The Art of Focus →
Graphic created by Octav Druta. Inspired by Craig Damrauer
How do you define focus by the way?
Stop Solving Problems For A Moment →
It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness. - Charles Spurgeon
Look around, everyone is seeking to solve problems. Take health care for example. There are over 40 drugs to treat Nausea, over 100 drugs to treat Insomnia, over 400 drugs to treat Pain - the list is huge.
I’m not saying that it’s wrong to have many alternative treatments for health problems, but isn’t the world focusing too much on solving problems in general?
How about looking at why people are healthy? How about looking at why people are happy? How about connecting with those people so that you can have access to what they do well, to what makes them happy?
I personally started to do this already. I connect with people and find out what drives them, what makes them happy. This activity fills me with a tremendous amount of energy because I can always join their projects and their activities in general. Here are a 10 ideas that inspire some of my friends to be happy:
Catalina Rusu loves tango nuevo
Dan Ciotu loves to play football
Dragos Ilinca loves to travel to Iceland
Dragos Manac loves to listen to the music of Notorious BIG
Iulia Stanescu loves to love me
Radu Spineanu loves the burgers from In-and-Out Burger
Razvan Roman loves tourbillon watches
Lavi Marcu loves improvisation
Vladimir Oane loves to listen to podcasts about tech and religion
Vlad Stan loves to take photos of people filled with emotion
These are just a few ideas and they are just some of my friends. Imagine being connected permanently to new ideas that inspire them to be happy :)
I challenge Catalina and Vlad to write a blogpost about 10 ideas that inspire their friends to be happy. Make sure you also chalenge some your friends to do that!
PS: If you want to get access to thousands of ideas that inspire you to be happy, check out this fresh new link: trigwee.com
Join my dream of learning GO →
So simple, yet so hard. I knew about GO. I knew that it’s remarkable for its strategic complexity despite its simple rules.
I felt that I should experience this mysterious game some day. With time, this feeling turned into a quiet voice - a constant longing in my mind.
Photo credits: tasuki
My trigger for action was in the summer of 2009. I’ve read about my friend’s Daniel trip to China. He shared his extraordinary experience of playing GO with a master.
Suddenly I felt the urge to turn the longing I had into a dream and I did - on Trigwee only a day after reading Daniel’s post.
I felt like I had removed the pressure from my shoulders after sharing my dream with my friends.
And finally the beginning of 2010 it all came back to me when Daniel finally invited me and a couple of other friends to learn the game. I couldn’t wait until my first lesson of GO with Daniel.
Afterwards I went to the AppStore, downloaded a GO game for my iPhone and started playing regularly. The game is simply fascinating. It is surrounded by a vast amount of knowledge, wisdom and culture.
Even though the rules are extremely simple, playing an actual game of GO is challenging. Therefore I wanted to learn more about it - but I found too many resources online that I felt overwhelmed: Software, books, audio lessons, iPhone apps, etc. I needed some guidance to explore the information in a structured manner.
At some point a thought crossed my mind: “Isn’t there some sort of online GO school?” So I asked Bjoern from Supercool School about it. He runs this crazy awesome online platform that allows people to build their own schools online. His dream is to give people worldwide access to education.
Now we are searching for a principal to lead a GO school - to make my dream of becoming a 1-dan GO player reality. I am sure that all around the world there are people that want to learn the game and become better at it by joining a great community. Help us find a GO principal!
Add yourself here to join the dream of learning GO.
Please send me an email to octavdruta at gmail dot com if you are interested to become the principal of the GO School.
Power to you →
What is power to you? Before rushing to submit your answer in the comments section, watch this cute little video. You’ll find it… well, you tell me how you found it - I am curious to learn about your opinion!
Looking in a mirror without using one →
You smile, he smiles. You wink, he winks. You wave, he waves. You know exactly who I’m talking about, right? It’s the “Man in the mirror”.
Little Spy. Image copyright Vlad Dumitreanu
Listen to Michael Jackson’s song: “Man in the Mirror”. It’s both a source of inspiration and a great opportunity to take a look at yourself in the same time.
Looking at yourself is a nice way to start brainstorming about what you want to achieve. I’d like to ask you to share and/or think about how can one look into a mirror without using an actual mirror. Here are three examples that I thought about:
- Create something. By creating something you’ll have the chance to observe your interests and skills.
- Experience something new. Experiencing the unknown will expose your deepest emotions. Our emotions and what/how we think about them are among the biggest barriers to achievement.
- Start a conversation with your friends about what you think that is right or wrong. The environment, the experience and the education shape our beliefs. A key factor of evolution is adaptability. One’s beliefs about what is right or wrong can often hinder the ability to adapt.
Here we go, three ways one can use to “look into a mirror” without using an actual mirror. It’s your turn now :)
Please do get infected →
Disclaimer: I am one of the advisors of Seedmoney
Striving to get infected with a virus isn’t the best thing to do, you know? Well, believe it or not, there are exceptions. How would you like to be infected with happiness? Or let’s say… inspiration? Maybe passion? Perhaps Motivation? Knowledge? Extraordinary results?
Photo copyright: nomoco
They say that your friends can make you fat, lonely and even happy. It’s been decades since various sociologists and philosophers advanced the idea that behaviours can be “contagious”. So, are you already asking yourself about great social environments where you can get infected “constructively”? Well, there are many of them.
If you’re interested in building Internet companies, I can recommend one myself. It’s called: Bucharest Hubb. You can only join this community if one of the Seedmoney advisors recommends you or by direct requests. If one of the advisors recommends you, you can join as a member by paying a fee - which is quite acceptable.
There’s even one way to join The Hubb for almost free. The Hubb community needs 9 persons that want to help voluntarily with activities that require 2 up to 3 hours a day - for someone that is already involved in a personal project or even a job. If you want to help out with the logistics of the Hubb, you can get free membership throughout your activity there. If you’re interested, feel free to contact Cristina: cristina[at]seedmoney.ro.
This is a great opportunity for you to join a community where you can get infected “constructively” :)
You can register to take a tour of the Hubb by following this link: http://www.bucharesthubb.com/register.php
What are you building? →
Launch48, Harry Potter and JetCarStunts. An event for startup enthusiasts, a world famous character, and an iPhone app. What do the three have in common?
Image copyright Lego.com
I think that they’re all about building something. I had the opportunity to experience the three of them last week.
- Launch48 - building a webapp in 48hours that should make sense as a business;
- Harry Potter - building a captivating story around a character;
- JetCarStunts - building the skills of driving a hybrid between a car and a plane across 5 levels of difficulty (just learning, easy, intermediate, hard and impossible).
Building - what am I building? I asked myself this question back in 2008. Then, I wanted to explore how much of my activity is centered around consumption and how much of it is centered around creativity.
It’s an interesting exercise.
- you take a sheet of paper and split it into two columns;
- during the day/night, stop a couple of times and look at what you’re doing. When you’re building/creating something, you write it in the first column. Similarly, when you’re consuming something, you write it in the second column.
- at the end of one week you count how many times you built or consumed something.
Here are some examples that denote consumption:
- reading something
- watching a movie
- eating / drinking
And here are a couple examples that denote creativity:
- writing something
- drawing
- cooking
I believe that there should be a balance between consumption and creativity. When we consume something, we take something from the world. When we create something we give something to the world. Most of what you consume couldn’t have been available for you if others wouldn’t have created it. Learn to say thanks by giving back. Build something!
What next? →
Here’s a wonderful video in which Hans Rosling outlines the change in life expectancy and income per person over the last two centuries with the help of Trendalyzer.
What do you think that the world will experience in the next 200 years? How do you think about the future?
What does it mean to achieve a dream? →
Is it about running blindly for a prize?
What does it mean for you? Can you share?
Dreaming of a breakthrough in technology →
Kwabena’s dream is to create a computer based on the “organized chaos” of the human brain.
Image: Kwabena Boahen/Stanford University via Discover Magazine
While pursuing his dream, Kwabena wants to solve a problem related to energy efficiency. He says that “Energy efficiency isn’t just a matter of elegance. It fundamentally limits what we can do with computers”.
Read more about Kwabena’s dream and watch his TED presentation. I find his dream fascinating as its achievement could open a wealth of new possibilities for the humanity. Can you imagine?
