Only have 3 priorities, and make sure office hours is one of them.
On cutting out the filler tasks. Sept-Nov 2023 Newsletter 🧡
Within my first hour in San Francisco I had a conversation about taking out a life insurance policy for cryopreservation (freezing yourself when you die so someone can un-freeze you in the future). Turns out you can do this in less than 30 minutes!!
It was a potent opening topic… but things just kept getting interesting! I chatted with a lot of young sf entrepreneurs, technical pms, engineers and more. It’s been an imaginative and thoughtful crew, with deep discussions on breeding anti-complacency, creating cultures of criticism (and not cancellation) and on vesting money/networks/time.
People here care about progress over comfort. I’m in love with the spirit of acceleration. I feel like the blandest person in the room rather than the weirdest. This inspires me to be more curious, strive more and frankly, to work harder.
This newsletter is a few weeks of lessons from studying chemistry in North Carolina and experiencing the draft of ambition in the Bay Area. I also have some youtube shorts of some of my Sunday moments.
Chemistry
It feels like Chemistry is a subject that was almost bestowed onto me. I love chemistry for its fundamentalism (e.g., with thermodynamics, quantum physics, electrostatics) and its applications (to healthcare, materials design, etc).
I never imagined studying a theoretical science. It just happened as I followed scholarship opportunities and laid out classes that I could graduate with. I also never wanted to stop taking chemistry classes. And here I am, learning about why reactions happen and how to drive them forward.
My favourite part of my degree is its abundance of mental models. Our macro-world is merely an accumulation of fundamental laws. Electron behaviour isn’t too far off of human behaviour, when you think from first principles.
While I may be the odd one out by not explicitly being on a pre-med, pre-research, path, I am absolutely fascinated by how matter behaves, and I may just ride this wave of curiosity for a while.
In SF it’s been fun to absolutely jam out to the principles we can derive from molecular orbital theory and reaction mechanisms … and how to applying them to building the next generation of products/companies/status quos.
Reflection: I can only hold 3 top priorities
Holding more than 3 priorities dilutes the quality of other commitments. And sometimes I’ll try to camouflage multiple priorities into my three. But the conclusion is always the same: I can’t do it all.
My goal for the next 6 weeks is to stick to 3 priorities a day. Here’s why it’s a powerful method:
It’s simple to keep track of. Literally just bullet points.
Throughout the day, there’s a natural rhetorical question: am I pursuing one of my top 3 priorities?
It forces me to realize what is most important to me.
^ Then I feel more confident cutting the fat
Fun things like friends, athletics, travel etc can be a top 3 priority too. It’s not just a workaholic framework.
It reminds me of how precious life is; I have finite time on this earth, and I would rather do a few things really well.
Having these carved priorities create a natural set of boundaries. For example, to say no to opportunities that don’t align, or to stay in rather than go out, etc. ‘Hard decisions’ become easier with the clarity of intentions!
My three priorities, more or less, are:
Studying
Real-world experience in biochem / public health
Office hours and reading
And I’ll often swap one of these priorities for relationships, an adventure or recipe-creation.
Keeping things simple makes them easier to track. When I can track things, I can stay on track. When I stay on track, I can make meaningful milestones happen 💯🤓 — this principle of blunt simplicity has other applications:
Set goals with ONE specific metric, so you don’t have to pull up a notion page to see if you’re on the path for achievement
It trains the muscle of not overthinking. Practicing applied simplicity translates to other areas of life; especially bias-towards-action.
Let’s you do more of what matters. And then to think less about what doesn’t.
^ Choosing to simplify goals is difficult because it requires honest self-dialogue, and bravery to pursue a radically simplified agenda. I made a short about these two adjectives (honesty and bravery) — it’s an idea still cooking, so I’m interested to hear what others think about this intersection.
Lastly, my priorities create an alignment template for the people I surround myself with. Of course, I want to be around folks who support my pursuits or who are on a parallel trajectory.
Big Idea: Office Hours
The highlight of my semester has been engaging more deeply with the UNC Chemistry community and that includes going to office hours!
Office hours is a rewarding experience, even outside of academia. Fundamentally it is:
Interest in a topic
Conversing with an expert
Feeding personal inquisition
This is easily replicable! With a self-guided interest and an ability to identify experts, one can create an office-hours like experience anywhere and at any point in life.
I wish someone emphasised utilising office hours (not just for grades) at the start of university. Nonetheless, I plan to make the most of them during my last ~3 semesters of university and into whatever I pursue beyond.
Sometimes I felt ‘unsure’ in what to ask during office hours. Is the question too stupid? Did I prepare well? However, my problem was usually thinking about how my question will sound, rather than asking a question to fill in my understanding of the topic.
^ Also, more often than not, I could have read more.
As a curious person tired of the conversations we have on repeat (how are you—good how are you; how was your weekend? Fun! ; what do you want to DO with your degree?), the pursuit of office hours has started to fill my nerdy void. It’s not just the conversation, it’s the research before and after, and dedicated attention to deeper subjects. The pursuit of expertise and understanding feels good.
Where I go for office hours will change over the next few years (e.g. now it’s chemistry, later it’ll be startups, and even later it will be related to raising little humans). Despite upcoming different phases of life, I want to keep my zest for education alive!! The craft of office hours, especially outside of formalised agreements, fuels the gift of education.
So what office hours do you want to prepare for before the end of the year?
Closing: Ideas I’m munching on & what’s next?
Questions that are cooking up new ideas:
What should I do on my nights&weekends vs during my days? How do they develop the ambition and character I want to shine through my life?
How can I create more capacity for good decisions? (hint: I think letting go and outsourcing small decisions is a LARGE part of this)
HOW DO I INVEST MONEY!?!
How can I specify my vision for humanity, and my role within that vision?
What’s next?
🧫 Biochemistry lab work with the Redinbo Lab
🏥 Supporting public health innovations with Madiro
📖 Choosing curiosity
🌍 Identifying a rocket ship I can hop onto for the summer
Thanks for reading :) I hope your curiosity gets the best of you this afternoon 🥰
Love how you’re growing!