Danish Khan's Thoughts Entrepreneurship, Programming, and Life

I admit my experience with research at a university might have been a lot different than it normally is for most people, but I would highly recommend anyone who thinks they want to work in a startup environment to try and obtain a research opportunity.  I feel that it is a safe and secure environment for someone to test the waters of a startup environment and see if they feel like it is for them.

Here is a brief summary of the research that I did and the video of my presentation at the end of the fellowship:

Nomatic*Aid consists of a hand-held geo-tagging photo device that enables coordination between human relief workers during, as well as in the weeks and months after, crises. For an effective crisis response, spatial and temporal information about the resources (e.g. water, arable land, vaccines) and displaced people has to be collected and collated by the team of responders working on the field. The information garnered needs to be disseminated and collated by a central server. Since a network infrastructure may not be available after a crisis, the hand-held devices are expected to form a mobile delay tolerant network. Such a system uses the idea of parasitic data transport by encouraging nodes to physically carry data for others when network connectivity is not available.

This project intends to use camera cell phones equipped with a Global Positioning System (GPS) to tag, store, and communicate “capsules” of context-based data. The hand-held devices will serve both as data collection and storage devices as well as communication nodes. Since the devices have limited transmission range, unpredictable mobility, and limited battery power, routing algorithms that exploit these unique challenges will be designed.

I realized that for me staying in the middle on a constant basis was very difficult. My first two years of college I was on the side of sleep and study because I was driven to transfer out of my current university.  Once I accomplished that goal I had to evaluate what I wanted out of my last two years of college.  I realized I wanted to obtain more of a social life since I studied really hard my first two years.  However, I did not want to ruin my education after I worked so hard to get into the university I wanted to be at.  It is hard to always stay in the middle, but it is not that difficult to move around the triangle if you have some self discipline.  I learned to use my calendar and to-do list to manage my studying time making sure that when crunch time came I wouldn’t be tempted by my friends asking me to hang out with them.  Likewise, my calendar allowed me to know when I did have the free time to hang out or to catch up on some sleep.

It all comes down to how motivated you are to make sure you balance your life.  Realize there is some truth to when people tell you that you have to choose two out of the three, but you have to ability to move around willingly.

There are many ways you can help yourself in all three areas.  In general the Getting Things Done method has helped me out a lot.  The basic principle is that you need to record your tasks externally so that you free your mind from remembering everything that you need to get done.  I like to give myself three main task to accomplish each day and make sure I get them done no matter what.

There are many methods and opinions on how to study effectively.  People will tell you to skim the book and just highlight the main concepts that matter.  Sometimes it is pointless to read the book and more important to pay attention to the professor.  In general my study habits include putting on my headphones and listening to some classical music while I’m studying in one of the libraries on campus.  I would have to say that my advise here would be to find the best situation that works for you and make sure to always stick with it.  If you know you work well at the library force yourself to go there when you need to study.  Here is a good simple guide on how to study effectively that includes some of the things I highlighted and some other key advise.

When it comes to sleeping  I have realized that when you are told you need at least eight hours of sleep is not true at all.  First of all there are studies that are showing that people who sleep eight hours die sooner than those who sleep less.  Also, it all comes down to making sure you stay in a constant habit and getting yourself to REM sleep.  If you really want to be able to balance studying, social life and sleep an interesting new idea that a friend brought to my attention is called polyphasic sleeping.  There is The Siesta, The Everyman, and The Uberman.  They are all very difficult to accomplish and many people have tried.  If you have the time and energy it will allow you to have a lot more hours throughout the day to do all the things you want with minimal amounts of sleep, but you’ll probably feel more refreshed then people who sleep for hours.

The best advise for obtaining a social life is just start talking to people and joining clubs and organizations that associate with the activities and things you enjoy doing.  Surrounding yourself with people who enjoy the same things as you, but are also different while expand your knowledge as well as allow you to have some fun.  So, go out and enjoy life just make sure you don’t get caught up in one area because being able to balance everything is what will allow you to enjoy everything you want.