You heard that "discipline equals freedom." I, too, like this saying. There's power in it. It makes us feel in control. And overall, it rings true. But is it true, really? Not totally; it's easy to exert discipline on the wrong things. You can
Every entrepreneur who stays long enough in the game will experience feeling stuck. I have written about this topic before, and the article became one of my most-read, reaching tens of thousands of readers (and counting.) Usually, an entrepreneur feels stuck when one of these two things happens. Either your
Isolation is as bad as the lack of data. Trying to make serious decisions on your own is a grave mistake. Our actions and decisions are always both emotional and rational. Oftentimes, the rational side comes later to justify our decision. However, there is a simple way to bring on
If you've been following this blog for a while, you probably noticed that more and more of my content includes anecdotes and teachings from my fatherhood. I used to say that having kids turned my life downside up. It made me reassess my priorities, reconsider the risks I&
There's a comic strip that circulates in entrepreneur communities. It's about a character who starts a new hobby. But before long, his entrepreneurial mind takes over and pushes him to turn the hobby into a side business. Making it, well, not fun anymore. I can tragically
Entrepreneurs are compulsive learners. In the early days, it is an unfair advantage. Or even a requirement. Entrepreneurship demands that we be all-terrains. We need to understand the different aspects of the business, from innovation to operation. The founder is responsible for turning the idea into a purchasable product. Sometimes,
Last week's essay was popular. It attracted hundreds of new people to the site in just a few days, and people engaged in conversations about whether or not our culture values and promotes intelligence as the supreme good. It struck a chord. Recent advances in technology demand that
Is the ruthless pursuit of performance good? What can we say about a society that rewards effort over everything else? Why do we marvel at intellectual prowess more than kindness? I'll be honest: I hesitated for a while before writing this week's essay. I took a
Many dream of public writing but never publish anything. Ask them why, and they'll answer that they don't know what to write about. The following is your crash course in creating short essays: Take one small idea and start writing at once. You don't
In the business world, work frequently happens within a project. Success depends on completing all the tasks on time and budget. And a project has a beginning and an end. At work, we are encouraged to build and reinforce certain "type A" character traits: competitiveness, restlessness, and a
Networking events suck. I have said so myself in the past. And if I'm being honest, I still dodge most invitations to business gatherings. My friend is a lawyer, and she was invited to an after-work event with other people of her profession in a Parisian bar. She
I took an unscheduled week off. Not a vacation per se, but a week AFK. Away from the keyboard. I didn't answer emails. Not even the ones that would normally prompt me to reply right away. Not even the ones that had a clear question for me. I
It sometimes takes me many drafts to get to a published essay. The peculiar thing is that I never write several drafts about the same idea. Throughout the week, I come up with ideas I want to share with you, dear reader. Ideas are sometimes inspired by something happening in
When I was young, I had few skills and no experience. I had, however, clarity on what I wanted, and I hustled hard! Nothing illegal, don't worry. But I was relentless and determined to push boundaries to create opportunities. I got my first job when I was seventeen.
A friend's question prompted me to reflect on the way I work. Joschua asked me: "How's your motivation level?" I'm currently promoting a new product, and it's always a rollercoaster ride. Some days, I am encouraged by the positive replies
If you love learning or have a predisposition to starting businesses, it's difficult to set your mind to only ONE thing. Our world is crazy interesting. The number of ideas knows no bounds. Each day that passes, the environment changes. Each day that passes, you change. And change
One of your jobs as a parent is to educate your child. It's more than just the fun stuff, like teaching them to draw or play chess. It's also how to act in a world of actions and consequences. I'm finding out the hard
It took me a long time to understand how I work best. Like many of us, I'm a sucker for productivity. I'm on a forever quest to find the tools, processes, and hacks that will enable me to achieve more. Over the years, I oscillated between
Wake up and put on some music. Jump in the shower and bring your phone to finish listening to that podcast you started yesterday. Drive somewhere and play an audiobook in your car's speakers. Work out with your headphones on. Cook, do the dishes, do the laundry, or
"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit." - Gordon Gekko I'm not much of a movie buff, but this epic scene from Wall Street made a strong
I'm big on routines. To some, it may even look like a boring life. I like to know what my weeks are made of, and usually, it's the same pattern week after week. Take Mondays, for instance. Every Monday has the same structure as the previous
Why it is better to pick goals optimized for the actual work versus the outcome we think we want. It is said that with focus, you can achieve anything. One problem, though: focusing is really hard when you freaking hate what you do. It goes like this: you want to
"$175 for two cubic meters, delivered" (that's roughly 0.55 cord) Me: Ask him if he would agree to 160 "Would you agree to $160?" "No. I don't work for free." Wife: Wow. I don't feel like buying
Last night, I experienced something I wish for all of you. My son and I were sitting in the kitchen. Well, I was sitting; he was lying in my arms, half asleep. He is teething and sleeps super poorly. Which means the whole family sleeps badly as well. I turned
When I was younger, I had one clear goal. I wanted to be a millionaire by the age of 30. I didn't know it then, but this wasn't even MY goal. It was something inherited from the tech-entrepreneurship culture of the early 2000s. Remember this? A
After publishing my (very popular) article The best way to get unstuck, I began thinking about the conditions that create stuckness. Following Charlie Munger's inversion principle, let's examine seven pitfalls that would get almost anybody stuck. By doing so, we will increase our chances of avoiding
"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." – Benjamin Franklin. Time that isn't planned is up for grabs. And grabbed it will be. Either by people or by the many distractions fighting for our attention. In
The perceived value of your product is about to take a nosedive. Here's how to save it using the glassmith tactic. A glassblower blows air into a pipe. A beautiful vase appears from what was molten glass a moment ago. As you walk out of the workshop, you
Here are 40 life lessons IÂ learned during my first 40 years on this earth. 1. Creating a strong couple requires the dissolution of individual integrity to build a shared one. This is also true for a nation, a team, a community, a company. 2. Most arguments are not worth
I started dabbling in entrepreneurship over 20 years ago and have experienced the feeling of stuckness more than I can recall. It is one of the most common struggles with this career path and can be difficult to shake off. Stuck City is a place any creative, self-employed, and curious
I will not bore you with my entire “year in review.” Instead, I’ve decided to share with you some things I believe I’ve done right this year. I like this exercise because it forces me to acknowledge and focus for a few minutes on my good moves when
There I was, sitting on the floor of my living room, watching a video of this super intelligent and prolific guy frustrated. He was trying to livestream his work session, but an app on his computer kept hanging. And there I was, feeling at peace because of it. Bitting more
Do you feel like you're always in a rush? Always behind? The fear of missing out (FOMO) is real. It creates insane behaviors in us. We have forgotten that this earthly life will eventually end. We rush towards achieving ephemeral goals. Successes that won't last. A
I used to be confrontational. Not that I especially wanted to create conflict, but like many (mostly young) people, I felt the need to be right. I had the urge to correct people. If a discussion led to an argument, boy, did I want to win it. I've
Anticipation is a double-edged sword. It helps us to be patient. It motivates us to get started working on complex projects. Anticipation is a vital tool that allows us to battle and often defeat the resistance. Anticipation is a self-feeding force. As we go, the resistance ramps up, and anticipation
This might sound a bit off-topic, but hear me out. Winter is here, and in Sweden, where I reside, you need to heat your home continuously. Luckily, my small house is equipped with a wood stove. Its central position is to ensure that we have a pleasant temperature everywhere at
This week, I released a new app: a prayer engine. It lives at Prayer.page "What even is a prayer engine?" Well, I'm glad you asked. It's software running on a server that streams prayer lines in real-time. These lines appear at the same
Driving is boring. While I understand the thrill of dynamic driving, I have never been that much of a car enthusiast. However, there's something I enjoy when I absolutely need to get in my car to go somewhere: it can be an uninterrupted thinking session. Two days ago,
There is a secret that parents know but only discuss with other parents. A few days ago, I met with an old friend of mine. He's not a parent, but he likes kids. When asked if he'd like to be a dad someday, part of his
We are often caught up in thinking of progress as a static event. Or at least something that is the result of actions and decisions taken in the recent past. Take the example of a race. Our default thinking is to consider the result at the finish line to be
I drive a German car. When I close one of its doors, the noise often reminds me of an article I read a while back. The author argued that a team designed the sound of these doors. And the sounds of the hand-break. And probably many other interior parts. These
Inventing a product from nothing is hard. Though you certainly can draw inspiration from existing things, maturing the idea into being often involves a painful process of trial and error. You spend days building the product's core, only to realize that you should have done it another way.
These days, I avoid telling people that I'm an entrepreneur. The word and what it encompasses has massively changed since I launched my first (real) venture at 21. Instead, I answer by telling people about the projects I'm working on. Or if I'm in
For the past few months, I've been back to focusing on making products. Though I was partially on parental leave, I shipped an accountability web app, wrote and shipped two short books, and an iOS application. I aim to release the product I'm working on in
Last weekend, my family and I decided to take a drastic rest day. We stepped out from the connected world to focus on being together. No phone, no work. An initiative that was part of practicing the ancient tradition of Sabbath but updated to the modern times. This was my
A lion was born in a zoo. He never had to worry about food. Every day, many people visited him outside his small enclosure. He felt a peculiar blend of comfort and discomfort. For he knew he wasn't meant to live like this. Intrigued by this feeling, he
Being in the present means leaving worries behind. But it can also mean losing the desire to improve the situation. It can distract us out of anxiety or hypnotize us into slavery. We no doubt need to be in the present moment at times. That's how to enjoy
Over the past few years, a few books have highlighted the importance of feedback. The entrepreneur community has blindly accepted that this feedback should happen earlier and earlier in your product's life. The problem with this is that it doesn't account for the entrepreneur's
A topic I've seen discussed a few times over the past few weeks is: Should I build a business by myself or try to find cofounders? I've started companies by myself, and I've also been blessed with great cofounders. I thought I'd
Openai's CEO Sam Altman wrote: “give yourself a lot of shots to get lucky” is even better advice than it appears on the surface. Luck isn’t an independent variable but increases super-linearly with more surface area—you meet more people, make more connections between new ideas, learn
It is possible to work for an extended period with maximum effort. I know I've been doing it for years at that point. The last time I've properly been off work, for almost two weeks, was at the birth of my daughter nearly four years ago.
I recently wrote about 2 False ideas preventing rest. Continuing on this topic, and to further confirm the importance of rest to remain performant, check out what Khabib Nurmagomedov says about it: For me, recovery is sleep; the most important thing. > Between training, at least 2 to 3 hours.
My first iOS app hit the Apple App Store this week. Hurray! I built it in less than two months without prior knowledge of Swift and SwiftUI. The catch? I relied heavily on AI to get me started. It was a fascinating experience because I learned while doing it. The
As summer is coming to an end here, I'm reflecting on rest. More specifically, I'm reflecting on my quasi-inability to take some extended periods of rest. Two false ideas play a major role in this issue. First, the sentiment that there is such a thing as
I stumbled upon this extract from Schwarzenegger's memoir a few weeks ago. It caught my attention because it talks about promotion. Something that only comes naturally to some product-oriented entrepreneurs and artists. Whenever I finished filming a movie, I felt my job was only half done. Every film
I've seen a YouTube short by Alex Hormozi, where he mentioned something he calls the rule of 100. 100 minutes of content creation per day, 100 reach-outs per day, or a $100 ad spend per day. And you do that for 100 days. Alex isn't the
We don't have unlimited time. We know that; it's easy to grasp. But we equally don't have unlimited energy and even less quality energy. When I was 20-something, I thought productivity was about cramming as much work as possible into my day. I would
"What project management software do you use?" Tens of thousands of views and countless replies. That's how popular a simple productivity question I asked on Twitter became. We are suckers for productivity. It's out of control. We try to squeeze more and more of
"We asked it the best recipe to bake a prinsesstĂĄrta*" I was baffled. This company had hired a consultant to teach its staff to leverage AI chatbots (such as ChatGPT or Bard), and what they remembered of it was this. The recipe to bake a cake. What followed
The world has crossed the AI Rubicon. Artificial intelligence has been around for a while. We are coming in contact with it every day. From Amazon or Netflix recommendation engines, to Tesla's autopilot. It’s doing its magic in the background. But in late 2022, what felt like
There's a famous Gallup survey on employee engagement. If you are interested in this topic, you have undoubtedly read articles mentioning it. This study presents a distribution of the average workforce that looks like so: 10% of employees are engaged at work. Another 71% are not engaged, and
This is my take on a question asked on a leadership Q&A page. There is a famous saying that goes: "People don't leave companies. They leave bad bosses." When it comes to finding ways to treat people poorly and lacking tact, we human beings
Over the past few years, I've seen the name Eisenhower next to the word "matrix" more often than his first name "Dwight." Before becoming the 34th President of the USA, Dwight Eisenhower was a five-star general in the army. He was known to be
This is my take on a question asked on a leadership Q&A page. What makes this question interesting is that it's asked from a leader's perspective, not a manager's. So for our answer, we will eliminate every way that uses authority, hierarchy,
This is my take on a question asked on a leadership Q&A page. I see two ways to answer this question. First, because you are standing between your team and your superior, you have to apply leadership to do the transmission part of your job. You take the
All your employee's contracts are expiring at the end of the month. Your biggest competitor wants to poach them all. How will you convince them to stay? Quite a radical way to think about internal communication, isn't it? Organizations usually have a much milder approach. Internally,
In the past, I have written why I believe a good leader ought to talk about risk with their team and how this kind of discussion should happen regularly. I argued that it is a powerful way for the leader to deal with the fear of letting people down. Of
This is my take on a question asked on a leadership Q&A page. When thinking about an approachable leader, one might hear: "My door is always open!" In reality, a leader is approachable because of a series of traits and conducts. The very first thing that
How can you participate more enthusiastically in building the culture? Over 15 years ago, when I was younger and didn't know the first thing about personal development, a friend shared an essay that made a strong impression on me. It was titled "Showing up." The author
Think about something you've known how to do for a long time: driving a car. You have learned how to coordinate your body to manoeuvre this dangerous machine safely. Most of us would call ourselves good drivers. But if we're honest, we'd have to
This is my take on a question asked on a leadership Q&A page. What people in leadership positions fear most is to let people down. As a young entrepreneur, I was afraid not to be able to make payroll. A poor decision could hurt the whole staff. These
And why you should care about the way you package your communication. Recently, I had to write a detailed email to a customer. I answered some of his questions regarding my company's software and provided guidance to help him improve results. My reply drew from my experience working
This is my take on a question asked on a leadership Q&A page. Some might be inclined to say that a leader needs to be both task-oriented and people-oriented. My answer is that it's either-or. It depends on what is expected of the leader. Scenario 1:
This is my take on a question asked on a leadership Q&A page. Father of modern management Peter Drucker said: "[...] to get strength, one has to put up with weaknesses." Don't waste time trying to get rid of weaknesses when you could be furthering
"If the software crashes during the demo, it's game over for us!" This is something I'm still guilty of: using hyperbolic, epic language. Part of me probably believes that this increases motivation and concentration. The reality is that it rarely works. It adds stress
How many times do you need to repeat something to your team to truly get heard? Many, many times. I've read in a book that when you have something important to communicate, you should repeat it until people start making fun of you. Extreme? Maybe. But I'
We all want to make better decisions faster. In some cases, that means not deciding at all. Which is the topic of today's post. Human beings are wired to hate uncertainty. We like predictability and clear answers, sometimes to the point of absurdity. We want to know how
Did you know that only a minority of CEOs are coached? As I was looking through my notes, I found an article about coaching for CEOs. I figured this is something you might find interesting too. The first surprising data is that only a third of the CEOs declared being
Here are three questions employees want their CEOs to address now that the peak of the pandemic seems to be behind us. 1. Is the company safe? Is my job safe? Many people have lost their jobs, and those who got to keep theirs have seen some colleagues, friends, or
There's one desire that all human beings have. Understand this basic human need to build better relationships. Master it to empower people to give their best. This need, this desire we all have is to feel important. All of us want to be acknowledged. No matter who we
Heard on the radio at the start of the pandemic: “I’m expecting a video call at any time, and that’s stressing me out.” This came from someone who’s recently been sent to work from home by her company. Too many businesses aren’t enforcing the new rules