October: Making Changes for the Better
Hey! I’m Neha Adapala- a 16 year old currently living in the UK. A summary of the funnest things I’ve done this month that’s on my LinkedIn: Microsoft I Accelerator (where I won 2nd place), ran a workshop about AI biases with 10 attendees, spoke at a panel about synthetic media (and deepfakes) under the AI+Society forum to a full room of people at the Wellcome Collection. My interview was also featured on the video about the event!!!
( https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7128355140834594816/ )
October was a great month full of cool stuff going on. One of the coolest things I can think of in the wider world was the UK AI Safety Summit. But, outside of what’s already on my LinkedIn, lots has been going on in my life.
Adopting discipline:
Discipline is one of the biggest powers but also the biggest barriers between me and my ideal self. So I plan on closing the gap. I have started by waking up at 6:30am everyday during the holidays. This has caused a massive increase in productivity, because it allows me to feel like I’ve done so much more work in the morning, since I have already worked for 3 hours before 10:00am which is when I usually used to wake up. I am still working on getting up on the first alarm though (I have to set around 500 to wake up haha). In the next month, I plan on waking up at 5am on school days as well.
Maximising productivity:
Kanban boards
I started using Kanban boards to organise all my tasks and I can’t believe how much funner I find tasks now. It seems like a small change, but I absolutely adore putting an item in the done section and seeing the little pieces of confetti explode as a congratulations! It’s also honestly really motivating to see how far I’ve come, which is harder to see on a physical checklist.
Time blocking
I have learnt to effectively time block activities to maximise my productivity by using Parkinson’s law- the idea that work expands to fit the time given. This is not only really satisfying to see how much work I’ve done over the past day, but also helps me organise everything I need to do in a timely way so the work actually gets done.
No music
I was always a strong believer that music helped me focus the best. Now, I can say confidently that for me, personally, no music helps me at all, unless I’m feeling really unfocused and don’t want to do any work. This has really helped me achieve my flow state when working much quicker, allowing me to do lots of work
Explore Hackathon
Our team won the Ted Talk Award! As the PM, and also presenter, of my team for the explore hackathon I learned a lot. Here are some key takeaways:
You can do a lot more than you realise. I set the task of memorising the script that day… and I did it. For me, it always took at least 3 days to memorise my spanish flashcards that contained around 50 seconds of speech on it, but I memorised this 4 minute speech in a matter of a few hours.
Practice is useless if you don’t get feedback. When practising my speech, as painful as it was to watch myself speak in front of the camera, I did it again and again. I always watched back and asked myself questions essentially encapsulating the big question of: how can I make more people want to listen to me? For next steps, I would definitely look for other people for feedback because your own views are probably flawed.
People care about the solution and more importantly…if it does anything. When presenting, you should always start with the problem- contextualise this for your audience because they probably don’t know why you dedicated your time to this topic, so let them know. Quantify the impact your product will have. Focus on what the problem really is, because it’s not always about people dying. What are people actually worried about? For example, our team had the idea of filtering out second hand smoke using AI and our problem statement focussed on the deaths caused by second hand smoke. However, people don’t really think they will die from secondhand smoke. People are more worried about the cancer and illnesses caused by secondhand smoke, so highlight this as the problem!
Neha’s Art Corner:
One day when my parents were driving me to school, my dad asked the question- “Do you want to go to Milan for Fabiano Millani’s workshop?”.
For context, around 3-4 years ago my sister stumbled across this incredible hyperrealistic artist on instagram. Being her little sister, of course I saw everything on her instagram, so we both went and showed my father. From then on, he had been an avid watcher of this artist, showing us his youtube videos at least twice a month. Over the summer, he followed the artist’s tutorial to create his own hyperrealistic portrait while the rest of the family (including me) had gone to Italy. I’ll never forget how excited he was to show us his painting. His massive smile when he turned around the canvas to display his painting conveyed true happiness and pride.
Of course when he popped the question to me in the car I was taken aback. It’s not everyday that I get asked to travel to another country over the course of two days to do something that is solely for your hobby or interests. But after thinking about his avid passion to learn from the artist, I knew he was going to go anyway and I thought “I might as well go along as well”. This was in part to go to the workshop myself, in part to spend time with my dad and in part to make sure he thoroughly explored Milan in that short timeframe.
This encounter taught me a few things:
Just do it. Don’t procrastinate doing something- just do it. Like how my dad just booked the tickets and hotel. It’s important to plan, but don’t overthink things
Value your parents. Yes, I loved painting and I absolutely adored the idea of going to a workshop, but I know that what I’ll remember out of this was how my dad looked so proud of his painting everytime someone complimented it. When my dad took his time out to do something he loved.
Do something for yourself. Too often I spend ages doing things that will help better my understanding in something that I am passionate about doing for my career. But not everything I’m passionate about can be a job, so it’s important to take the time out of your day to follow these other passions.
Not only did this lead me to making my first oil painting and a confidence boost (because the artist told me I had amazing colour perception and was very talented) but also, I met so many new people. Being the youngest one and one of the three english-speakers there, I was definitely intimidated. However, I was warmed by seeing people from all different ages and backgrounds come together to paint. I loved speaking to people about their life, hearing their experiences and lessons they need to learn.
So that was my month! Come along at the beginning of December to find out about what went on in November. (I’m curious too)
Thanks for reading. If you are interested or have any questions, please email me at neha.adapala@gmail.com
Feel free to follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neha-adapala-7b2a56231/