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In September/October I’ve rediscovered my love of writing. OK, maybe love is too strong of a word, but I lack the vocabulary in English to find another, more suited one, so I’ll use that.

You might have noticed it, actually, since I wrote on this blog a lot more than I’ve done it in the entire two years before.

And then I stopped. Or not really. Cristina, my co-founder at The CEO Library, decided to focus more on what she wants to do (and can do) in Romania, so she decided to leave the operational position. She still helps with advice from time to time. If you speak Romanian or can use Google Translate, you can read more here, on her blog. The Google Translate version (here) is quite good, actually.

This meant that I started to write a little bit more. Not only about business and books, but also about the most interesting libraries I’ve visited in the last few years. Yes, I start with Bucharest’s Carturesti Carusel. Because why not?

I also used to write The CEO Library weekly newsletter.

As for the things I’m writing, here’s a short excerpt from the second newsletter I sent, about two weeks ago:

Asking questions is probably one of the most underrated skills in the world. I mean, everybody can ask questions, right? A toddler asks questions. And, oh, my God, they do ask a lot.

As you know, though, it’s not that simple.

I grew up in communist Romania. School was a serious matter and you didn’t ask stupid questions. Or, even better, don’t ask anything. Take everything the teachers give you, learn it by heart and become the perfect little communist. Of course, I’m generalizing, because I was fortunate to have some great teachers, but they weren’t the rule. This continued through college, even if it wasn’t as obvious as it was in the first years of school.

You can read the entire newsletter I sent here, to get an idea.

Truth is, I don’t know exactly what I’ll do with The CEO Library just yet. The project started one way and it morphed in something a little bit different over the last 2 years. I still need to think about it. But, for the moment, I’m happy to have found a community of like-minded people again. It feels like it’s 2008-2009 again when I was writing my Romanian blog. Of course, the context is different, but I genuinely missed writing.

I will still write on this blog, as well, don’t worry.

I mean, I can’t write on The CEO Library about silicone wheels for the desk chair, right? Or can I?

Ok, ok, but I can’t write about wanting a Christmas tree in October there. Can I? May I?

First time I ever heard Avicii was in 2011, when I was listening to Levels and a little bit of Fade into Darkness.

But the moment I became a fan was when I heard “Wake me up“. The song has special meaning for me because it’s the song I connect the most to the US. Both because of the sound and mostly because I was listening to it on my daily commute between San Jose and San Francisco when I was looking for investment for MavenHut.

That’s when I started to listen to everything he was launching. Hey Brother, Addicted to You, The Nights, they were all among my most played songs. I have Heaven, the latest song released, in heavy rotation right now.

I also watched the documentary he released shortly before his death and I liked the guy even more. You could see how dedicated he was to his music, fighting through debilitating pain every day. The film is also a premonition, since at some point in the show this happens:

“He’s a shell of what he used to be,” says a friend in the film, while another describes him as “a ticking timebomb”.

It all builds to the point where, late in the documentary, Avicii flatly says of touring: “It will kill me.”

The Guardian

If you didn’t see Avicii: True Stories, it might be available on Netflix in your country.

On December 5th there was a live tribute for him in Stockholm, in order to raise awareness for mental health. It’s his music and the people he played it with. You can watch/listen to it on YouTube:

I’m writing/updating this as I’m watching the live transmission of State of Play:

Untitled Goose Game: This seems such a stupid game idea, I might actually enjoy playing it, especially during the upcoming Christmas holiday (Dec 17th, 2019)

dreams: more of a game creator, it might be the non-pro game developer’s tool that I can try to use to finally build a game on my own (Feb 2020)

Babylon’s Fall: this a Square Enix game that looks like I might actually enjoy. I don’t know too much about it, I just hope it has a really good story 😁

Ghost of Tsushima: This might actually be the game I’ll play. (2020)

Yeah, that’s it. Nothing truly interesting, unfortunately. For me, that is, YMMV. If you want to see the entire State of Play, you can see it below:

At the beginning of November 2019 I asked in the newsletter and on Instagram for our community’s favorite books of 2019. After about 2 weeks of adding books to the database, here are the lists. And yes, I was doing other things as well, it didn’t take me 2 weeks to add 50 or so books, ok?

1. Best New Books of 2019

These books are all published in 2019. You liked them and you recommend them.

2. Best Fiction Books of 2019

Though you wouldn’t think so, some of you actually read fiction :D So here are 10-11 fiction books you said it’s worth reading.

3. Best Non-Fiction Books of 2019

Finally, as expected, this is the biggest list. About 80 books you recommended (including the ones of the first list) are here and it should be enough for everyone to have a full 2020 with the books they didn’t read already.

I loved playing Witcher 3 on the PS4. I played it in 2015 and what I remember is this: after about 3 days of playing 10-12 hours a day, my girlfriend asked me if I’m close to the end. And I said something along the lines of “it’s pretty close, maybe 2 more hours”. It took me 2 more days to finish the game. The story continued to keep me stuck in front of the TV.

This is why I didn’t play the game again since. I loved it, but starting to play again for 100 hours seemed too much. Until it appeared on Nintendo Switch, about 2 months ago. I bought it on Black Friday and now I play it in shorter bursts, whenever I want. And it’s as good as I remember. It’s amazing the developers (CD Project Red) managed to use the underpowered console that is the Switch to actually make the game work. And it works amazing, even if it’s not 4K resolution.

Today I also started to watch The Witcher, the Netflix TV series. And, after 2 episodes, I can say I’m in. Henry Cavill is as close to Geralt of Rivia (the titular character) as much as it can be and the cinematography is really good.

If you want to watch a fantasy series you need to see The Witcher on Netflix. If you heard about the Witcher games or books but you were not too interested in them, the tv series might change your mind.

One of the first “modern” SF books I’ve ever read was one in the Foundation series. I don’t remember exactly which one, but I was around 14 and I read all the books written by Isaac Asimov that I could find. Unfortunately, though, you couldn’t find most of them in Romania, where I was born. And you couldn’t find the non-fiction books in particular.

Last week I read I, Asimov: A Memoir, his autobiography. I didn’t read a book that I liked this much in a long time. As I said already, Asimov was part of my youth and I’ve read and re-read the Foundation, Robots and Empire books over and over again over the years. And, through the 600 pages of I, Asimov, I almost turned back in time.

In I, Asimov I’ve discovered a genuine happy person, someone that did what he loved his entire life. I discovered that one of the biggest authors of Science Fiction actually stopped writing fiction novels almost completely for 20 years. I discovered that he enjoyed writing mystery short stories a lot. And this shouldn’t surprise me since most of the books in his SF series are, actually, mysteries. Especially the Robots ones.

His autobiography reads like the archive of a blog, with anecdotes and short stories of the author’s life. It made me smile so often, I didn’t believe it. I was reading in bed and I would read out loud to my fiancée something that made me laugh loudly.

Besides the laughs, I also appreciated the power of Asimov’s convictions. I’m taking example, as well, since sometimes I forget to support my opinions as strongly as I should. And I’m sure my friends might think differently and laugh at the last sentence.

Here, in Asimov’s biography, I found the best reasoning for reading ever. And a refute of watching TV at the cost of reading.

I also pointed out that television yielded so much information that the viewer became a passive receptacle, whereas a book gave so little that the reader had to be an active participant, his imagination supplying all the imagery, sound, and special effects. This participation, I said, gave so much pleasure that television could not serve as a decent substitute.

In short, the age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate. Now that is gone, and the youngsters have their glazed eyes fixed on the television tube. The result is clear. True literacy is becoming an arcane art, and the nation is steadily “dumbing down.”

I was born in communism and, even if my parents had a big enough library at home, most of the books I read were available from the school library. I still remember how happy I was when I found, in one corner, a new Jules Verne book I could read and share with my class mates. So I understand the value of access to books. And I’ve started The CEO Library because I know you need more than what the school provides.

I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it.

I was surprised that Asimov was writing in 1992 that we, as humanity, are destroying the planet. And, 30 years later, he was and is right, unfortunately. And we fight with the results of neglect.

We are now perfectly capable of damaging the planet beyond repair in any reasonable time, and are, in fact, in the process of doing so.

And, again, in 1992, he wrote the perfect explanation of the difference in thinking between “conservatives” and “liberals”. Living in a world where the split is even more obvious and evident, I can’t but wonder at Asimov’s understanding of life.

I have been a liberal all my life. I have had to be. Early in life, I noted that conservatives, who are more or less satisfied with things as they are and even more satisfied with things as they were fifty years ago, are “self-loving.” That is, conservatives tend to like people who resemble themselves and distrust others. In my youth, in the United States the backbone of social, economic, and political power rested with an establishment consisting almost entirely of people of Northwestern European extraction, and the conservatives making up that establishment were contemptuous of others.

If you enjoyed Asimov’s books, you’re gonna love this one.

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.

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’…

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)

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.