Arhiva: ianuarie 2020

Update: Here are the results:

1. Man’s Search for Meaning – The Classic Tribute to Hope from the Holocaust, by Victor E. Frankl
2. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, by James Clear
3. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein
4. Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell, By Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle
5. Born to Run, by Bruce Springsteen

---

Here’s the first poll for The CEO Library Book Club:

“I just started a gaming company and we make Solitaire games!”
“Well, that’s stupid!”

That was me in 2012, telling a friend about the new project I just started. He still is my friend (I know!) and he is a smart guy. And he genuinely thought it was a stupid idea. And I still remind him of that discussion.

Of course, that’s what started MavenHut. We built that initial Solitaire game (Solitaire Arena) to a company with 35 people and more than 40 millions players.

Do you know there’s a guy that wanted to start a marketplace for people to rent inflatable beds in their apartments? Or a guy that thought internet was good for selling books? Or some guys that thought they could build a site helping you leave it the moment you visited it? Yeap, they’re Airbnb, Amazon, Google. They all seemed really stupid at the moment.

I love stupid ideas. I like talking about them. I know most of them will never become a business, a company or even a side project. But come on, don’t you want to let your mind wander and wonder?

I prefer, as Tynan says here, to see the good in the ideas. That’s why I almost never say “don’t do this“. I just say “what stops you from trying?”

That being said, no matter how much I love talking about stupid ideas, I would not invest in them. I mean, I can’t afford a 1 in 1,000 chance of something working.

I will never put down a stupid sounding idea, though. After all, I’ve founded a company making Solitaire games. “How stupid is that, when you can play it for free on Windows?”

The image above is of the MavenHut offices in 2014. I took it from Radu.

There was a joke in communist Romania:

“At an exam for policemen, they are given a ball and a cube and a board with two holes: one round and one square. The task: fit the cube and ball through the board in front.

The conclusion of the exam:
5% of the policemen are quite smart, 95% are really strong.”

While I’m not a policeman in communist Romania, that’s me. That’s you, I bet, as well: you try to clean and organize your office. Your room. Your email account. Whatever. And you find things you don’t really know what to do with. And you try to push them into a set of categories you already established for your stuff, but it doesn’t really work.

I feel it’s the same thing when you’re trying to organize your life/space in any way. We’re really, really strong: we’re trying to fit stuff in categories it doesn’t fit and it’s never completely as it should be.

The solution: a Space for Disorganization. A space where you dump things you don’t know where to put yet. Or you don’t have the time right then and there. As Janet and Isaac Asimov say:

It also helps to have one – and only one – Space For Disorganization, a shelf or drawer where things can be dumped until you have time to be neat, methodical, and are able to make decisions about where things should go. When you think you’ve lost something, it will probably be in the space for disorganization.

And if you wait long enough you’ll find that more of its contents can be just thrown out, and the process of doing so can serve as a Constructive Activity to Raise Self-esteem.

I found this quote in How to Enjoy Writing by Janet and Isaac Asimov.

And I’m actually doing something akin those lines, even if I never defined it. Especially now, when I’m putting together my home office in the new house.

Here it is, my Box of Disorganization, in the photo below. It’s filled with cables, gadgets, batteries, device manuals, I even see a Halloween decoration piece on top there.

I also have a similar space in Evernote, which is my tool of choice to get things from around the web that I “might” need at some point. Including the links you read in the weekly newsletter I send.

The “Space for Disorganization” in Evernote is a notebook called _Inbox. That’s where I drop everything that’s not specifically targeted for something. And every 2-3 months I go through the notebook and see if what I saved has a more specific place. If not, it just goes to another notebook, called Reference, where I might find it in the future using the search function of the app.

The advantage, for me, for the existance of a “Space for Disorganization”?

It doesn’t generate “paralysis by analysis”.

If I don’t think of a specific place for some thing or for some information, it goes straight to the Space. Also, as you know, small decision sap your energy. Because there’s no effort to think too much about what I need to do with something, I lose less energy on these small decisions, of where to put what. This allows for more energy to organize my space and keep it clean. Physical space or online space.

Keep in mind, though, it needs to be only ONE Space for Disorganization. If you have more than one, you just made a really good system of being disorganized.

Do YOU have a Space for Disorganization? As you can see, even a box from IKEA works.

I’ve been watching The Crown in the last week or so. Yesterday I got to episode 9 of the first season, called Assassins (light spoiler ahead).

The context is this: Winston Churchill sits for a portrait with a famous painter – Graham Sutherland. It’s the Prime Minister’s 80th birthday and he was given the opportunity as a present.

There’s a short scene when the character (Churchill, played by John Lithgow)) realizes that he painted a pond 20 times or more because it reminded him of his dead daughter.

The painter says this to him, before the scene (which starts at 35:30 in the episode, by the way):

I was thinking especially of the Goldfish pond here at Chartwell. It’s very much more than that. As borne out by the fact that you’ve returned to it again and again. More than 20 times.
[…]
I think all our work is unintentionally revealing and I find it especially so with your pond.

Beneath the tranquility and the elegance and the light playing on the surface, I saw honesty and pain, terrible pain. The framing itself indicated to me that you wanted us to see something beneath all the muted colors, deep down in the water.

Terrible despair. Hiding like a Leviathan. Like a sea monster.

Then you can see on Churchill’s face the agony, the pain, the longing, the missing. Everything a human being can feel, you could see in those 30-40 seconds. No sounds, no words. Just his face. And you could feel how much pain there was inside him.

It’s the best acting I’ve seen. Ever.

I wish I was able to be that good at something in my life as John Lithgow is good at acting.

Later update: after writing this, I’ve started to read about the portrait. And I’ve found out that John Lithgow won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for this exact episode.

I have a good friend that wants to start up a blog. And he has so many interesting things to say, I would read his blog. Well, this brilliant guy started his blog about a year ago. In his head. He knows what kind of articles he’ll write, how long they will be, how great they will be.

The issue? The articles are still there, in his head.

I’ve heard about Lean Startup (and its predecessor, 4 Steps to the Epiphany) about 3-4 years ago.

The basic explanation of the concept is that you create a Minimum Viable Product, you go to market, you learn from the feedback and reiterate. Basically “Build, Test, Learn, Reiterate”. And do this cycle as often as possible.

The shorter the cycle it is, the better you chance of succeeding in your startup (because it creates more chances of getting the things right). A lean startup sees its runaway (the time until it runs out of money) not in months or years, but in the number of cycles it has. MavenHut was a lean startup.

Now, blogging is by no means a startup, most of the time. It can be see as one, though. If we keep comparing, my friend is actually in the startup stage where you want to create the next big thing, the thing that you know will change humanity. You want to create the iPhone. You have everything in place, you just don’t have the time to create… well, perfection.

All he needs to do to reach perfection is to start the Minimum Viable Product for his blog: the first, simple, small, 200 words article. Then the second. Then the third. He will get feedback for all of them (from me, from his other friends, from people on Facebook or Twitter). And the 10th article will be a 2000 words article about something great. But the form will not be the best. Still, he will understand how to space paragraphs, ideas, use headlines and so on. And his 30th article will be a lot better. And so on and so forth.

By the time his blog is 9 months old he will write his first great article. The one that hits Hacker News and Reddit and that gets 1000 likes on Facebook and 150 RTs on Twitter. And then he will start again. Until, 2 years from the start, he will be a household name in his chosen field.

This is a good story, right? On the other hand, you might not be the household name you wanted, but writing helps a lot in other ways, ways you didn’t really think about:

I recommend daily writing for anyone, not just writers. Here’s what I’ve found from my daily habit:

• Writing helps you reflect on your life and changes you’re making. This is incredibly valuable, as often we do things without realizing why, or what effects these things are having on us.
• Writing clarifies your thinking. Thoughts and feelings are nebulous happenings in our mind holes, but writing forces us to crystalize those thoughts and put them in a logical order.
• Writing regularly makes you better at writing. And writing is a powerful skill to be good at in our digital age.
• Writing for an audience (even if the audience is just one person) helps you to think from the perspective of the audience. That’s when the magic starts, because once you get into the reader’s mindset, you begin to understand readers and customers and colleagues and friends better. You have empathy and a wider understanding of the world.
• Writing persuasively — to convince others of your point of view — helps you to get better at persuading people to change their minds. Many people don’t want to change their minds when they feel someone is attacking their position, so they get defensive and dig into their position.
• Writing daily forces you to come up with new ideas regularly, and so that forces you to solve the very important problem of where to get ideas. What’s the answer to that problem? Ideas are everywhere! In the people you talk to, in your life experiments, in things you read online, in new ventures and magazines and films and music and novels. But when you write regularly, your eyes are open to these ideas.
• Writing regularly online helps you to build an audience who is interested in what you have to share, and how you can help them. This is good for any business, anyone who is building a career, anyone who loves to socialize with others who are interested in similar things as them.

The quote above is from Zen Habits, an article called Why You Should Write Daily.

Here are all the “Decade in review” articles I’ve found interesting, without a specific focus or order. The titles are pretty self explanatory, so I will not add my commentaries this time.

Books related decade reviews:

1. The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s (Time)
2. The 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the Decade (LitHub)
3. The 20 Best Books of a Decade That Unmade Genre Fiction (Wired)
4. The 20 Best Novels of the Decade (LitHub)
5. The CEO Library’s Best Books of 2019

Business & Tech related decade reviews:

1. I’m a 36-year-old CEO who sold my first startup for $1 billion. Here’s what I’ve learned this past decade (Business Insider)
2. Decade in review: Reflections on the last 10 years in the tech industry (Tech Republic)
3. The Top 20 Business Transformations of the Last Decade (Harvard Business Review)
4. Emoji, Uber and selfie: These 25 words describe the decade in tech (CNet)
5. From AirPower to Zune, a decade of tech and companies that died (CNet)
6. The attention economy is in hyperdrive’: how tech shaped the 2010s (The Guardian)
7. Selfies, influencers and a Twitter president: the decade of the social media celebrity

Other interesting lists:

• 100 photos that defined the decade (CNN)
• The 100 Moments That Defined the Decade in Music (Billboard.com)

You can also find book recommendations on migration at the end of this blog post.

At the end of 2018 I moved from Romania, where I lived pretty much my whole life, to Portugal. They’re pretty similar cultures:

• Both generally European (Portugal “more European” than Romania)
• Both had a dictatorship that finished in the last 50 years
• Both have problems with corruption (less in Portugal)
• Both have a lot of bureaucracy
• Latin language.

You’d think there would be no problems adapting to the Portuguese culture. And it’s true, in many ways we had no issues. I can actually speak enough Portuguese right now so I can ask for directions and mostly understand the answer. And my fiancée spoke the language quite well already.

But there are some issues I’ve never thought of. Case in point:

I say: I want central heating in the house.

They say: the house has central heating.

I mean: I want electric central heating with radiators in every room of the house and 24 degrees Celsius everywhere in the house.

They mean: We have central heating with fireplace and wood, with heating recuperator, MAYBE radiators, and 17-19 degrees in the entire house because it’s never that cold outside.

We say the same thing. We mean almost the same thing. Yet, it’s really different.

I was thinking of a completely automated heating system and being able to wear shorts and t-shirt in a house. They meant that there is a system to be used, even if not automatic, and it’s not as cold as it is outside. And yes, you might need to add another layer of clothes, but “the winter in Portugal is just 2 months and it’s not that cold anyway”.

It took me some time to understand the difference in perception.

We were using the same words, but our understanding of them was different enough to generate confusion.

The solution?

• Ask for DETAILED information on everything. Sometimes people will look at you thinking you’re crazy, but keep in mind it’s your money at stake if you make a mistake
• Ask often “What do you mean by X?”
• Find someone from your country that has been living in the new country for a longer time (years, if possible) to “translate” the cultural differences. And to translate the language.
• If the above is not available, find someone native that also speaks your language (or English). They might be capable of explaining the differences
• Ask A LOT of questions about your chosen country. Ask everybody you meet, frankly, especially in the first year or so.

Well, this is not the perfect solution, but it is A solution. Changing countries is a difficult endeavor in itself, but the small things add quickly to the pressure and lack of comfort.

On the other hand, we were walking the dog around the neighborhood yesterday. One neighbor stopped us and invited us into his yard to give us some oranges and tangerines right from the tree. About 5kgs worth of them. The difference to Romania? If something similar happened, we would’ve left with 5kgs of apples. A little nuance in cultures, for sure, but I would’ve been happy with the apples as well.

Oh, and the photo on the top is not the view from my home, unfortunately. It’s a view from Foz do Arelho, across the Obidos Lagoon, to the Atlantic Ocean. An amazing place to visit. Just sayin’…

I love playing games, especially games with great narrative. So I was looking through Den of Geek’s Best 100 games of the decade and I was thinking I played quite a lot of them. Especially since I don’t play games as much as I want to.

Also, don’t forget, I started and sold a gaming company in the past decade. So I was doing “research” :D

Go to the Den of Geek list to see some more details about the games, but here are the games I played (or at least touched in some way) with a little bit of commentary:

96. X-COM: Enemy Unknown. I’ve loved the original series, which I played as a kid. I played some of the new one as well, but not enough.
90. Mortal Kombat X. The 1 vs. 1 game of choice in my family, along with Rocket League. My fiancée beats the hell out of me most of the time.
79. God of War 3. I loved this series on PS3. Finished this game twice (once on PS4, as well)
77. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Played about half of the game. My cousin loved it. Me, not so much. Good game, but it didn’t get me at the right time, I think.
73. Nier: Automata. Loved this game. I hate that it’s so difficult to go back in the middle of it and replay it, because the controls are weird and I don’t remember them.
72. Super Meat Boy. Played a good amount of hour after seeing the Indie Game: The Movie documentary. Good game, I understand why it is one of the best indies ever.
71. Shovel Knight. Played several hours. Rogue games are not necessarily my type.
69. Life is strange. Loved the game, the story and the mechanics of it. Didn’t really get into the second one, but this one I really liked. Finished it.
68. Heavy Rain. Played a little bit of it, but I didn’t get too much into it. I loved Detroit: Become Human, though.
64. Her Story. Liked it, finished it, forgot about it.
62. Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I loved this game. Finished it several times, in different ways.
61. Until Dawn. Got it recently, played several hours, didn’t really get me. I also don’t really like teenage slasher movies, so maybe this is the reason?
60. Bastion. Played several hours on iOS devices. I should get back into it.
59. Wolfenstein: The New Order. The same Wolfenstein tropes, but I love them. Finished this one.
58. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Played several hours. Didn’t have the time to get into it as much as I wanted to. Since I have a history of playing it waaaaay too much, I avoided the game.
49. The Outer Worlds. In the middle of playing it. Still about 5-6 hours in, I’m just learning about the first city. Looks interesting enough to continue playing it.
48. Fez. I played it after the Indie Game: The Movie documentary. Interesting, but I liked Super Meat Boy more.
46. Telltale’s The Walking Dead. Loved it. Played the entire first season on a transatlantic flight where I didn’t have what else to play on my iPad. The 10 hours flight went by in a second.
45. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. The same as the previous one. Liked it, finished it, never gonna play it again.
42. Limbo. Creepy atmosferic game and interesting narrative. First game I played along with my neice. Good memories.
41. Gone Home. Really good walking game, great narrative. Loved it, finished it.
40. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Played several hours. I hated the controls for some reason. Couldn’t continue it.
38. Batman: Arkham City. Played for several hours until I ralised I don’t really like Beat’em’ups and the Batman universe.
37. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. My favourite series. Played them all several times. Great story, great characters.
36. Firewatch. Great walking game, great atmosphere, heart breaking story. I wonder how many people looked for a firewatch tower to spend their summers after this one. Finished it.
35. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. The best in the series. Feels like one of the best movies and books I’ve ever seen/read.
34. Undertale. Played several hours. Didn’t get it. Stopped playing it.
33. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Played about half of it, then life got in the way. I liked it.
27. Fallout 4. Played several hours into it. Didn’t like it.
26. Mass Effect 3. Loved the series. 2 is the best. Even Andromeda is okish.
25. Horizon Zero Dawn. Most expensive game I ever played. Bought a PS4 Pro and a 4K TV just to play it. Loved it. Finished it several times. I’m waiting for the story to continue in HZD2.
23. Marvel’s Spider-Man. Played about 10 hours. I liked the mechanics, but I’m not that interested in the universe and the stories. Stopped after a while. This is one game I wanted to love, but didn’t, unfortunately.
21. Stardew Valley. I love this game. I have it on all the platforms, especially iPad and Switch. I have about 30-40 hours into it, so I’m not that crazy about it, but when I have time, I start it again.
20. Bloodborne. Started it, played several hours, stopped. Not my type of game.
19. Journey. I played it for about 2 hours. Didn’t really get into it.
18. Red Dead Redemption II. Just got it recently. Played about 2 hours. Going back to it.
17. BioShock Infinite. Played it, finished it, don’t remember much about it.
15. Rocket League. Along with Mortal Kombat X, the multiplayer couch game in the family. I’m not good.
12. Fallout: New Vegas. Played more hours than Fallout 4, still didn’t get into it. I like The Outer Worlds more.
11. Mass Effect 2. This is the game that got me into the series. Loved it. I hate that I can’t play it on the PS4 in any way. I also don’t own a PC to play there. Loved it, loved it. The first game that made me love the characters and get that kind of connection with them.
10. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Love it. Replaying it now on the Switch, because why not?
8. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Played several hours into it. Didn’t catch me.
7. Grand Theft Auto V. Played about 10 hours. Not my type of narrative and game. Stopped it. Maybe I’ll retry it again sometime.
6. Super Mario Odyssey. Played several hours. Not my type of game, even if I love the mechanics. I still have it on my switch so I might return to it.
5. Red Dead Redemption. Loved it. My fiancée remembers it as the first game she lost me for a week. Still shudders when she hears about using a horse to go across the map of a game :)
4. God of War. I liked it, I finished it, I didn’t love it. I don’t kow why, but I didn’t get that much into the narrative as I thought I would.
2. The Last of Us. The best game I ever played. Since I love narrative based games, keep that in mind. The only action-adventure my fiancée ever played because she saw me playing it and she wanted the story for herself as well.
1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. About 15 hours in, I struggle to like it, but it’s getting better. I kept coming back to it for the last 2 years or so.

There you have it. 48 games. I played others as well, of course, especially on the mobile devices. I mean, I didn’t put on the list Candy Crush and the hundred hours of “research” I put into it :D and several hundred dollars, just for good measure, as well.

The games above are just the ones that are also part of the list at the Den of Geek. Go there and read more, since it’s not mine.

Gaming books recommendations

• Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture – The book to read to understand what was like to create games during the 1990s. With, maybe, the first real rockstar of gaming, John Romero.
• Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World – in case you need to explain to someone that gaming is not only about staying in front of a screen
• Ready Player One – an SciFi book based in VR and knowledge of popculture and early gaming titles. Also, the movie.