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Welcome to my newsletter! My name is Dev Patel and I'm working on a few projects in AI with the goal of transforming the healthcare industry with it. But first, I'm training myself in preparation for an opportunity to do good. There's some cool stuff and lessons here, so lmk if you enjoy!
I'm passionate about AI, emerging tech, and its intersection with biology. I enjoy coffee and play video games. I've done a few things like win a global hackathon, built some interesting projects, and my personality type is a[commander!](<https://www.16personalities.com/entj-personality>) Right now, I'm working with a team to improve if not solve women employment in the digital economy with the United Nations, and turn out recommendation into reality!
A commonly recurring thought that I've been having for this past year (essentially after the summer of COVID) was why am I not working hard enough or why am I not having fun with work. It seems all too common with a lot of people that I've talked to, and I think a lot of us have been having a hard time during the pandemic and probably after it will go away. For me at least, I can remember having fun, working my hardest, and growing as a person for the past few years, but I've been less aware of that throughout this year in these short bursts of time that I like to call "microwaved weeks" → microwaved food is hot on the outside but really cold inside and the heat dissipates really fast. That has essentially been me for the past few months and getting reheated is making the quality of the food, or me, a lot worse over time. I've been told to set up conditions, deadlines, clearer goals, and all that jizz but really, that's not why I wasn't being productive or working to the fullest.
I was working with a small team to propose potential solutions to improving female involvement in the digital economy to a team at the UN and after we submitted our solutions, and we got some feedback that was quite revealing. TLDR; I wish you guys focused on the balance of creativity and impact instead of originality as they aren't the same thing. When I looked back to the times in my life where I've had the most fun working and doing, it was because the projects and ideas that I was working on were always above and beyond + creative in nature. By creative, I also mean extra, like buying a high-torque motor and attaching cardboard strips to the shaft to make a motorized archimedes screw for a useless mini-golf/Rube-Goldberg machine. Now, I write newsletters. A good example of this is Kanye West: I'm listening to Highlights while writing this and this beat, production, and auto-tune is so different than anything I've heard from his discography so far, and he sure as hell is having fun with it just like I am. Kanye is Kanye because he's always different. I think that I enjoy pushing myself, I'm disciplined, hardworking, ruthless, and also being a bad bitch, but if I gave that credit to myself, it would undervalue the work that I do. Let me explain.
The traits we associate with good workers, successful individuals, and generally productive and disciplined individuals are not what I just described them to be, but rather they are a product of the creative work that they do. Conditions are not actually meant to be enforced upon to control work, but rather they are required to complete the work that you've set to achieve because of their creative and risky nature. Through the work itself do we actually become the person we want to be, and an injustice in the work we do is an injustice to our character. Let's take Elon Musk: he is known for his rigorous deadlines, setting up high-stake → high reward environments (simply put, a company culture where people get shit done), and doing really hard work. To get this stuff done, he's fundamentally different and is able to do the things I just listed not by choice, but rather by necessity. Developing a reusable rocket requires high levels of creativity with its associated risks, and to execute on that idea, you simply have to change. Building a skyscraper is a lot of work too, but it's also not creatively demanding. Therefore, becoming more disciplined won't help you get a project done, but picking the most fulfilling, challenging, different, and creative project will make you more disciplined. Looking back, when I had taken up way too much work that was demanding in nature, I got really stressed and tired but when I did get the job done, I got this feeling of confidence and control that I've never had before.
Now, you don't have to find work that's only creative (this is the best for me) but what I do know is that changing a task in such a way which produces conditions that you thrive in best will fundamentally make you grow, and that too far more than any other self-help book out there.
Our team worked on South Africa's inequality and unemployment problem through opportunity generation and rural development. We tackled this fairly challenging system with a new take on the traditional gig economy, providing them with micro-credit to pay for internet and access to tech, and allowing women to improve their skills through projects and collective communities. Simply put, we tackled the demand problem for jobs by providing rural communities with high-level and productive opportunities to work. Read more about our solution below and feel free to comment on it if you have any questions!
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UP1boqVQ4Bmn7j8XSlNTZCmtfhthZQ3ng0mECJgW-yg/edit?usp=sharing
Wanted to spend my time experimenting with GANs and Image Segmentation for the third pillar of my project involving live-time mood prediction. I have a few research papers I need to read on them but I'm hoping to wrap this project up soon so stay tuned for that! Btw if any of you have a cool research papers, code, or insights for tech in general, I would be totally down to talk about it through a coffee chat. Feel free to contact me or else I'll contact you with way too many questions (that sounded pretentious LOL). The repo is still the same if you want to check out my progress.
https://github.com/devpatelio/moodify_mfcc_ffn
I'm going to be working on understanding what I want to do this month. This involves commitments, work, field of expertise, and just exploring and being curious. It's gonna be a challenge, especially considering all of the things I have to get done but I'll squeeze it in somewhere. You can read my updates, content, and other stuff on medium.
Medium stuff here: https://medium.com/@hello.devpatel
There's a lot that's coming up and I'm super excited to share it all with you through my notion. Here are some of the main ideas that I'm thinking about, projects I'll be working on, and upcoming events that I'm excited for! I'll be sure to add some stuff down here