electronic amplifiers. Notes here if anyone's enough of a nerd to want to read them :D
  • Learned about the Oauth protocol at work while developing some integrations with external softwares for clients. Also started developing headless browser automations to make financial transactions with some legacy sites. Pretty cool once you get everything working and you can watch your own little assistant using a computer to help you :D

What I Learned

  • All it takes to start travelling the world is the right passport and selling waffles in Switzerland :D
  • There are many different ways people try to console others who are feeling heartbroken. The most common: "You'll find someone better." Not the best approach. It can dismiss how much the person you care about meant to you. My recommendation is to ask: "What did they mean to you? What do you miss?" It creates more space to feel what needs to be felt before moving on.
  • There's this tradeoff between routine and living in the moment in the modern world. Living in the moment all the time unfortunately loads the closest meaningless deadline onto my attention and evolves into drifting down a river of external pressures. Routine all the time leads to a lack of imagining any other possibility, turning into drifting down a river of internal pressures. The difficult trick is intentionally working towards something, but shocking myself every so often with something completely unpredictable. Ex: Pilgrimage to Yukon...
  • Sometimes in life, I've been working hard for years and years and I look up, look around me, and realise I'm not happy where I am, don't quite remember how I got here, and don't quite know where to go next. In these moments, it can feel like years of effort have been for nothing and I'm once again starting from scratch. But thinking on it a second time, if I'm not happy where I am, then what else would I do but start from scratch? It wouldn't make sense to just say: "Well, the momentum is still going this way so I might as well stay on the bandwagon." Realising this, starting from scratch doesn't sound like a scary disappointment. It sounds more like an exciting new effort.
  • The hardest part about love is that it's given, not earned.
  • I don't know how many times I've fallen down, but I know how many times I've gotten up. It's the number of times I've fallen down + 1.

What I Did

  • Wrapped up my design team's experiments creating a chatbot to analyse political legislation.
  • Learned about devops, deploying a software service on Azure from start to finish for the first time. The process was heinous to say the least. I would offer notes, but there's nothing conceptually valuable to note ;-; It's just day after day of searching through the corners of the Internet to analyse massive pages of docs, just to realise that companies as large as Microsoft can have incorrect documentation for tools that just don't do what they say they do. And then a bunch more trial and error to correct this x 15.
  • Moved forward from/with heartbreak.
  • Finished midterms at university. Ongoing notes on electronic amplifiers

What I Learned

  • We live in a society where I see someone overworked, miserable, exhausted, and without a social life just grinding from 7 AM to 7 PM every day. Their Linkedin says 'XYZ at ABC' while I'm just 'XY at AB' though. So I get in line for my turn to be in their place, even if I'm not fully sure if the extra letters on Linkedin are what you really want.
    • "Escape competition through authenticity" - Naval Ravikant
  • I don't really need people to help me with hard things because they're hard. I'm just looking for people to tell me it'll be okay amidst the uncertainty. If I roll up my sleeves and get to work, I get more done in a couple of days than I have waiting weeks for others to give me permission for X,Y,Z
  • "It isn't merely that your fate depends on whether or not you get your act together... the things you do, they're like dropping stones in a pond. The ripples move outward and they affect things in ways that you can't fully comprehend. And it means that the things that you do and that you don't do are far more important than you think!" - Jordan Peterson
  • Started talking to my brother more personally after years of not doing so. There was nothing holding me back but this imaginary wall that appeared a castle till breached and a wispy remnant right after.

What I Did

  • Started working at an AI startup doing investment research. My boss is very nice. She plays to my strengths and I've been getting to do a lot of detail-oriented optimisation with prompt-engineering, batched evaluations, data quality refinement, etc. Here are some notes I took during onboarding on Next.js and Fast API
  • Loving my design team creating chatbots for political legislation analysis. I don't have to worry about anyone and things are just getting done! Finalised our experimental method and getting ready to collect our experimental results in February.
  • Stressed about my design team creating a toy AI accelerator. Really struggling to get things done while taking on others' work. Pushing through the discomfort and trying to create opportunities to learn new things when I get too demotivated by the grind.
  • Gave a keynote to a high school conference about how to get started in AI. The speakers before me were a former finance minister and the CEO of Honda. I walked up and said: "You know, I was talking to my friend last night, wondering why I got invited to speak here. I don't have any of the credentials of the other speakers. She told me, 'Hey, you're the guy who's going to teach the kids how to get into university. You're the star of the show!'" That got a big laugh :D
  • Really working at trying to make new friends and snap out of being complacent and waiting for others. As my economics teacher, Mr. Lam, told me, "Progress over perfection."

What I Learned

  • I've been thinking about technical work and artwork. Throughout the last 200 years, there have been so many technical discoveries that improved lives beyond recognition. Innovators discovered how to create vaccines, enable tiny computers with electronic switches, create enormous planes and ships to connect the world, analyse previously-impossible scientific problems with intelligent algorithms, and more. Yet, after each discovery, the world (and the innovators themselves) moved onto the next thing. There wasn't a permanence in the outcome. It isn't like that for art. Individual artworks, from those of Picasso to Pixar, can be remembered at a scale that individual technical works almost never match. People find inspiration, feel joy, feel clarity, and more from experiencing a movie, painting, song, etc. - even if it's hundreds of years old. No one will ever point to the 4th order Runga-Kutta method when asked What did we achieve as humanity?" Someone may well point to a painting by Picasso when asked the same. Technical work can improve a life. Artwork can improve a reason to be alive.
  • I've been noticing that expectation is the root of most of my negative emotions. I just don't know what to do about it. Examples: if I see others similar to me achieving X and I have the thought: Why can't I do X? If I make a nice birthday present for a friend and I have the thought: I wonder what they'll get me? It seems like a flaw in our biology that someone could tell me I won $2 million in a lottery, send me a check for $1 million in the mail, and I end up more unhappy than I was without any check.
    • But on that note, it's wild how divergent expectations can be, even for the very same person. Ex: I've been waiting for a train bored and tired just distracting myself until the destination. Ex: I've been waiting for a train overjoyed since I was waiting with a friend that I thought I wouldn't be able to say goodbye to. In the right situation, a lowly blade of grass may be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
  • There are two problems with running from my mistakes. 1) When I arrive at the place I ran to, the problem has a tendency to pop back up. 2) Running feels like progress, even when I can't realise if I'm running forwards or backwards.

What I Did

  • Finished creating a reflection on lessons I learned from travelling across Canada.
  • Designed an AI accelerator chip's computation modules. It was a very new process for me. I'd never sat thinking for hours about all the possible design options I knew about in order to pick the best ones. End design if you're a computer engineer. I'll have a more public-friendly overview soon :-)
  • I was lucky enough to get an aerial photography drone. It's quite an easy way to get reinterested in photography again since nature always looks pretty from afar. I do wonder if I'm getting too lazy because I don't have to think about what would look good :?
  • Made a painting as a birthday present and I decided to make the frame myself. A mitre saw made easy work of the woodworking. Though I have to say, carpenter's glue is SO annoying to use compared to fasteners :D Nice break during exams though.
  • Finished university exams and gearing up for an internship working on AI-based financial analysis. Already learning lots since it's a two-person developer team and I have to take ownership.

What I Learned

  • Helping a group of people abstractly doesn't motivate me. Listening to and understanding ONE human from the group motivates me so much. Ex: I was trying to solve a problem for students missing their pets. That didn't motivate me abstractly, but I felt a LOT more dedicated when I thought about my one friend missing her cat. If it energises me to solve her problem and I end up solving a bunch of similar people's problems in the process, we're good to go :-)
  • I get pretty annoyed by people who value truth above all else. The rest of us aren't lying b@#$@#$! because we don't value truth FIRST. We just know that arguing about what's correct isn't productive at all times and sometimes, it's useful to delay conversations about the truth to prioritise other values like helpfulness or reliability. Sometimes, I get frustrated when people don't understand this. Ex: If I have a time-sensitive deadline and I thought through a long problem to make a decision, I would get frustrated by team-mates who would keep asking me to explain my decision while the clock is still ticking. It would feel to me like: "I've thought through this; why aren't you trusting me?"
    • In contrast, I had a conversation with a friend who valued truth over all else to see the opposite side of this. In the same tight-deadline scenario, they'd get frustrated by me not sharing my thoughts and leaving an unsettling uncertainty in the air in an already stressful situation. It might feel like: "Why are you hiding things? Why don't you just be open about what you're thinking?"
    • Who's right? The mature part of me wants to say that there's value to be had in being aware of both perspectives to dispel frustration and figure out how to collaborate together. The immature part of me wants to say I'm right and the truth first people are misanthropic b&$^#@$ 😅
  • Regarding me and math - two lessons learned.
    • A) ChatGPT was better than me at every single math problem I did this semester (bookmark in time?) 😭 The reality of technical work now is that we don't need people who are somewhat good at any individual task. Perhaps we still need people that are somewhat good at a combination of tasks. We do still need people who are very good at individual tasks in ways that AI hasn't reliably replicated yet.
    • B) I randomly called a friend to check in at 10 PM and found them freaking out over a math assignment from a course I'd taken 8 months ago. I didn't remember much. Still, I kept at it trying to figure things out for an hour, while feeling a bit of pressure since I didn't feel like I was being particularly helpful. In the end, I did somehow stumble my way through breaking the problem down into a few cases, each of which Individually I completely or almost could solve. It reminded me of when I was young and my father would cut up tomatoes into halves and quarters to teach me about adding fractions when I couldn't understand them on paper. I think the biggest value I got from that exposure when I was young was just a tiny belief in perseverance. A tiny reminder when I'm stuck that makes me more likely to think: "I can probably figure this out if I try again" instead of "I'm no good at this. Let me give up."

What I Did

  • Bunch of growth when it comes to using microprocessors. There's a point where I was super conscious, thinking 'how do I implement X, Y, Z?' Then, I just started started thinking about the end goal because I knew I had experience figuring out the details. Ex: We had a 10:1 ratio of students to lab equipment for one of my courses. Instead of waiting in line for hours (default), I just saw it as an engineering problem to figure out - ""Which equipment does the lab have that I don't? How can I improvise a solution?"" It was pretty cool in the end when I figured out how to hack together a UART communication terminal and a power supply.
  • Similarly, learned a lot from a course which was basically the 'Biology 101 of Computers.' It showed all the options for how to build everything outside the CPU of a computer. Imagine a course on all the parts of a cell outside the nucleus. There's quite a lot in there and it doesn't get much attention since the star of the show is the complicated bit in the centre (the nucleus or CPU). Notes linked above.
  • On my design team learning how to create ASICs for ML accelerators, we finished implementing the building blocks of a CPU. The technical implementation was easy. The hard part was having 7 people follow 7 different naming conventions, commenting styles (or lack thereof 😭), etc. - and then trying to bring it all together in the end. More people isn't better for goals where the bottleneck is planning and more eyes/expectations just adds more pressure. I'm looking forward to working on our final accelerator design independently during the next month so we can all start from the same master blueprint.
  • Made a best friend and I feel so happy about it đŸ„° It's surreal looking at old texts and seeing how we weren't close at the start of the month and how close we are by the end of the month :O Too many late night existential adventures and inside jokes to count :D

What I Learned

  • An example of one door closing opens another: a lot of students at university get worried about finding coop internships. "What if I don't find something by October???" One thing I observed was that different employers recruit with different timing needs. If a student doesn't find a job at a larger company by October, it's not the end of the world. Because smaller startups are often recruiting for interns that can start immediately. So applying in December and starting in January better meets their need.
  • It's a new experience when I consider starting a full time business. I'm excited about it, keep thinking about it, am happy doing it - but I know I'll be losing money or making very little for a long time compared to anything else I could be doing. Yet I still want to do it? :D
  • There are lots of obviously good ideas in the world that don't get implemented simply because of thousands of bureaucratic challenges. This isn't just a government problem. 99.99% of people will say that it's an obviously good idea to have a phone simple enough for seniors to reliably use by just saying a few voice commands. But that involves getting thousands of companies with millions of employees to cooperate on making accessibility a priority. So it just doesn't get done and hundreds of millions of people have a lower quality of life than they could have had.

What I Did

  • Debugging a bunch of code across the computer stack. My design team is working towards our first ASIC tapeout with an 8-bit CPU. Growing a lot with concurrent programming and realising the limitations of common debugging methods.
  • Tested a business idea to connect students away from home with pets. I was happy to see how happy people were during our pilot,
    • Trying this while having university going on, it made me see how valuable quick solutions are, even when they're more expensive. Ex: Setting up an expensive Shopify site in 2 hours vs. setting up a cheap Wordpress site in 2 days.
  • Got through midterms at university.

What I Learned

  • My favourite movie is a Hindi film called 3 Idiots. A (translated) quote I really like from it: ""You don't need fees to study, you just need a uniform."" Served me well as I just bought a clipboard to look official and gave myself permission to run customer surveys to test business ideas :D
  • Speaking of, sometimes, I just need to give myself permission to try something different, even when everyone around me isn't. If I know I won't enjoy a career working as X, but the path to get there is tangible, it doesn't make it a good idea to work towards X.
    • Steve Jobs: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. And if you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. And don’t settle.”
    • On some days, I've been so in my head worrying about the future that I fell over on a run because I literally couldn't pay attention to a single step :/ So many ways to interpret that event. Is it a sign to stop dreaming about the future and focus on today? Is it a sign to practice more awareness of my thoughts?
  • It helps a lot with productivity when I start and end the day with a tiny victory. Just something as simple as exercicing in the morning and doing some coding challenges at night.

What I Did

  • Started a design team that's working to create an ASIC for efficient ML computations. Also started a design team that's working on creating chatbots as assistants for political decision making.
  • Growing a lot in terms of low-level C skills and Verilog skills. Video I recorded on how to debug C like a professional and notes on Verilog.
  • Started university. Currently in a hectic period as I finish coop and exchange term applications.
  • Randomly started organising my university's French club because why not :D

What I Learned

  • Laziness, industriousness - personally, I've noticed that it's just a choice (one single choice). It's not that I'm happy to wake up at 6 AM to go exercice. I'm always tired. The question is how do I react to this negative feeling? Either I just lie in bed or I get on with the day. In either case, that split-second choice is nothing big, nothing complex, nothing difficult. But it is important beyond mention :O
  • There was a time this month where I was thinking, "Man, how @#!^ed up is the world that the nicest I've seen people being is in Youtube comments????" That was honestly what I was feeling at that time. Though the feeling didn't do any good. It didn't help me, nor did it help the world. To be in a state of mind where I can be useful to the world, I need to fix what's broken with myself first. Easy to say, hard to consistently change an action of mine every week.
  • I was giving a workshop on leadership to a student design team I help run. I was being more casual, trying out new ways to engage people - all without the nervousness I typically experience. I asked myself why and the only answer I could find was that I got nervous in presentations where I needed something from the audience who had more power than me, versus when I perceive that I'm giving to the audience who has less power than me. This observation about myself sucks. I'd rather this not be the case. But if I know it's the case, I can either accept it and act to make myself better or pretend I'm the perfect person I want to be. I choose to know my weaknesses and run from their effects, rather than run from my weaknesses and know their effects.
  • I get frustrated when I see people think without listening and listen without thinking. Easy to notice in others, easy to ignore in myself.
  • Over the past 1.67 months, I've travelled the world, seen natural marvels, seen human ingenuity, heard soulful music, eaten great food, experienced deep social connection, bought whatever my heart could desire, used magical technology, etc. The only thing that made me happy was deep social connection. Every year, we spend trillions making people less annoyed and pennies on making people meangingfully happier. More of one doesn't necessarily mean more of the other.

What I Did

  • Nearing the finish line with a course on ASIC manufacturing. New notes on Verilog and verification. Currently working on a MAC processing element.
  • Finished running a reading group on AI accelerator chip architectures (notes). Here's a video summary of the layers of accelerator chip optimisation. Warning: complicated :O
  • Went to Calgary and met a lot of old classmates. Experienced all the emotions: happiness, disappointment, excitement, frustration, love, heartbreak, ... Also visited the Royal Tyrrell Museum and parts of Banff national park for the first time. A full photo gallery is coming soon, though the people were more valuable than the places <3
  • Working on a reflection after all my travels. Inspired by the excellent exhibition, "Le son du rap QuĂ©becois" at the MusĂ©e de la civilisation in QĂșebec city. It's a mix of of an article, a video, a podcast, and a photo gallery. Really enthused by the creative break, though running away with perfectionism in my art :D
  • Wrapped up an internship as an ML integrations developer at the Public Health Agency of Canada. Frontend, backend, side end - I worked on all the ends :D Grateful for a unique team that gave me the flexibility to learn as far as I was willing to push.

What I Learned

  • I spent a week in one of the worst neighbourhoods in Winnipeg. It felt like one block, I was in Canada and the next block, I was in a developing country. I would see boarded up windows, half-clothed people without shoes, smashed bus shelters, and so on. Everything felt like a grim paradox. I'd see rows of nonprofit headquarters with messages about hope, just a few metres from the most shocking poverty I've seen in a Canadian city. Museums would celebrate indigenous history and sell indigenous-themed trinkets to tourists, while never mentioning the crime, homelessness, or drug addictions affecting indigenous people just blocks away from them. In reflection, I'm shocked by just how BLINDED some sources of information can be to particular problems. Ex: the museums not having any information about modern struggles in Winnipeg's indigenous community or Canadian news outlets not having any information about ongoing wars in multiple nations in Africa and Southeast Asia.
  • In Saskatoon, I learned about changing trends in engineering students at the University of Saskatachewan. It used to be that a lot of students who grew up as kids on rural farms would attend. They had lots of hands on experience with vehicle repairs, so many companies in the agricultural sector would specifically want to hire students with that background. These days, there are fewer students like that and more students with just theoretical knowledge. Agricultural companies also have less need for hands on experience as their products get more digital. From my technical (economic and mathematical) perspective, diversity is a cost of efficiency. As the world becomes more globalised, GDP grows and grows. But there are fewer and fewer humans in environments that forced them to learn extreme and unique skills. This saddens me since I've had a desire for a long time to witness and be amazed by the limits of human capabilities. Living a good life would mean meeting a lot of people who come alive with and are incredible at the unique things they do. The opposite of this seems to be boredom, insignificance, a lack of reason to explore - really, just being less alive.
    • On this note, the highlight of my entire trip has been visiting my friend, NR, in the middle of nowhere on an unplanned weekend. As a discomfort challenge, we went to a midnight dance where I was dressed as a neon traffic sign and NR wore a wetsuit. I danced like a stick. NR danced like the visual incarnation of music, just flowing in this way that I can only describe as "truly alive." It gave me a memory of my own to understand what the movie Soul was trying to show: the revelation and beauty of regular old living.
  • Happiness is inversely proportional to expectations. I just expected temporary stops to negligible points on a map when I went to Saskatoon, Edmonton, and (accidentally, since my train was early) to Jasper. Since I expected nothing, every adventure was incredible (including a surprise 6 AM hike in Jasper, just three fortunate weeks before the town was evacuated due to wildwires). Officially arriving in Vancouver with the expectations of "Beautiful BC", however, I just found an over-rated and overpriced crowd of tourists.
  • Throughout my 21 years of life, most of my time has been dedicated to learning. Trying to better understand the world around me, in some moments with more dedication and passion than others :D Yet I can now count things that I'll never really understand until I experience them. I met a young couple from Ukraine that left their parents behind in the war. I could ask them what it felt like to know their parents were on the literal battlefront every day. They could try to tell me about the "background stress always" occuring. Though I KNOW I don't understand them and I couldn't unless I were in that situation. It's a humbling anchor to my ego and judgement, enough to quell them so I may learn for a moment, even if I can never be rid of them entirely.

What I Did

  • Started a course on ASIC manufacturing. In progress notes. Here's a nice interactive transistor simulator if you're interested in exploring digital hardware.
  • Continuing to run a reading group on AI accelerator chips (notes). Nearing the end goal of skilling up enough to design a computer chip in the fall.
  • Started exploring AI assistants for decision-making. Here's a cool paper showing how AI agents can replicate human characters. The goal is to simulate political decision-making for applications like testing different voting systems.
  • Travelled to Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, and Vancouver. Learning lots from meeting people with extremely different lifestyles :-)

What I Learned

  • I've met a bunch of people who are very settled and fewer people who explore a lot. There are pros and cons to each. I think it's a wise goal to aim for some time doing both. Knowing there's a transition soon helps me appreciate the current phase of life.
  • There are lots of ways to learn how to listen carefully. Debate coaches, critical thinking workshops, negotiation seminars, social counsellors, ... Very few resources to learn to spot what's missing. In my experience, that's where the interesting story is.
    • Ex: While I was visiting QuĂ©bec city, there were dozens of attractions hoping to grab my attention. What wasn't there was a zoo. So I searched for some details and found a lot of news history about budgeting issues that I wouldn't have learned about while simply paying attention to the dazzling things trying to grab my attention.
    • Ex: While reading an economics paper on AI and job loss, there were way too many production and labour wage models masked in fancy jargon. There wasn't any analysis regarding the technological difficulties of controlable and reliable AI.
    • ...
  • I don't have to schedule urgent tasks in my calendar. They're urgent so they automatically keep popping into my head. I do need to schedule important tasks with no deadlines. Those are easy to put off for some more urgent priority.

What I Did

  • Dug deeper into computer chip design. For example, network on chip (wiring) or designing logic gates.
  • Created an intro to AI accelerators (computer chips designed specifically to run AI models). Recording coming soon.
  • At work, did an internal test and live demo of my chatbot. It was nice to see my colleagues pitching in to find ways to make the chatbot misbehave (or just talk like Shakespeare :D)
  • Got back from QuĂ©bec city and currently on my way to Winnipeg. It was nice to have dinner with my hosts and talk to some clubs at the local university. Also, I felt a new feeling of joy just to hear someone speaking English after so long speaking French in QuĂ©bec :D I better understand the nervousness of being an immigrant and not knowing a language well.

What I Learned

  • Having one top priority scheduled in my calendar, everything else step aside, is a great way to stop procrastinating neglected tasks. The high-urgence deadlines, I don't have to bother to schedule time for.
    • Ex: I've wanted to review my linear algebra fundamentals for months, but always kept pushing it aside to prioritise learning something new until I scheduled it at 11:30 AM daily.
  • ChatGPT has become a great learning assistant when I focus on bite-sized chunks. Ex: A completely unapproachable paragraph or figure with undefined acronyms or industry jargon takes just 5 minutes to learn about if I show ChatGPT the figure/paragraph and note every single word I don't understand.
    • Another part of the challenge is just mental willingness to approach a seemingly-unapproachable lesson. It helps to remind myself that the more new it seems, the more I'm learning.
  • In QuĂ©bec, I bike everywhere. And everywhere is a hill :D I often go in a random direction just to explore. Sometimes, I see nothing and have a giant hill to bike back up. That's when I selectively choose to remind myself of the workout I'm getting! Focusing on growth makes unfruitful exploration easy.
  • Without intention, nothing is memorable.

What I Did

  • Made a question and answer chatbot for public health information. Also optimising API servers in cool and mysterious ways :D
  • Learning about low-level digital circuits and accelerated computer chips for AI. Hoping to start a design team about this in the fall and currently running a reading group about it through the summer.
  • Planned a cross country trip to Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, and Calgary. Glad to be finally done all the planning and looking forward to getting started next month.
  • Went to QuĂ©bec city to learn French. Made my friendly hosts a pretty dinner compared to my usual :D

What I Learned

  • For both personal and workplace productivity, good habits are more important than experience and smarts. I might have learned a lot of discipline in the past, but someone with less experience like that who still exercises every day as a habit will see much greater benefits of good health than me over their lifetime.
  • When it comes to learning, dots connect with conscious realisation. Ex: The biggest thing that helped during my materials chemistry course was actually all the time I'd spent solving very large systems of equations in a physics course last year. None of that mundane work felt any good last year. Still, it gave me a calmness/familiarity that helps in surprising ways.
  • I don't regret trying things that don't work. Ex: When I spent an entire day travelling to see a total solar eclipse, I didn't actually find the eclipse interesting. Still, that helps me know what not to repeat next time. If I hadn't gone, I'd always have a curious regret.
  • The problem with experts is that their knowledge is locked away in their brain until they trigger it with the context they learned it in. It doesn't help to ask experts for best practices; I have to present them with the full context of a lot of problems they've overcome over decades.
  • Balancing boards are surprisingly fun exercice (my arms get pretty sore from always being extended as I try to balance) and rock climbers have surprising endurance in how long they can keep their arms in one position :O

What I Did

  • Currently reading a textbook on accelerated AI chip hardware (in progress notes)[https://docs.google.com/document/d/17wyhCGVnH4765QbX5OZDyqkWzX3t3XXA0rxOyrEnrpY/edit#heading=h.10l6fhv87y61], starting a reading group on digital integrated circuits.
  • Finished preparations for my internship at Public Health Canada. I'll be creating chatbots to provide epidemiological information. Excited to move off to QuĂ©bec for the next month!
  • Finished exams and another university semeter. Much more fun than first year :D
  • Took apart a computer for the first time! Turns out surface mount CPUs are very pretty!
  • I was quite lucky to be able to travel hundreds of kilometres to see a total solar eclipse. We were driving in the middle of nowhere to some small park we'd never heard of to avoid clouds. There was literally no one in sight for ages... until we entered the park and were greeted by 250m of continuously parked cars! I wonder what is was like in big cities instead of the middle of nowhere :O

What I Learned

  • Managing humans is like managing stocks. Best to diversify risk across many :D
    • Example of implications: email three separate people if I expect one to finish a task. Have two teams exploring independent next steps.
  • Start first, adjust later. There's no time left to adjust if starting later.
  • Having marked 'phases' of life (ex: different jobs, living in different cities) adds urgency to make the most of each phase. A long time in one place leads to lethargy.
    • Currently, my university's study/coop alternation very helpfully creates this for me. In my last month of this 'study phase,' I've been signing up for as many events and talks as possible instead of worrying about short-term exams.
  • When I don't exercice consistently, my muscles hurt and I feel lazy when I exercice after a few days. When I try to exercice constantly, my muscles hurt due to repeated stress. Work consistently, but not constantly.
  • Curiosity compounds. If I force myself to learn something random or watch a documentary about a developing country once every few months, it's 'kinda cool'. If I want to get useful perspectives on problems I come across, however, I need to do it a lot more consistently. Just like investing.

What I Did

What I Learned

  • A must-have skill for busy people: do what I love early in the day. Time will organise itself around the boring tasks later.
  • Practicing how to react to problems. Practicing how to wait before arguing with the property managers instead of acting recklessly. Practicing how to take a deep breath after I'm hungry but I dropped my food so now I have to clean before I eat. Practicing tiny day to day life :-)
  • There are a lot of broken things about the world. Pick my battles. I don't have the time or energy to be a housing activist just because I got angry at the property management company being unfair one day. It takes years of dedication to make change; make sure I'm there because I care for the long run.
  • There are these moments of aliveness when I'm walking home alone from the university at night, feeling all the creeps because I was binging some murder mystery show, and I suddenly get pulled out of my thoughts by the rushing wind through the tree leaves above, looking up and for a moment feeling perfectly comfortable in my skin :-)

What I Did

  • Fundraised $1K for a debate on the future of AI in a week. Wrapping up odds and ends and excited to go live :-) Also onboarded 5+ profs to my policy club as we get teams started.
  • Submitted a conference paper on AI and cybersecurity to the Canadian Undergraduate Conference on AI. Relieved after wrapping up several months of hard work.
  • Researching how to prevent AI-enabled electoral misinformation with Prof Paul Heidebrecht. Currently at the very-concerned-and-in-despair phase. Will update once I get to the connecting-the-dots-to-new-solutions phase.
  • Halfway through 6 courses and midterms at university :-)

What I Learned

  • A LOT of people will smile at me and look nice on the outside, but never be someone I can count on. One of the great goals of life is befriending the precious few people who're not afraid to look ugly on the outside, as long as they're good, dependable people on the inside.
  • These days, memory is a very cheap commodity. Attention is not.
    • This is as literal as it is philosophical. Literally, I was stupid when I saved my linear algebra notes in a poorly searchable format to save space. I have no shortage of memory, but I'm very limited in time to spend looking for information. Philosophically, it's an invitation to create habits on getting the right thoughts in our head. The grateful ones, the reflective ones, the empathetic ones. Other things can easily be noted outside our heads for later.
  • I wanted to take apart a computer to learn about how it works. I took it to a professor, thinking he could help me observe the right details. Now the computer's sitting there unopened since experts are too busy to speed up my learning. I'd learn more from just making an attempt.
  • Under-rated habit: have a journal to log angry/frustrating moments.
  • Under-rated habit: Treat myself like I'm forgetful. Just count on todo lists..
  • "You don't have to push hard when curiosity pulls you along" (paraphrased from Paul Graham)

What I Did

  • Finished recruitment for a club on public policy. It's great to meet students from more faculties than I've ever seen in one room before!
    • We were lucky to learn from a seminar with a UN field associate who shared unforgettable stories about what she learned helping refugees find a stable future!
    • Finished fundraising $1000 for a debate on AI governance I'll be hosting in March! Gears are getting going :-)
  • Started working on a conference paper testing lightweight AI models for cybersecurity on smart devices. Draft coming next month!
  • Started my second year of university. Enjoying it a lot more than my first year because I've got some great profs and more tangible courses :-) Ex: Here are some physical analogies for circuits that I learned from Prof Derek Wright. Also, I learned assembly language (notes)

What I Learned

  • Information isn't very useful unless connected. This is true in CS data structures and it's true in education. A good habit to connect what I learn is to go from consuming knowledge to categorising knowledge. Ex: Stop to ask myself: "WHY does X work this way? What past experiences could this have helped with?"--> This is one of the problems with courses instead of projects. If I'm watching a Youtube tutorial, I don't know or have to know what's coming next. I just sit there and information comes my way. Though if I'm creating a project, I have to work backwards from the end goal and fix every hitch along the way. Forces me to connect dots MUCH more.
  • Under-rated habits: never argue online. Wait 2-24 hours before sending negative messages online.
  • Planning backwards is good at countering analysis paralysis. Even with uncertain outcomes, I have a certain plan to follow.--> Another way to snap out of analysis paralysis is to think 4 months at a time only.
  • Think like a lawyer: ex ante vs ex post. Ex ante thinking is pre-emptive, unbiased, not in reaction to something going wrong. Ex post thinking is reactive, with our judgement altered after something goes wrong. --> Ex: If a friend disappoints me, I might feel bitter and want to start an argument. That might feel right ex post. But I should also stop to think ex ante. How can I reduce the chance of future events like this? Which incentives do I want to create for myself and for my friends?

What I Did

What I Learned

What I Did

  • To be honest, I mostly had technical learnings over human learnings this month :/
  • One reflection I had was that you can never fully control the influence you have on others. You can show up to try to make a positive influence. But it's up to others to determine what sticks. That's the part that feels like an incredible honour :-)
    • I first noted this when talking to a retiring department chair thinking about how he influenced his colleagues. At a smaller scale, I saw it when my team-mates were being interviewed about working at our design team. Very heart-warming to see them adopting my work-consistently, work-publicly philosophy!

What I Learned

  • One of our human problems is we seek certainty over progress.
    • Ex: Countries want happier people, but GDP is easier to measure so they maximise GDP. For a long time this works, but eventually a country gets a whole lot of GDP and not a whole lot of happiness.
    • Ex: We want happier relationships, so we set up times to meet. Things are veritably getting done; we can see them on our calendar. But week after month after year, we're still longing for that spontaneous joy, play, and connection that defined our childhoods.
  • In my experience, chasing happiness and love seems to be like chasing butterflies. The chasing doesn't work, but when I have moments of going about life without a care, the butterflies seem to show up.
    • Ex: It's been hard for me to maintain connections with old friends. I felt I was forcing myself to keep investing and showing care when they didn't care anymore. Then, I tried stopping and trying to meet new friends by just showing up to random university clubs. It wasn't perfect, but it was progress :-)
  • My experience with travel has been that very little of it is the part where you get to the destination :D So why optimise the destination instead of the journey?
    • I mean this literally. How much time did I spend deciding which city to visit in Nova Scotia and how little did I spend deciding which games, music, podcasts, etc. might make the road trip to those cities more enjoyable?
    • I also mean it figuratively. How much time did I spend comparing university majors to decide which one to do? How much time did I spend thinking about how to best spend my time at the university while I'm here?

What I Did

What I Learned

  • It's not the message that matters, it's the journey of listening. It's not the knowledge that matters, it's the journey of understanding. That's each individual's path to meaning and revelation in their lives.
    • Many adults have preached to me the greatness of India. I found all their speeches obnoxious. Yet when I saw this music video celebrating the common perception of love across religious and cultural lines, I came to newly appreciate the diversity and cultural depth in India's history. It was my process of understanding and finding meaning/beauty in what makes the world valuable.
  • Best way to ask for feedback: consistently and ahead of time. Asking in-the-moment or one-off, people hesitate to be fully honest over polite.
  • Just a personal reflection, but my most when I have power is to see how I can create opportunities that benefit others. Whereas some take on positions of leadership with an intuition of using the resources available to them to progress towards their goals. The benefits of the latter are making more directed progress towards a focused vision. The benefits of the former are having a trusting team. Ideally, both kinds of leaders are helping an organisation.

What I Did

What I Learned

  • My problem with university isn't what they teach, it's why they teach. People shove information at you so you have all the tools to do X. But I don't learn for utility, I learn for wonder. It's that motivation to feel the universe so big and undiscovered that drives human exploration.
  • Poor vacation goal: cover all the [blank] spots. Creates hectic, hollow experiences. Better vacation goal: discover the one place where I can sit and appreciate for hours.
    • Read: no optimising how to get from A to B. 'Taste-test' in one place and hope to discover enough marvel to drop B.
    • Read: it's about HOW I look, not what I look at. I carelessly drove past heavenly oceanside cliffs trying to be on time to the next spot. But I spent an hour just sitting and appreciating one tiny hill in a small suburban park when I got home and just wanted to unwind and reflect.
  • I visited an expert with a purely-curious question: ""WHY do moving charges create magnetic fields?"" Neither of us knew, both of us ended up using Wikipedia and ChatGPT to find answers, and I found the answer first. When humanity's knowledge has become so concentrated, it's not useful to visit experts just to get answers to questions. Poor response: stop visiting experts. Better response: use the freed-up time to invest more in building relationships.

What I Did

What I Learned

  • Organising events = a lot of upfront annoyances. But also a lot of followup serendipity (social connections / referrals specifically).
  • Waking up early = extra wiggle room to deal with the day's problems. Wise move in a world where things breaking is the norm.
    • Similarly, starting tasks early = more time to gauge difficulty and reallocate time/resources. Try problems early for a good 15-30 mins. THEN, decide when/how much to work on them.
  • I don't like having my back against the wall. But any time I've been forced to do or die, I ended up prioritising and succeeding. Why be scared of known unknowns? Take a risk I'll figure it out.

What I Did

  • Plot twist: unlike what I said last month, I was able to organise an AI governance hackathon last minute. It was nice to invite people from different faculties, like the law student who won based on her proposal to improve AI-enabled healthcare diagnoses for marginalised patients!
    • Also, many students were also interested in working on technical AI. So I'm starting a team to work on applied AI for cybersecurity (protecting IoT devices)!
  • I'm done with university courses for the next few months. Just wrapping up some final exams and recording videos to explain what I learned in first year computer engineering.

What I Learned

  • Environments HUGELY change how easy it is to meet people. Ex: Difficult environment to meet people: cluttered room where I have to walk up to groups of people to start conversations. Ex: Easy environment to meet people: small circular tables where people are waiting to start a board game.
  • In the short run, anything but stuck is fine. Anything but stuck gets me new experiences. Those bring me closer to getting what I want out of life in the long run.
    • Read: if hopeless after failure, start trying random, unoptimal things. Progress > perfection.
  • ""We can do small things with great love."" - Mother Teresa. Try reminding myself of this before going into a conversation.
  • The fun thing about playing a piano is that I'm just focused on pressing the right keys in a very repetitive way. Hones my attention on that instead of all the worries usually in my heads.

What I Did

  • Failed at getting enough students interested in an AI governance hackathon I was organising :/ Currently very confused about future career plans as a result. Hopefully, the low forces me to grow to new highs.
  • Got through midterms at university. Also had fun trying out a new board game club.

What I Learned

  • It's really really good to talk out worries with others.
    • In trying 7 new projects to learn about AI, 6 would fail. It never feels great to consistently fail. But others can help remind me that I get to try, not have to try, to succeed.
  • There's nothing magic waiting in adulthood. Anything I'm scared of, uncertain about, not ready for, etc. - it'll still be waiting for me later unless I start working to change now.
  • Underrated habit: do the hardest thing first. Start with just one choice to do a hard task. Don't give up because the 'habit' part sounds scary.
  • Nervous to start X? Ask: "What could go wrong? What are two steps to prevent that?" Automatically more ready to start now!

What I Did

  • Finished open source implementations of encryption algorithms for AI models. Put together a research proposal to improve these algorithms. Haven't found collaborators yet sadly :/
  • Started organising an AI governance hackathon and advising a team working on ways to make democratic decisions about AI usage policies.
  • Started another university semester. Committed many mathematical sins while using physics' integration rules :D

What I Learned

  • Reappreciating these mental health tips I'd learned about managing unhelpful thoughts. What I do consistently >> what I know.
  • Appreciating the importance of habits > willpower. Ex: To improve thinking, don't pause to reflect once. Create a notes template asking me to list bullet points on the limitations of EVERYthing I read.
  • My natural instincts are to be open/communicate lots. But in large organisations, more eyes = slower progress. I have to be more thoughtful about where to seek feedback.
    • RE: A biased feedback source - people who have to face end costs are usually too risk-averse. Ex: parents, public relations staff, budget makers, lawyers, etc.
  • The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. I've been anxious about global problems like AI safety. Worrying about the entire, huge problem doesn't help anyone, though. If I start with the smallest action (ex: reading a single research paper), I can build that on to a larger next step. Over the course of a life, a person taking directed small steps can achieve an unbelievable amount relative to those simply wandering.
  • Technically, reading lots about AI and cybersecurity. Notes here.
  • Interviewed a provincial politician. Was shocked by the number of behind-the-scenes staff that help put together a political campaign. Also, was surprised to hear the conflicts within political parties.

What I Did

  • Applied to and got rejected from 3 AI safety fellowships. Still, I'll take the rejections as signals to dive deeper instead of give up! I've specifically been exploring how to prevent AI algorithms from being stolen and misused. Currently, I'm launching open-source encryption tools for AI models.
    • Also finished leading a cohort of students on a course on AI safety. It was very useful to have everyone present recent research every week and teach each other what we learned.
  • Finished an internship at the Public Health Agency of Canada. Two dashboards I worked on are set to release in June. For now, I can share a dropdown and bar chart component I created for the dashboards. Also, some general post-internship lessons.
  • Preparing/planning to move back to university. Trying to get out of classes and work on AI wherever possible :D

What I Learned

  • It can feel hard to admit I'm wrong. But it's easy to start quietly fixing my mistakes first. And it gets easier to admit I'm wrong after that ;-)
  • Followup emails are under-rated. At the time of writing, I have a meeting with a provincial politician tomorrow because of one :-)
  • If I can't get some task off my mind, write down all the details I'm thinking of. Then, my brain knows it doesn't have to keep thinking anymore.
  • Eat a meal in silence at least once a week. It gives me time to think about where life is going and what I'm looking for.
  • I don't know how nice it is to be healthy until I get sick.
  • In Western corporate culture, most people avoid giving negative feedback unless it's urgent. To get around this: set up recurring feedback sessions and keep asking followup questions for specific examples of what to change/keep doing. Go into a feedback session with the thought: "They'll say something vague like 'your work is great.' I'll need to push them for specifics."
  • Before a __, ask what the best thing I can learn from it is. Ex: Before a meeting, before a university semester, before the first day on a job, etc.

What I Did

  • Finished a course on biosecurity. These are my notes.
  • Wrote some articles about using AI for malware detection: general version and technical version.
  • Made some videos explaining gzip compression and bouyancy.
  • Made a rotation speed gauge with an Arduino - tutorial coming soon!
  • At my job with the Public Health Agency, I started documenting my projects as my internship ends. Ex: Documenting this bar chart component I made.
  • Also started a role as a TA at this course on AI Safety. It's been challenging to figure out how to balance time commitments from everybody, but asking each individual about their needs helps.
  • Finished researching what it takes to be a Canadian member of parliament. Moving on to researching effective educational policies. More notes here.

What I Learned

  • Ownership dies in inconsistency. I started a project at work with no guidance, so I made all the plans. Soon, everyone had tiny modifications to suggest, so I just fulfilled others wishes. I got so much in the habit of this that when the request stopped, I couldn't think of what to do myself anymore.
    • Antidotes being explored.
  • We need to make it a norm to just learn for the sake of learning. Natural response to more uncertain careers (and humans needing to do less and less).
  • When I have a limited lifetime, not trying due to fear of failure just doesn't add up. Every second that passes, I'm left with less opportunity to reach my dreams.
  • Followup questions are VERY valuable. Humans with limited time rarely give me the opportunity to ask follow up questions. But with AI assistants, we can all have more of this valuable resource.
  • Can't get started on some bold goal? Aim to start with bad, inconsistent, tiny, unclear progress. "The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step" - Lao Tzu
  • Adult friendships are much more about intentional effort then magically 'clicking.'
  • In the adult world, genuine enthusiasm is such a valuable and rare gift to offer yourself and others :-)

What I Did

  • At my job with the Public Health Agency, worked on dashboards to let the public access data about pesticide concentrations in the environment and their bodies.
  • Continued learning about biosecurity. Learned how genetic sequencing, decontamination, and vaccines work.
  • Finished a course on cybersecurity. Notes here. Also, researched how AI can be used for malware detection. Notes here.
  • Finished AP Physics BC's content on fluid dynamics. Notes here.
  • Started researching important political changes to prepare for technologies like AI and biotechnology changing our society. In-progress notes here

What I Learned

  • Good leads to bad and bad leads to good.
    • Catching up with some old friends from middle school, I found that the ones who grew the most were the ones that faced the most challenges: career changes, mental health issues, lost friends, etc. While the ones who stayed in comfortable situations didn't have much to remember.
  • What I practice > what I learn.
    • From public speaking to empathy to technical skills, everything I learn fades away unless I try to grow it.
  • The best first drafts are the most CHANGEABLE. Before starting the first draft, pause to THINK: "I'll probably redo this."
    • Less time upset by issues, more time thinking up creative solutions.
    • Ex: It doesn't matter if I code the most efficient software for the first meeting. People will want something completely different by the second.
  • Give people time to give feedback. They're usually not thinking about me, so they need time to reflect and remember to give the best feedback.
  • Just read the reseach paper :D (part of 'Do the real thing')
  • Schedule reminders to be more [blank] before a call. Ex: More enthusiastic.
    • More intention = more growth + more fun!

What I Did

  • Started making graphs for the government at Public Health Canada. Links to released projects coming soon.
  • Continuing to learn {cybersecurity basics](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JJgH9NHg9IQhdXYhqM2z40hAID1kGbTvHK-pqb2nylE/edit). Also researching how AI is used in cybersecurity.
  • Joined a study group on biosecurity. Ongoing notes here.
  • Continuing to learn about fluid dynamics. Ongoing notes here.
  • Updated this site :-)

What I Learned

  • Some quotes I've been thinking about:
    • "We are always in a hurry to get things finished and so the things that we finish weren’t worth finishing." - Alan Watts As he puts it, this is how we end up "Going
 faster and faster, to less and less desirable objectives." Especially in a university focused on the spread of information over knowledge, I fear people have forgotten what really is valuable in life.
    • "The consequence of mitigating risk makes the prospect of success inconsequential." - Navid Nathoo I've been thinking about what my life would look like if I aimed for success. Compared to what it would look like if I aimed to avoid failure. It seems that I'm in a great position to fail soft (as I'm privileged enough to live in a highly-developed country), but I'm not yet in a great position to win hard.
    • Paraphrasing: 'Real freedom is about attention. It's about the choice of what to think about. This choice starts with education, but the kind of education that is the job of a lifetime.' - David Foster Wallace One of the things that surprised me about being in a university was just how few people around me actually wanted to learn. Ie. Intentionally, personally decided that their education mattered to them. At the end of a life, my education is my path to living a more fulfilling life. It's the masterpiece of a lifetime of effort. Why would I passively show up and let someone else decide how it unfolds for me?

What I Did

  • Finished my first semester of university.
  • Made a podcast sharing the story of a friend of mine that very much inspires me.
  • Made a series of tutorials on physics. Also, assorted tutorials on Python, calculus, linear algebra, and gears.
  • Finished a month-long cybersecurity challenge. Notes here.
  • Wrote some takeaways on my year-long public speaking challenge.
  • Created some INCREDIBLE wood engravings of Wall-E and a bush viper.
  • Confirmed an upcoming data science internship with the Public Health Agency of Canada. At least 25% of the forms I've ever signed in my life up to this point were for this job :D

What I Learned

  • Don't just pick the first solution. Applies everywhere from coding one function to managing economic policy for a nation.
  • Gratitude > mirth. Watching memes or comedy might make me feel happier for a minute. But watching a documentary about the hardships of the developing world makes me grateful for a week.
  • When it comes to starting new relationships, 90% of the work is just showing up.
    • This month, I followed up with many professors I'd already met. Just showing up led to interesting conversations and opportunities shared. I just had to choose to make time for this.
  • My education is my job.
    • If I don't want to learn, it doesn't matter how skilled a teacher is. I won't grow. If I want to learn, it doesn't matter how poor a teacher is. I'll make some step forward.
    • Read: Intentional practice before optimised environment. If I want to learn, plan less and get started.
    • And to maintain/remind myself of intentions, schedule Calendar reminders before events to do X. Ex: Before a study session, set a reminder to think backwards. Ex: Before a meeting, set a reminder to listen actively.
  • My happiness comes down to what the voice in my head is saying at the end of a day.
    • If the voice in my head is just complaining about the stupid people in my way, the stupid problems I have to put up with, the stupid... I'll be unhappy. If the voice in my head is thinking: "WOW, I'm one of the luckiest humans that's ever lived out of 70+ billion who've gone through this adventure called life!" - I'll be happy.
    • A first start to getting to the second case is putting a poster of reasons to be grateful on my wall. And moving it around every few weeks so it catches my attention again.

What I Did

  • Started two courses on cybersecurity. Growing notes here, here, and here.
  • Wrote a paper on how AI is affecting cybersecurity in healthcare.
  • Gave some small talks on how to find values and on technological risks.
  • Finished guiding a course from the Centre of AI Safety.
  • Studied excessive amounts of linear algebra, physics, and calculus. Also some object-oriented programming.

What I Learned

  • Ask: "How can I be more human?"
    • Whether it's making a joke in a job interview, asking personal questions to mentors, or talking casually in presentations - people tend to like humans > robots.
  • Write out EXACTLY what I want to do. Devil's in the details.
    • Ex: I wanted to learn about cybersecurity, so I randomly started meeting cybersecurity professors. But that unintentional wandering didn't help. When I made a list of exactly which actions to take (e.g. code an AI model that detects scam websites) - then, I had clear progress.
  • What I do > who I do it with > how I do it
    • Ex: Found myself getting high grades in physics after lots of studying. But 'success' had no consequence because the goal didn't matter.
  • Jump into the deep end. Give myself an opportunity to learn.
    • Ex: I didn't know anything about microcontrollers. I could assume I'm incompetent and look for the most basic resources I can find. Or, I could read more about physics and challenge myself. I found myself learning quicker and more enjoyably with the latter.

What I Did

  • Finished a year-long speaking challenge
  • Started learning to use microcontrollers
  • Learned to use a metal lathe and miter saw to make a ring.
  • Gave a presentation on safety engineering and hosted a speaker on AI safety.
  • Learned best practices for coding (maintainable code > working code).
  • Did excessive amounts of calculus, linear algebra, and physics.
  • Continuing some research on cybersecurity risks from AI. Will update with notes soon :-)

What I Learned

  • If really really busy, don't try to finish sidework before doing what matters. Just do what matters when I feel like it. Sidework contracts to fit the time left.
    • Ex: If I have 9 courses at university, I'll never not have schoolwork. Can't wait for that before working on personal projects I enjoy.
  • Show up in person. Gets you ahead of 90% of people.
    • Ex: Want to interview X professor? Don't send an email. Knock on their door. Skip the line.
    • Also, a meeting ended with no actionable is a meeting wasted. Get some followup action.
  • Plan stepS (plural) to achieve goal. Not step 1, then 2, then 3.
  • Add my own side goal in 'assigned' work. Creates intrinsic motivation out of extrinsic pressure (more fun).
    • Ex: Have to code X for teacher/boss? Make a side goal to have the most well-documented, fastest, most concise, etc. code. Let it be a challenge by getting a boss/teacher to give feedback on it.
  • Negotiating? NEVER make my request before saying back theirs. If they know I listened to them, they're more likely to cooperate.

What I Did

  • Moved out for university and started adulting (bills, rent, groceries, and all that).
  • 3D printed a floss pick. Got a safety licence to start working on a robotics and woodworking project.
  • Started researching cybersecurity for biotechnology. Notes here
  • Learned a bunch of linear algebra and physics.
  • Barged into 10+ labs uninvited :D Lots of nice people taught me about rocketry, paper mill waste production, and autonomous vecicles!

What I Learned

  • Ask: "How could I be wrong?" before challenging team-mates.
  • Don't aim to impress people by surprising them if I can't get any feedback for surprise's sake. Ex: Don't present at work without feedback, aiming to surprise everyone.
    • Also, ask which questions the audience would have before presentations.
  • Before a busy time, write down what it makes sense to worry about. Ex: Top 3 tasks in a busy day.
  • Leave written notes whenever possible in teams. Ex: Daily updates, raw research in docs, etc. I have to spend less time explaining if I can link to some writing.
  • Openly share my motivations/goals. Creates vulnerability + others know how to help me.
  • Don't mention side projects at work unless the other person is trustable. Many people think you're not focused enough on the job, but not all.
  • Respond to any feedback with a detailed + empathetic thank you. Specific instructions
    • When getting feedback, remind myself: "Feedback is a gift. I'd be worse off without it." So I'm less defensive.

What I Did

What I learned

  • Be 10% too enthusiastic. Works out to be just right :D
  • How to feel grateful? PAUSE to reflect: "What didn't break today?" before sleeping.
  • How to calm down under stress? Ask: "How can I be playful here?" Ex: Failed a test? Say: "Another F! At least it literally cannot get worse from here :D"
    • If too busy, ask: "Which failures are easy to ignore? Which ones can't I ignore?" Helps let go what's unnecessary.
  • Define the lowest quality that will work. When busy, reduces unnecessary work without fear.
  • For small problems - SAY out loud 3 possible solutions before trying one. Reduces unthoughtful iterations. Ex: When coding or doing homework.
    • Figuring it out < asking if it needs to be figured out. Ask first to avoid unnecessary work.
  • Personal insight: if I set meetings around 10:30-11 AM, I sprint to get work done quickly beforehand. What time might do that for you?
    • Though this was less effective if I didn't have 'finishable chunks' of work. If I give myself a completely unrealistic goal, I won't even try.

What I did

What I learned

  • Working backwards is good for filtering possibilities. Ex: When busy. Working forwards is good for opening possibilities. Ex: When stuck.
    • Also, if busy, ask: "Where am I spreading myself too thin? What can I cut out?"
  • I only remember what I FOCUS on. Ex: When I send a friend a video explaining something I learned to test my knowledge. Not when I read a textbook while thinking of when I'll be done.
  • Ask and note down what makes others feel appreciated. Celebrate them in that way (ex: as a team lead trying to motivate a team or a friend trying to help).
  • In the morning, once a week: break down weekly goals into smaller 'milestones'. Then write which milestones have to be done by when in a calendar.
    • Doing this mid-week helps to 'let optional tasks go' to prioritise the essentials.

What I did

  • Onboarding at Happier Lives Institute, a nonprofit researching the best ways to improve global happiness. So far, just planning my research and building as many relationships as possible :-)
  • Learning AI safety from scratch. GIANT doc with my learnings.
  • Wrote an article on learnings from researching the cancer patients' experiences with treatment. Also, made a pitch on how to improve their experiences.
  • Researched four amazing speakers: a preacher, Charlie Chaplin, a Tiktok star, and a scientist.
  • Went to a French conference on mental health. Learnings here :-)
  • Read Messy by Tim Harford
  • Found a house to not be homeless as I move out for university :D

What I learned

  • Read Bad Data. Learned how to choose the right metrics for goals.
  • Speak with overly cheesy excitement. Either I feel happier or laugh at myself and feel happier.
    • Similarly, forcibly laugh for 60-90s. Increases happy hormones. (Source)
    • Whenever asked: 'How are you?' - say: 'I'm grateful that...' Makes me happier within a week.
  • Free time? Work on what has future benefits
    • Ex: Prepare questions for an upcoming meeting
  • Assume the best in others Being too cynical is worse than not cynical enough.
    • Ex: I was annoyed that someone missed a meeting. Turns out, their mother was diagnosed with cancer yesterday :-(
  • I can't remember a time where I didn't fear something enough. Just do it! I won't look back :-)
  • Feedback I got on a job interview that went well:
    • Show curiosity by mentioning questions I'd like to explore on the job.
    • Tell specific stories in responses. Ex: ""I think quick because I'm a journalist"" --> ""One time, I had to rewrite a 4-week philosophy essay in 13 hours""
    • Show ability to learn by explaining HOW I resolved problems in screening tasks
    • Ask my interviewer personal questions so conversation isn't one-sided. Be 10% more casual than usual

What I did

  • Buit this site to share practical tips on people, productivity, and more.
  • Working on several online courses. Some review, some new :-)
    • Finished two courses on UX Design by Google. Notes
    • Finished learning about chaos theory and complexity. Notes
    • Started reviewing calculus and probability
  • Researched non-medical problems for cancer patients. Article with key lessons learned coming soon!
  • Researched 4 incredible speakers: an author, a Nobel Prize winner, a navy SEAL, and a preacher
  • Read Bad Data by Peter Schryvers. Highly recommend it! Explains common mistakes in HOW we use data.
  • Training problem-solving with riddles :D
  • Preparing to move out for university. Searching for apartments and building up my cooking catalogue :D
  • Got accepted to two fellowships studying AI and mental health this summer. Will start soon :-)
  • Got and recovered from COVID :/ Lucky to have my family's support.
  • Helped 30 people with mental health and had 30 calls with friends :-)

What I learned

  • Discomfort without reflection is not equal to learning.
    • Before sleeping, journal: "What made me uncomfortable today? Any hidden benefits of that?"
  • When choosing todo, pick the hardest option for 3+ days.
    • After 3 days, the 'hard' options don't seem so hard.
    • If hard to start todo, write the FIRST step to start working on it
  • Struggling to progress on goal? Aim to improve process > result
    • Ex: Trouble making friends? Have a call aiming to share 2 vulnerable stories. Vs. aiming to make new friend.
  • For open-ended tasks, give yourself only enough time to choose the easiest option. Ex: 10 mins to email any 3/15 leads. Cuts inefficient pursuits.
  • Define what not to do > what to do. For hard-to-set goals.
  • Personalised tips on making longterm friends.
  • Define when to abort before starting high-stakes work. Ex: New exercise that could hurt muscles.
  • Cut the least important task at the start of every day/week. Less redundancy.
    • And if stuck on task, ask: "Can I try this another time?" Helps move on.

What I Did

  • Working on several online courses. To find skills that best suit me :-)
  • Researched public speaking tips from 5 incredible speakers: Sadhguru, Kevin Hart, Darren Hardy, Joze Piranian, and Larry Winget.
  • Published lots of decision-making tips. Working on a site to share these easily :-)
  • Finished reading Influence by Robert Cialdini - explains the principles of persuasion well. Also, Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell - good warning to not be overconfident about understanding others.
  • Applied to 2 internships for the summer.
  • Did 1500+ situps, 1000+ pushups, and biked 150+ kilometres.
  • Had 30 calls with friends and helped 35 people with their mental health.

What I learned

  • ITERATE on all these actions. It often takes me 3+ tries to learn how to do each one well.
  • Stop to think: "What's life like for them right now?" Try asking them for time to think during a call. Or do it right after a call. Empathy is slow.
  • Shared struggle = connection. But not great for giving advice (due to shared blindspot).
    • So let others know when I relate to their struggles. Adds trust.
  • Explicitly state your intentions when trying to help. Reduces misunderstandings.
    • Ex: Add to the end of any advice: "I hope this helps you [do sthng]"
  • What do I think I understand well? That's what I MOST need to double-check.
    • Ex: I thought I understood someone like a 'soul-sister'. Tried writing down what I thought I knew about her. But I just wrote what I knew about myself. I was just ASSUMING that also applied to her.
  • At the end of any project, ask: "How might I be wrong?"
    • Often, this happens because I haven't seen some new perspective. Ex: ANY time I research a global problem (ex: mental health), experts tell me things I never found in any report.
  • Tough decision? Stop thinking of facts about the options. Instead, think about my priorities.
  • Before meeting X, think of positive things they've done for me. Makes me more enthusiastic.
  • Too busy? Ask: "What would I finish today if I had to leave for vacation tomorrow?" Makes me do most essential work first.
    • Also, try: "What if I didn't do X? What'd happen?"
    • Also, I realised that I REALLY don't like being busy after a stressful hackathon. And I don't need to be busy to do good work. I can just cut out redundant work. "Being busy is a form of laziness - lazy thinking and indiscriminate action." - Tim Ferris.
  • Too timid? Ask: "What's something I can try today that I don't know will work?" Makes me try to get help I wouldn't have asked for.
    • Also, just try. Failures hurt less than regrets. Ex: I wanted to see a specific museum exhibition. Walked 1.5 hours to do so. Turns out Museum was closed. But I don't regret trying! And I got to see cool sights while walking :-)
  • At the start of each day, write one thing that MAY go wrong. And how it wouldn't be the end of the world. Hurts less IF that does go wrong.

What I did

What I learned

  • How to thank people here
  • Ways to show trust here
  • Ways to kickstart vulnerability here.
    • Also, it can seem like being vulnerable = 'bothering' others. But that just isn't true. Note how you feel when others are honest or vent to you!
  • Before starting work, set a goal I MUST achieve. It makes me choose my goals wisely and cut out unnecessary work :D
    • For the same reason, ask: "What'd be too much? Too little? Just right?"
  • Before starting work, write WHY I'm doing it. I might not change WHAT I do. But at the end, I can reflect: "Did I achieve my goal?" And realise a missed lesson.
    • Ex: I'm editing a podcast to learn new lessons. I realise I hadn't noted any lessons at the end. So I stop to do that!
  • If it has delayed rewards, do it early. Even if I don't feel like it.
    • Ex: I don't like cold-emailing. But I force myself to do it on Sunday. Because people won't respond if I wait until later in the week when I feel less lazy.
  • Every week, rewatch 1+ documentary about someone worse off than me. Though I 'know' its message, I quickly forget its importance. And start worrying again about unimportant first-world issues :-(
  • End every meeting with an actionable. Not just to help me. Ask: "What's a next step you want to take on [problem] that you mentioned?". Then, encourage them to do that in a followup note and check on their progress in a week.
    • On a similar note, compliment others' work on social media. Tell them I look forward to seeing the next article, conference, announcement, whatever.

What I did

  • Learned how to run 3D animations on the web with Three.js. Made this Martian environment to explore as Eve from Wall-E.
  • Recreated two AI models from cool research papers (one on COVID-19 detection with smell sensors and another on encoding words as numbers).
  • Published a report summary of the neglected causes of biodiversity loss. A big opportunity is starting nonprofits / companies to reduce meat consumption in Brazil, India, Russia, and China. Unexpected connection, but more details in the report :D
  • Researched 4 amazing speakers: Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Alan Watts, and Richard Feynman. One takeaway: nothing replaces talking about what interests you.
  • Published 2 podcasts with researchers on antifungal develpment (insanely neglected healthcare issue!) and reducing meat consumption (large opportunity to commercialise findings)!
  • Made a Malcolm Gladwell Shrine for my website :D Has notes on criminology, network science, innovation via disadvantages, and more!
    • Also published a lot of reusable tips for problem-solving! Like brainstorming techniques, how to break down problems, etc.
  • Finished reading the Gita and Tao te Ching. Tao te Ching is more of a reflection on your beliefs (recommended :D) than a discovery of someone else's beliefs.
  • Lots of random learning. Ex: behavioural evolution - cool insights on how evolution changes animal behaviours. Ex: molecular genetics - awe-inspiring marvels on how complex our body is :O Ex: Interpersonal therapy - practical tips to deal with loss, disputes, loneliness, and major life transitions.
  • Had 43 calls with friends and 8 meetings with experts (mainly about biodiversity loss)!
  • Did over 50 pushups a day for over two-thirds of the month!
  • Gave advice to 25+ people on mental health forums :-)

What I learned

  • Take notes, even during personal meetings. After the meeting, ask followup questions on something I learned. Leads me to pay more attention and learn more.
  • Every time I do X bad habit, do Y good habit. Ex: every time I want to check social media, do 10 pushups. Turns the bad into good :-)
  • Stop being hard on myself after failure. That's not discipline, that's irrational.
    • Instead, ask: ""What should I change to fix this?"". Use failure to get lessons for the future.
    • In general, what am I getting lessons for if not for future use?!? Take notes more.
  • It's easy to confuse 'less convenient' options with 'harder' options. This is why I'm capable of more than I think.
  • Before EVERY meeting, review these tips from Dale Carnegie on how to leave a good impression.
    • Especially important: compliment specifically + research their work beforehand,
  • Writing fears makes them less intense. Try it out. Journal answers to this question: ""What am I scared to write down?"" Then delete/burn/tear the answers.
  • Learned about Tummo breathing. Feels like when you eat a mint and your mouth is tingly... but in your stomach :D Fairly good at helping focus :-)
  • How to say no: ""Thank you for reaching out to _. [Sincere compliment]. [Honest reason for no]. [Future-facing compliment]."" Examples here
  • Mental pain usually leads to growth - scientifically proven. It's not weirdo philosophy. See here for evidence.
  • To inspire: Say WHY I'm doing X before saying WHAT I'm doing. More details here
  • Reflect: ""How can I compete less with others and more with myself?"" [to get better over time]
  • There's a very special feeling of compassion that I can only get via helping others. And I value that feeling so much, it's like: ""What am I doing if it's not to help others???"" No amount of personal success will bring me that special feeling.

What I did

What I Learned

  • My friend Jesse taught me to just try. No matter what. One opportunity always leads to the next.
    • Ex: I applied to work at a mental health nonprofit. In just 40 mins :D Now, I'm a speaker there. Suits my personal goals :-)
  • Be vulnerable first. Ex: In a call, share a personal story first. Ex: Ask a new friend for their address to send a christmas gift first.
  • Curiosity dissipates conflict. When mad, ask: "Why am I mad?"
  • At the start of the day, make a todo list. Write WHY I'm doing each todo. Write which part of each task holds most value. Do that first. Identify which task has least priority. Do that last or don't do that. Work in 15-minute sprints (set a timer). After each sprint, check if still on task.
    • For work. Not for relationships/fun. Ex: not for a call with friend.
  • Intentionally make tiny mistakes in front of others. Less ego
    • Ex: leave bug in code while showing it to others.
  • Work on what's possible > what I'd like. Less stress.
    • Ex: I had house repairs one day. Just set one goal.
    • Ex: Had bugs in website. Asked: "What's the cost of fixing it now?" That I might not publish this reflection. So I left the bug.
  • Meditate/listen to calming music before calls. Less stress = more authenticity, enthusiasm.

What I did

  • Wrote annual reflection on lessons learned in 2021 (here)
  • Finished teaching a course on AI starting with grade 9 math (here)
  • Recorded podcasts with an e-waste researcher. And a researcher of psychotherapy in developing countries. Will publish in January.
  • Designed 3D model of a commercial kitchen. (here)
  • Published monthly newsletter with helpful tips. (here)
  • 4 speaking challenges: a corporate skit, presentation on fungi, documentary on food waste, and fake news report. (here)
  • Researched the speaking style of 4 speakers: Barack Obama, Stephen Colbert, Jordan Peterson, Mel Robbins
  • Read 4 reports on biodiversity loss. (notes)
  • Finished reading How to Win Friends and Influence People. (notes)
  • Did chores in a house of 3 for a week :D
  • Learned to cook 3 Indian dishes: chhole, pav bhaji, palak paneer
  • 25+ calls with friends :-) And made 3 christmas gifts <3
  • Updated website to include these updates :D

What I learned

  • No matter how much pain I go through, I can get unimaginably better. See case studies.
  • Do things that I'm curious about, especially if most others aren't curious about them. Then, I know prestige isn't biasing me.
  • To be authentic, be spontaneous. Ex: Set a timer and don't stop writing.
  • Venting emotions to others is a healthy habit.
  • To get to 10x better, ask: “What can X do that can’t be done anywhere else?”
  • To listen well, I have to WANT to listen. I'll want to listen if I'm asking questions that lead to interesting answers. Ask:
    • “What’s the most surprising thing you learned about this week?”
    • “What’s something [adjective] you do that most others don’t?”
    • “What’s a big challenge you’ve faced that shapes who you are today?”
  • Immediately after negativity, reflect: “How can I grow from this?”
  • When thanking, complimenting, encouraging, etc. - add SPECIFIC details.
  • Keep giving till I learn to stop expecting something in return. Ex: Thank someone every day.
  • Usually, I fear what others think. Not failure.
    • To overcome the fear of what others think, do tiny things to look ridiculous. Ex: Wear a tie with a sports shirt.
  • Self-confidence is based on intention, not results.
    • Before starting a task, do a positive affirmation about my intention. Ex: “I will pursue this out of curiosity and will persist even if there are setbacks.”
  • Avoid preprepared questions in meetings. Ask followups whenever possible.
  • Ask: “WHY am I feeling [negative emotion]?” Curiosity dissipates negativity.

What I did

What I learned

  • If I don't know what to do, helping others is a good default. It benefits others, makes me happier, strengthens relationships, and gives me new perspectives.
  • If I can’t get 10 good ideas, get 20 ideas. - James Altucher
    • Intentionally get stupid ideas! Combine 2+ stupid ideas into 1 uniquely-good idea.
    • Ex: What’s a unique project? A) Make video games (stupid - not unique). B) Cut off a leg (stupid - not feasible). Combine: make video games as less-boring rehab exercises for amputees.
  • Tag people on social media whenever I find something that might interest them. Low-effort way to show I’m looking out for others.
  • Calmness is in what’s inside, not what’s outside.
    • Ex: I can hold my tongue in an argument, but still feel annoyed at the other. That isn’t being ‘calm’. I have more work to do.
  • Don’t push away negative thoughts. Don’t ruminate over them endlessly. Seek the balanced middle.
    • Ex: Letting myself recount a sad experience by journaling about it. But closing the journal after and not thinking about it.
  • Enthusiasm hack: just add more exclamation marks and emojis!!
  • How to argue less: ask myself: “Am I helping the situation right now?”

    What I did

  • Started a weekly public speaking challenge for 52 weeks!
  • Started learning 3D printing basics. Made an extra painful Lego brick and bike handle lightsaber :D
  • Publicly shared notes on all the books I've read!
  • Training to speak about mental health at a nonprofit
  • Made dinosaur art for seniors :-)

What I learned

  • At the end of a bad day, say: “Surely tomorrow can’t be this bad!” :D
  • Failure = time to research how to avoid the mistake next time.
  • In a world full of things breaking, *a normal day is worth celebrating
  • If I don't get what I want, see what I can learn from what I get.
    • Ex: I interviewed a biotechnology expert. Understood none of his jargon. Felt frustrated. But then made myself learn every word.
  • I can create or I can polish. I can’t do both.
  • “Write down the 20% of activities causing 80% of your negative emotions. What is the worst thing that could happen if you stopped doing them?” - Tim Ferris
  • Suicide takes your pain, multiplies it 10 times, and throws it on everyone around you. Make a vow to yourself or someone else to not commit suicide. - Tim Ferris
  • If demotivated, work on most exciting part of my discipline. Ex: AI Profile Photo Generator
  • “Treat others the way they want to be treated.” - Chris Voss
    • Ask: “What makes you feel cared for?”
    • Ask: “What gives you energy?”
    • Ask: “What would your perfect day look like?”

What I did

What I learned

  • Worries seem tiny in a list, but tangled in my head. Think less, write more.
  • Simplest way to feel more organised = declutter my desk.
  • Reflect at the start of the day: “How can I seek growth over productivity today?”
    • Ex: Doing all my todos < leaving one unnecessary todo. Trains awareness.
  • Failure feels okay when I can see it's just the first attempt!
    • Reflect at the end of the day: “Which of today’s failures was just the first attempt?”
  • “Nothing wrong with money. But the richest of your life won’t be measured by it.” - (Source)
  • Be vulnerable first. Ex: Share my fears with others from the very first meeting.
    • A story starting with achievement is a cue to tune out. A story starting with struggle is a cue to listen in.
  • Detail erodes fear. If I feel I can’t do X, SPECIFICALLY write what I’m avoiding and why.
  • How to say no without feeling guilty: ""I feel guilty just saying this, but... [honest reason for no]""*
  • How to disagree without feeling uncomfortable: “I want to be honest with you
 [disagreement].”
  • If I can’t get 10 good ideas, get 20 ideas. - James Altucher
    • Get stupid ideas even! Combine stupid ideas into good ideas
    • Ex: What’s a unique project? A) Make video games (stupid - not unique). B) Cut off a leg (stupid - not feasible). Combine: make video games as less-boring rehab exercises for amputees.

What I did

What I learned

  • Ask personal questions. Ex: about others' childhood, family, dreams, worries, etc.
    • Shared past = connection. Shared present = understanding. Shared future = excitement. Ask questions based on the emotion I want to create.
  • The people are worth more than the paper. When I got my diploma, it meant nothing to me. My teachers were nice though.
  • Their red isn’t my red. Ask for specific examples.
  • Ask: ""What could've made them do that?""
    • They aren't crazy. I'm just missing some information.
  • To find what others are looking for, ask them why I’m worth their time.
    • Ex: “I’m curious, why did you decide to respond to my email?”
  • “All the golden heros are walking flaws who have maximised one or two traits.” - Tim Ferris
  • DEMAND feedback on how to grow. More feedback now, less redoing later.
  • Make a ‘happiness’ box. Save messages/events/memories that make me happy.
  • Use more common words. So I don’t sound like an evil robot.
  • Train to greet others as enthusiastically as possible. Start by smiling more.
  • Just try. Each new experience leads to the next one. Even if the first wasn’t valuable, it might lead to a valuable one - Jesse Pound
  • Before meetings, recall one thing they told me last time. Ask them about it again. Shows I’m paying attention.

What I did

What I learned

  • Never respond before saying back what they said.
    • Forces me to slow down. And refocus on the other person.
  • Ask: “What sacrifices are they making here?” to focus less on me, me, me.
  • Do something that’ll benefit my future self.
    • Ex: Put a reminder to make my bed somewhere I’ll see it the next morning.
  • If comparing myself to others, compare myself to those less fortunate than me.
  • If I adapt my goals to a bad situation, a bad situation becomes an opportunity to pursue new goals!
  • To fix cynicism, remind myself of kind strangers who helped me. Also try these tips.
  • Don’t interrupt others (information lost). Let others interrupt me (information gained).
  • Work with constraints. Ex: Set a 15-min timer and a goal like answering 3 emails.

What I did

What I learned

  • Only I can decide what makes life worth living. There's no meaning to find 'out there'
  • Go on social media and post compliments on the first 10 posts I see.
    • I make friends by showing interest in others. Not vice versa.
  • When stuck for a long time, work backwards
    • Ask: "What skills will I need to reach my goal? Which experts can I ask to find out?”
  • Sleep = number one priority for staying alive. Fix it.
  • Don’t tell people what to do. Let them think of my idea by asking guiding questions.
  • Ask team-mates what motivates them before starting any work. Ask for specific examples.
  • Show others I trust them by sharing vulnerable stories. And by admitting something is complicated, but I believe they can figure it out.
  • When doing something hard but necessary, make a list of how it’ll help me grow.
  • Try breathing exercises to get my mind off of troubling thoughts.
  • Search for random acts of kindness on Youtube when I feel drained.
  • Stop trying to change others so much. I’ll regret being ungrateful for who they are.
  • When in a conflict, calm down by asking: “What could possibly have made them do that?”

What I did

What I learned

  • Just ask. Even when my problems seem complicated. Others often relate.
    • Ex: I can search the most personal, vulnerable issues on Reddit.
    • Ex: I can rephrase questions to be about others: “Could I ask you for advice on how to deal with anxiety?” → “How do you deal with anxiety?”
  • “The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.” - Naval Ravikant
  • “The only real test of intelligence is if you pursue what you want in life.” - Me :D
  • There are different types of success. Ex: family, career, legacy, happiness. I have to JUGGLE between them. (Howard Stevenson)
  • Not everything happens with intention and not everything with intention happens.
    • Ex: Spontaneity suits fun & relationships. Go into a meeting without plans once a month.
  • Defer conflicts until I’m face-to-face with the other. To better see the meaning behind words.
  • Default to assuming the best in others. Don’t search for ulterior motives.
  • When in a troubling situation, pretend it’s a test to remain calm. After, score myself on how well I remained calm.
  • Get over the self-doubt. Then I can actually be useful to others.
    • Ex: I met accomplished entrepreneurs and felt insecure. But I thought they were making a textbook mistake. So I shared the textbook and turns out they hadn’t read it :D

What I did

What I learned

  • Action needs intention. Action doesn’t need tangibility.
    • Ex: Stopping to do nothing for 10 minutes is a very hard action.
    • Ex: Crossing off todos all day without thinking isn't admirable.
    • Ask: "What do I need to do that requires the most intention?"
  • "What past limitations - real or perceived - are you still carrying on as baggage?" - Tim Ferris
  • Start a decisions tracker - any time I have to think twice about a decision:
    • Write the problem
    • Write what I considered
    • Write the decision I made
    • Later, write its outcome.
  • My thoughts aren’t me. Just like the weather isn’t the planet.
    • They don’t define me. They don’t control me. If they're unpleasant, I can look away.
  • The more I expect, the more I’m setting myself up for disappointment.
  • When plans change, exploring is an easy next step to find value.
    • Ex: If stuck in traffic, study the typography on store signs. Reflect on what I’m grateful for.

What I did

What I learned

  • When struggling, be the supporter I wish I'd had. Plan what'd make me happy. Do that for others.
    • I’ll stop thinking of just me, me, me. And I’ll feel compassion. Evolutionary guarantee!
  • HOW to support others
    • Show I care. Tell others my intention is to help.
    • Let them talk as much as possible. Ask open-ended questions. Leave silence to think. Ask for examples. Try saying back what they said.
    • Ask them what they need. Don’t tell them what they should do.
    • More here
  • At the start of a day, remind myself of the things that may go wrong. And realise those possibilities aren’t as bad as they seem.
    • It’s not about expecting bad things to happen. But accepting bad things may happen.
    • This works well when planning tasks for the day (ex: X may not show up to the meeting).
  • Thought experiments to feel grateful
    • Remind myself that I’ll do [current action] for the last time one day. Maybe even today.
    • Remind myself I might look back on some part of this current moment wistfully. Because I’ll likely have more problems as I get older
  • “Pain is a good thing physically because that is your self-preservation mechanism. But suffering is something that you do in your mind."" - Sadhguru
  • Ask: “Which of my prior experiences might have influenced this action/decision?”
  • “Don’t take yourself so seriously. You’re just a monkey with a plan, after all.” - Naval Ravikant
    • The universe doesn’t owe me anything. When something goes wrong, shrug it off.

What I did

  • Tested a forum to share sustainable product ideas with 30+ users. People didn't have enough interest. So we shut the idea down.
  • Interviewed a researcher who exposes sustainability violations from large companies like Walmart :O
  • I made a video on 5 lessons I learned on how to deal with loneliness. Inspired by my best friend who was always there to support me for months amidst the pandemic.
  • Ran a meditation workshop! Shared thought experiments to feel grateful :-)

What I learned

  • If I don’t care about myself, I won’t grow. I won’t even want to live.
    • Self-esteem is the prerequisite to ANY success.
  • Schedule time to do nothing. Just stop and think.
    • I’ll find new perspectives on old problems.
  • Don’t make decisions while feeling negative. Wait a day.
  • Don’t be a victim. Self-pity makes me unhappy. It doesn’t solve problems.
    • Instead of whining, ask: ""What’s the first step to fixing this?”
  • If I feel upset, say: “This too shall pass.” Nothing matters as much as I think in the long run
  • Placebos are practical. If it feels good, it works!
    • Point at myself and laugh for no reason.
    • Imagine an alien is in front of me. It has the EXACT same problems as me. What advice would I give it?
    • Make a deal with landmarks like trees: “I bet so many humans that pass you aren’t smiling. So I’ll make you a deal, tree. I’ll start smiling and you can have better sights to see! Win win!”
  • I don’t need to be in control to feel calm. If I accept what’s out of my control, I’ll also feel calm.
    • Ex: Relationship issues: “They’re going to [verb] and it’s out of my control. Oh well.”

What I did

  • Prototyping a forum where customers can share the sustainable product ideas they're looking for with businesses.
  • Interviewed a soil ecologist on how worms are LITERALLY reshaping the world.
  • Built a collection of eye-opening documentaries to get perspective on the world.
  • Nearly done with high school! Finished all but two courses :-)

What I learned

  • So many of our thoughts are just planning for the future and reminiscing about the past.
  • These days right NOW... these are the good old days I’ll look back on.
    • It's all a unique mix of experiences in time that I'll never get back
  • If I find I'm always right, I'm not making hard enough decisions.
  • Employees see their work as a task. Owners see their work as an opportunity.
  • There's value in negativity. I'm more willing to change what's not working.

What I did

What I learned

  • We can't turn back time.
    • I know this, but don't act like it. Ex: When I daydream about being a child again. Ex: When I wish a relationship were different like before.
    • The solution? To learn to adapt to/accept the present. Like water
  • No one can get you what you want... when you don't know what you want.
    • Ex: No number of college application hacks will help me feel less worried about where I'm going in life. But sitting down to decide what I want - that will.
  • Ask more questions. A 3-year-old asks hundreds of questions a day. Adults get trained out of it. But asking stupid, basic, childish questions is a habit of incredibly successful adults!

What I did

  • Finished university applications
  • Interviewed several entrepreneurs about challenges for running small businesses sustainably.
  • Wrote an article about sitting on my bed... just to prove I could turn any boring topic into an interesting story :D
  • Also, wrote a few reflections I only realise now at the end of highschool.
  • I recorded 5 podcasts with researchers on topics like geoengineering and philosophical insights in evolution!

What I learned

  • People make the world go around. And not just from their work.
    • Ex: Who keeps me happy enough to work all my life?
    • Ex: Who are the people who said one sentence that completely changed my perspective on the world?
  • The universe doesn't owe me anything
    • Many of our problems with the 'world' are really problems with 'our expectations of the world'. If we change our expectations, we can take away a lot of our problems.
  • Happiness comes BEFORE success - Sadhguru. Being happy lets you do MUCH better work.

What I learned

  • Gave an interview about the nitty-gritty details of plastic pollution :O
  • Recorded 8 podcasts with researchers about everything from food insecurity in Africa to how engineers are facing water shortages.
  • Mentored 4 teens starting TKS - an accelerator I'm an alumni in. Biggest lesson? People like stories a lot more than advice :D
  • Learned some negotiation basics. Ex: Focusing on 'interests' > 'positions' (why they want X vs. what they want).
  • Failed at winning a scholarship. Wrote this article on how that forced me to learn acceptance.

What I learned

  • Sometimes, a step back is better than a step forward
  • There are many correct ways to see reality. I have to choose the most useful.
  • I can't be successful when I haven't defined success.
    • This isn't some academic wordplay. I mean it practically! Writing down the person I'm aiming to become in whatever time period is SO useful. Whenever I feel demotivated, I come back to that. And it's an easy way to find out what to do next.

What I did

What I learned

  • What I work on > how hard I work - Naval Ravikant
    • Growing up, I often prided my work ethic. But as I work on more projects, I've realised that I CAN work hard on the wrong things. Ex: Imagine Elon Musk used his determination to be a great accountant :D
  • It's the people that say yes to opportunities.
    • The most influential work ALWAYS involves multiple people. Learning to work together is thus inevitable. No matter how nerve-wracking it can sometimes be for an introvert :D
  • If it's not fun, I won't do it.

What I did

What I learned

  • Career is not equal to identity
    • When I ask people who they are, they tell me what they do. But people are more than what they do. Not realising this prevents us from finding close relationships.
  • Life works on its own schedule. Do my work, then step back.
    • I can easily stress about when scholarship decisions come out, when mentors will email back, when team-mates will finish their part... But I can't control any of that. Do my work, then move on. They work on their own schedule.

What I learned

  • Started a podcast with my team-mate to interview specialised researchers!
    • I was interviewing experts in plastic pollution and realised how there were so many niche areas of knowledge I'd never heard of. That was a shame... so I decided to fix it!
  • Made a creativity game with React! Much more fun than note-taking app tutorials :D
  • Finished creating a course on plastic pollution with Plastic Bank!
    • Also, made a recommendation on how to make more impact for Plastic Oceans Canada :-)

What I learned

  • Positivity isn't about how I appear to others
    • I had a lot of meetings with people where I forced myself to be enthusiastic. But this left me tired. To actually feel more 'positive', I had to remember I was lucky to still meet people. Ie. Real positivity comes from basic, pleasant emotions like gratitude, faith, hope, etc.
  • I judge myself more than anyone ever will
    • Ex: This month, I missed a meeting with a mentor. She wasn't mad. But I never forgot that moment, even years later. This is something I need to get over if I want to grow from mistakes instead of wallowing in them.
  • I have problems running amok in my head. And that makes me lucky.
    • Some have to worry about finding enough food, shelter, water, medication, etc. to live. But I only have to worry about writing forty pages of essays. I'm lucky I only have to deal with problems in my head :-)

What I did

  • Spoke at a webinar on plastic pollution by The Ellen MacArthur Foundation!
  • Created some infographics explaining the basics of plastic pollution.
    • And helped Plastic Bank create some presentations explaining the problem to youth.
  • Recorded podcasts with chemists, marine biologists, and waste management experts from Norway to Mexico.
  • Won a TD Insurance hackathon with an idea on how to keep youth drivers safer, while also reducing costs! It was very unexpected, since we snuck in as the only highschool team amidst 150 university teams :D
  • Wrote a few blog posts on lessons we can learn from Syrian refugees, why it's hard to understand the value of failure when young, and how to keep our options open in life.

What I learned

  • Someone else getting more doesn't mean I get less.
    • In the modern world, there are LITERALLY countless problems to solve, careers to have, awards to win, etc. It's very rare to have people on the exact same path. Ie. If a 'competitor' wins, that doesn't mean I don't have a chance to win.
  • When things go wrong, we turn to leaders.
    • I know a CEO whose company hosted an online conference. It cost $50,000. Last minute, there was a technical issue. All the staff were panicking! And everyone started messaging the CEO. From the outside, it was interesting to observe how people IMMEDIATELY turn to leaders under stress.
  • Our brains haven't somehow become more rational in modern times
    • We might do more abstract thinking. But we still have the same biases as ever! Ex: we still have the same myths about death now as cavemen did.
    • Realising this with humility is the first step towards making better decisions.

What I did

  • Started The Plastic Shift with my team-mate. We've created resources explaining root causes and potential solutions in plastic pollution.
  • Started a podcast to interview experts in plastic pollution!
  • Failed at pitching a mobile app to reduce distracted driving. Got a useful reality check on what matters to managers - not technical details. But what's propreitary, which employees are needed, and how much time/cost to expect.
  • Got feedback from a child education startup in Kenya that my team consulted for :-)

What I learned

  • I have natural tendencies, not strengths vs. weaknesses
    • Ie. I just act one way. Sometimes, that's useful. Sometimes, it's not. Ex: I like being helpful. That's good around close friends. But bad around exploitative team-mates.
  • I need SOME boredom in life. Boring times are when my brain can 'explore' and find new lessons (like these ;-). Instead of worrying about __.
  • Failure is when we finally stop the car to fix the warning light
    • Ie. It FORCES us to stop. Instead of knowing that we have X bad habit, Y insecurity, Z neglected commitment, ... but not doing anything about those warning lights.

What I did

  • Started researching the root causes of plastic pollution. More research to come here as we dive deeper!
  • Made some app mockups for a hackathon. The goal is to reduce crashes for young drivers :O
  • Made a playlist of the most insightful TED talks I've found ;-)
  • Found a lot of inspiration from Jordan Peterson's lectures on having personal responsibility! Wrote a reflection on what I learned :-)
  • Researched the effect of COVID-19 on markets/industries. After studying the impacts of the 2008 financial crisis on different income-levels, I wonder how similar/different this crisis will be?

What I learned

  • Appreciate the easy and prepare for the hard
    • While not being stressed is nice, the stressful times are when I'll NEED these lessons. It makes me calm to say it: ""These are the times I was preparing for :-)""
  • Each of us is our own biggest problem
    • When working on an intense project with a high-achieving team, I felt insecure. I worried whether I was good enough. But I was the only one worrying that! My team-mates didn't judge me. My biggest problem was in my head.
  • A leader starts a message. A follower starts a movement.
    • We all focus on the most charismatic leaders. But what's the point of leadership? To make successful movements? But the success of a movement is based on how many people follow. So go ask a friend: ""What cool things are you working on? Which ways can I support you?"" It takes a follower to start a movement :-)

What I did

  • Finished the most intense project I've ever worked on. In 3 weeks, spent 100+ hours making a recommendation for an early education startup. They work to bring high-quality preschools to slums in Kenya. I had the opportunity to recommend a strategy to help them scale :-)
  • Researching the impacts of the 2008 financial crisis on lower-income classes. While in a new recession from COVID-19!
  • Learning Javascript/HTML basics to better work with websites!

What I learned

  • My decisions are always a bit random. So I should be less hard on myself
    • No really! I can't control which next thought will come up. Ex: ""Think of a movie"" --> I didn't have any control on the first movie that came to my head. Or the second, third, or fourth. So any decision I take is a little random + a little out of my control.
  • We can't change the world. We can change our interpretations.
    • And how we interpret an event determines how we feel! Ex: Interpreting a negative event as a challenge to grow from (fancy word: 'challenge appraisal') reduces negative emotions.
  • All progress decays. Accept it and work with it
    • Ex: I can get frustrated I don't remember how to code X. Or, I can take notes to look back on accepting that I'll forget what I learned soon.

What I did

  • Won a hackathon on how to use IoT sensors to detect leaks in oil pipelines. Boring issue, but important for the planet!
  • Made a presentation on how new financial models are the key to energy access in developing countries.
  • Learning Javascript/HTML basics to better work with websites.
  • Ran a ballet workshop on how to do pirouttes after 3 days of Youtube lessons :D
  • Started a hackathon on how to reduce insurance costs for youth, while keeping them safer.

What I learned

  • Without effort, you can get things done. But you can't love getting them done
    • Ex: The more energy I put in to meetings (being enthusiastic, preparing beforehand, etc.), the more I get out of them. Versus checking them off a todo list.
  • It's easy to accept what you've never had. It's hard to give up what you previously had.
    • Ex: I've been vegetarian my entire life. I don't 'miss' meat - I don't even know what it tastes like :D But friends who're trying to go vegetarian for the first time - they have a lot more to give up :/
    • Implication? Be careful about the comforts you let into your life. If you've never had 6 gigabytes of cell phone data, takeout every day, a house with X bedrooms, ... you won't miss them. But if you get these things, it'll be harder to give them up.
  • We make mountains out of what we'd rather not do. But the moment we get started, it gets easier
    • Ex: Me writing a chemistry report is 6/10 boring, but me thinking about doing it is 9/10 boring :D

What I did

  • Finished my 2019 annual reflection. Summary: I grew more in 2019 than the rest of my life up to this point.
  • Got through my last exams in highschool!
  • Finished a course on Excel! I feel like getting any data and creating tables and charts out of it these days :D Made a team tracker to practice my skills ;-)
  • Researched root causes of not having electricity access (because you don't have ID to sign up for loans to get electricity infrastructure). And for accidental deaths in hospitals (because staff don't have transfer protocols when changing who cares for a patient).
    • Also wrote an article on electricity access in rural areas!
  • Wrote about an experiment on finding as many things to be grateful for as possible!

What I learned

  • Not every goal has a 'hack'. Sometimes, it's as simple as more effort = more progress. Paul Graham has useful thoughts on how to find areas that work like this.
  • Life doesn't owe me anything
    • I applied to a standup comedy audition. Didn't get in. Felt bad because I thought of myself as a 'funny guy.' Especially when a failure challenges my identity, I have to reduce my ego and realise I'm not owed anything. And try to form less rigid identities in the future.
  • Watch documentaries about the developing world. I'll realise I have every reason in the world to be grateful.

What I did

  • Made a recommendation for Sidewalk Labs on how to increase access to affordable housing :-)
  • Researched how microgrids can increase energy reliability amidst growing natural disasters.
  • Started learning Excel
  • Did some funny Star Wars skits with a banana :D
  • Survived another crazy busy exams season :O

What I learned

  • Life's problem's repeat themselves. So by tracking my problems, I'll have fewer nasty surprises :D
    • I learned this from Ray Dalio, who recommends tracking decisions you make to see their outcomes. That way, you can check for any common mistakes you make.
  • Learned about personality types! They let me better understand what I'm strong at and weak at.
    • Ex: I use this to set goals to fix MY specific weaknesses.
    • Ex: I use this to know where I'm so bad I'd better delegate X to others :D
  • Failure is a forcing function to fix what's wrong. So in a tough spot, I don't need to think: "Phew... I'm glad it's over." I could think: "Wow... I'm glad that happened!"

What I did

  • Pitched a law-firm on how to improve customer service with Salesforce.
  • Took part in the EthWaterloo hackathon! I didn't learn too much due to some disappearing team members :/ But nice food at least :D
  • Wrote some articles on lessons learned from Marcus Aurelius and Carl Jung.
  • Updated my website :-)
  • Read Principles by Ray Dalio! Interesting takes on decision-making. Could've been a little more practical.

What I learned

  • Stoicism tidbit: if it's in my control, don't worry about it. If it's out of my control, don't worry about it. For those keeping track - just don't worry about it :D
  • The best relationships start without a plan
    • Ex: I didn't know whether I was accepted into a hackathon until the day before. I wasn't sure about going, but I had an AMAZING time with friends! (And the Vietnamese subs were great too ;-)

What I did

What I learned

  • Hard work has delayed results. But it proves useful in unexpected ways later.
    • Ex: When I was at a techology festival, I found I had lots of cool stories to share with people! And they were about tiny projects I did over the summer, like just learning about basic concepts in AI.
  • In a world changing faster than ever, generalists can adapt more quickly to new roles.
    • Ex: This is why it makes sense to learn multiple unrelated skills to be better than 75% of people. Compared to learning one skill to be better than 95% of people. Mulitple unrelated skills are unlikely to all go out of use at the same time.
  • No new success comes without sacrificing something else. It's better to be aware of that sacrifice and prepare for it rather than be surprised by it.
    • Ex: Though I had a great time at hackathons and technology festivals, I had no time for friends/family. And that created lots of negativity I wasn't ready for.

What I did

  • Was sponsored by TKS to go to Elevate, Canada's largest technology festival.
    • It was a great experience! We got to see Michelle Obama roasting Donald Trump, hear Chris Hadfield sing Space Odyssey, and meet some Olympic athletes behind the scenes :D
  • Took part in TD Bank's hackathon to solve problems for the community. Designed senior-accessible mobile banking apps - which was weird to see a big bank lacking?
  • Researched the banking industry's issues with regulations. Well, not any specific regulation. But how it costs $500M per year to TRACK changes in regulations.
  • Wrote some articles on lessons learned from Plato and Socrates. Also, a random article on the uses of haptic technology.
  • Moving from Waterloo to Toronto this month :O

What I learned

  • Everyone knows something I don't. It's my job to unlock it.
    • So 'being bored' in a conversation is really my fault.
    • Ex: I met one financial employee randomly. I thought I'd have nothing to talk to him about... 15 minutes later, he was telling me how his work in molecular genetics led him to a job in corporate finance! WHAT?!
  • My biggest gift is the people who care for me. They NEED to come first.
    • This month, I've been travelling hundreds of kilometres every day to attend an entrepreneurship accelerator. How? With my parent's financial support (and tolerating me waking up at 5 AM). And at the accelerator, I've been having impromptu meetings left and right everyday. Understandably, my team was frustrated. So I wrote up a very long apology at 1 AM and a plan to fix this. The next morning, my team-mate forgave me and she told me to just get more sleep. The only reason I am where I am today is due to others' support.
  • Closed doors are GOOD. They keep you from going where you don't belong
    • So in the end, you keep trying a new path to get to where you enjoy and fit!
    • Ex: I interviewed a consultant who left a high-paying corporate job to start a startup. Why? Because he just wasn't in the right place yet. It's that simple.

What I did

  • Pitched at the DMZ Startup Accelerator for $5K to support a project using AI to detect emerging diseases. We came in top 5!
    • Travelled 2.5 hours 2x a day too many times to count this month :O When getting to the DMZ Accelerator
  • Wrote some articles about renewable energy from nuclear fusion, solar panels, and batteries.
  • Interviewed 20 people in 5 days :O Lessons on what I learned here

What I learned

  • The closing of one door is how you look for another
    • I've been trying to keep this in mind given my family's soon to come move to another city. I can focus on the sadness of losing friends. Or I can focus on the new opportunities that lie ahead.
  • And problems in the end are good! They lead to massive changes! And massive changes fuel massive success.
  • Every new discipline holds another perspective to understanding the world's complexity. And solving the world's problems. You really can connect everything to everything else. Ex: Fungi connect to human economies.

What I did

  • Joined the DMZ Sandbox Accelerator to learn more about startups.
  • Researched the energy industry, from nuclear fusion to advanced solar panels to better batteries.
  • Finished taking intro to biology in summer school. It gives me a deeper appreciation for how the world works :-) Ex: What fungal mycelium networks can teach us about human societies.
  • Planning logistics of moving to Toronto.

What I learned

  • The journey matters more than the destination.
    • It wasn't the final presentation, but every session along the way that defined my life-changing experience at TKS.
  • It's exciting to look back on past success, but the most important part is using it to build upon the future.
  • The biggest lesson from learning about new technologies like Artificial Intelligence is that an ordinary 16-year-old really can make an unthinkably large difference in our modern world. There's less and less getting in the way.

What I did

  • Took part in the Microsoft Discover AI hackathon. Out of 125 teams in university, my ragtag highschool team made it in the top 25. Our idea was to use AI to track the spread of insect-borne diseases!
    • It's a nice lesson to just try :D Reflected about other lessons here
  • Made an infographic on the applications of AI!
  • Spoke at TKS about focusing on the journey over the destination. The program has literally changed the course of my life. I felt a lot of nostalgia wrapping up after a year.

What I learned

  • Taking an easier path isn't good or bad. It often depends on your situation.
    • Ex: If learning AI, you could start with the basic math. Or you could just copy code from the Internet. Which is better? Well, if you want to make a career in AI, learning the fundamentals is important. But if you're actually curious about neuroscience and just want to see what kinds of applications AI has in neuroscience, it's better to actually focus on the part you're curious about.
  • A closed door now is what makes you walk to the next open one.
    • Ex: I didn't get hired for an internship I applied for. BUT that freed up my summer to work on an AI project with a team of people I love to be around :-)

What I did

  • Interviewed for an internship at TD Labs. I didn't get in, but I've now given a job interview for the first time :D
    • One of my big lessons was to ask my interviewers personal questions at the end. It makes me more 'alive' during a process that could use some 'aliveness'.
  • Learned how to use Tensorflow to develop AI algorithms. Wrote about my experiences here
  • Researched organic photovoltaics (solar panels). Made a summary about this new type of solar panel!
  • Pitched a hackathon idea on how to use AI to predict the spread of insect-borne illnesses.

What I learned

  • The more time constraints, the more prioritisation needed.
    • At the beginning of the day, write down the tasks that have urgent deadlines. Work on those before any others.
  • Businesses need an economic incentive first. My team often struggled to filter ideas in hackathons due to this. We wanted to do the most good possible! But if we don't think about the bottom line, we won't do ANY good :/

What I did

  • Created my first personal website!
  • Wrote a series of articles on problem-solving strategies
  • Researching ideas for a hackathon on moonshot technologies: one in a million ideas that could potentially make a huge difference! Currently finalising an idea on tracking insect-borne ilnesses with AI
  • Applying to lots of scholarships and internships :-)

What I did

  • Started learning the basics of making a website with Bulma CSS
  • Tried basic AI projects like recognising handwritten numbers
  • Helped my school run a fundraiser to support mental health :-) This year, I didn't even forget to plug in the laptop which was running the speaker's slides! (That happened last year :O)

What I learned

  • The universe doesn't care about my intentions
    • When I launched a fundraiser for my school to raise money, I came up with a new idea, got a team working on it, and worked hard to get it running from scratch.
    • But in the end, people loved the event, but no one donated to the cause :/
    • This taught me that no matter how good my intentions are, I HAVE to think effectively about what I do. Else, I won't make a difference like I intended. Ie. Doing good vs. feeling good

What I did

  • Made a recommendation to Wealthsimple, an online bank. It focused on how to get more low-income Canadians access to education grants by the government.
  • Learning about problem-solving techniques. Adding what I learn to this series of articles!
  • Working on building my first website!
  • Launching a fundraiser at my school called Kahoot for a Cause. Basically, raising money for human rights via trivia challenges!
  • Guided a tour explaining the history of Anne Frank and World War II :O
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Toronto, ON

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