Super Scripts, Robots, and Travel Apps
And a story about productivity (and lack thereof) | Shift 2023
Introduction
I started the year with dozens of ideas I wanted to put into action. Physics engines, task completers, deep learning research, healthcare platforms, and ion thrusters were all on my mind, and there was no way I was going to get to all of them without being efficient. But as the semester began, I hit burnout for the first time in my life. I tried to brute-force my way through it, and learned a lot in the process (and spoiler: brute-forcing didn’t work).
When my brute-force methods failed, I decided to temporarily throw productivity out the window. I stopped building for the “tangible impact” I so craved and began to build because of my love for it. I spun up a few less serious projects as a result and had a much better time. What I discovered in doing so became apparent in a conversation with a fellow creator.
Impact, novelty, and building really matter to me. Helping others, discovering new concepts, and making things bring me more joy than most other things. I’ve tried to combine them for the last 5+ years, but this year learned that it’s sometimes nice to separate them too. I could get my doses of impact and novelty from clubs and books, then make things solely out of interest. My last two projects were specimens of my new mentality and healthy change in my approach to building.
Contents
- Super Scripts
- Board Game Robot
- GPT Travel Engine
Super Scripts
I started the semester by writing scripts to make myself efficient. Learning to custom-mod my computer with shell scripts was a lot of fun, and they actually worked. The scripts are as follows:
- Close Sites — This script closes any blacklisted website every minute, curbing the occasional instinctual late-night youtube binge.
- Shutdown Watcher — This script syncs to your calendar to shut down your computer on specific trigger events. If I wanted to get to the gym at 5:00pm, my laptop would no longer stop me.
- Guest/Incognito Tab Toggler — This script can help you easily toggle access to guest and incognito tabs. Getting past website controls and extensions is as easy as opening a guest tab, so why not remove that functionality entirely?
- Email Automator — This script generates and sends custom emails automatically. The high level of customization through code helped me save a few tedious hours.
I built these scripts quickly and was excited to apply them. I began to use them and was excited when they actually made me more productive. Adding a few more hours to my week felt great!
Board-Game Robot
Despite my more productive plans, I felt like building a robot. I missed building physical machines and always wanted to build my own robot from scratch. I had a great time.
The prototype is still a work-in-progress. My biggest challenge was planning weeks in advance. I couldn’t simply tinker with parts in front of me like I was used to with code and Legos, which significantly slowed my progress. I relearned CAD and ordered a few gizmos to test the arm movement mechanism. I’m studying abroad now so couldn’t make progress this Winter but am excited to get a working version up next Fall.
GPT Travel Engine
This January, I figured it would be fun to hop on the LLM hype train. I’d spent hours planning trips across Europe, then realized ChatGPT could do my research in minutes. With power like this at my fingertips, I thought it would be fun to turn this travel search into an app.
The technical side was quite intuitive. I used Next to set up a website and backend and called OpenAI’s API to generate the recommendations. I whipped up a few styles to make a site I got my friends hooked on. Low impact, but really fun to put together.
Conclusion
This year, I experimented with the idea of building for myself. I had a lot of fun as a result and learned a couple lessons about burnout and productivity in the process. I still enjoy high-impact projects, but always trying to change the world can, at times, be counterproductive. I’m looking forward to building my robot, learning guitar, and chasing more passions next fall :)
