L.A.B. Report

Hey,

How was your May?

This May I spent time working in Shanghai and felt like I was going into a parallel universe where technology chose a different development path. Instead of the usual pollution, I saw a tonne of cars on the road sporting green number plates, which means they are either full-electric or hybrid electric. Apparently, 1 in 4 cars sold in China in 2022 were electric and I found a full-battery EV being sold for $930 USD. I bought a single pear from a man who carried his pears to town by foot in a willow basket. I paid for it by scanning his QR code enabled by mobile payment magic. I saw people go out without cash, cards or even a phone and instead used Face ID to pay at the checkout (what happens with twins??!?). I saw storekeepers selling their goods simultaneously in person and online on TikTok live streams. I bought a kilo of grapes from a farmer livestreaming from his farm and got it delivered the next day, from 3000 miles away. 

But I also saw how much competition there was for work among the millennials and gen z, dealing with a toxic work culture of 996 (9 AM to 9 PM, 6-day weeks). I learnt a term called "lie flat", where people have responded to this competition by leaving the big cities and turning their back on traditional "success". The consensus was that people who achieved "success" had to give up on sleep, wreck their bodies and study or work every waking moment in order to achieve. 

I realised this while I was sick in bed scrolling through Chinese social media. I came across a post about myself. Somebody in China did a deep dive on me and wrote a post about my background in medicine, surgery, programming and startup. I scrolled through the 900 comments and started laughing out loud. "She must only sleep 2 hours per day to achieve so much". "She probably never gets to see sunlight". "She must just have different genetics that allows her to work so hard". "I heard that she speaks 10 languages". "This is why she can't find a husband". "All I'm good at is scrolling social media and procrastinating, she's probably completing another PhD while I'm here scrolling."

I was not completing another PhD (I don't have a PhD). I was in fact on my third hour of social media scrolling. Lying prone on my hotel bed, feeling terrible with jetlag. Trying to figure out if I could even motivate myself to get something to eat.

We often look to others and imagine them to have superhuman abilities or super-fortunate circumstances. But looking at my friends who I consider far more successful than myself, it's often just silently putting in the work, day after day. Everyone can count to a million, it's just whether you want to.

So I hope that in June, you'll be brave and go after what you want. Don't chase praise. Don't believe people who want to pay you with prestige. Don't overthink and just put in the work to become the version of you that you like the most.

Let me know on Twitter @yu_angela, your thoughts and stories.

• Something I learnt about online education

  This month, I came across a blog from Bartosz Ciechanowski. In a million beautiful animations, interactive diagrams and playable components, he showed me how much we're missing in online education technology. We're in 2023, where I can ask ChatGPT to explain IPV6 in the voice of Angela Yu and yet online education still (for the most part) relies on pre-recorded videos. Yes, YouTube was great when it came out in 2005. But it's almost been 20 years and we still rely on this technology to teach each other online. I have some ideas of what the future of online education should look like but Bartosz did such an amazing job providing an example of what that could look like. Be sure to check out his explanation of bicycles too!

• Something I learnt about visual design

  I always thought I had an eye for design, but it's really hard to compile all the little rules that you find yourself naturally following. This month, I came across this brilliant series of "safe rules" for visual design. Some of these rules you might have heard me say already (e.g. don't use more than 2 typefaces). But others, e.g. "the smaller the text, the bigger the letter space and line height" are rules that just make sense when you see it. 

• Something I realised about side projects

  If you ever hack into my computer (please don't), you'll find a literal tonne of side projects. Projects that you build just for yourself. In between the millions of lines of unpublished code lies a lot of joy and creativity. Even though a "Days since I last had tacos" countdown website is not really very useful to anyone, creativity and programming are both muscles that you need to work out. Creativity is a bit like flexibility, if you don't train it you really do lose it (try getting up from the ground from a cross-leg position). Programming is more like weights, you only get stronger by doing more reps with heavier weights. For inspiration check out this Space Elevator by Neal Agarwal, or this AudioPen by Louis Pereira or this list of personal projects on Hacker News (love the call routing software for the grandma with dementia).

• Student App of the Month

  This month, we picked IronZen, an app built by Aleh Hutnikau for his friend with OCD to calm his anxiety before leaving the house. Aleh built this for Android and iOS after he completed our Flutter course on Udemy. Check it out!

 

Wishing you all the best,
Your instructor,
Angela