Reading, Napping, and Fighting Mosquitoes | Ahnaaf's April W2 Update
"Surely you're not biting me, Mr. Mosquito!"
Welcome to my April W2 Update!
GM! This is my first weekly update (hopefully, of many) where I talk about my progress, as well as hopefully teach you something that I learned this week.
If you’re new to my weekly update, welcome!
I’m a 16 y/o web2 + web3 + neurotech developer currently trying to build the future of neurotech R&D funding with NeuraDAO + Bring electricity to 10,000 Liberians.
As I go on a journey to try and build the future, I would love to have you be a part of it!
Reading, Napping, and Fighting Mosquitoes
Here’s the first-ever weekly update from me! I’m writing this bit after I wrote the rest of the newsletter and I’m actually enjoying it. This is basically a reflection but cooler, and can bring me some serendipity.
This week of April was alright, there were a lot of good parts, and 2 bad parts which you’ll read about in a second (I hate mosquitoes, and naps that make me more tired). I hope you enjoy!
Rundown of the second week of April:
Fell back in love with reading
Defining paths for Electrify Liberia’s solution
Reading again.
It all started with a conversation with my good friend Zayn Patel, and we brought up our goals and what we want our optimal selves to be like in a year.
Zayn said that he wanted to become a better operator (regarding project management I assume), writer, builder (with regards to being technical), and thought leader.
I said that I wanted to be a better operator, problem-solver, and builder (quite similar, I know).
Later I found that I too want to be a better writer (more specifcally, storyteller), which even further led me to find great books.
When talking about how we’re going to do so, the conversation turned to content and the various content that we’re reading/listening to. As we were talking I realized that I wasn’t reading as much as I wanted to, and the core reason was due to how obvious the habit was.
If the habit (reading) was more obvious, then I would read more. For that to happen, I needed to have my book at all times, which was unrealistic. This is where Zayn dropped a knowledge-bomb on me: ebooks.
Dude, I could just have a bunch of ebooks, and instead of scrolling on Instagram or whatever when I’m just killing time, I could read.
Never going back
The results were instant. I went from sometimes reading 30 minutes on a blue moon, I read 60+ minutes throughout the day, sometimes just getting lost in a book.
It perfectly compliments my lifestyle as I’m constantly learning, and having fun at the same time. It’s been 4 days since I had that call (at the time of writing), and I’ve already read a total of ~150 pages. Most of which were from Richard Feynman’s memoirs: “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!”
I’ve never had so much fun reading memoirs while also learning a new lesson each chapter. Highly recommend that you guys read at least 1 of his stories, it’s truly addicting.
When I’m waiting for a ride, elevator, friend, or something interesting to happen, I read. I’ve been finding so many excuses to read, during downtime, it’s not like I can’t leave the books, the books won’t leave me.
How are We Going to Electrify Liberia?
For those who don’t know, I, along with Raina and Sanvi have started a project as part of TKS Activate to electrify Liberia (hence the name, Electrify Liberia; we’re very creative).
At the moment, we thoroughly understand the problem and are trying to attack one of the factors of low access to electricity in Liberia: inadequate energy generation.
What we’ve been doing this week is validating our hypotheses and looking at different paths for our solutions.
What that looks like is us looking at different energy generation methods and discerning what’s the best method for which specific customer, and what’s economically feasible.
Currently, we’re looking at Hydro, Solar, and Biomass as the top 3 contenders of energy generation for Liberia and we’re researching what makes sense for the people that we want to serve.
Reflection on How the Week Went
Hmm, when I think of this week I think that progress was ok. I often felt tired after school which led to naps, which led to me feeling more tired, which led to lower productivity.
However, as the week progressed, I iterated on my schedule and afterwards I started to feel less tired as the day went on and productivity increased.
The issue was diet. I tend to come home around 1-3 and eat a carb-heavy meal and then try to work. Instead of working, I just slept due to the carbs. The solution was to just not eat at that time, and postpone eating until around 7pm where I was really getting hungry and my work day was mostly over.
Another optimizer that helped was timing my sleep cycles and making sure to wake up fresh. I did that using sleepyti.me and Sleep Cycles (on the App store).
From what I understood at Muse, the reason why timing your sleep cycles is important is that the deeper into sleep you go, the harder it is to pull you out of sleep leaving you feeling disoriented. However, if you wake up in the part of your sleep cycle which is quite light, you’ll wake up feeling quite fresh. A key sign that you’ve woken up at the right time is that you don’t remember your dreams.
If you do remember your dreams, you woke up in the worst part of your sleep :)
Otherwise, I’m chilling
School is annoying, but that’s a constant. Other than sleeping at times that I shouldn’t be, life is generally pretty good. Especially as it warms up, I’m starting to enjoy life a lot more.
Anyways, if you haven’t already, go on a walk today at a nearby trail. Try to do so without any headphones or looking at your phone, instead take a journal or something to write wth. Just take in the sun, think, and write whatever thoughts down.
It’s pretty fun once you get into it.
Dude, f**k mosquitoes
Ok, I’m going to write a whole section on why I hate mosquitoes.
I hate them so much I think I got ~10 bites from mosquitoes this week. I don’t even know how they bite me in some places -> I’m wearing clothes how does this happen!?!?!?
Realistically, I’m not sure how large the effect would be on the food chain if we just wiped them out -> they don’t provide much of a positive effect on the world, they’re just annoying and transmit many viruses.
You know what? I’m gonna do a tweetstorm and see if it’s viable to remove mosquitoes.
What's Next?
This week was ok, but next week will be quite… long. Our solution for Electrify Liberia is due next week as well as a bunch of content so that we can present it at TKS’s Demo Day.
Here’s what I’m going to do next week:
Finish the Solution + Website + Article for Electrify Libera
Have 2+ meetings with people for NeuraDAO
Thank you for reading my April W2 newsletter, I hope you enjoyed reading it!
P.S: I still love this GIF, look at it more.