A month ago, I came up with a list of the things I wanted to consider during my YouthActionNet Fellowship retreat.  In the 24 hours that it took me to fly and transit to Mexico, I've already come up with a solution for all 10 points.

My rationale behind it is that if I'm going to be spending a week talking to 20-odd people about all these issues, the best way I can prepare is to come with an already executable plan mapped out to build upon... or to completely tear down and rework.

Just by coming up with a "best plan" means that I already needed to think through a number of scenarios and justify to myself why some of them won't work, whereas others may stick; which puts me in a very strong position to answer heaps of questions about all those points, as well as quickly recognise what I don't know about those areas.

My plan I've created is the "best plan" I could have created with all the knowledge that I knew at the time...  Which means that there could still exist a "better plan" that can be created through the addition of knowledge that I currently don't know.

I think it's important to come up with a "best plan" by yourself before asking others for suggestions to help you create a "better plan", as it shows your commitment to the project, shows that you've done some research, and shows that you've thought things through.

On 17 May this year, over two months after I'd submitted my application, I received an exciting email in my inbox.  "Congratulations!  You have been selected as one of 20 YouthActionNet Fellows out of 600 applicants!"

I was stoked!  The YouthActionNet (YAN) Fellowship exists to strengthen, support, and celebrate the role of young people in leading positive change in their communities.  In order to achieve that aim, it includes a weeklong retreat of skill-building, networking and resources and advocacy-training, at a selected location (this year, it's in Mexico City!) followed by a yearlong mentorship.  It's run by the International Youth Foundation and is backed by companies such as Nokia and Starbucks.  In total, my fellowship is worth over $20,000!  There are over 400 young social entrepreneurs from more than 60 countries who have been YouthActionNet Fellows in its 10 year history.

Since then, there's been heaps of emails to organise things.

A month ago, we were sent a homework assignment to complete before next week.  The first task was to construct the work I do into a story, including a 4-page guideline of how to do that.

That activity was surprisingly really useful.  I used a variation of it for a speech I gave shortly afterwards, to great reviews, and I've used the structure for interviews since then as well, including this one:  Brains Matter .  I've probably given a variation of that speech 5 times publicly in the past month, so I found that activity really useful and I'm glad I got that task done early!

The second task was to consider what I wanted to learn from my fellow participants during the week, and what I could offer.  This is the list I came up with.  (I like lists).

Can teach at YAN:

1. Setting up an advisory board
2. Managing a team across the world
3. Growing an organization globally
4. Growing an organization exponentially
5. Time management
6. Bootstrapping
7. Setting great goals
8. Really achieving your goals
9. How to make people do what you want them to do
10. How to have efficient meetings

Want to discover new ideas for the following at YAN:

1. Sustainability - creating a structure whereby the organization can live without me and I can exit gracefully
2. Raising money
3. Structure for having staff next year
4. Way in which we can engage all the female engineering students in the world in the organization
5. How to make people really engage with and advocate the organization
6. Ideas for acknowledging people so they keep volunteering
7. Ideas as to how to create a community?
8. How to recruit superstars teams in other locations (recruiting a whole team at once for another location over the phone/Skype)
9. How to find an executive director/successor?
10. How to have a greater mainstream impact

I am flying to Mexico tomorrow for the retreat, and I can't wait to meet all the other participants from all over the world and am so excited to be joining such a large and inspiring organisation.

Just in the past 2.5 weeks, I've seen my productivity shoot through the roof, I have more energy and I feel great about myself (who wouldn't?)

No, this isn't a new fab drug or wonder-pill.  It was just a simple matter of changing the way I see a tiny thing in my life.

So let's reassess where I was 3 weeks ago:

• 3 speeches to write, and submit/ deliver within the fortnight
• 5 assignments and 3 mid-semester tests due within 3 weeks
• I had to finalise trip details to the USA in November
• Plan ahead to get things done before I go to Mexico in a fortnight
• Lots of stuff to send to prepare for my awards
• An abstract to write that was overdue
• Stressed about negotiations taking place

And things were so not going to get done.

I use the HitList, I write a daily plan, but I procrastinated so much it was debilitating.

What usually happens is I pile on all these things to do, don't manage to get them done then delegate them off to someone else at the eleventh hour.  Except I couldn't do that this time, because these were all personal things that had to be done by me.

One night, while I was examining honestly what I do with a friend, I realised that amongst everything else, I also spend a lot of my time time watching television and YouTube videos because I thought that it made me more creative.  I thought, "really creative people made these tv shows and these music videos.  If I watch them,  I can store up good creative ideas for the future".  But while I was saying this aloud, I realised that I study mechatronics engineering and computer science.  If I really wanted to improve my creativity and thinking skills, I could just study my lecture notes or do tutorial exercises.  Because while everyone has access to those tv shows and music videos, not everyone has the opportunity to expand their minds through studying engineering.  And with that, I knew that I would be able to follow my plan, not procrastinate, and get everything done.

Since then, I have:

• Found a casual engineering job for 5 - 10 hours a week
• Submitted everything I needed to, including all my assessments in on time!
• Finalised two negotiations
• Recruited a new Robogals Global team member, participated in two photo-shoots, met up with heaps of old friends and contacts, conducted a few media interviews, etc.

And all I can say is, it feels awesome to finally know myself as someone who can make a plan and make everything on it happen!

So what's in the way to you being productive?  What do you need to get honest with yourself about?

My business partner Mark Parncutt was quoted in this article in StartUp Smart about the state of entrepreneurship in Australian universities.  Happy reading!

http://www.startupsmart.com.au/growth/young-entrepreneurs/2011-06-07/the-state-of-student-start-ups.html

As the Cheshire Cat says, "if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there."

In my Engineering Analysis A class (an engineering maths class), in my second year at uni, my tutor asked everyone in the class what they wanted to do after uni.  Twenty people said they didn't know, one person said they wanted to do business, and I said I was going to be an entrepreneur.

At the University of Melbourne right now, people are criticising a new reform, the Melbourne Model, which is basically a broad 3-year degree followed by a specialised 2-years Masters degree.

One of the main criticisms is that it doesn't let students go into uni and study what they actually want to do.  With only 2 out of 22 people (11.11%) people in the above-mentioned engineering tutorial (a specialist degree) knowing what they want to do, I don't think that the criticism is well-founded.

Now, a lot of my friends are in the final year of their degrees and are getting worried because they don't know what they want to do next year.  Most of them are just applying for every graduate position out there from consulting companies to banks to engineering firms.  Not all of them want the corporate route though.  So here's my two bits of advice about taking the road less travelled:

1. Figure out what your purpose is in life.  Do you want to "have a positive impact on the world", "revolutionise an industry", or "to help people".  I know people with all these purposes.  There's no right or wrong purpose, it's just what's there for you when you philosophise on what you want to accomplish in your life.

It's about figuring out an over-arching goal that drives your life however you choose to execute it.

Bill Gates' purpose was to put, "a computer on every desk and in every home".  He came up with that vision in the 1970s, while Microsoft was just being created, when personal computers were the thing of science fiction.  He then worked his guts out and helped make his vision a reality.

Figure out a phrase that distinctly describes what you want to do in your life.  Make it short and snappy so that you can keep reciting it off to yourself.  If it's too long and complicated, you'll forget it immediately and never use it again.

For me, my purpose is to "put a robot in every home, to make people's lives easier".  Yes, I know Bill Gates wrote an essay called that in a 2007 Scientific America magazine edition (I bought a copy the first day I arrived in Melbourne to study at uni!)  But I'm pretty sure I had that vision before I read the article.  So it was very cool to see that a thought leader and the richest guy in the world also had the same vision as me.

I study Mechatronics Engineering and Computer Science to learn about robotics, I run a not-for-profit organisation Robogals to increase the number of young women pursuing engineering in their tertiary studies and careers, and I hang out at entrepreneurship networking events to keep me inspired and to meet cool people.  It's all aligned with my purpose.

2. Next, what are your interests?  Are you into politics?  History?  Arts?  Software?  Electronics?  Languages?  It's important that you do something related to your interests so that you bring an added level of passion and enthusiasm to your role, that comes from doing what you love.

You might be interested in programming because you spend most of your time coding.  Or else, you might be interested in fashion design, but you don't really know how to sew.  Or you might be interested in French, but you don't speak any French.  Whatever the case, if your interest sounds cool to you and you know how to do it, great!  You're well on your way to carving out a career in that area.  If you don't really know much about your area of interest at all, give in and get amongst it!  If you spend your time immersed and engrossed in your interest, before you know it, you'll feel confident.

When I first started university, I really wanted to start up something, so I founded Nudge.  After I did that, I spent all my spare time reading blogs on the internet about entrepreneurship.  After about a year and a half of reading countless blogs about marketing, raising money, how to write a great pitch, what makes an entrepreneur, countless success and failure stories and everything in between, it just clicked for me and I suddenly just really got entrepreneurship.  It's very simple.  Choose something to do, and work hard.  If you need money for it, fund it yourself or go to the bank.  If you need more money for it than you have access to, make a solid plan and go and raise some dough from angel investors or VCs.

The world is your oyster.  By ensuring your opportunities are aligned with your interests makes the choice easier for you.

3. Finally, join steps 1 and 2 together and create a goal that aligns your purpose with your interests.  Whether that be doing in internship in NYC to get experience in publishing with the purpose of sharing people's stories, being a ski instructor in Japan to learn Japanese with the purpose of helping your country, or being a solicitor at a top firm so you can help people.

Your goal doesn't have to take into account the next 20 or 30 years of your life.  I'm told that my generation is expected to have 7 or 8 careers during our lives!  It can just take into account the next two to three months, with a loose 2-year goal after that.

Interests change.  Goals change.  Opportunities change.

The most important thing is that whatever you choose to do in the next two months, or the next three months, or the next two years is immaterial, as long as it is aligned with your purpose.

For me, I'm going to be at uni until the end of next year, during which time I'll work on Robogals and keep making it better and better.  While I do that, I'm working on my first robotics startup.  I'll do as much as I can while I finish off uni and keep my commitments towards Robogals.  Then, after I graduate - world, look out!  It's going to be exciting!  :)

Having said that, I've told a good friend of mine that if he has a web startup idea that he wants to make happen, then I'll support him with that.  (If I also get to be cofounder and have an equal stake in it.)

Either way, I'll still be developing my entrepreneurship skills in the tech industry to help me fulfil my purpose, so whichever of those two options I choose will still be the right path for me.

I think one of the most inspiring and magical things about this world is that things can change so quickly.  So, the opportunities and options that you have now may be minuscule compared to those you'll have in six months time.  One moment I was in Melbourne with a vision of having Robogals be an international organisation, even though I didn't know anyone anywhere overseas.  Six months later, Robogals was international, after I initiated our second chapter in London.

So don't worry so much.  Choose a direction and follow it intently.  If it's aligned with your purpose, you're going the right way.