My Nocturnal Adventures

One of the first thing that one of my old Yahoo! managers said when he came onboard was that he wanted people to be committed, not just engaged. Then he told the story about the chicken who is delivering eggs but survives and the pig the sacrifices himself to deliver ham. The chicken is only engaged but the pig is committed. You get it.

That story took me back to my college years when we used to stay up all night to get our university magazine ready for publishing or when we planned new projects during the weekends. The use of the night-time was showing true commitment to the current mission at hand.

These nocturnal adventures continued as I ventured into the mid-90s startup world of Stockholm. We stayed up until the work was done. When you are committed, there are no rules when you should go to work or when you should quit. You keep charging ahead until you are either done or dead tired. Then sleep and repeat.

So as I have slowly getting used to being back in the startup world over the past few months I’ve also started to use nights and weekends for work. Our future is like an unpainted canvas and as any artist knows: creativity never sleeps.

So this past Saturday I woke up at 2am in the morning and realized that my head was full of ideas. I grabbed a coffee, the laptop and got to work. That was one of the most creative sessions I’ve had over the past few years. My commitment – I realized – came from being trusted, empowered and accountable for my work but also from really caring about the outcome.

I think the nights and the weekends are crucial to the success of a startup. That’s when you get time to look back at the past week, get overall perspective and think about the future. If you live in an entrepreneurial network – as I do – it’s the best time for sharings and learnings. It’s also the best time to get work done.

The Annoying Little Expat

I was remined of the difference between a tourist and a traveler the other day when I watched Paul Bowles The Sheltering Sky: A tourist knows when he is going home, a traveler doesn’t.

I think you have the same destinction between the sorry little expat and the global nomad. The expat is doing a foreign gig cause it pays better (only for big corporations), accelerates (sometimes) the career and it sounds darn good. But they still live in their own cultural cocoon wherever they are, meeting up for their national holidays and exchanging experiences with each other. They refer to each other as person x from country y.

The global nomad is the antithesis of the expat and the working friend of the traveler. There are no plans to return, life is not lived in a cocoon protected and managed by multinationals and there is no celebrations of national holidays.

There are few things I *really* dislike but one of them is pretentious expats, especially from my country of origin. My blood boils when I get presented as Per from Sweden and then asked questions about what it’s like *over there*. Pending on daily mood I either answer “Dunno” or “It blows”.

I did not emmigrate cause I wanted to be a corporate tourist and get sucked into the medicrazy of the expat community. I left cause I needed personal and professional freedom to thrive and excel in a world that focus on the future, not the past. I don’t care where people come from, I care about where they are going. That says much more about who they are than any stamp on a passport.

4 Miles A Day

I’ve always tried to live close to my office but it has had it’s challenges. When I worked in Stockholm I had to buy a condo to get as close (15min walk) as I wanted, in London I rented a pad right around the corner from my office but then we moved. That forced me to take the Tube everyday since I didn’t want to move away from my favorite local pub.

Once here in the States, I commuted about 100 miles (160 km) a day for 3 years to get to my office. Today I’m fortunate to have an office only 2 miles away from where we are living. So I walk the 4 miles (6.4 km) a day and it’s awesome. It gives me time to think, to rev up / down and to get my daily exercise (w/o having to go to the gym).

The first few weeks were really hard. My legs were sore and I exhausted by the time I got *to* the office. Now I’m slowly getting into the funk as I’ve walk to work every rain free day since Christmas. That’s pretty darn good.

My walk is beautiful and takes me through Pacific Heights, Nob Hill, Chinatown and the Financial District. In the morning I’ve the beautiful sunrise view and in the evening the beautiful sunset view. Once spring really kicks in I might even stop by for a cold beer on the way home. Life is great!

Oh No – Not The Dentist

My exposure to dental services has been minimal since I had braces. Unfortunately I need to visit the dentist today for some annual cleaning. Not a very pleasant experience. Been anxious since yesterday and been thinking about cancelling this awful event. But I guess I have to go just to have it done, out of my life.

After dentist: Hmm, somewhat puzzled by the lack of pain I’m feeling. The 8 shots in the upper part of my mouth were really painful but once the drugs kicked in everything was go-ood. Right now I’m enjoying a Chianti Classico and surprised that I can enjoy a real dinner – not just one consumed through a straw. Am I getting super powers? Wolverine powers?

10,000 emails

I’ve had my Yahoo! mail account for about 10 years now. It started out as a Rocketmail account and later became a Yahoo! mail account when RM got acquired. Recently I realized that I had about 6,500 unread emails which is insane.

In the spirit of making my life more simple I decided to unsubscribe to every subscription that isn’t crucial to my existence and to delete a lot of worthless old messages. I started with unsubscribing to about 50 newsletters and updated many online accounts with my new Boxbe.com account that forces the sender to pay to reach me.

I ended up deleting close to 10,000 emails. One might wonder why someone wants to do this in the age of unlimited storage? My take is that it’s a wonderful katharsis experience, a way of reclaiming my online persona and privacy.

My email is now solely for friends, iTunes notifications and a few key accounts. The rest is going to have to pay to tap into my lifetime value.

Black Sabbath

It took eight weeks, most weekends, night and days to get here but it was all worth it. A new milestone is reached in time for this long weekend. It’s count down, clean up and release party on the agenda for today.

And it’s live!

New Ripping Software

MediaFork is a new DVD ripping software based on the good old Handbrake code. It’s still Handbrake but tigther and more devloped. And available for Mac, Win and Linux.

Note: Having problems with getting the forked media files to work on the iPod. Reverting to good old Handbrake.

Success is Personal

Contrary to the public belief, success is something very personal. It’s true that most people measure it by fame and fortune, two external ways of getting recognition for measuring success. But in reality, I believe that anyone that is successful knows it inside. It’s really a state-of-mind.

I feel extremely successful when I walk to work every morning, knowing that I work on projects that really matters to people. Projects that is changing the world to the better. I feel successful when we meet important deadlines and deliver killer stuff. I feel successful when I work with an awesome team that challenges me to evolve and elevate my performance.

Success is also in the freedom to design your own life. For many it means the big mansion and not having to work. But hey, I love working. Having a mission in life is really important and keeps you young. I tried to take time off from work and just do whatever but quickly realized that I was becoming fat, bored and slow.

I think true happiness is found in simplicity, in the smaller things, in friendship, in team challenges and in constantly growing. Success to me can never and should never be measured in physical things but in an inner sense of pride and a confident state-of-mind. The rest is just posing.

The Days We Live For

I woke up this morning after a really cold and rainy night to realize that the sky was about to turn blue and the sun slowly warming up our neighborhood. It was clearly going to be a beautiful day. I became even more aware of this while walking over Russian Hill, through Nob Hill and Chinatown. It was clearly one of those days when you feel – from top to toe – that life is great. There are no worries, the sun is slowly warming you as you walk and the iPod is delivering one good song after another (and I didn’t even use shuffle).

Everything just feels complete. There is good kharma in the air and you smile from inside out. You plan the work and work the plan. Seeing it come together is above anything in life. It’s just clicks and suddenly everything feels effortless. You are in the zone and you know it. You are the freekin’ master of the zone.

I, Slacker – The Book

I slurped (publishing speak for downloading blog content into the Blurb BookSmart app) my old I, Slacker blog this weekend. The purpose of the blog was to share my experience of taking time off – the comme il faut of the corporate world. My manager at that time at Yahoo! totally got what I tried to do and supported my venture wholeheartedly. That man will always have a special place in my heart.

The book making process sort of forced me to read through all my old ramblings which is always a sensitive process for a writer. Old stuff could be insanely great or just pure awful. Once I had read through all my blog entries I realized that I’ve met all my targets and came out with a few really invaluable key learnings. I also ended up being much more motivated and passionate.

After my first 3-month hiatus I took another year off to just chill. That was a life changing experience. All the fear of not being able to survive in one of the most ruthless market economies in the world disappeared. And so did the greed. And back came the passion and the energy. And I found a killer gig at an awesome startup in central San Francisco. It was one of those rare win-win-win-win situation. A quadruple victory as they say.

Anywho, by reading through my old blog entries I realized that I have enough good stuff for a book on the subject. It might not be a mass market product, I’m just hoping for a niche market response and the start of a discussion around the devilish rat race. See, I know who the man is now and I’ve learned how to stick it to him. That should be worth a few bucks.