On having personal projects
Recently, I watched a few videos on YouTube from the MIT Maker Portfolio series. The videos are portfolios of engineering projects from students who apply to MIT. I really enjoyed watching them because of the creativity and originality behind each project.
Of course, this is a bit of a biased series. The students who apply to MIT are top-tier, talented, and likely have the freedom and resources to create interesting projects and show their talents.
But I couldn't stop thinking about what stops many other students, and everybody in general, from finding an outlet for their creativity and interests. Whatever interest or talent we have, there are countless resources available on the internet to help us follow our passions.
Online, there are endless resources to learn anything that catches our interest, forums to connect with people who have similar interests, and plenty of ideas for cool projects to build. Still, many of our curiosities remain just wishes, without leading to action.
I could think of two reasons for this:
First, most of our time online, we (especially myself) consume information passively without producing any output. We follow the news, scroll through random videos, or jump from one website to another without really knowing what we are searching for.
Second, we are conditioned to automatically associate work with external rewards. If we do something, we expect to be rewarded externally. The reward could be a degree or certificate if we learn something, earning money if we do hard-work, or being praised by others if we follow a hobby. Often, it is hard to imagine creating or learning something new just because it is "interesting."
But what if we try to turn a small part of our passive internet usage into something creative? It doesn't have to be anything special. A short blog post about a random idea, a simple piece of code, some silly art, a thoughtful review sharing your opinion of a book or video, or a small project.