How one week in Switzerland changed the trajectory of my life
June newsletter
June has been an absolutely epic month! From falling in love with energy storage to spending 10 transformative days in Switzerland.
Falling in love with energy storage
One of the bottlenecks of our conversion to renewables is that they are intermittent meaning that when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing we can’t have a constant stream of electricity. This makes it so that renewables such as wind and solar are impossible to adopt fully. I set out a month or two ago to solve this problem using energy storage, first looking into liquid air and then looking into thermal energy storage.
Essentially I see two pathways for energy storage the first is storing things electrochemically, making a better battery that doesn’t have the problems that a lithium-ion battery has and the second is storing things thermally but making the efficiency of thermal to electricity processes more efficient.
Though last month I was working on this as well, it was only this month that I realized that I’d fallen in love with this problem. Electricity production counts for 27% of all global emissions, so if we could solve energy storage we could convert to renewables fully which would eliminate more than one 4th of all global emissions.
During my summer alongside my internships, I want to get closer to becoming an expert in energy storage.
Switzerland
This month I was given the opportunity by the knowledge society (TKS) to travel to Switzerland alone, for free! This was because I was invited directly on a fully paid trip to Villars Institute, a three-day conference that connects young people with experts in systems thinking and climate solutions. Afterwards, I stuck around for a few days exploring CERN, AKDN, World Economic Forum and Mercuria offices. This was definitely the most exciting part of my month.
Hands down the best part of my trip was learning and growing with some of my best friends.
Villars Institute
The Villars Institute is a nonprofit foundation established in 2022 to accelerate the transition to a net zero economy. Villars Institute invites students from schools and organizations around the world! As part of TKS, I was picked alongside 7 others to go and represent TKS as well as network with experts who would accelerate my growth.
I want to give a huge thanks to Lee Howell and Marco Dunand for paying for the accommodations and my flight as well as organizing this amazing event! It was absolutely amazing to travel to Switzerland for free, and network inside of a 5-star hotel.
World Economic Forum, CERN and Mercuria
After Villars, I stayed a couple of extra days to visit CERN, World Economic Forum, AKDN and Mercuria. It was really transformative for me to see companies and organizations actually working on real social and technological impact. I truly think that World Economic Forum has the coolest office ever!
Takeaways
The Juice vs The Sauce
Given that I was in Switzerland and I had ten days to spend quality time with the founders of TKS, I took advantage of it and sought out feedback. Needless to say, I got roasted 🔥. They ripped to shreds my assumptions about energy storage, made me look like a fool in front of my friends and overall pushed me so that I could get to the next level.
I remember my last night with Nadeem (one of the co-founders) and he told me that most of my friends and I had the juice, we had a semblance of knowledge in our field and we had accomplished shiny things (like internships). However, none of us were deep enough in our topic to withstand being grilled about it for hours let alone a few minutes. Nadeem after 3 or 4 questions had already outdone me.
The sauce is not just shiny accomplishments like articles or videos. The sauce is understanding the field to a point where you are an absolute expert. If I grilled Nadeem or Navid on education, they would know every single company working on new-gen education and every single school curriculum implementing new ideas.
Funny how Nadeem found all this wisdom from a youtube meme.
“The juice is temporary, anyone can obtain the juice. The sauce, the sauce lasts forever”
A Wise Man
My goal during this summer is to get from 2% knowledge in energy storage to 15%, obtaining some of the sauce.
Billionaires are normal people?
In Villars, I became homies with multi-millionaires and billionaires. The funny thing is, those people are super chill. People who are making a huge impact, epitomes of success in my eyes, are very normal. For example, I met Desh Deshpande one of the most successful people in all of India. I asked him a really good question during his talk, and afterwards, he was hugging me and called me “the battery man”. We then had an hour-long talk about my ambitions and goals. I had another experience when I was talking to Marco, founder and CEO of Mercuria (a highly innovative energy trading company) for 3 hours!
It’s crazy to me that high-impact people would take the time to talk to me. It made me realize that these goals of mine to achieve great success aren’t that far away, it’s just about perseverance and the belief in a better future.
Stop being introspective, just do
I think a lot, maybe too much. The problem is I’m obsessed with my feelings, if something bad happens I focus too much on my feelings and stop being rational. I ask too many dumb questions or hypothetical questions that don’t help me grow. The reason why is because I want people to validate my emotions, and make me feel like I’m successful.
From talking to Navid and Nadeem I think I realize that it’s much better to actually own my actions and be on my own path than to play the comparison game and feel too much. I have nothing to complain about, I’ve been given opportunities to have very unique/life-changing experiences and yet I’m finding the exact reasons why they’re not perfect instead of living in the moment. Imagine a life where I’m constantly working toward the next goal without taking a step back to appreciate it, that sounds like a life that’s not worth living.
Essentially… don’t take yourself too seriously. You live on a flying ball in the middle of this black zone called space and you can die at any second, enjoy what you have and try your best to make life better for other humans who live on this blue ball called Earth.
More fun pictures…
Micro impacts translate to Macro change
One of the coolest people I met at Villars was Ibrahim. He’s making a huge impact in Africa right now giving farmers access to tools to enhance their crop yields by a factor of 3x. He’s also one of the happiest people I’ve ever met. He’s someone who’s making. social impact and enjoying himself at the same time which truly inspires me.
During my last day at Villars Institute, I told him about this constant anxiety I have. The truth is that I’m constantly scared of not making an impact. It’s a constant fear of not living up to the expectations of the life I want to live. What if 30-year-old me is a failure? What if I give up to soon? These are questions I’m always asking myself. It’s like I’m running on a treadmill and I’m scared that if I fall off I’ll never get back up.
One of the most impactful things Ibrahim told me was that he doesn’t think about the long-term impact. He never worries about how big his impact will be, he doesn’t worry about the macro level, he stays in the present and focuses on the micro impact. Every day he wakes up and says to himself “How can I make today better than yesterday”. It’s the reason he talks to me, not because he has nothing better to do (he could be in Africa feeding people by improving their crop yields), but because if he makes a micro impact in the lives of people he meets, at the end that creates a macro impact for everyone. He certainly made an impact on me…
If every day you try to make yourself and the world better you don’t need to worry about the macro because micro impacts compound into greatness.
What’s next?
Internship at the lab working on my own project (sugar batteries)
Internship with Cert Center Canada, working on hybrid electric planes and EVtols
Article on energy storage ranking that goes extremely in-depth
Learning how to drive
Thanks again! See you next time!
wow I loved the last paragraph - I was just feeling anxious today about not having made enough of an impact, and that advice was so helpful :)