No Limitation's Only Innovation's
January Wrap Up: Solving the Energy Crisis - Strengthening Core Values - More Project Managing
Sup ya'll! 🔥 Get ready for a wild ride with me, Rayan - the emoji-loving, ultra-ambitious teenager chasing big dreams. In this newsletter, I'm all about transparency. I'll share my skill building progress, research, challenges, and even my failures. Let's do this together! 💪🏼
Here’s my favourite quote I discovered this month:
“The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.”
~ James Clear
Participating in a Hackathon — Solving the Energy Crisis
The world has been in dire need of alternative energy for the past few decades. One that’s clean, & efficient. Rising issues like climate change, air pollution, and energy poverty have been at the root of the industrial use of fossil fuels.
P.s Artificial Intelligence made this photo :)
“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
If you’re unaware, a hackathon is an event where teams gather to engineer something according to a given prompt rapidly. During this hackathon (24hrs), my team and I were challenged to “Solve a real world problem with an innovative solution.”
With this challenge, there were 4 areas we had to nail down. These are…
Impactful problem | Solves a real problem that matters
Executable solution | something you can build and deploy within 3 years
Technically deep | Clear technical explanation and understanding
Clarity | Clear ideas + communication, prototypes & or visuals to help us understand
Although 3 & 4 are important, (since It doesn’t matter how good your idea is if you can’t communicate it) 1 & 2, are the most key. I’m going to focus on 1 right now, and 2 in my next newsletter.
How do you Brainstorm A+ Ideas? ✅
During hackathons, one of the critical phases is idea creation, and when it comes to brainstorming A+ Ideas, you must find A+ problems, so how do you find a problem that matters? You have to be optimistic. You can’t tackle large scale world issues if you can’t vision large scale solutions. So find that problem, look deep, and find the root cause.
How do you Create Innovative & Effective Solutions?
The problem my team wanted to tackle involved solving Nuclear Fusion reactors. Here’s an example of what finding the root cause would look like…
Fusion reactors don’t work → Why?: The plasma cannot be sustained for a long period of time → Why?: The random affect of plasma turbulence means magnets must be continually changed to keep plasma confined → …
And go on and on until you can’t ask “why?” anymore.
After doing this several times, the Root Cause we discovered was that calculating the ideal configuration of the magnets to confine plasma was too slow to be effective… 🐌 I haven’t mentioned our solution yet. Still, because we’ve identified the root cause of the issue, the solution comes easily.
P.s. I’m writing an article about our idea; It’ll be out before my following newsletter, where I’ll discuss this more!
Nuclear Fusion ⚛️ — Building a Minature Sun
Over the past 5 months, I’ve been researching nuclear energy technology, specifically nuclear Fusion. Not to be confused with nuclear fission (splitting an atom), the type of nuclear energy we have today. Nuclear Fusion (fusing atoms) is a reaction within the sun and produces unfathomable amounts of energy. But, the conditions required to induce this reaction are extremely difficult. Because of this, scientists have been trying to solve Fusion for more than 60 years.
What I’ve Been Writing this Month
Atoms Unleashed: A Technical Exploration of Nuclear Fusion’s Clean Energy Potential
January’s Collage
January’s Growth Insights
Effective Time-Management Requires Anticipation of failure
In my daily life, I must balance several tasks between school, scientific research, content creation, and other small things here and there. Because of this, my calendar would be packed with back to back tasks, events, meetings, and other commitments. This over-optimization I sought to keep me on track did the opposite. 📉 The pressure to maintain an extremely rigid schedule as such is unrealistic. Therefore my failure to anticipate factors such as procrastination, meal times, and last minute changes led me to organizational destruction.
The Lesson: Understand when you’re moving too fast in life. We all want to get things quicker, but this type of optimization wasn’t maintainable; by adding small gaps between timeboxed tasks of 5-15 minutes, I could complete all my required work on time and keep on track from day to day.
Choosing Friends — Creating Intentional Friendships
On average, every 2-3 years, people will do a cleanse of their friend group. Re-accessing who we want to be friends with and who we do not. But how much control did you truly have when you initially became friends? For most, close to none, 😬 usually, our friends are just people we happened to share classes with, or you’re on the same sports team. Because of this, we tend not to have much choice in who we want to friend with, leaving many with low-quality friends. I’ve learnt the art of intentional living in the past few months. This has allowed me to take control in the areas of my life where I demand high standard results.
in·ten·tion·al
adjective
done on purpose; deliberate.
Intentional Living
skill
Intentional living is the art of making our own choices before others' choices make us.
The Lesson: Achieving success in particular areas of your life requires more than ‘action.’ It requires deliberate, carefully thought out choices that lead you to your desired outcome.
Book of the Month
This section is under service see you next month :)
Podcasts of the Month
TL;DR I’ve mentioned James Clear several times in my newsletter, this podcast from Tim Ferris (another legendary author) interviewing James Clear teaches you several valuable lessons about building habits, reducing your barrier to success, and building your personal brand.
TL;DR This is one of my favourite podcasts by Neil DeGrass Tyson. Every episode discusses a different topic at a high level yet keeps it simple enough for anyone to understand. 🌌 You'll love this podcast if you find space fascinating or even emerging new tech.
TL;DR In preparation for the hackathon this month, I listened to My first Million’s episode where ambitious students pitched their startups so I could get an idea of what a winning pitch sounds like. 🏆 (it’s not what you think)
In February, I’m Going to be Intentional About…
Optimizing my daily routine.
If you follow a rigid schedule or balance a heavy workload day-day, you understand the value of consistency. The more consistent your schedule is, the easier it is to follow. Following a new routine day-day is difficult and not sustainable if you balance a heavy load. So I’m kicking off February with the DRVN 30 Day Challenge. In this challenge, my friends and I are tasked to stay consistent with several healthy daily habits for 30 days. The goal is that these habits will become second nature by the end of the month.
Having a bias towards action.
Let’s stop talking about our goals. It’s 2023, and I’m going to be intentional about setting action items of what I need to do to achieve each set goal. Ensuring my goals will never remain a thought but will allow them to become a reality. It begins by asking myself, “What do I need to do to achieve ___ outcome?” There is never an excuse not to start now.