When I was in my final year of high school, my family couldn't afford to send me to university, so I looked for scholarships that would enable me to go.

Trawling through websites, I found:

• A $9000/ year scholarship to study civil engineering, which also included all university tuition and return flights home every year that would require you to do 12 weeks of work experience at the company every year, then work there for another 4 years afterwards.
• Scholarships of $6000/ year at a water facility with an internship and work contract afterwards.
• $2000/ year scholarships that would require you to join and be active in the organisation.  An exclusive scholarship - meaning you couldn't get any other.
• $8000/ year scholarships where you would have to work in a mine 10 weeks of every year.

I never got any of these, because I never applied.  They weren't aligned with the kind of engineering I wanted to do, the way I wanted to spend my university life, and what I wanted to do after university.

One scholarship that I did receive was for full tuition to finish my undergraduate degree and my masters in an accelerated programme of electrical engineering in 4 years.

That seemed like a lot of work and studying to me.

I decided that wasn't how I wanted to spend my university years.  I wanted to do more than just study and learn more than what I could from books.  So I turned that down too.

And I went to Melbourne University to study Mechatronics Engineering and Computer Science, with no scholarship and not enough money to live for a year.

In my first month, I found the Paterson Scholarship, applied and became the inaugural recipient of the perpetual scholarship.

Don't just follow the waters where they may take you.  Choose a path and things will pop up along the way that help you get to your destination.

When I first started Robogals, the first thing I did was tell people about my vision and ask that they sign on to join.

From that, I got a team of 3 female science and engineering students - Kelly Chiu, Ann Chee Lim and Vi Vu.

From week one, I delegated roles for us all.  Kelly was the secretary, and Ann Chee and Vi would work on the robotics lessons and competition.  My job was to call schools (because no one else wanted to do that), recruit more people, and just make the whole thing work.

Then I found more people to help build the vision.  Through a friend of a friend, I found Adam Falconer, who designed the Robogals logo and then stayed on to be the Creative Design Manager.

I found Daniel Huang, a friend of mine who lived with me at Janet Clarke Hall, my halls of residence, to be the treasurer.  Mark Parncutt took on the role of Sponsorship Manager.  He found Felicity Zhou to help him out…

I just kept telling people about Robogals.  If they were interested, then I would find out a skill they wanted to learn, then assign them tasks so they could develop those skills.

This created a whole community of people working on Robogals in the first few months.  That was inspiring to me, because it meant that even while I was working on Robogals, other people were as well, and the impact of our work was compounded.

After 2.5 months, I left Melbourne to move to London for 10 months.  I always knew that I was going to do this, so it had been arranged from week 1 that Kelly would take on the role of President when I left.

Fast forward a year later, and I'd expanded Robogals to 5 chapters in Australia, and 1 chapter in the UK.  That was really exciting, and I felt so happy!

Then I expanded Robogals to a further 5 chapters in the UK.  That was even more exciting, but also really stressful.

By that stage, Robogals had 11 chapters in Australia and the UK.  There were all these people - all these female engineering students working on Robogals and working on getting more girls interested in engineering.

I was really busy - trying to manage it all, keep up with people from all over the world, develop new projects, while figuring out a system so that we could compartmentalise roles and create processes, so that the things I was doing could be replicated.  It was really hard, and it took a lot of time, but the thing that kept me going, was knowing there were hundreds of people all over the world, working towards our vision.  I didn't want to let them down.  I wanted them to feel proud to be a part of the organisation and the community.  And so I just worked my hardest in order to create that.

Creating stuff is hard.  If you build a community around what you're doing though, the thought of their energy and spirit will keep you going.

One of the biggest muscles to exercise shouldn't be getting yourself motivated to not procrasinate.  Sure, procrastination is a big issue, and eventually, the days turn into weeks, turn into months, turn into years, and you still haven't done anything.

But I find that procrastination really isn't that much of a deterrent to people.  When push comes to shove, people submit their homework assignments, get their forms in, and make sure they organise their priorities to spend time with friends.

Hence I think the muscle that needs exercising is always giving up the thought of, "what are other people thinking about me?"

Will they think I'm a loser because I want to start this company?

Will they think I've gone crazy if I tell them I'm not going to apply to grad jobs?

Will they think I'm stupid if I don't finish my assignment completely?

Will they laugh at me if I fail?

Will they think I have too much time on my hands because I do this?

Will they say, "oh John's not serious.  He's never been serious about anything in his life."?

Will they mock and tease me?

Will they talk about me behind my back, while shaking their heads?

Because doing homework, submitting forms and spending time with friends are all the norm.  But you going out there and writing your books, starting your cupcake business or inventing a time-saving device are not.  Stop worrying about what other people think about you and you will procrastinate less on the things that matter.

In Robogals, I always looked for the hardest possible thing to do.  And then I did it.

Because I knew that if I could achieve that, then I would attain a level of confidence in my abilities that would allow me to take on even bigger, more ambitious activities in the future.

I didn't know what I would be like at the end of the project.  I just knew I would be a better version of me.

If you're over your university studies.

If you're not looking forward to taking a week out of your life and attending a conference.

If you don't want to attend the gala dinner.

Relate it to what you love.  Or try and figure out another way of looking at the situation that empowers you.

For example, finishing your university studies makes it easier for you to get a visa to go and live in another country.  Going to the conference is about doing market research for your company.  Going to the gala dinner is about meeting another 10 people and making a new friend.

Create a game for yourself, where you're constantly coming up with new contexts until one sticks.