I recorded monthly video diaries throughout 2025, documenting my journey working towards making aging and death optional.
Hey! My name is Elias Schlie, and my goal is to make aging and death optional. Here's the short version: First, I'm building a world-class understanding of Biology and AI/ML. Once I feel ready, I'll join (or build) an extraordinary team of people who are just as ambitious and driven as I am. This year (2025), my full focus is on Step One. Every month, I'll upload a short video sharing my progress, my struggles, and my learnings.
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There's never been a month in my life where I worked this much!
⏱️ Total focused work: 316 hours and 39 minutes
🗓️ That's an average of 10 hours and 12 minutes every single day (weekends included!)
📚 Harvard's CS50 (Computer Science + Python Programming)
📖 Introduction to Biology
🤖 A bunch of courses for my university (where I study AI)
✅ Completed nearly a whole semester at university in just one month — with grades like 9, 9.5, 9.5, and 10
✅ Felt like I 10x'ed my biology knowledge this month
✅ Completed a 7-day fast — which was incredible!
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⏱️ Total focused work: 298 hours and 19 minutes
🗓️ That's an average of 10 hours and 39 minutes every single day (weekends included!)
1️⃣📚 Read & studied "Molecular Biology of the Cell" (Alberts 2022) for 100 hours
2️⃣👨💻 100 hours of CS50 AI & Computer science (Harvard University)
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I call this month "Machine Learning March": I built a Linear Regressor, a Logistic Regressor, a Decision Tree, and a Neural Network completely from scratch without ML libraries.
⏱️ Total focused work: 325 hours and 30 minutes
🗓️ That's an average of 10 hours and 30 minutes every single day (weekends included!)
1️⃣🤖 100 hours of learning about Machine Learning
2️⃣🧬 68 hours of reading "Molecular Biology of the Cell"
3️⃣🧑💻 University Exams: Advanced Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms (10/10), Cognitive Neuroscience (99.17%), Computational Linguistics
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Completed 8 full university courses in one month across three different semesters.
Continued building ML fundamentals and deepening theoretical knowledge while maintaining intense focus.
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There's never been a month in my life where I worked this much!
⏱️ Total focused work: 342 hours and 59 minutes
🗓️ That's an average of 11 hours and 12 minutes every single day (weekends included!) 🤯
Completed 8 full courses: 🧑💻🥷 Advanced Programming, 🧠 Cognitive Neuroscience, 👨🎓🤖 Machine Learning, 🎤💻 Computational Linguistics, 🚗🤖 Autonomous Systems, 👨⚖️🤖 Ethics of AI, 💾 Data Structures and Algorithms, 🧠🤖 Deep Learning
✅ Set a new personal record: 84 hours of focused work in a single week
✅ Completed nearly two full semesters worth of coursework
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The Month I Started Building
⏱️ Total focused work: ~300 hours (9 hours 49 minutes per day)
✅ Finished exams for 9 university courses in Cognitive Science & AI
✅ Built foundational scripts for automating my note-taking (Obsidian) with LLMs
✅ Prototyped AI agents for science (news & paper summarization)
✅ Started serious learning in JavaScript/TypeScript and web development
✅ Built first versions of AI agents to automate workflows
✅ Developed structured note-taking, now over 10,000 notes
✅ Shifted from pure learning mode to building mode
✅ Maintained strong intrinsic motivation
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⏱️ Total focused work: 288 hours and 46 minutes
🗓️ That's an average of 9 hours and 57 minutes every single day
🚀 Deep dive into AI agents and language model tooling (langchain + agents)
🧪 Built a custom MCP server to connect LLMs with Obsidian
🧭 Personal reflection on direction, meaning, and intrinsic values
💬 Developing systems for better conversations and group dynamics
✅ Built and shipped my own MCP server — clean, simple, and powerful
✅ Reached a new level of clarity on what I value
✅ Used fasting as a powerful tool to reset and return to deep focus
✅ Pushed physical + mental boundaries with a 50h fast + night hike