Recent am contribuit la un proiect open source menit să ajute oamenii în timpul pandemiei COVID-19. Esența acestuia constă în "conectarea" persoanelor blocate în case (de exemplu vârstnicii, bolnavii), cu voluntari care sunt dispuși să aducă produse alimentare și medicamente.

Contribuția mea constituie un Telegram-bot care informează voluntarii despre misiunile pe care trebuie să le îndeplinească (cum Tom Cruise în "Collateral", avea un gadget care-i spunea ce are de făcut ;-). Poți face click pe imagine pentru e vedea acest bot în acțiune:

Fiind întrebat despre motivațiea mea de a participa în acest proces, am zis că îmi place să fac ceva care are impact pozitiv asupra societății, și că nu e prima oară când mă implic în astfel de inițiative. Versiunea completă a răspunsului este redată aici:

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The notes are derived from Simon Sinek's "Infinite game". The notes are for personal use, but you might find them useful.

Keep in mind that this book lacks scientific rigour. The stories it provides make intuitive sense, but this wouldn't pass peer review, if it were a journal paper.

General stuff

• Learn to identify the context you're in.
• Understand what game your opponents are playing and adjust you strategy accordingly.

A just cause

Have a greater mission. Examples:

• If an American railroad company didn't have the mission to "promote the rail", but "to move people around" , it would have adapted to market changes. Perhaps it could have extended into airplanes, cars. But they were stuck and stagnated (at least in the USA, where railroads "lost" to automobiles and airplanes).
• Sony CD, tape vs Spotify
• Garmin and their dash navigators lost market share as smartphones grew in popularity and replaced dash-mounted GPS devices.

Write down your cause and have it formalized - it will be easier for someone to pick up the torch and carry on after your demise.

Other notes

• Shareholder interests vs consumers benefits / Adam Smith vs Milton Friedman.
• Where there is unbalance, there is unrest.
• Will vs resources.
• Fear can push us to choose the best finite option, at the risk of doing infinite damage.
• Culture = values + behaviour
• Drug dealers aren't trying to beat the police and win, they're just trying to stay in the game. So, don't choose "finite game" tactics against them.
• Lazy leadership = when you solve a problem without understanding the root cause, but by merely instituting a policy and expecting it to work. The time-sheets example, they were introduced without explaining the employees why they are needed and how they will solve the problem.
• The best solution to ethical failures is an infinite game mindset.
• Consider Patagonia stock( they are portrayed as a company with an infinite mindset and good ethics. (just checked it - it is a privately held company that hasn't gone through an IPO)
• Losing a rival is not necessarily the same as winning the game.

These notes are based on "The richest man in Babylon", they were written for personal use, but they might be helpful to others as well. The book is written as a series of stories, meant to teach the reader about the optimal ways of managing one's budget, and what mistakes to avoid.

In retrospect, it is clear that most people (my past self included) lack training in this area. Therefore:

• These matters should be discussed in schools (perhaps "ora clasei"?), so children have a basic idea of how things work;
• Whenever the opportunity arises, run such classes myself, or lobby for their introduction;
• Share my notes with friends;
• Discuss how my friends and acquaintances manage their budgets.

General points

• No one lends his entire fortune, not even to his best friend.
• It costs nothing to ask for advice.
• You can fail to obey the laws of X, or you can fail to observe them. (X could be investment, economics)
• The sun that shines today is the same sun that shone for your grandfathers, and it is the same sun that will shine for the last of your descendants
• Advice is a thing that is freely given away, but watch that you take only what is worth having. (said in the context of taking advice about X from a non-expert in X)
• Willpower to keep going even after several failures
• The greatest wealth is not in the coins already in your purse, but in the continuous influx of what keeps coming into it. (the "golden slaves" that work for me)

Basic rules

• Savings - a part of what I earn is mine to keep (treat it like paying yourself).
• Pay yourself first. No less than 1/10th of what you make.
• Learn to live on less than what you make.
• A small and safe return is far more desirable than risk.
• Do not strain to save too much.
• Categorize your expenses: necessary, nice-to-have, luxury; cross out the non-critical ones.

The 7 cures for a lean purse

1. For each 10 coins you earn, spend only 9 (i.e., save 10%)
2. Plan your budget: savings, basic needs, etc; cut out unnecessary stuff
3. Put each of your coins into labour, so it works for you.
4. Guard your treasure, entrust it only to reliable entities that know what they are doing.
5. Live under your own roof. If needed, take a loan to buy it. In that case you will be paying monthly to the creditor, to cover your debt, rather than to the landlord, who actually owns the place.
6. Plan for the future, when you are older and cannot work as effectively. Houses and land are a good choice.
7. Increase your ability to earn - improve your skills, work more efficiently, work harder.

On luck

Those who are "lucky" are just people who could identify an opportunity when it arose, and acted swiftly.

• Do not rely on blind luck.
• Think of the moments when "success was within reach, but you missed it" - reflect upon that, what made it so?
• Do not procrastinate, take the opportunity when it arises.

Stories from the gold lender

• Investing into emotionally-driven people is not a good endeavour.
• Do not lend to people who don't know what they are doing, nor have a reliable plan, nor can provide guarantees in case of failure.

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Şi totuşi hai să-ţi spun ce e iubirea,
fiindcă adevăru-i complicat.
Iubirea nu e cum în imnuri scriu poeţii
şi nici cum marii meşteri au pictat.

Şi nu e nici cum cântă trubadurul,
şi nici aşa cum în romane-i explicat.
Nici pe departe nu-i cum pare în "reţele",
şi filmele ne-au dezorientat...

Iar dac-ar fi s-asculţi ce spune lumea
s-accepţi cum ţi se dă, denaturat,
să te găteşti de o dezamăgire,
căci zborul tau va fi abrupt scurtat.

Şi totuşi hai să-ţi spun ce e iubirea,
să ştii că ai ieşire din impas:
exclude tot ce sigur ştii că nu e,
şi-atunci iubirea-i tot ce a rămas.

Take off your smile
for a while
you grew accustomed to it...
Have you already forgotten the face
that quietly suffers beneath?

Take a moment to think
for a while
and question the path that you chose.
Would you have walked it again, if you could?
Or left it to vultures and crows?

Take a break, catch your breath
for a while,
get out of this torturing wheel!
Whose race are you running, again?
Is the finish line even real?

Take a step back
for a while,
and look at yourself from aside.
Who is the person in front of your eyes?
Is it someone that you recognized?

---

Take a chance, try a change,
and defy the programming.
Use your free will while you have it.
Break the loop, dammit!

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These are my notes about "How to have impossible conversations", by Peter Boghossian and James A. Lindsay. After reading Boghossian's previous book, I had no doubts that this one would be useful, and I wasn't disappointed!

It is full of practical tips and examples and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys discussing controversial subjects. The notes are for personal use, they make sense to me, they may not make sense to you. Read the book to make your own impression.

p.s. this was written on a phone, so there might be typos or short-hand notation that doesn't make sense.

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Every step you take,
every decision you make
closes a door, blocks a path,
it's obvious if you do the math.

The freedoms you have will erode,
straightjacketing you down the road.
As time passes by you'll think more
of what you don't have, but had plenty before.

The hourglass runs out of sand,
look closer, make note of the trend.
The choices you still have today...
Tomorrow - they're going away.

Sometimes when you ask
how it goes,
I try to escape with a ruse.
"Not bad", I might say,
"many others would like
to walk through their lives
in my shoes".

"How nice", you remark,
without giving a chance
to finish the thought
that ensues.

And so I am left,
ruminating all day...
Do I want to be
in my shoes?

The notes are based on "The now habit" by Neil Fiore:

• Procrastionation is not laziness.
• It could be fear of criticism, fear of judgement, even fear of success.
• You can overcome it by focusing on getting started.
• Think about what you can do right now, rather than about a hypothetical future where the work is in a "finished" state.
• Introspect and understand why it occurs in your case.
• Make time for guilt-free play.
  • Use the "unschedule" to plan guilt-free play time first
  • Remember to add constraints with respect to how much work you want to get done (no more than 5h/day, no more than 20/h week)
• Read the "walk the plank" example to learn to observe yourself from aside and understand that most often you have what it takes to get it done, and the pressure is actually self-induced.
• Find ways to rely on intrinsic motivation to work on something (rather than external forces).
• Don't push yourself too hard, accept your flaws and limitations. Your imperfections are a part of you, learn to live with them, and perhaps gradually improve yourself, but don't try to change everything at once (you will probably fail and this will dampen your spirits).
• When desperate, think about the worst thing that could happen - is it that bad? Most often it isn't! And even if it does happen - what will you do? Sometimes there are very simple measures that can be applied, once you're aware of them, your anxiety is reduced.
• Learn how to get into the flow state and how to stay there.

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So, you have found yourself
at the bottom of the bottomless
pit of despair and doubt.
Again.

Don't worry, with time
you'll get used to the cold
and the numbness of mind
and the pain.

Rejoice! You've set foot
on a ground where
no human or beast
stepped before!

Now you have plenty of time
to rethink, to replan,
reconsider, recant, as all
your concerns are no more!

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