Are You Staring At Me?

As a digital nomad I get to work in public places a lot, especially coffee shops. Every once in a while I run into some mild problems, but, usually, nothing really serious. Until the other day. Sit down, relax, and make sure you don’t read this in a coffee shop too

The Premises

So, here I am, on a nice Monday morning, unpacking my laptop over a nice small table at my favorite Starbucks, arranging my cup of tea and plugging in the cable. Around, a few people at their own tables, most of them with their own laptops, tapping silently. Soft music, nice light, a perfect atmosphere for working.

I’m at the first floor (this Starbucks has two floors, and the top one is less crowded) and, at this exact moment, a young fellow, with a hoodie on, jumps over the stairs, looks at the toilet door (which was closed) and then turns at me. He smiles and waves, almost greeting me. A microsecond of browsing through my (I admit, quite large) database of persons that I know and a definitive result: I don’t know this guy. I politely look over him, while he came forward and take a sit on a bench just in front of me. 2-3 meters maximum. He must wait for the toilet, I presume.

Confusions happens, I tell to myself, then I start working. After a few minutes, a gentle sensation over my forehead interrupts me. I get this sometimes, when people are looking at me. I take my eyes out from the computer and, surprise, the young fellow is still there, staring at me. The toilet door was open, so he must’ve already been there, I think. I browse through my internal database again, only to get the same result: I definitely don’t know this guy. And yet there he is, smiling and looking at me. The hoodie is off, it’s getting warm.

I get back to my computer and continue to work. But not for long. My forehead sensation was still there. I take my eyes off from the laptop and this time I make eye contact. The same second he slips his look over me, avoiding eye contact. Hmm… I gently look around, take a tea sip and there it is again, with the corner of my eye I see him staring at me again. I try eye contact again and then he avoids it again.

Around, business as usual. Nobody seemed to perceive nothing strange. They either thought this guy is with me (somehow), or his behavior looked quite normal.

At this point, I started to identify the whole situation with some sort of a problem. I can’t really work when somebody is staring at me. So, I started to evaluate the possible reasons for this. After a few seconds, I identified 3 possible causes.

1. He’s probably gay. And really, really lonely.

Not much to do about this, I’m straight so I may just tell him that.

2. I’m on candid camera.

I’m turning around looking for places where they could hide a camera. Trying to figure out which of the people at the tables were accomplices. After a few minutes of gazing, I had to admit I wasn’t on candid camera. Nobody looked like a candid camera crew (I worked for a while in television, so I kinda sense this stuff). Also, on candid camera, at some point they come at you and tell: “Hey, man, you’re on candid camera!”. This guy didn’t. He just continued to look at me.

2. He must be on ecstasy.

As far as I could tell, his eyes were ok, didn’t notice any shaking or other strange movements, so he didn’t seem like he was on drugs. I’m not too experienced at this, though, so I didn’t rule it out completely.

As I was still trying to find out the number 4 reason, all of a sudden he gets out, turns on his heels and down he goes, over the stairs. He just left. I confess I had a huge relief breathe and gently came back to my work. Incidentally, it was one of those days when I had a full plate, so to speak, so there was a lot to be done.

After a few minutes, the foreground sensation again. Ok, somebody is looking at me again, I’m saying to myself. Who could it be? In front of me, the bench was empty. Another short relief breathe and then I turn to the right. And there he was again, the hoodie fellow, with a cup of tea and a sandwich, on the bench next to me. Not more than one meter between us now.

I felt a bit of an emptiness in my stomach and then instinctively looked to my screen, not understanding one thing of what I was looking at, but desperately trying to understand what was going on.

The Interaction

It must have been more than a half an hour since I was at that Starbucks, so I decided to tackle this somehow. I suddenly turn to the right, and this time he can’t avoid eye contact anymore.

“Can I help you?” I ask upfront. Trying not to be angry, just polite.

“Oh, no, not at all.” he shivers, looking surprised that I actually opened up a conversation with him. Like he didn’t expected this to happen. The he continues to stare at me.

“Are you sure?” I ask again, this time a little bit angry.

“Oh, yes! I’m absolutely sure.” he answers, somehow realizing that he must’ve been on some sort of a faux pax. And then he looks the other way. I stay turned for around 10 seconds and I make sure he won’t stare at me anymore. And, apparently, it worked.

I get back to my work, but only with half of my focus now. I still sense this guy, no more than one meter away from me, watching his cup of tea, eating his sandwich and staring randomly around. Every once in a while at me, too, but this time he looked a bit more controlled.

At this point, one of my partners in WPSumo came in (we had to finish something together) and, being already cautious, I invite him to sit down on my bench, between me and that guy. Of course, my partner has no idea about what’s going on and I decide not to tell.

We start working, but, after ten minutes or so, I suddenly see my partner’s eyes growing bigger and bigger behind his glasses. He elbows me pointing to that bench: “Have you seen this guy? He’s sleeping”. I lean forward and there he is, the hoodie guy, on his left side, one hand under his head, knees almost to the chest, in the embryo position. He didn’t look completely asleep, but hey, he was still lying down on a Starbucks bench.

The next second he rolls over his back, face up and then his hands are starting a strange dance in the air. Very, very slowly, he was picking objects and then rearranging them in other places. Invisible objects, of course. Think Tom Cruise in Minority Report, only sitting on his back. The other people on the room started to notice this. Some of theme were smiling, some of theme were pointing their fingers to the head: “he must be screwed up there”. But that didn’t seem to stop that slow, almost hypnotic dance.

At this point, a waitress came in, starting to clean up tables. As I know her (I do spend a lot of time there, so we kinda have small conversations every once in a while), I ask her upfront:

“What’s up with this guy?”

“Oh, I guess nothing”, she replies. After that, she leans forward to see the slow Minority Report dance and adds, just a bit worried: “Well, I hope nothing. It’s just… how he is. Does he bothers you?”

I decided to answer “no” to this question. We went on with our work, finished what we had to do like in 20 minutes and split. I could’ve stay longer, but, somehow, the staring guy, as inoffensive as he was, made me not to.

The Hoodie Guy And The Goals

As I was heading home, I tried to understand what was that bothered me so much about this encounter. After all, like the waitress pointed out, he was harmless. He was just staring at me. A simple presence, just a look, a harmless surveillance.

And the moment I found the word “surveillance”, it hit me: it was the pressure of the expectations. I didn’t know exactly what this guy was asking from me. But, somehow, I was afraid I couldn’t deliver. As simple as it was, that was the exact thing that made me feel so uncomfortable. If I wouldn’t feel that I had to do something in a certain way, I wouldn’t be bothered at all. I might’ve even look back at him for hours too. Or stare at the walls.

Almost frightened, as I was walking back home, I realized how many times I did this, not outside, with other people, but inside, in my own mind. How many times I created an observer, a person who was expecting me to act in a certain way, only to get completely stuck when he was staring at me too much.

How many times I created bold goals, literally creating dozens of hoodie guys, bringing them into my own room, and making them stare at me, until I was delivering. And celebrating big time after that.

There is a certain weight in establishing bold goals. There is a certain (unnecessary) pressure in creating bigger and bigger standards. The bigger the standard, the longer the gaze of the hoodie guy. At some point, you kinda get fed out with all that staring and just walk away.

Sometimes, we just need a balanced interaction between our goals and our resources. Too many hoodie guys in the room will make you feel uncomfortable. The pressure will be too big. And, at some point, you’ll give up.

It’s way better to negotiate your goals every once in a while. Like in telling the hoodie guy to just give you a break. And then secretly watch him arrange invisible objects with his hands while you get on with other stuff.

Now, quit staring at this blog post. It’s embarrassing

Cash, Stubborness and Music

I had the first cassette recorder when I was around 4. It was called Jola 2, a Polish make. I know, I know, Poland and cassette recorders. But hey, it was the peak of the communist era in the Eastern Europe, in very early seventies. We were all actually eating our own dog food.

I still have a very clear recollection of both the actual device and the context which lead to its acquisition. It was a black box with the cassette tray on the left side, with the speaker on the right side (it was an ellipse shaped speaker, I remember how I peaked through the small holes of the black plastic mask and realize the form which has letting the sound out). It also had a transparent radio scale with all the frequencies painted on it. A round knob on the right was moving (by the means of some complicated plastic wheels and thin strings) a small red line on top of that scale, so you know which frequency you were listening to. It was mono, of course, in 1974 having a stereo device would have been extremely difficult. The cassette was manipulated with a line of silver buttons, on top of the tray. One of them would open the tray, while the others were helping you play, record and rewind the tape.

We bought it, (actually, my dad bought it) one summer when we were on vacation at the Black Sea. At that time, Black Sea was a popular destination among other countries in the communist block. Many people from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia were coming along. The political police wasn’t so obvious and many small things were still tolerated. Like a nudist beach in each resort, which, usually, was also the place where a little bit of black market could be seen. I don’t know why the black market was always around the nudist beaches, but this is how it was.

The Negotiation

One day we went on a walk, me and my father, to see what was going on at one of these “bissie-nissie“ (a covert term for ”business“ of course) places. I remember that I got chewing gum and I was making bubbles. My father was looking very carefully at all the stuff lined up on black teeshirts on one side of the beach. At some point, he saw a small black box and he asked for the price. He didn’t know any English, and, apparently, the seller didn’t know any English too. But they were waving around hands and fingers and they were also drawing numbers in the sand, erasing them quickly with their feet, once they were sure the other part got it right. My father asked for a short demonstration and the seller put a small thing into the black box, pushed some buttons and, miracle, the black box started to sing. I was amazed.

We went back to our place on the beach and my dad started to talk with my mom. He took a small purse (which was holding the money, I was going to find out soon) and we went back to the bissie-nissie place. This time we went straight to the seller place, which was a small room in one of the hotels lined up on the beach. They started to talk. Again, they didn’t speak any English and the seller native language was very strange (it was Polish). But they were talking like 15 minutes and apparently they were thoroughly enjoying it. They were both smiling and laughing. Twenty years later I learned that what was going on in that room was called negotiation. At some point, my dad took out the money from the purse and put it down. The color of the bills, wrapped up in a moderately big package, was blue. I remember that very clear. The seller wasn’t smiling anymore and he didn’t look quite happy. But as my father was still talking, smiling and waving his hands, the grumpiness on the face of the seller started to fade. The money package was still on the floor. After a few minutes, the seller made a funny face, something that was clearly saying ”well, what the heck“, took the money and gave the black box to my father. We walked out of the room with my very first music device. The silver top of it had a strange word, with red letters: Jola 2.

For the next few years, that music device took a very prominent place in my day to day life. Names like ABBA, Boney M and others became common in my vocabulary. I soon learned how to play a cassette, how to record music from the radio, or even from the device’s microphone, starting my own proto-podcast. I was about 5 years old. The audio cassettes were still fragile at that time and the technology of that Jola 2 wasn’t very advanced, so, every once in a while, the tape was stuck inside. I learned how to take out the tape and use a crayon to rewind the tape again inside the cassette. Of course, once the tape was wrinkled, the sound wasn’t that good anymore.

The Problem

As years went by, the Jola 2 approached its end. At some point, it just stopped working. I had no idea why. But my father took a screwdriver, took out the back side and started to look inside, with just a soldering gun and a lot of patience.

I remember my first encounter with the inside of the cassette recorder. It was so colorful inside, so full of wires and strange shapes that I just couldn’t take my eyes out of it. I stayed near my father and watched how he slowly started to dismantle it, piece by piece, wire by wire. It was obvious he didn’t have any idea about how it’s working. Other than: ”this might be the power wires, they must be the power wires. Now, where do they have to go?“. He really had no idea how the whole device was working, but he had an incredible stubborness and patience. After the first few evenings (he was still working all day and he had time for the ”cassette repairing“ only late in the evening) I just gave up and went away, finding other ways to fill my time. But my father stood there and he even started to look at the electrical scheme (a huge piece of paper filled with strange symbols).

After a few weeks, in one of those long evenings in which my father was completely immersed inside the cassette recorder (sometimes  felt like he was literally inside that box, eaten up by those colored wires and shapes, melting inside the delicate electrical engines) well, one of these nights, I heard music again. I was so surprised that I was looking outside the room. Nope, it wasn’t coming from the inside. My father actually repaired the cassette recorder. It was working again.

I was so shocked that I couldn’t ask my dad how he did it. He just did, and that was all that counted for me. Before he put on the black panel I took a final look at the inside of Jola 2. It was as colorful as I remembered it, but now there were some new things popping up. In some places there were some new wires added, while in others there was something resembling to metal stitches. It was changed, that’s for sure. But it worked again.

After Jola 2 I also had a Kashtan, a Russian magnetophone on which I listened to rock music for the first time, but that’s another story.

The Business Approach

Around the age of 30, after I was rambling around, doing pretty much nothing with my life, I decided to become a business man. I started from scratch an online publishing company, which at its peak was the third player in the market. After 10 years, I sold it for a profit.

Starting it, making it work and then growing it wasn’t easy at all. But as I grew, both in terms of experience and lucidity, I started to realize something. It was related to my first cassette recorder, of course.

First: the negotiation in that room was something extremely important. If you go out and ask every business man which is the most powerful tool in a negotiation, they will always tell you: ”cash“. Cash is king. As a four year old kid I had absolutely no idea about it, of course. But I did recall the strange discussion between my dad and the Polish seller. As I was going to find out soon, in my own business, each negotiation is the same: both parties are just talking in their own language. There is seldom a real communication between them (that’s why my father and that guy were able to understand each other, although they didn’t speak each other language). But the moment my dad put the money package on the floor, everything changed. In a few minutes, the other guy made that funny face, like ”well, what the heck“, took the money and gave us the device. In other terms, we closed the deal.

I used this, unconsciously, in many deals as a business man. To this very moment, for me, cash is the most powerful tool in a negotiation.

Second, it was the ”breaking up“ moment. The moment the cassette recorder stopped to work. As a business man, I experienced a lot of crisis. Sometimes it was a cash crisis, sometimes it was a market crisis, sometimes it was all of that and even more. And each time I had a crisis, I also applied unconsciously the same approach as my father. Took up the back panel, dive into it without any knowledge of the problem, but with an iron like desire to make it work again. Studied the causes, did a lot of trial and error, sometimes drastically modifying the inside of the music box, but, after a certain period of time, the music was on again. I think you may call this discipline and stubborness. Without it, I highly doubt that any business can advance.

The Selective Recollection

We tend to select from our past the supporting memories. I’m sure there were a lot of details to be remembered from both the negotiation part and the breaking up of the device. I’m sure I could’ve remember the hotel room paintings or the color of the carpet (since I did remember the color of money package) or even the face of the Polish seller. I’m also sure that I could remember the shape of the table at which my father sat while he tried to fix the Jola 2.

But nope. I did remember what I needed to. Which is another way of saying that we have all the resources we need. We literally have access to an endless reservoir of inspiring and supporting examples in our own lives.

Each and every situation in our lives carries the seeds of something important. Just be aware and look carefully.

I guarantee that if you do it, the music will never stop.

The Lottery Scam

You know what a “Lottery Scam” is? If not, just bear with me for a second.

The “lottery scam” is a widely used con. It usually starts with the sending of a letter, in which the winning of a prize is announced. Somehow, you, the receiver of the letter, are suddenly entitled to that prize. You just won something. Isn’t that wonderful?

After you get in contact with the sender to clarify the details of your winnings, you are then asked to pay a little bit of money. It’s not much, compared to the winnings and it makes perfect sense, too. That money is either “processing money” or “tax” that you should just pay. And it’s not that much anyway.

After you pay that small amount of money, all of a sudden, your prize either disappears, or transforms itself into something completely worthless (like coupons for extremely expensive stuff you can’t afford anyway). It’s in that moment that you realize the small amount of money you were required to pay was really important. And lost. And that you’ve been scammed.

The Life Lottery Scam

When presented like this, this scam is relatively easy to be spotted and avoided. But the bad news is that the “lottery scam” works on many other levels. In fact, it activates some very deep switches, making us vulnerable on many areas. I call it “the life lottery scam”. Here are a few examples.

Suppose you’re a man and a beautiful woman enters your life. You are incredibly attracted to her and start telling to yourself that finally something good is coming into your life. She also seems attracted to you, but not too much. Just enough to be seen as a valuable prize, as something that you must fight for.

And fighting is what you do. You fiercely begin your struggle and start spending small amounts of stuff (not talking specifically about money, it’s also time and emotional support) knowing that the value of the final prize will be so big, that will make these small investments look ridiculously small.

And spend, and spend, and spend until, at some point, tired or even broke, you want your prize. You know you won the lottery, you paid your “processing fees” and now you want the reward. Alas, you will instantly find out that the reward was never there. As in the classical lottery scam, it’s either completely nonexistent (the woman simply dumps you) or it’s just something you don’t want (like the “let’s just be friends and I told you already you shouldn’t expect more than that from me anyway” thing we all got at some point in our lives).

What happened? You traded some amounts of your life (translated into various types of support, like time, money or emotions) on something that you thought it will be an order of magnitude higher. But you forgot one essential aspect: you were never signed up to that competition. Most of the time there’s no competition at all. You thought you were in, because you wanted to, and, most of the time, that’s what you’ve been lured to believe. But in reality, there was never an authentic intention for a real bonding from the other side.

Many of the relationships I see around myself are just variations of this specific case. One of the partners is a parasite to the other, feeding with his or her money, or time or emotional support, in an endless expectation of the other partner for a bigger exchange, that, of course, never happens. That’s a very common “life lottery scam”.

But it also happens in jobs, or in professional relationships. For instance, during some conversations with your boss, you suddenly start to perceive small hints that a new promotion will be in place soon. Also, you get some signals that you’re going to be a “real candidate” for it.

What do you do? You start working your ass for it like never before, because you now know that you already won the prize. Finally, something good is happening to you at this stupid job. But when the promotion time arrives, you either learn that it was never something about a promotion, or that somebody else will get it in your place.

Again, you traded your work hours, your ideas, your input for something that you thought it’s a done deal. Only it wasn’t. Just another form of “life lottery scam”.

The Surprising Scammer

One very important difference between the standard “lottery scam” and what I call the “life lottery scam” is about the scammer. In the standard “lottery scam“ this is very easy to spot. It’s another person (sometimes a group) who just wants your money. But in the ”life lottery scam“, the scammer – and I’m sure this is gonna be a huge surprise for you – is not always outside.

Most of the time, the scammer is you. Yes, you. You project your expectations, and goals, and hopes on a certain situation, without properly assessing it. You think you won something, without really taking the time to be sure about it. You just think you did. You take your suppositions for granted and start to build on this incredibly thin foundation. And when the weight of the building is reaching a critical point, namely when you want your ”prize“, the foundation collapses.

And it’s only then that you realize that you weren’t in any competition at all. There was no prize to be won. You just traded your time on a ghost. More important, on a ghost you created yourself.

You Can’t Win A Competition You Never Signed Up For

The bottom line in this scam – and the reason for this blog post – is that you can’t win a nonexistent competition. Or one that you never signed up for. If something looks too good to be true, then it usually is to good to be true. Just ask questions until you get your answers. And, most important, start by asking questions to yourself. Investigate, uncover any half-explained information, immerse yourself totally in any interaction until you find out what you need to find out. Which usually is just the answer to a very simple question: “is this for real?”.

There is this secret desire that something will happen outside us, something that will drastically improve our existence. And this desire grows stronger and stronger over years. The less you do your work, the more you expect somebody else to do it for you.

Well, I got news: there’s nobody out there capable of doing your work. Only you.

Living Off The Grid

For the last 3 years I’ve been living completely off the grid. I don’t have a regular job anymore, my income sources are completely erratic, and my personal relationships are either collapsed or very hard to understand from a traditional perspective. I travel a lot and when I work, I set up my own hours and spaces. From the outside, I often characterize myself as a digital nomad, but on the inside, I’m just living off the grid.

It’s an incredibly powerful experience and, the more I get into it, the more I enjoy the whole process. But, as cool as it may look or feel, living off the grid is not easy. Also, it is a socially alienating lifestyle, and that’s for a very good reason: any individual living outside normal rules is intrinsically a threat to the society. Which will in turn do whatever it takes to alienate those who are not obeying its rules. And believe me, I’ve been treated like this by what we call “society” more than once.

What Does “Living Off The Grid” Means?

Before diving too much into the causes and consequences of such a lifestyle, let’s stop for a moment and try to understand what “living off the grid” means. At least for me.

First of all, it means I’m not socially enrolled as a worker. It doesn’t mean I don’t work, it just means I don’t have a regular job. I don’t fit into any socially accepted description of a job, although I do perform a lot of value creating roles. I code iPhone apps, although I’m not a programmer. I write on a popular self-improvement blog (the one you read read right now, that is), although I don’t define myself as a blogger. I wrote 5 books, though I’m not a writer.

In fact, I do have a very odd lifestyle and it took a while even to me to come to the terms with it. After jumping from one definition of what I do to another, from blogger to writer and from entrepreneur to programmer, I finally decided that I’m neither of them. And that I just live outside of a normal grid of rules. With all the good and bad stuff that may come out of this.

Second, living off the grid also affects relationships. I don’t have any of the socially accepted roles in this area, nor do I want to embark on one anymore. I’m not a husband to anyone (I’m twice divorced, as a matter of fact). I’m friend of a few, although I do have a rather eclectic taste in friends. I have short bursts of powerful social interactions, followed by long periods of solitude.

All in all, I’m not following any traditional patterns in living my life. I do not comply with a lot of socially accepted rules. Also, I’m not a nice guy, by any standards. And that’s true, although parts of my blog may have mislead you in this matter.

And yet, I live an incredibly fulfilling life. I don’t experience any of the limitations that come with following the rules. I have an unbelievably diverse field of experiences. I see a lot of places and interact with a lot of people. I create and provide value on many levels. And all this while still maintaining a decent level of comfort, enabling me at least to provide for myself and for my kids.

So, that’s what “living off the grid” means to me. Now let’s move a bit to the reasons for this lifestyle.

After giving it a lot of thought, I came to the conclusion that living off the grid has 3 main reasons: impossibility to adapt, boredom and, finally, curiosity. Let’s talk a bit about each of these and then we’ll go deeper with the implications that this lifestyle had on me for the last 3 years.

1. Lack Of Adaptation

Some of the people living outside of the grid are just unable to cope with the normal rules imposed by society. They simply can’t accept something that is imposed to them. The energy necessary to follow all the rules will simply dry them out. They’re the unadapted.

To some extent, we’re all unadapted. We do not obey to all the rules, all the time. But we do obey to a certain set that allows us to survive in the grid. We’re able to cope with the majority of rules imposed on us, and we do this for the vast majority of time. But once we reach a certain threshold, once we’re not able to fit in properly, we’re off the grid.

If there will be a scale for people living off the grid by lack of adaptation, to the most violent end of it we’ll find criminals, homeless or other “extremes” of the human nature.Their lack of adaptation is so obvious and aggressive that society simply can’t manage them in a frictionless way, and they have to be put away. On the other end of the scale are the shy, unobservable, silent people. So shy and unobservable that we don’t really know they’re there. But they are. We’re only not accepting them in our “circle”.

2. Boredom

Another cause of living off the grid is boredom. You know, when you just had enough and need a break. Everybody needs a break every once in a while. We’re designed in such a way that we need diversity, otherwise we tend to implode sooner or later.

Boredom makes rules so unfulfilling that simply obeying them became a chore in itself. Why being a socially correct individual when you don’t get any excitement back? What’s the good in being correct if you don’t get back anything funny?

And, sadly, this is true: the role of rules is to keep the larger structure going on, not to provide excitement. Rules are made to keep everything under control while excitement, by definition, it’s something completely out of control.

3 Curiosity

That’s the third, and, if I may say that, the most “healthy” reason for living off the grid. If lack of adaptation is your “child” mode and boredom is your “adult” mode, this is what I call your “experimental” mode. The playful one, curiosity in action, but doubled also by responsibility. Trying things outside the normal scope, just to see what happens. How you feel. What you can get off of it.

It’s different from lack of adaptation because you know you can cope with the rules, but now you just want to play. Deep down you know you’re fit, you just try something different.

It’s different from boredom also as it doesn’t set any expectations. In the boredom mode, you expect a thrill as result of your action. In the curiosity mode, you already have the thrill inside, regardless of the outcome of your action.

So, to finish this part, my main reasons for living off the grid are in order: curiosity, boredom and lack of adaptation. I always was almost clinically curious, I was really bored after running my own business for more than 10 years and I also have my share of not coping with the rules. Like I told you, I’m not a nice a guy.

Consequences Of Living Off The Grid

During the last 3 years many things in my life were changed. I will only talk about a few of them, namely about those who may be of interest for a broader audience.

Business

Doing business when you live off the grid is kinda difficult. You must rely only on your own efforts for branding and networking. You won’t get any help back from society: none of your diplomas will work here. It’s only what you know to do and how well are you able to sell it. If you’re good at these, you may end up pretty good. You may create an image of success and you may attract a lot of partners. In my case, I have to admit I also relied heavily on my successful history as an entrepreneur. Before living off the grid, I acted as an important society pillar: I created a big business, which in turn created jobs and generated a lot of extra value. But if I wouldn’t have such a successful history, my current position as an “off the grid” business man would have been very different.

Doing business when you live off the grid is also borderline fraud. Or, to be more correct, this is how it’s perceived by normal society. And why is that? Because you, as an outsider, claim ownership to stuff that is no longer backed up by your lifestyle. You want money, right? But money is a value that was generated inside society. You’re no longer part of that society now, you live by your own rules, so why you still need money? Of course, what’s happening in real life is that you start to align some of your “off the grid” rules to those of a normal, protective society, in order to keep the revenue area in sync, so to speak. Many of the popular icons of this lifestyle are actually doing it. Think Tim Ferris or Steve Pavlina. Although they’re prophets of a lifestyle in freedom, outside a regular job, some of their rules are making (a lot of) room to (a lot of) money.

In my experience, doing business off the grid took a lot of trial and error. The good news is that my initial model, building an online brand around a blog, was validated. This thing is actually working. The bad news is that I have to work way more than I initially thought to make this happen. And I also had to increase the speed of my experiments. If you’re reading my blog, let’s say, twice a month, you wouldn’t have notice any of these. There was very small experiments in monetization, like advertising, affiliate products and so on, each in a very narrow time window. They were taking place at a very high speed, so the regular flow of my messages wasn’t disturbed. Also, I had to invest a lot of time in building some real life connections. These efforts couldn’t be seen also on the blog, but they were part of this new lifestyle.

After 3 years I can finally testify that doing business as an off the grid individual can work in a sustainable way. But it’s not even remotely as easy as doing business in the normal society. So if you wanna take on this path, be prepared to work your arse off.

Personal Relationships

Probably the most challenging area. First of all, when I really got into this new lifestyle, my traditional relationships went bonkers. Although it worked well for a year or two, starting with the third year, my traditional marriage collapsed. It took almost 2 years to solve the whole separation related stuff and it was one of my most painful and difficult times ever. Mostly because my daughter, Bianca, had to witness a lot of unhealthy emotional reactions.

I won’t blame entirely my new lifestyle for my marriage collapse, but it was certainly an important part of it. As much as we, as men, don’t want to believe this, women are also starting partnerships with our images, not with us, as human beings. Just as we, men, are attracted by their exciting shapes or flirtatious games (which are almost never exact mirrors of their real human beings), they’re also attracted by our (often unconsciously projected) images of protection and power. In my case, being “the CEO” had a big impact on my last marriage. So big that when the “CEO” part of me was gone, wasn’t much left, at least in the eyes of my ex-wife. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no one to blame here, this is just how things were and I don’t hold any grudges to anyone.

Subsequently, starting new personal relationships when you live off the grid is equally difficult. You know, before this, every time a woman was asking me what do I do for a living, the answer was easy: “I own my own business”. From that point on, things were usually pretty straightforward. But now, I am having a real hard time trying to explain to my new acquaintances what I do for a living. In the beginning, I was taking this question seriously and started to really explain that I have a blog, and around it I built an ecosystem of products, and brands, and so on. Big mistake. Now I only tell them: “I do everything I can to avoid a 9 to 5 job”. It seems that it keeps their minds busy enough so we can move to other parts of the game.

But even if they eventually understand what I do for a living, the real bonding is very difficult, especially if the other person is very much “into the grid”. As a matter of fact, the higher is on her career path, the most difficult is for a woman to relate properly with a man off the grid. Their minds are pretty hard wired into stability and protection (usually, that’s the main reason behind their effort to climb on the career ladder anyway). So, if at any moment they will perceive (and women are extremely good at perceiving things, you know) that you’re not into this protection role anymore, and you’re just experiencing and looking for adventure, they’ll back off. Of course, there is also the other side of the coin, when your adventurous image will arouse them and made them push things even deeper, just to experience a little bit of the thrill they see inside you. But in the end, the planet represented by society is way bigger than you, and its gravity will attract them back.

There is always the possibility to meet a woman who also lives off the grid, or who has a deeper understanding of the world. In that case, things will really work out. But, as you may imagine, this is an order of magnitude more difficult to happen than a normal, society compliant relationship.

Health

This area was one of the few that benefit 100% from my lifestyle change. I will just start by saying that every time I’m asking an unknown person to tell my age just by looking at me, I invariably get “30, 33 or 30 something”. I will be 41 in 3 months.

The main reason for my huge massive health improvement was that I escaped a very tiring work routine. Getting to work day in and day out, whether you like it or not, well, that’s not a good thing. I know you know that. I’m just saying. Doing things in a forced way is not good for anyone. Unfortunately, when we sign up a social contract to have a job, we gotta follow through, otherwise the whole universe around us will collapse. And that mere thought is literally killing many of us slowly. And don’t even imagine that just because I had my own business I didn’t have to go to work day in and day out. As a matter of fact, I think I worked more than any of my employees.

Another important consequence for my health was that I also had a lot of time to experiment. One of the most interesting health experiments I did in the last 3 years was my raw food diet. I stayed raw for like 9 months. During this time I lost 12 kilos and I felt like I was 14 again (minus the hormones thing). I was sleeping 5 hours a night and felt absolutely great. But in the end I had to give up. The main reason for that: society is not ready for this lifestyle. I simply can’t be 100% raw and still have a normal social life. Right now I’m omnivorous but I also drastically changed my physical exercise routine.

And by that I come to another fortunate consequence of living off the grid: the ability to start complex 30 days challenges. I started a 30 days challenge to exercise 2 years ago. I also started a “taming monkey” experiment in which I re-learned how to run. And in the meantime I did countless of other small improvements in my physical health. Like walking instead of driving and not eating after 7 PM. And more. But there’s a very important caveat to this situation and I’m very much aware of it. None of these experiments would have taken place if I wasn’t a self-improvement obsessed freak. And by that I mean it’s much more difficult to get motivated when you’re off the grid. When we’re sharing our lives with other people, by following the same rules, much of our behavior is on auto-pilot. Most of the time, this is a bad thing. But there are situations when being part of a larger group are beneficial. Like your weekly basketball game, for instance, if you know what I mean.

Social Interactions

And with that, I’m going to the part that was most heavily changed by living off the grid: social interactions. In the beginning, the most important consequence was that I was able to filter all my social contacts based on a simple rule: whether I like them or not. You have no idea how heavily our social contacts are influenced by our jobs and how little we can influence them when we follow the rules. Once you’re off the grid and once you can make a conscious choice, your social life will be completely changed. You will meet only people you want to meet. This simple change will have enormous effects on your social life. You will simply be able to ignore people you don’t like. Because you’re not forced to deal with them anymore. Massive amounts of anger and rejection won’t be triggered at all. Instead, your emotional life will start to heal. At some point, you will grow so strong that you will not need this filter anymore. You will be able to deal with all kind of people the same way you deal only with people that you used to like. And that’s huge. It’s an internal transformation that will literally catapult your social life. As of today, I have no difficulty whatsoever to normally relate with basically anyone. And I mean anyone.

Also, another important consequence was that I started to work from home. For the last 10 years I had an office. All that was “work” was happening in that place and in that place only. But after I sold my company I didn’t want an office anymore. So all my work started to happen at home. As surprising as it may seem, this was one of the most effective disciplinary measures I ever took. Working from home, instead of making me a lazy couch potato, transformed me into a productivity freak. There were also a lot of other lessons I learned from this.

But probably the most important thing that happened to me on the social level was traveling. It may sound strange to you but I never left my country until I was 35. And since 37, when I sold my company I went over the world and back 2 times. I started a company in New Zealand (and thinking to start one in US too). I went to Asia, from Thailand to Japan. I gambled in Vegas, ate cooked rice in Hong Kong and croissants in Paris. Visited half of Europe and also crossed my natal country, Romania, in any conceivable way. I learned how to fly in Christchurch and also made my first tattoo. I simply can’t imagine myself being capable to have all these experiences by living a socially accepted lifestyle. Like having a regular job and so on. If there is one, I simply cannot see it, so I’d greatly appreciate any insights in the comments.

The Most Important Lessons From Living Off The Grid

Living off the grid is cool. It’s also pretty difficult, as you already saw. But there is also one thing that proved to be the most important of all. A thing so simple and yet so powerful. A thing that made me realize that I can really keep this lifestyle for as long as I want to, provided I won’t forget it.

Without further ado, here it is: living off the grid doesn’t have any positive outcome if the grid doesn’t take something back of the outside experiments. In other words, if you’re living off the grid for yourself, you are not improving anyone’s life. In fact, you’re not improving your life either. You may say that, as a result of your actions, you’ll be a different person once you get back to the grid. But, since the grid hasn’t changed at all as a result of your absence, your newly acquired abilities or skills are useless.

So, if you really want to live off the grid, remember to give back. Stop every once in a while, look back and see what you can share with others that will make the grid a better place. Start telling your stories, for instance. Or start teaching others, Or just start providing some service you learned on your off the grid experience.

In my case, I’m giving back on this very blog more than 500 self-improvement articles. All free of charge. Just browse and read at your leisure. Also, I wrote 5 books and created an iOS productivity app. All these are some of my ways to give back to the grid.

Because I have no intention to get back there soon. It’s way too cool out here.

Even if it gets really tough at times.

Running Update (Taming Monkey Number 6)

It’s the middle of the month today and it looks like a fine time to make a short recap of my taming monkey number 5 progress. If you don’t know what this taming monkey thing is, just go and read the first post. Basically, it’s like a monthly challenge which replaced my new year resolutions. The measurable part is that I decided to run at least 15 days in June.

The Data

Until today, I ran 10 days out of 15. Looks like, at least from the “measurable“ point of view, I’ll make it. From where I am right now, doing it for 5 more days seems rather easy. But if I learned something since I started this ”taming monkey” challenge, is that each and every monkey had some very unexpected effects.

The first and the most important one is that I want to run each and every day. But I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself. Let’s stick to the data:

BTW, if you’re wondering how I pulled those nifty tabs out, you gotta check out WPSumo, the wordpress framework that powers my blog. I did those tabs without a single line of code .

Also, if you’re wondering how was I able to extract such a detailed data, the answer is rather simple: I’m using Nike+ GPS, an iPhone app which proved to be really helpful. It tracks the total time per workout, the number of burned calories (based on my actual body measurements) and it also lets me input other details. Some of these are presets which are rather useless (it was rainy or sunny?) while others are pretty interesting, like my mood and the type of track, including a free form text field where I usually input all my running time.

The Approach

I decided to do it in the morning, because I can have a better control of my time in the morning. The evenings are usually dedicated to business meetings (yes, I’m still a digital nomad and I do have strange working hours) or to various social events, like getting out with friends or going to the movies.

I started to run in very short shots. In the beginning, I didn’t run for more than 300 meters in one shot. After this, 300 meters of power walking. Then I gradually started to increase the distances. I crossed the 1 kilometer limit in my seventh workout.

So far, I had only 3 main issues:

1. Breathing

It was rather difficult to find my own pace, at least in the beginning. Either I did it too fast and almost hyperventilated myself, or I was doing it not deep enough, thus the need to compensate every 4 or 5 breathes with a deeper one. Also, even the weather was absolutely fine, my throat seemed to become irritated if I was keeping an accelerated breathing pace for more than 4-5 minutes.

As I advanced and I kept putting myself there, I slowly found a little bit of balance. Now I can breathe normally for the first 3-4 minutes and my throat only gets irritated after 20 minutes. I guess I just have to keep pushing.

2. Ankle Pain

Around my 7th workout my right ankle kinda decided to have a life of its own. Like starting to hurt, for instance. It wasn’t a severe injury, but enough to feel it and affect my running balance and speed. It started rather mildly but aggravated in the last two workouts, up to the point that I decided to treat it with some BenGay. So far it’s under control, but I don’t know for how long.

I have a little bit of a history with my right ankle. I got it injured pretty much every year in the last 4 years (around the same time of the year, go figure) and it was always because I kept pushing on something that I wasn’t quite ready for. I suspect that there might be other reasons involved, not only physical. That’s why I decided to be proactive about it and don’t let it go out of control.

3. Will And Focus

But the most important issue was focus and, subsequently, will. Each time I started to run, my visual field was modified. I was moving, of course, and faster than I was used to. So I had to focus more on what I was looking at. My world was basically shaking around. You know the feeling.

The problem was that I had to find some extra resources to alleviate this problem. Like finding a little bit of smoothness around me. I guess I was trying to unconsciously do what a digital camera stabilizer is doing.

Around my fifth workout things got under control with this one too. I was able to separate my will from my perception. My lungs were hurting, my throat was irritated, my muscle legs and my right ankle were in pain but, somehow, I was outside of all this. My will was like an observer which was controlling this pile of muscle and bones and kept commanding to it: “two hundreds meters more, you can do it”. And indeed, those extra 200 meters were the ones that were the most important in the whole workout.

But even after I managed to control my will on a regular basis, some days are still better than others.

Running Effects

I lost some weight (didn’t measure that so far but I can see it from my outfits, which got larger), I have a better mood throughout the day, I sleep better (and far more less than usual, sometimes just a few hours per night) and I kinda have a much clearer approach on things. Like I don’t panic much (I didn’t panic before either, but some anxiety was always at the table) and find it easier to communicate my point of view.

Some of these workouts were scheduled while one of my kids were spending the day with me. If it was Victor, my 13 year old son, I took him with me. He actually seemed to enjoy this activity. At least for a while. If it was Bianca, my 5 year old daughter, I took her with me too and left her play with her grand mother until I finished my workout. Then we got together and played some more.

I know that I’m not yet stabilized, so to speak. My metabolism is still trying to adjust to this change. And it is a rather drastic change. But as I advance in this new direction, I can see the progress. And that’s what I’m after, in the end.

Taming Monkey Feedback

I’ve been talking to a number of people about this whole “taming monkey” challenge. Like real people, not over the internet. Some of them were friends, other just casual social interactions. All of them seemed surprised.

Some of them are still using new year resolutions. Some of them are not into this goal setting thing at all. But all of them are understanding the whole concept very clearly. Each and everyone has an underdeveloped part of himself that still creates some blocks. Each and everyone has some promises that he or she never lived up to. And each and every one of them are accepting the fact that they have to do something about this.

So, from where I am right now, I think I know what my next book will be about. At least one of them, for sure. A guide for taming your inner monkeys. Based on a real, 12 months long experience.

But then again, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m only in the sixth month.

5 Good Reasons To Share Your Goals. And One Powerful Reason Not To

Goals are great. They are like lights on your path, marking with clarity various milestones one your journey. And goal setting, believe me, is an art. The art of properly setting course to your closest destination, making the best of your resources and with the greatest chances of success.

One of the most important chapters in any goal setting book would be about sharing. About making your goals visible. Making them public, verifiable, open. And since this is a very important part of the whole goal setting artistry, let’s talk about 5 reasons you should share your goals (once you have them clearly defined, of course). But I’ll also talk (at the end, of course, so don’t peek) about one reason you shouldn’t do this. Confused? Good. Because that will – hopefully – make you read on.

Let’s go.

1. Accountability

Sharing your goals helps big time with this. If you’re telling to a friend: “you know what, I will travel to Thailand this summer”, you can bet that the next time you see each other, he’ll ask: “hey, buddy, how’s your trip to Thailand going?”. Or something along those lines.

Accountability is a measure of your “stick-to-it-ness“ (and please do not complain that this is not a word, I had enough from my spell checker already). So, if you bring other people in your goal picture, you can bet that your overall involvement in that project will be considerably higher.

2. Clarity

Every time you tell the world about some of your goals, you modify them. You take something from a discussion, something from another one, until, out of this ping-pong game of sharing your plans back and forth, your goal will emerge in a new form. Most of the time, this form will be a much clearer one.

In fact, many of our goals are shaped by our interactions, by our conversations or by our encounters. So, the more we’re out there, sharing our visions and implementing our plans, the more those visions and plans are getting clearer, bigger and more structured.

3. Progress Measurement

Progress measurement is not really about being accountable, but more about metrics. As you get closer to your goal, you’d want to measure how long do you have until you reach it. That information can be precious in many contexts. For instance, you may want to set up a new goal or to evaluate the resources you already used.

And sharing your goals will make progress measurement easier. Sometimes you may even deliberately use your peers as guides or supervisors. When you want to give up smoking, for instance. Ask them to cheer you every day you didn’t smoke or every week.

4. Motivation

Suppose you want to visit Italy this summer. And you start telling people about your goal. At some point, something interesting will happen. The mere fact that you tell to somebody else, will act like an incentive. It’s not about accountability, but about being pumped up and ready to act.

There are many ways of motivation, of course, some of them better than others. I think it’s ok to “use” other people like an enhancer of your own willpower, as long as you don’t become too dependent on these “help links”.

5. Connection

Sharing your goals with like minded people may help you grow your social circle. Goals aside, the mere fact that you take the time to share something, to give details, to bring updates and keep in touch with other people, all these tiny actions will create a connection.

And connection, as opposed to competition, is always a better way to advance. And if not better, at least not as tiresome as fighting each and every day for the first place.

***

But, as important as it may be, sharing goals can go just as far in helping you reaching them. In other words, there is a limit over which you shouldn’t trespass.

I don’t know if you’re going to find this in any goal setting book, but I know for sure it comes from a real life experience. My real life experience. And it’s about obfuscating your goals. Hiding them. Keeping them close to your heart, but far from the curious eyes.

Sometimes, in certain circumstances, the best way to go is to hide what you really want from anyone else, except you. And here’s why:

They Don’t Know Shit About You

Yeap, that’s the reason. Because, the moment you take out your goal, the moment you’re sharing it with the whole world, you create a loop. People will start to hold you accountable, (and, most of the time, that’s a good thing, as we saw right from the point one above). But it’s a good thing only to some extent. If you reach the goal, they’ll cheer at you. If you don’t, they’ll point fingers at you. Either way, you’re gonna create a reaction.

And that reaction is based not on who you are, but on what you want to do. Even more than that, the reaction is based on what other people perceive from what you want to do. And here’s how, based on just some assumptions and affirmations, they’ll start seeing in you a person that you’re certainly not. They will only see some stuff that has been done, in fact, not even a person.

But, in your attempt to really stick to your path, you take those cheers or fingers pointed at you quite seriously. You start to believe them. If you succeed, you’re a star, because they cheer at you. If you fail, you’re a loser, because they point fingers at you.

Now you see it? As important as it may be for your accountability, clarity and so on and so forth, this sharing thing may be handled with care. And you know why?

Because the most important person in the world is you. The universe turns round and round because of you. Each person that enters into your life, each achievement, each tiny thing you learn, all these are about you. There’s a whole world inside you, and what you do, feel and create in the outside world is a mirror of this inner world. And all your goals are part of you, not of them. You know better than anyone else what you should do with your life. Not your mother, not your wife, not some bright but shallow self-improvement guru, not me, the author of this blog.

So, if you found something important, really important, something that will define your entire life, some incredibly rewarding goal, keep it to yourself. Grow it like you grow a plant, with care and attention.

Follow this inner light each and every morning, hope that it will be there each and every day and, the moment you finally reach it, just breathe.

How To Catch A Bee

When I was a kid, one of my favorite distractions was catching bees. Before jumping to any conclusions, let me give you a little bit of the context around this sentence.

I grew up in a communist country, in a small city near the mountains. You didn’t have much to do in a small city from Romania, especially under a communist regime. All kids had to go to the same state kindergarten because their parents didn’t have any time to spend with them. And that was because they had to be away all day to build socialism, of course.

Although a very rough place to be for a kid, with not much affection or tenderness around, (not to mention the strict discipline and the terror of not saying what you want, by fear of the political police) the communist kindergarten helped me a lot. I’m sure that my will to become self-supported immediately after high-school had a lot to do with that. Also, my ability to survive in difficult conditions must have been built up during those years. But I’m getting a little bit ahead here. Let’s get back to our bees.

Playing Around

So, under this rather gray background, any activity that stood up as being different, or at least colorful, left a very deep mark. Catching bees was one of these activities.

We used to take an empty plastic tube, the ones that were used to keep small pills of C vitamin, took out the small plastic top (the tube was closed by applying a little bit of pressure on it) did a small hole in the top and then went out hunting.

The outside playgrounds on the state kindergarten were surrounded by small bushes. I suppose the initial intention was to have a “live fence” around the playgrounds, but they were just bushes. We were slowly approaching those bushes, sensing the vibration of hundreds of small insects, slowly and gently, trying to spot a bee.

When we spotted it, we were carefully approaching from one part the top and from the other part the tube, trying to catch the bee in the middle, right into the tube.

If our moves were smooth, if we were close enough, if we were fast enough and, of course, lucky enough, every once in a while we ended up with a bee caught in our small vitamin C tube.

That moment was magic. I still remember the thrill of it. That small insect was caught only by our actions. We did this. I couldn’t find any comparison for that. I know it sounds dumb, but in our little grey universe, that dumb activity was the only way to prove our assertiveness. And, as incredible as it may sound, our capacity of enjoying life.

Releasing The Bee

We weren’t into killing insects. Hence the small hole in the tube, to keep the air flowing in. We were into catching up something difficult to catch. And potentially dangerous.

The bees were buzzing inside the tubes for a few minutes, just enough for us to show them up to our colleagues. Oh, the moments we were finding out someone did catch a bee. The sudden aggregation of a human circle around you, the joy and admiration on the childish faces, the yelling and the joy. For milliseconds each bee catcher became a local hero.

After that, the bee had to be released back into the open. Releasing the bee was a very important part of the game. You couldn’t hold a bee forever in your vitamin C tube. You just couldn’t do this, it was against the rules. You had to go out and catch a new bee every day.

There were some kids who wouldn’t obey that rule. They were carrying their bees in their vitamin C tubes each and every day. In all honesty, those kids weren’t very popular. As a matter of fact, we used to make fun of them. “Is that the 100 year old bee in your tube?”. “Still sleeping together?”. “Are you married already?” Eventually, they had to release their bees too and get back into the game.

The Adult Perspective

One day, our parents spotted this game.

“What are you doing there kids?”, they asked.

“We are catching bees”, we answered.

“Oh, I see that, but what is the benefit of this game? Are you building a house for those bees?”

“Nope, we’re just catching bees.”

“Are you killing the bees? Oh, you want to clean the fence from insects?”

“Nope, we’re just playing.”

After we went like this for like ten minutes, we realized that they just couldn’t understand the game. For them, that bee had to have a meaning. Do something with it. Use it somehow.

For us, just catching the bee and releasing it back into the open was enough.

Oh, the thrill when someone was catching a big one! The joy on our faces and then the smooth and necessary releasing of the bee back into the open. Those were magic moments. Did I say that already? Yes, I did. But that’s ok.

Today

I still catch bees these days. I still do things only for the thrill of it, without any immediate benefit. Or specific usage.

I support my friends if I can. I support other people if I can. I set up some goal and then reach it and then forget about it.

I make insane amounts of money and then release it back into the open, letting myself broke. And start again. And again.

Many of my friends don’t understand this. To be honest, I don’t really care. I may listen to their concerns, because, well, we’re friends, and that’s what friends are doing. But when it comes to that question: “So, you really don’t regret letting that bee fly away?”, I always answer “Nope, not a bit”.

Because I still have that thrill inside. I have my eagerness to pursue a new goal, I have the ability to reach it and the power to let it go after that.

Catching bees and releasing them back, as simple and dumb as it may seem, helped me not only to keep my mental health, but to act and react like any human being on this planet should.

Like a child.

7 Things To Do When The Shit Hits The Fan

I know you’ve been through this, we’ve all been. Minding your own business, peacefully, things going on smoothly and then, out of nothing, something incredibly bad happens. The shit hits the fan. Of course, I’m not talking about the physical phenomenon (nor do I advise you to try to replicate that exact setup). I’m talking about “unpredictable” crisis. Situations that turns really bad without any perceivable warning. We’ll see later on that the “unpredictable” factor is not so unpredictable.

Well, since I’ve been through something that may qualify as a shit storm during the last week, I thought it would be useful to share some of my experiences, as well as some of the ways in which I eventually coped with the disaster.

The Story

One of things I really enjoy doing is writing iPhone apps. And lately, writing iPad apps. During the last 3 months I developed an iPad version of one of my iPhone apps, iAdd. I will skip the details about what iAdd does, just follow the link if you want to know more. I will just let you know that iAdd is a universal app, which means you download it only once but it will work on both your iPhone and your iPad (with a different interface, of course).

It was a really slow and daunting process. I think I changed the workflow at least 5 or 6 times. Writing a few days., then realizing it’s not going to work and starting over. Writing user interfaces is kinda difficult, you know. To make a long story short, after countless hours of getting my fingers dirty in the hidden intricacies of Objective C and iPad user interface elements, I finally came up with something I liked.

In this process, the iPhone app had to be touched a few times. A few navigation patterns had to be modified. And  adding a little bit of this here and taking out a little bit of that from there. Fact is that after 100 days of development, the initial app, the one that was currently on sale on AppStore, was completely modified.

Feeling under the pressure of making it happen, without proper testing and with an incredible feeling of faith that everything is going to be just fine, I finally submitted the app. Version 1.3, which was supposed to be most glorious one to date. I really like the iPad interface I came up with, seriously.

The review process took about 4-5 days. I finally received the email stating that my app “is in review” and then, about 10 hours later, the email stating that my app is live on the AppStore. I think it was 3:30 AM last Friday. I felt a fantastic relief that my app was finally live and went to sleep as usual. Only half an hour later, I heard another email (I keep my iPhone close when I sleep, to hear the morning alarm, and when I get an email from certain important sources, the iPhone rings). Sleepy but relaxed, I looked at the email.

The next second, my relaxation went away. And also my sleep. It was an email from an unhappy customer, who just bought my app and who was experiencing a crash. A crash means the app is just going away when it isn supposed to. A crash is a bad thing. Scratch that. A crash is the worst thing that may happen to your app. In just a few minutes I received another email from another customer, who was experiencing a similar problem.

In just a few hours I was about to find out that my app was practically unusable.

What happened?

Well, a mix of bad luck, tiredness and just plain strange stuff. The app submitted was simply not working and it took me a few hours to find out why. Some parts were not properly tested, while others were just left away, not included in the latest build, because… Well, I don’t know why. I simply can’t explain how the app was submitted in that form, but that was the blunt reality.

In other words, the shit was on the fan already.

To make things really sad, you gotta know that you can’t fix things in the AppStore the moment you realize something is wrong. It takes days for your app to be reviewed again.

What About Now?

As I already told you, that happened last Friday, in the morning. It’s Wednesday now and for the last 4-5 days, I was under an incredible amount of pressure. As of today, the first fix of iAdd was approved and it’s live on the AppStore, iAdd version 1.3.1. But meanwhile I discovered another round of crashes which are fixed in the next version, namely 1.3.2. Which was just submitted to the AppStore, a couple of hours ago.

Hopefully, iAdd 1.3.2 will be the last version to see crashes. But, based on my recent experience, anything can happen. Seriously, I do hope there won’t be any more crashes starting from 1.3.2.

What follows is an attempt to formalize my experience in fighting an “unpredictable” situation of crisis, just like the one I just left behind.

1. Assess, Don’t Stress

It’s very easy to give in to panic when something goes wrong. Instead, I focused on what exactly happened. And what happened proved to be a little less worrying than I thought. For starters, there were a few additions that were still working, That was a good thing. Next, I already knew how to fix the crashes. Yes, I had a number of unhappy customers. And they were perfectly right.

But as I dived into the analysis process, something very interesting happened. The adrenaline rush was not directed to a “fight or flight” situation anymore. When you’re facing a crisis, your reactions are following only two patterns: fight (or try to prove that my customers were wrong, in my case) or flight (leave things as they were, cutting out the iPhone business for ever from my business stream).

Either way, we’re talking about stress. And stress, as dangerous as it may be, it does have this incredible access to energy. It can literally release (or block) tons of energy. Well, this stress energy, this adrenaline rush was transformed into working energy. In just a few hours I was able to fix the most annoying crashes and do a resubmit. And, luckily for me, it took only 3 days for Apple to approve it.

2. Decide So It Won’t Collide

Moments after I realized what went wrong, I started to plan. What needs to be done ASAP? What can I do now? What is the time frame available? After I gathered all the data, I started to play with decisions. Some of the things I knew I have to fix weren’t so visible (they weren’t producing crashes, anyway). I decided to leave them for the next version and focus on what I could do to fix the crashes.

Our ability to identify and follow up decisions during a crisis is drastically affected. But despite that, it’s vital to step back and choose. Even in a very dangerous situation we have many more options than the “fight or flight”. There is this urge to run away from the place of the crisis, hoping that a change in context will also change the facts. Unless a building is crashing on you, running away is never the best option.

Avoidance won’t work either. It takes a while to turn your face to the fan and take all the shit upfront. But it’s the only viable solution. Only if you identify the direction you can start to prepare the escape. If you don’t stay there, if you don’t face the crisis and its causes, you won’t be able to stop it. You may get away for a while if you run away, but each time you’ll get back to that place, there may be a different day, but you’ll be facing the same old shit.

3. Communicate

Nothing is happening just by itself. And there isn’t such a thing like a “black box” of our life events, something completely unaccessible. Information is there, reach to it. Each time you face a crisis, try to communicate. The moment I got the first emails from my unhappy customers, I started to answer. Acknowledging the situation, apologizing, but… at the same time trying to get as much intel as I could.

As I following up to the angry emails I realized something very interesting. Yes, the app was behaving badly. Yes, there were a lot of frustration. But at the same time I realized that… my customers were actually relaying on my app for their daily activity (iAdd is time and task planner, to put it mildly). So, my app was important. Not to mention that my immediate answers were gaining big time on the “support” size of the whole experience. People were actually appreciating the fact that I was answering instantly and that was somehow lowering their frustration. Or so they said to me .

Every crisis can reveal something about you (or the others) that you weren’t aware of. As long as you stay on track and communicate. Don’t isolate in a “I know better” pattern. If there are other persons involved in your crisis, try to understand their point of view too.

4. Rebuild Carefully

After I finished the first 3 steps, I started to write code. This time, in a completely different manner than before. The worse had already happened. So why worry now? I just sat carefully, testing each feature 3-4 times with different data, until somehow, the whole app started to get a different consistence.

The emphasis here is on “carefully” not so much on “rebuild”. You gotta rebuild anyway, but just do it very carefully. It’s very important to realize that you did as much harm as you could already. No need to augment on that. Just pay close attention to what you’re doing and things will start to straighten up.

Again, when we’re under pressure, we have this huge urge to speed up. Well, speed up, if you have to, but do it carefully. You don’t want to make another mistake and then another one and then another one. Accept the current disaster and focus on avoiding the next potential one.

5. Leverage

After I realized I’m facing a real customer crisis, I started to look around. I started to manage the process. And I’m not talking about assessing, deciding and writing code. I also started to write blog posts on the iAdd official blog, explaining what’s going on. It wasn’t only about fixing some bugs. It was also about informing other people.

After I wrote the blog posts, the number of messages decreased. People were visiting the blog, were reading the posts and apparently they were getting the answers they were looking for. They were not into bullying me, the author, they were just trying to understand what’s going on.

Using as many tools as you can get a hold of is incredibly useful in time of crisis. If a wheel on the car explodes, try to stay on track with the remaining three, don’t stop. Leveraging means reaching out to whatever you have, own or can use in order to smooth the crisis. And that stands true for any type of crisis.

6. Keep Your Fingers Crossed

I bet you didn’t see that coming. Well, neither do I. But after I did everything that was to be done, after I submitted the app, responded to customers and wrote blog posts, I realized that’s it. I did all I could do. Everything more would have been a waste of energy.

So I just sat back and tried to relax. And kept my fingers crossed. Fact is you never know if something is going to work or not. You can only hope. Keeping your fingers crossed is a way of “giving yourself in”. I did everything, now let’s see what happens.

In any crisis, there is so much you can do. Anything over that level simply won’t matter.

7.  Learn

Write down what happened. Well, not necessarily in the form of 7 items list blog post, like I did, but do write it down. See where was the glitch. And then repeat it. Rewind in your mind all the phases of this unfortunate crisis. That’s how you can prevent it later on. That’s where the “unpredictable” I was talking about in the beginning of this post is turning into “obvious”.

We learn from mistakes, not from successes. We remember the dangerous and hurtful events much better than the happy events. I guess it’s wired into our survivals patterns. We do this in order to avoid a similarly dangerous situation.

Or at least that’s how you can cope better with it next time the shit hits the fan again.

Finding Your Inner Monkey

Following up my first post in 2011, in which I declared that all I want in 2011 is to tame twelve monkeys, a lot of friends or blog readers seemed to really pick up this notion. I received a lot of wishes in the form of “good luck with your monkeys” or something along those lines. People seemed to be nicely impressed with this approach.

But reading between the lines I realized that there might be a little bit of confusion surrounding this. As a matter of fact, I think there is a lot of confusion. People seem to think this is something rather funny. Well, it’s not something funny. It’s not like going to zoo on a Sunday afternoon. It’s a twelve months long challenge! Maybe using the word “monkey” made everybody think I’m just fooling around.

Well, I’m not. So I decided to write a separate blog post on this topic.

What Is A “Monkey”

An inner “monkey” is a drastically undeveloped part of yourself. You may think at it like a long term goal which was never attained. Or like a deeply buried dream you never dared to dream until the end. Or something you declared to yourself you’re going to follow up through, but never did.

A “monkey” is a goal frozen in its evolution. Like a genome which was never able to reach the human form. It was only strong enough to mimic its human shape but at the core level it’s just an unfinished project.

That’s the first part of a “monkey”. It’s about its lack of completion and unfinished nature. But there is more about it.

There is also this part which is wild and playful. Whenever you start dreaming at something you’re in a playful state. You don’t have constraints or deadlines. You’re just projecting a desired reality. You’re playing. Like a monkey jumping from one tree to another.

This wild nature of a monkey is something precious. In the first stages of any dream we have we’re enthusiastic and playful. Just like a monkey jumping around. That part is somehow lost until we eventually finish the project. Somewhere along the way we forget how to dream. We loose our initial enthusiasm. We may reach the human stage, but our inner “child” is dead.

Why Taming A “Monkey”

And here’s where my approach is different. I don’t want goals. Those goals will kill the initial playful phase. Will take away the enthusiasm. I don’t want to transform that monkey into a human being. All I want is to tame it. To make that monkey obey my wishes and commands. But at the same time to keep its playful nature and to fool around with it, if this is what I want. It’s like having a pet. A monkey pet.

Goals are ok. Reaching goals is a very fulfilling thing to do. I myself wrote dozens of posts on goal reaching. But taming monkeys is something completely different. It’s an attempt to complete and refine that underdeveloped part of yourself, but at the same time to keep its wild, playful and enthusiastic nature.

How To Identify A “Monkey”

Theory is nice, but let’s get practical. How to identify a monkey? Well, this is what I use. It’s just a list of 5 simple questions.

1. Is It Something That Is Dragging Around For A Long Time?

For instance, you cannot say you’re having a “monkey” if you just started a new, exciting project. That’s not a monkey because it’s too “young”. A monkey should have a long evolution within yourself.

2. Is It Something Inspiring?

It cannot be close to your real nature if it’s not inspiring you. Take the time to think at it for a while. If it’s a very precious dream you had, something that is making you smile when you think at it, then you’re on.

3. Is It Something That You’re Afraid To Take Action On?

Sometimes, those unfinished parts of ourselves seem to be suspended in a realm of non activity. It’s like you’re afraid to take action on it because it will break the pleasure of just dreaming about it. Well, if that’s the case, you got yourself a monkey.

4. Is It Something Personal?

It’s gotta be personal. It’s gotta be something that is somehow inside of you. Originated within your deepest, most personal layer. If it’s just a task you’re avoiding to do at your job, well, that’s not a monkey. It’s plain ol’ procrastination.

5. Is It Something That You’ll Still Enjoy Having After You’ll “Finish” It?

Remember that you’re going to manage that monkey. If it’s just something you want “now” and forget about it, well, this is not a “monkey”. It’s just a desire. But if you know you’ll enjoy having and playing with that thing, well, you got yourself a monkey.

How To Tame A Monkey

This paragraph is a work in progress. I don’t know now how to tame a monkey (yet) because I just started. All I know is that this month’s “monkey” is an app I wanted to publish on the AppStore for a long time.

I think there are at least 6 months since I decided I will publish it, but didn’t write a single line of code. So yes, question #1, “is it dragging for a long time”, the answer is “yes”. Also, it’s something that is very inspiring for me. It’s an app that will allow people to connect to each other in a completely new way (that was question #2).

For some reason, I was always afraid to take action on it. Because, at the technical level, there were some black spots on my knowledge map. And I was afraid to explore those spots. Question #3, of course.

As for questions #4 and #5, you can bet it’s a personal thing and it’s also something that I will have to manage for at least one year, if not more. So, my monkey was completely identified.

Back to the taming. I’m working on it and the monkey is starting to respond to some commands. But we’re far from having a complete response. I will update my status in a few days.

Also, the good thing is that I have a wonderful time doing it. This is a very playful monkey.

Taming Twelve Monkeys

This is my first post for 2011. It’s also the post that marks an entire new approach to my blog. And, generally speaking, to my life.

2010 was a very difficult year for me. If you’ve read my (already traditional) end year list about the things I did in 2010, you already know that. I had to face some of the most powerful challenges in my entire life. On all levels: personal relationships (ended my second marriage), financial (had to overcome some of the most profound and unexpected money problems I ever had), and also career (my non-compete agreement after selling my company in 2008 ended last year). But that is already in the past.

Having a lot of free time in the last few days, I reread some of my articles on this blog. I relived some of the situations I’ve been through. And, of course, experienced again the same type of emotions.

At some point, I just felt like I had enough. Like it was too much whining. Yes, it was difficult, but whining is not in my nature. Never was. And never will be. Letting off some steam, even in this highly camouflaged form of some methaphoric blog posts, is acceptable. But remaining in the same space of complaining is not. At least for me.

So, things are going to change around here. Less whining and more action. But even this action will be very different from what you’d expect from a New Year goals post. Just read on.

Twelve Monkeys

I’m not a big fan of New Year goals. I’m a huge fan of goals, but not during this particular time of the year. And that comes from a long experience of failing at New Year goals. Yeap, I epically blundered almost every time I made a list of things I want (or like, or dislike, or intend to change) around this time of the year.

So, as much as “counter hype” this will sound, I decided to ditch them altogether. No more New Year goals for me.

No more measurable improvements in my financial situation.

No more plans for a fulfilling personal relationship.

No more detailed action lists.

No more milestones for my businesses.

Nothing. Nada. Zero.

Instead, all I want from 2011 is to tame twelve monkeys.

What Monkeys?

Yeap, I saw that coming.  Good question.

First of all, yes, it’s a metaphor. Of course. I don’t intend to tame real monkeys.

And second, by “monkey” I understand a complete, easily describable, distinct and also, wild (as in an uncontrollable, erratic) situation about my life that will have to change.

We all have “monkeys” inside us. We all have these impulses, these habits or these unexplainable approaches that are making us behave below our true potential. A monkey is an underdeveloped part of myself which seems almost ok from the outside, but which isn’t. A part which mimics some human shapes, gestures or goals, but which never really reaches to them. Like a potential human being, stopped in the very process of evolution. You know, just monkeying around…

I find those monkeys highly uncomfortable. Because, as cute as they may be, they’re still monkeys. They’re still sketches of what I should be. Blueprints with just enough plaster on them to make them look real. Empty carcasses trying to fool everybody around that they’re the real thing. Annoying. Very annoying.

So I decided to tame them. To put them through some really tough times. Teach them to do stuff. Made them obey my own will.

That’s all I want from 2011.

Now you may somehow understand what I want, but you lack a clear image. In other words, you want some examples. Hang on in there, there will be some examples later on this post and they will also be as detailed as possible.

But don’t hold your breath. There won’t be high concepts or deep philosophical debates here. Those monkeys, those loose ends, are merely unfinished businesses. Promises I made to myself, but never lived up to them. And they are also coming from an incredible diverse field. There will be many areas in which those monkeys are going to show up. Business, social relationships, travels, to name a few that I already know.

Why Twelve Monkeys?

Because there are 12 months, of course. By the end of the year I’d like to have no more than 12 monkeys tamed. I think it’s a worthy enough challenge. I’ll consider myself happy if at the end of the year I will be able to put my finger on 12 monkeys from my life and be absolutely certain that I tamed them.

But even if there are exactly 12 monkeys, I don’t expect the taming to take only one month per monkey. Some months may fit in, one monkey per month, some may not. I may as well start on many monkeys at the same time, and follow through to see which one will be tamed first.

What I will share on this blog will be one monkey per month, though. The monkey of the month, so to speak.

I will also share in advance some of the monkeys I intend to tame, just to give you an idea about what this is going to be.

Managing Tamed Monkeys

This is one thing that I learned in my 10+ years of experience in the business world. Every project you launch must be managed afterwords. Getting out there, finishing your idea, being in the market, well, that’s just a fraction of the whole work. Once you’re outside with your new project, you’re going to manage it. Otherwise, it will die. You’ll have to monitor its progress, its behavior, its results to see of you’re on the right track.

The same thing with “monkeys”. I know there will be a lot of work after I’ll finish the taming, just to be sure the monkey won’t slip back to the same state, than it will be with the taming process itself. So, month by month, there will be a lot of managing time adding up, as more “monkeys” will be tamed.

Also, I don’t know from the start which monkey is assigned to what month. Or, to be more precise, I don’t know all the monkeys for all the months. I only know there will be twelve monkeys for the whole year. As a matter of fact, I don’t even know all the monkeys. Right now I have only 3 monkeys defined, but I know I’ll find the remaining 9 in no time.

So I’ll be picking the monkeys one by one, as time will unfold (the first three are already picked). I will announce them on the blog, of course. I will also update regularly on the progress. I am very aware of the fact that I may fail at taming some monkeys. That will be shared too, along with the reasons (as much as I will be able to tell) of the failure.

Wanna Monkey Around With Me?

The reason I’m sharing this in such a detail is because I wan you to join me. From my experience, when you have two or more people sharing and updating progress on some specific goal, things will accelerate tremendously. I still don’t know why, but I do know it just happens like this.

If you feel like you have your own “monkeys” to be tamed, join in and let’s start together. This time is as good as any other time. Don’t think at something complicated or too time consuming. As I said, this isn’t supposed to be philosophical, or spectacular. Just share it in the comments, write about it on your blog, if you have one, or just put it out in your own social media circle. Again, if you have one.

But there’s nothing compulsory about this sharing,  of course. You can start taming your monkeys without telling anyone.

The First Three Monkeys

I already picked the 3 monkeys that I will start working on. Here they are, in the intended order:

January: Get that app on the AppStore. What app? Oh, I forgot you don’t know my monkeys. It’s just this app that I’m playing with it in my mind for a few months now, and somehow, I’m not able to put it out there. It keeps slipping through my fingers, literally. I even have the name for it, but I don’t have anything written. I won’t share the name of it, instead, I will pick a code name. From now on, the app will be known, until it gets approved in the AppStore, as “33 steps”.

February: Put the New Zealand company on the track. It’s already there, functioning and making some money, but it’s not a sustainable process. In February I will be in New Zealand for a couple of weeks, so it’s a perfect time for making this happen. This monkey is one of the most delusive of all. I know I have everything I need to make things happening the way I want to, and still, somehow, this monkey insists on remaining just a monkey and not make the leap to a fully developed human being.

March: Launch this business project that I’ve already worked on for the last two months. It will be a Romanian based project and, since I don’t want to reveal much about it, I will also code name it. This will be known as “The Club”. This monkey has many, many implications on various levels. It’s primarily about my career, but it’s also about commitment and communication. It’s a whole new way to look at work for me, from a completely new position. Also, I’m sure this monkey will need a lot of management in the upcoming months.

As you can see, it’s mostly about loose ends in my work, so far. Nothing fancy. But as simple as it may look, this area is at the moment the most annonying, monkey-like, part of my life. There will be many other monkeys until the end of the year, in various areas, like relationships or health, but for start, I will focus on this work part.

So, from now on, this blog will be about taming monkeys. And although it sounds like a joke, I can assure it’s not. It may be the most important, profound and long personal challenge I ever started publicly. After all, there will be 365 days until I’ll finish this challenge.

Oh, and the most important thing about this “12 monkeys” project is that, during the entire process, I intend to have a life. A real life, with everything you would expect from it: working and having fun, watching my kids growing up and engaging myself in new personal relationships. If there will be anyone exciting enough to have me hooked. Which, to be honest, is highly unlikely at the moment.

And, of course, traveling.

You in

Do You Have The “Glass Wall” Syndrome?

I“m not going to tell you what the glass syndrome is. At least, not in the first two sentences.

I know I’m at the third sentence already, and, technically, I could start giving you the definition, but I’d rather not. It’s a delicate concept and it’s better to tell you a short story first. It will make you understand the whole thing better.

The Evening Walk

I love long, solitary walks especially in the evening. I get this from my adolescence, where I was doing 5-6 kilometers daily long walks around the lake near my home city, Ramnicu Valcea. A few weeks ago, on a lovely and quite hot fall evening, I was walking on one of the largest central boulevards of Bucharest (the city where I’m working at the moment). A lot of people were doing the same thing. The lights, the noise and a certain city vibe made that walk pretty enjoyable.

At some point, I spotted in front of me, melted into the multitude of shops, a bank office. It was the self-service kind of bank hut, where you can enter in a small room and use the ATM. The office was fully lighted and I could see that there wasn’t nobody in. I thought I should take out some money from my ATM card, wanted to do some shopping on my way home.

I briefly stopped for a red light and then closely approached the bank office. Meanwhile a couple formed by two young ladies already entered and they were using the ATM. I thought I could enter too, just to be there and wait for them to finish. As I was entering the office, I started to notice a little bit of a dizziness. Also, my bones were feeling a small pressure, like when you’re trying to walk on a swimming pool, if you know the feeling. At the same time, I clearly saw the young ladies starting to turn their heads towards me. There was a real slow movement, the one that you can see in a Discovery like footage. ”Well, I thought, those lady are certainly turning their heads reaaaly slow“ and the second after I felt an intense ache in my forehead.

Everything came back to the normal speed in a split of a second and not only I started to suddenly hear the noise of the city again (somehow it disappeared in this slow motion whirlwind) but I also realized I was just banged my head against a glass wall. Instead of the empty space I was expecting to enter through, there was a real, thick and completely transparent glass wall. And that strange collection of sensations, everything I felt for the last 5 or 10 seconds, in fact happened in less than a second. Banging my head against that wall seemed to somehow make the Universe go in slow motion.

After hearing the incredibly ugly sound of my forehead hitting the glass, I saw the ladies looking at me with an indescribable mix of fear, wild amusement and surprise. A few of the walkers were also stopped and they were gazing at the guy who was slowly starting to feel the impact of his 88 kilos in close and total contact with an incredibly hard obstacle. Somehow, my synapses weren’t affected by the impact. ”Well, it looks like I can’t enter through this wall“, that was my first clear thought. ”Let’s find another ATM“, that was my second.

So, without even stopping, I just corrected my trajectory with a few degrees, describing a narrow, but solid curve and here I was, walking again on the street. A few laughs were still strong enough to enter my ears, but just 20 meters after I spotted a wall mounted ATM. Stopped by, took the money and went on. In 10 minutes I was entering a subway station. I found a mirror and, as I expected, my forehead had a nice, red, round, kilingonian-like swelling right in the middle.

Ok, you can stop laughing now. Seriously.

Well, to be honest, every time I think at this incident, I laugh my butt out too. So, lets’ have a good one.

Ok, you’re ready? Because I’m finally going to tell you what the ”glass wall“ syndrome is.

The Glass Syndrome

You are on a very clear path, but you didn’t choose the right entrance. You know what you want, but the way you want it, as familiar as it may look, it is refused to you. It’s like wanting to enter a bank from a window. Of course you will hit a glass wall, you just didn’t choose the right entrance. That’s the “glass wall” syndrome.

I know you’ve been there. Maybe in milder forms than hitting a real glass wall on a large boulevard, like I did the other day, but I’m sure you’ve been there too.

Truth is we’ve all been there. Because we do apply the same patterns over and over, without assessing too much. Most of the time, we’re right. But in some specific situations our lack of assessment is almost fatal. We fail to get the results because we think we know the solution.

Stop for a second and look very carefully at your life as it is right now. Look at your perfect job, perfect partner, perfect goals. Do you see them clearly? Then do yourself a service and look for the real entrance to those precious venues, because you may just banging your head against a glass wall. You may think you can have it instantly, but in fact you’re constantly choosing the wrong path.

The Cure To The Glass Wall Syndrome

Ok, suppose you’re hitting a glass wall. It’s not so uncommon, after all. So, how can you break free from it?

In just two words: move on. Don’t get addicted to the meaningless effort of pushing it harder than it needs. Just because you’re getting a shitload of resistance, it doesn’t mean you’re on the right path. You may see clearly the end goal, but you may loose the entrance from sight.

If you really want it, it will come to you. I found the next ATM in just 20 meters. It wasn’t exactly as the one I was trying to use before, but it did the job perfectly.

As long as I kept moving.