Can you Really Change the World at 16?
Short answer: yes.
Think back to the last time you were in a classroom. No matter whether that was today or years ago, can you remember a feeling that you were expected to make the ‘safe’ choice for the future? Go to a reputable university and settle down for a stable career… people didn’t really mention the riskier paths. For instance, you wouldn’t find many with big dreams like starting multimillion-dollar companies or making it big in Hollywood. Growing up, we’ve all had many differences in our lives, but the common theme for most is that we were taught it’s wasteful to have big, impractical dreams.
Well, despite this notion of always following the conventional path, I recently decided that I was going to live my big dream anyways. With a chance to work with Microsoft to build out a company based on artificial intelligence, I wanted to try my hand at solving one of the major problems I always heard about growing up. For me, that was taking on the issue of disease transmission from insects. Using artificial-intelligence prediction models, I aimed to create a tool to forecast disease outbreaks before they happened. Indeed, this is a problem faced by over half a billion people and most people working on it are distinguished researchers, and here I was thinking I could take it on at age 16. Yet, the craziest part of this venture was realising that there wasn’t really much to stop me.
MY Biggest Problem or THE Biggest Problem?
The crazy idea started off with a crazy challenge; picking a major issue that we could meaningfully address, amidst everything we’re bombarded with every time we turn on the TV. In the end, my decision actually came down to a simple factor; sure, there were way too many problems to even list, but there were only a select few that I was determined to solve. Even if one problem had a greater impact than another, it wouldn’t matter unless I was committed to bringing a solution to life. I just couldn’t ignore the hundreds of millions that are affected by insect-transmitted diseases like malaria every year, especially when the available tools to help them are in desperate need of a modern do-over.
Building off my previous projects in artificial intelligence, I feasibly envisioned a technical solution to the task at hand. What was even more important, however, was realising the enormous human impact I could have with this emerging technology. A key part of getting this moonshot off the ground was building it out in a smooth transition from previous projects, whether they be hackathon business ideas or challenging algorithms. By continuously reducing the barriers to approaching this novel idea, I was able to take it from being a pipe dream to a shaky experiment to a promising revelation. Before I knew it, my team and I had started our very own company, Prohibio Health, to bring our vision to life.
Always Being Ready to Turn on a Dime
Every step along this frenzied process, I never knew what to expect coming up. It seemed like every stage of making this solution more feasible brought new challenges that had to be dealt with last-minute. All things considered, however, the experience was made easier by knowing that I had a team to support me. Everyone had to self-sacrifice. Everyone had to adapt. But in the end, we knew our hard work helped the entire team succeed. So, yes, I did have to address last-minute responsibilities… trying frantically to meet deadlines the night before. Yet, after every challenge, I felt that I had put in the right effort to bring about success. And I knew that I had dealt with one situation when I had no uncertainty about how others would react to my solution.
One of the most hilarious, yet true pieces of advice I’ve been given about dealing with challenges is this simple fact:
“the earlier you fall behind, the more time it is you have to catch up.”
Of course, you may be thinking: ‘Well, that’s great! Now I can keep slacking off AND think it’s good for me!’ All jokes aside, however, the wisdom of this advice is that if you’re truly dedicated to finding a solution, a setback at the beginning will make you all the more determined to keep working hard until the end. That was the case when one of my teammates had last-minute family issues come up and I had to pick up with promotional work about the impact of Prohibio Health’s algorithms. It was also the case when I encountered unexpected setbacks in data processing for our prediction model and another teammate had to improvise with marketing content. The earlier my team identified these issues, the easier it was to plan how to address them because we knew all of us were dedicated to finding a solution.
With my specific challenge of trying to process data, I had many people advise me about the most efficient software or technique to use. Everyone seemed to have some de facto, miracle solution that would work. In the end, however, I didn’t have enough experience to use those different techniques. Even though they might have been easy solutions, they weren’t realistic with my constraints. Eventually, I had to go back to the basics and process data using programs I wrote myself, not any open-source software. What I discovered from this challenge is that there are many solutions to some problems. The ones that worked for one person may not be feasible for you, so you just have to keep asking people for their advice until you find some that also works for you. In the end, I had to work like a madman to develop my skills to the point where I could address the numerous challenges that came up in this project, but I now know that I have more tools at my disposal for future ventures.
Accepting Past Challenges While Expecting Future Success
A key part of growing to the point where I could overcome hurdles was constantly reshaping my expectations to match my reality. To illustrate, I had a specific timeline to find and process data for Prohibio Health’s insect prediction model. When challenges prevented me from accomplishing the goal in that timeframe, we had to reshape the extensions of our project that we were planning on working on after. When our timeline didn’t turn out perfectly (and things rarely do), I simply had to identify this limitation and move on to the next step. At any one point, the only thing that mattered was the biggest priority today… and that was how we worked every single day.
To address the problems at hand, I couldn’t keep worrying about missing imaginary deadlines that didn’t reflect the reality of the situation. I had to prioritise what was most important at each moment and spend my efforts accordingly. With that in mind, I also had to note the wishes I had given up (or deprioritised) at any one moment, so I could come back to them in the future. This insane vision that I had undertaken had plenty of challenges and setbacks, but its reward was the experiences and skills I gained to help me address future issues. And even though it didn’t turn out perfect in the end, I know I have the dedication to keep working at it and balance my priorities to improve upon it.
Breaking my Biggest Barrier: Myself
In the end, this crazy journey that I started didn’t take much… just an idea, some hope, and the amazing people to join me in chasing my dreams. Yet, how many others my age try to do this? How many adults even try to do this? Exploring uncharted territory is a double-edged sword; you have the potential to create unprecedented reward, but you also have to be willing to take the risk of giving it your all… knowing you might fail in the end. The issue of insect-transmitted diseases is immense to the point where it’s simply beyond imagination. I could easily count the number of people working on it, but I can’t ever imagine the hundreds of millions affected by it in ways they can’t control.
What my journey at Prohibio Health taught me was that the biggest hurdle I ever could encounter in this story was myself: not believing I had what it took to make this change. After going through this life-changing experience, however, I can say for certain that it doesn’t take much to start making this change. I’m not sure what the future holds for my team and our company, but I know it’s more than I can ever imagine and that we’ve already proved we can take our grandiose ideas and brings them to grounded reality. We may just be some kids in high school, but we’re fighting for a better future because in the end, it is our future to fight for.
Key Takeaways
- We aren’t taught to have big dreams growing up, but that doesn’t mean we can’t.
- The best problem for you isn’t the one with the biggest opportunity. It’s the one you’re most determined to solve.
- Everyone has different advice to overcome a challenge. You have to keep asking until you find some that works in your situation.
- You have to prioritise what’s most important at any moment while keeping track of the goals you’re sacrificing to do so.
- Starting a new path is risky because you don’t have someone else’s example to follow. But the biggest challenge is getting yourself to start.
