Lars Pind

Watched this brilliant talk by Dan Gilbert over breakfast.

It’s about synthetic happiness, and how it’s every bit as good as any other happiness. There seems to be this mentality that happiness has different qualities. That it’s only good enough if it’s earned through something nice happening to you. The science seems to say that in fact happiness is independent of what you get or what happens to you, that it comes from inside. That’s pretty good to know, isn’t it?

By the way, there’s something tremendously beautiful about starting the day with 20 minutes of fresh inspiration. I’m going to do this again.

Thanks to Jonas Thing for the link.

Jeg har lige modtaget mit eksemplar af Smagsdommerne. Godt gået, drenge, at selvudgive bogen, og tak fordi I sendte den før jeg fik betalt, og hvor er det dog et skønt projekt, I er ude i.

Men det er også sjovt at se hvordan bogen, ligesom websitet, lider under manglen på ordentlig redaktion. En ting er stavefejlene og det alt for friske sprog, men det mest slående for mig er hvordan bogen er sat op uden nogen sans for brug af whitespace og layout. Teksten går næsten helt til kanten, infoboksene er fyldt ud næsten til kanten, og forfatternavne og titel der står på hver side er alt for stort og dominerende, for bare at nævne hvad der lige fangede mit blik. Sjovt at de ikke lige kendte nogen, der kunne hjælpe med det.

Men skidt pyt, hvis indholdet er godt. Det glæder jeg mig til at finde ud af.

Flora og jeg går til rytmik på Familieskolen på Nørrebrogade 14, lige ved siden af kassen og i samme bygning som det hedengangne Arena, og det er så meget spild af tid at jeg har besluttet at droppe det og gå i Zoo i stedet.

Lærerne har ingen sans for rytmik eller toner, og børnene hverken lærer eller bliver særlig underholdt.

Første gang tænkte jeg at det måske var mine forventninger der var for høje, som de har det med at være. Men i dag sendte jeg Caro, og hun var enig. Og senere talte vi med et familiemedlem som også har gået der, og som prøvede et andet hold, og som klagede, men uden at få noget ud af klagen. Så jeg er nu overbevist om at det ikke er mig, men Familieskolen der er noget galt med.

Så spar pengene og tiden, og brug dem f.eks. på APA i stedet. Andre har gået der, og siger at det er super. Jeg har lige meldt mig på et hold.

I got tired of the lame schedule they have on their site and made this instead. Feel free to use it, and let me know if I miss some schedule changes.

Coaching ligger numer et på gad.dk’s top-ti over solgte bøger. Og bogen er endda fra 2004. Coaching er åbenbart urimeligt hot lige nu. Saxo.com har samme bog på 9.pladsen (med to bøger om sex få første- og anden-pladserne).

Jeg kan også se at Saxo.com er 20% billigere, det er jo godt at vide til en anden gang. Hvis de altså ikke tager mere i porto eller andre gebyrer.

Goal-setting has been quite the challenge for me to get right, but I believe I may have finally nailed it.

First off, there’s the usual stuff about making sure your goals are specific and measurable. “Run for 30 minutes 4 times a week” is good, “exercise more” is useless. And they should have target dates by which they should be met.

But what had me puzzled was that I’d have a hard time knowing why I wanted to achieve the goals I’d written down.

Some of them I wanted because I’d seen other people I admired do them, and I figured I should, too.

Some I wanted because it would be the kind of thing that would make my dad proud back when I was in 6th grade.

Some I wanted because I thought it would make tons of money and money is good.

Some I wanted because my wife once said she thought it would be a good idea.

Some I wanted beause I thought it would be fun.

In the end, I’ve concluded that the last one is the only one that matters. Choose your goals because you genuinely believe it will be fun and make you — and only you — happy. That’s certainly taken some changing of habits for me.

I’ve grown up with a mentality that fun was for losers. Real men worked hard and didn’t enjoy it, and if you were lucky, you’d get the big prize which was watching a movie on TV at night. I’m exaggerating, but still.

My first shock was when I visited my very rich and successful uncle, and he shared with me that his first rule of business was to have fun. Wow, did that swipe my feet away from under me. Still it took me a few more years to fully internalize this.

I’ve written many a goal in the past that was too lofty, impossible to achieve, too vague, uninspiring, or just irrelevant.

The other part is having too many goals. Achieving them requires dedication and focus, and you can only focus on so many things at a time and still be effective and happy. So setting goals is even more about all the things you’re not going to do.

That’s something I have a terribly hard time with, because I’m such a sucker for possibilities and the big dreams. But I have to restrain myself and choose. If it’s going to be this or the other, which will it be?

One thing compensates a little bit for that, and that’s the timing. I’ve opted to set goals for 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, 2 years, and 5 years. I know there’s a lot of uncertainties, but it allowed me to start from the bigger picture of where I want to be in 5 years. It also allowed me to capture the things I’m doing right now that are more temporary stepping stones to get to someplace else in a year or two.

I think the lot I have now holds up pretty well, but I’m going to let it sit for a day or two, and then go over it again and ask myself once more what feeling I hope to gain from achieving each goal. Hopefully most will be about having fun.

Back in November I mentioned the album that my cousin Henrik was about to release.

That album has been out for a while now, and I’ve found myself turning to it again and again. It is not a genre of music I’d normally buy. But good music is good music regardless of genre.

And good really reveals itself over time. When the initial impression with the production quality and the surprising changes has worn off, the music is on its own, it has to stand on its own two feet. That’s when you can tell if it’s a keeper.

Good music is a matter of the heart. It needs to make a connection from the artist’s heart to yours.

After having listened to this album over and over again for the past weeks, I can say with certainty that it does for me.

Buy Haiku online right now for only 89,95 and make yourself, me, and Henrik happy. And if you like it, go tell someone else about it. This music deserves a wider audience.

Here’s something I’ve always struggled with.

When people you love or care about have lowered their standards to the point where they’re satisfied with their lives, but you know they have so much more potential, what do you do?

Do you leave them alone, or do you try and inspire them to reach higher?

Reaching higher involves risk, the risk that you fail, that now you’re back where you started, only you’re not satisfied anymore, because you ventured out there only to have your ass handed to you.

In the past, I’ve tried by illustrating to people in detail just how their status quo was really nothing to be satisfied with. That, uhm, didn’t work so well. People would get really upset and really defensive, which completely defeated the purpose. And so for a long time, I’d just shut up, for fear of getting into trouble. It’s time to change that now.

I guess a better strategy might be to illustrate to people what’s possible. Draw a picture of a future that could be, and then see if that makes their eyes light up. It’s not fool-proof, though, because sometimes you can clearly see how the risk of failure and the perceived work to get there gets people demotivated before they even begin to get inspired.

It’s not easy, I don’t have any solutions here, but it’s something I’d really like to get better at.

I just bought a torch today.

How fortunate, that Rouxbe has a free video recipe for making creme brulée.

Can’t wait to try it. Uhm, I love creme brulée.

I read Hugh MacLeod’s excellent manifesto How To Be Creative the other day.

Hugh mentions how he started drawing on business cards, because they were small and portable and readily available. When he had the inspiration he could just start drawing right then and there, instead of having to get back to the office or get out his bulky tools.

I think that’s critically important. I see myself be inspired to write, to code, to design, to have sex, but then I set it aside, because I have this stuff I need to finish first. And by the time I get back to it, the inspiration has gone. And even if you then manage to do it, write it, whatever it is, your heart is no longer in it, and it becomes, literally, half-hearted.

I want to remember Hugh’s story. Respect my inspiration. Follow it right then and there when I feel it.

We always have all these little plans for the hours ahead. If we don’t, we’ll quickly make some. So inspiration, like phone calls, or a beautiful sunset, always interrupt something we were doing, always cross our immediate plans. But that’s okay. Just roll with it.

Last year at EuroGel 2006, Mark Hurst had invited David McQuillen to talk about the customer experince of Credit Suisse. One of the things he said that rung true with me is that most people who work at banks never go to a bank as a customer. Especially in top management, these people have probably not set foot at the front desk of a bank for 30 years. Such ignorance can’t but affect the customer experience.

I wonder how many of the people who work at a supermarket ever experience shopping at their own store. The checkout experience is usually horrible.

Before you start your approach, you have to know which things need to be weighed and make sure you weigh them at the far end of the store before you proceed to the checkout area. If you forget, you have to run all the way back, while the people behind you in line scoff at you and the clerk takes a break. How much could it cost to build a scale into the checkout counter?

Then you have to carefully measure how many bags you’re going to need. You bring bags with you, of course, to save the environment, but maybe you bought more than you thought you would? You better guess right, because by the time you find out, the clerk is on to the next customer. And if you get too many, it’s bad for the environment.

Next up, you have to scramble to pack your stuff before the next customer’s ditto come tumbling down the lane. It’s a fight against the tide, the conveyer belt keeps rolling, threatening to crush your fragile eggs and delicate basil under the onslaught of the two kilos of all-purpose organic flour. At the same time moving belt makes it hard to make your bags sit still while you try to fill them.

Best as you’re scrambling, it’s time to pay. You have to move from where you are, and make your way back up, past other customers, to where the clerk awaits your payment. But before you do that, you have to ensure that that sack of flour won’t crush that basil while your attention is elsewhere.

After paying, you can finish packing, and leave the store. And pray that everything is correct on the bill, because otherwise you have to go over to another long line, carrying all your stuff, to get it fixed.

What could be done to improve this? First off, build a scale into the register. It costs a little, but it also saves time, but more importantly, it stops putting customers at fault.

What about the packing experience? Have the clerk pack stuff for you as you go. Or employ someone to pack, who’s doing only that, so you can focus on paying. Alas, these cost labor, and labor is expensive in Europe, and supermarkets are are margins business.

But at least take care in designing your checkout counter. Think about where people are supposed to stand, where they’re supposed to put their bags, their children, how to prevent their goods from destroying one another, how to get from packaging to payment without having to move too far and without interrupting the packing flow too much, and how to give enough time for it to not be a stressful experience.

And make sure you don’t destroy a great checkout arrangement by throwing up one of those giant anti-theft screeners right where customers are supposed to stand when they pack their bags.

Oh, and think about creating an experience that gives the clerks an opportunity to be happy, relaxed, friendly, and helpful. They’re the primary face that your customers will see.

The bottle return system deserves a special note. I know Danish stores probably hate the bottle deposits and the return system as much as the next guy. I assume it’s only a cost to them. But hey, even when we’re standing there in front of these machines that so frequently break down, in line after some drunk guy with 18 bags of wine bottles at 25 ¿re apiece, our hands and cuffs drenched in a delicious mixture of stale beer from the other night and wine from that lunch with the in-laws—even then, it’s still us, your trusted and loyal customers.

You don’t have to treat us like shit just because we’re returning bottles like our government wants us to. My local supermarket recently moved their bottle return machines into the basement where they have parking. So now you have go through the humiliation of walking down a ramp, enjoying the care exhaust, and finally taking the painfully slow elevators up to the store. Thanks, but on thanks. I’ve started to just leave my bottles in the street and let whoever wants the pennies take them. After all, the system does work rather well that way.

So. Are we going to see better shopping experiences generally available? I doubt it. But I’m appalled each time I shop that the experience is so poor, and everyone seems so oblivious to it. Oh, that’s just the way it is, they’ll say. Yes, because noone has experienced or bothered to imagine something better.

I’m a big fan of Italian food. No, scratch that. A ginormous fan. So much so that I’d easily spend 2 months of every year in Italy just for the food. And another 2 months for the climate, the nature, the culture, the history, and the people. But 2 for the food alone.

I love their cuisine for its simplicity. Great ingredients, presented with minimal interference. I’ve always mocked the french for their elaborate concoctions and their patiently reduced sauces.

But Christina pointed me to an important point when she was here a few weeks ago, which is: Italian food works so well precisely because they have great ingredients. But us people in the north don’t have that.

Enter the French cuisine. The northern half of France also happen to have terrible produce, because of the climate, and that’s why they’ve devised these techniques that can snatch flavor from the jaws of winter vegetables. It’s pure genious, once you realize it.

So I’ve laid aside my air of superiority and picked up the French cuisine. Jacques Pépin is my new hero.

I’ve started out with his Fast Food My Way, which is brilliant. I bought it in November but didn’t find it too appealing at first, because I was in the Italian mind-set. But once that changed and I started cooking from it this month, I’ve been elated.

The recipes are super-easy and quick. I’m having another Jamie Oliver moment, meaning the feeling I had when I first started cooking from Oliver’s books, of how things just taste great and are so easy to make.

They’re simple things, nothing fancy, but they taste great, are so easy to make you can easily make a nice side dish, a salad, a dessert, and maybe a starter, too. And that’s new for me. I usually run out of steam after one or two dishes, so starting to make 4-5 dishes for a single meal has really catapulted my cooking forward a big step.

Get Pépin, and start cooking in French!

@media2007 has been announced, and I really want to go. But where? San Francisco is closer to my partner, but London is closer to home.

And I also want to go to SXSW and GEL. And of course RailsConf.

So let’s see the lineup:

• SXSW: March 9-13 in Austin
• GEL: April 19-20 in New York
• RailsConf: May 17-20 in Portland
• @media: May 24-25 in San Francisco
• Reboot9: May 31-June 2 in Copenhagen
• EuroGEL: September 6-7 in Copenhagen

Looks like a busy spring.

What conferences are you going to this year?

(UPDATE: Added EuroGEL, Reboot)

Our company lawyer in Silicon Valley, who by all means is a very nice person, has a super-slow turnaround time. It typically takes 2 wees go get a response to an email, and promised paperwork never shows up until after having asked for it more than once, and always weeks after it was promised.

I’ve been told by the few people I’ve asked that this is normal and acceptable behavior from a good lawyer, especially since we have a deferred payment agreement with him, but I still have a hard time believing that. So I wanted to ask the question a little wider here, and ask you if that’s normal?

Incidentally, if you want to recommend us aonther lawyer in the Mountain View/Palo Alto area, I’d love to hear your recommendation.

I’m addicted to good headsets for talking voice.

What I really want is this but for Skype.

Over the ear, light, perfect, crisp sound, and wireless, so I can move about.

Does anyone know if that’s possible?

Why more bars and cafes in Copenhagen don’t go smoke-free voluntarily is beyond me. Look at the numbers. 75% of your potential customers are non-smokers. And based on anecdotal evidence, people are fed up with passive smoke.

Or look at a business case. Ølbaren in Elmegade went smoke-free one night a week, then expanded to two, and finally went all smoke-free all the time. Reading the forums and newsletters you can tell that they were concerned, but apparently it worked out financially okay for them.

I don’t know if they actually experienced an increase in business, but it seems likely that would happen, as there’s currently such a shortage of smoke-free places that it makes it a special attraction.

Come April 1st there will be a mostly complete smoke ban, anyway, so why not pre-empt this and make it part of your brand and create a little extra customer loyalty by being an early mover? It seems like a business opportunity just sitting there. Perhaps there’s a disproportionate share of smokers amongst bar-owners?

The job of a partner, a spouse, or a friend is to help get you to a position where you can excel, where you’re free, even compelled, to do what you do best.

I hope to be that partner, that spouse, that friend.

I buy books like nobody’s business, at least 10 a month. But I don’t read all of them. Most, I just read a few chapters, and that’s all I need. If I’m not enjoying it, engaged, and learning, I skip ahead or put it down entirely.

The latest book I laid my hands on was Crucial Conversations, and from the little I’ve read in it so far, it seems like it would be an amazing 50-page e-book. Isn’t that true of so many books? It really doesn’t required 250 pages to communicate what they have to say. Yet to justify printing, stocking, and selling a book, with all the profits that have to be made up the food chain, you can’t really sell a 50-page book.

Unless you’re self-publishing or publishing online.

Yet the truth is that the customer would be better served by having the same content delivered in 50 pages, because then we wouldn’t have to wade through another 200 to find the nuggets.

So thankfully, with ebooks or PDFs, publishing a 50-page book is fine, and you can charge, say, $10 or $20 for it, and it’s still a great deal for the customer looking for help on a challenge she’s facing right here and now, and it should be cheaper to write and review than 250 pages, too.

I hope to see a lot more of this, and I hope that more authors will see past the supposed requirements to write real, full-length books, and offer more of what the market really demands.

Christina is in town, and I want to treat her to good, traditional Danish lunch on Tuesday. Ida Davidsen is closed, so what are the runners-up?

Told & Snaps? What else?

Yesterday I wrote Always Be Contributing. Later, I thought of another riff on that:

Always Be Courageous.

On New Year’s Eve we had little envelopes on each of our plates, to write down our new year’s resolutions. We told each other and talked about it a bit, but it didn’t get quite as interesting as I think it could have.

I far one had a mental block and was unable to think of any other than the no-brainer that I wanted to have another child.

The exercise sparked something in me, though.

In the next few days, I’ve been asking myself and my friends the question, what would you do this year if you knew it would be your last, that you’d die at the end of 2007? Some interesting conversations and insights have come from this.

One thing I realized was that fear was holding me back. Fear of rejection, fear of the unknown, fear of not living up to people’s expectations, fear of not being good enough, fear of not being successful, fear of failure, fear of not being liked.

In 2007 I want to be courageous.

Kierkegaard said, and I’ve always treasured this quote:

“To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”

(In Danish: “At turde er at miste fodfæste for en stund. Ikke at turde er at miste livet.”)

More than anything else, I want to have the courage to do what I feel is right and true, and ignore what other people think.

If 2007 was the last year of my life, that’s what I’d put first. I think the rest follows from that. Including contribution. Not contributing is the learned state, contributing is the natural state.

Remember, courage is not absence of fear. Courage is to acknowledge the fear, but to go ahead anyway.

Happy 2007!

This quote from Nick Smith, linked to in a comment over on this really interesting thread, really resonated with me:

“We seem to be developing a whole industry of productivity aids and techniques to help us find balance, carve out periods of ‘flow’ and ‘get things done’ within stressful, conflicted lives that are befuddled by limited beliefs. I am sure this need not be.”

I love my GTD for the few but important techniques that it taught me, but it isn’t the end game. It efficient, but not necessarily effective.

My mom recently asked me to loan the book, and I’m quite certain it’s not what she needs. She needs to study her motives and fears, not techniques.

GTD doesn’t help if you’re not doing the right things, or if your emotional patters are hurting you. In fact, chances are it might hurt, because it delays the breakdown where you realize you really need to do something.

That’s not meant as a warning against reading it, I do recommend it, just read it for the right reason. And it would have been a lot better as a 50-page e-book, so just scan it for the nuggets.

Maybe you’re familiar with the phrase “ABC – Always Be Closing”, featured in a powerful monologue in Glengarry Glen Ross?

My new phrase is “A – Always, B – Be, C – Contributing”. Always Be Contributing.

Do it. Contribute. Add value to every interaction you have with other people. I believe the way to be happy and fulfilled is to have the courage to contribute to other people at every step of the way. Life’s too short to not give of yourself every day.

I believe if you focus on contributing and serving, the rewards will come, but they might not seem as important anymore.