Taming Monkey Number Five: Solved

It’s time for my monthly monkey review. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please read the introductory post here. To make a long story short, I decided to ditch completely my new years resolutions and replace them with a year long challenge: taming a “monkey” each month. If you don’t know what a “monkey” is, well, basically, it’s an underdeveloped part of myself, something that I promised I will do but never really got to it. Get the whole scoop about “your inner monkeys” here.

iAdd Desktop Version

The fifth monkey, the one assigned to the month that just ended, was the desktop version of iAdd. I promised myself a year ago that I will do this and I went a long way towards it. At this moment, iAdd desktop has an interface, some pieces of functionality and a clear roadmap. I didn’t finish it, though. But, as the title of the post implies, I “solved” it.

As I advance in this challenge, I learn a lot, month by month. And I realized last month that sometimes, in order to tame a monkey, I don’t necessary have to finish it. Sometimes just making peace with it, accepting as it is and doing the best I can, will do the trick. That was the case with iAdd Desktop. I couldn’t finish it, but I’m ok with it. I guess I’ll finish it in a few weeks from now. Either way, it’s in my system. It’s out of the “one day I will do this” realm. And that means it’s not a monkey anymore.

Pretty simple, huh? Well, not so fast. The strange pipeline disorder I noticed last month continued this month. And it got even stronger. Meaning that strange drives seemed to appear in my life out of nowhere and took me on surprising paths. I take that my clogged pipes are starting to clean up. Big time.

And one of the things that I learned the most during this pipe cleaning, was about the promises I make to myself.

What To Promise To Yourself

In short, not much. The more I advance in this year long challenge, I realize that we do have a very complicated relationship with our own promises. And the less complicated we keep this relationship, the better our life gets.

That’s why I decided to step down from some of the ventures I embraced. Like the board of Venture Connect, for instance. Venture Connect is very high class networking event in which investors are meeting potential entrepreneurs. I was one of the first members in this board and massively contributed to the first two editions. It’s a nice place to be, no doubt about it, I get to hang out with successful entrepreneurs, with investors and I also get in touch with many startups. But fact is, I can do this anytime. I can hang out with fellow entrepreneurs whenever I feel like. If this is what I really want. I can also get in touch with promising startups whenever I want to.

To make a long story short, being on board of Venture Connect became a void promise. Something that I did just because it sounded good and looked like a nice pastime. But at some point this pastime hijacked my real focus and I felt sidetracked. And I had to make a choice. Many people from my circle of friends or close business partners were surprised by that move and thought I was upset about something from within Venture Connect. Nope, I wasn’t. It just wasn’t me anymore, it was just a nice image projection. Look fellows, I’m in so many boards. Famous, visible and popular boards. Ain’t me cool, or what?

Now, if at some point I will feel that my contribution to Venture Connect can really make a difference, I will most likely go back. But it simply wasn’t fair to stay there just because that made me look important, nice and famous. Whenever I hit a spot like “being famous”, “looking good” or “do it for the image”, I always put out the line of Rhet Buttler from the end of Gone With The Wind: “Frankly, darling, I don’t give a shit.” And I mean it.

The same goes with relationships. Too many times we project ourselves in some of our relationships and we keep our projections running long after the relationship is not representative anymore for us. But we’re comfortable and we feel somehow nice and validated. Fact is we’re not really validated. We just think we are. But we made this internal promise to stick with it because, years ago maybe, it looked like a good option. Things are changing, life is changing, we are changing. Every once in a while we have to reevaluate our promises and see for which of them we’re still holding true.

Full Thrust Ahead

That being said, I am incredibly happy to witness a real change in my lifestyle. And not only in what I do, but in the way I feel about what I do. What follows is just a short glimpse of the things I did during May. And, most important, of the things I thoroughly enjoyed during May.

Became A Regular Contributor To  Stepcase Lifehack

I think I applied to it a few months ago, Maybe 9 or 10. And, out of nowhere, I get this email that I’ve been accepted. 10 months after, basically. Now, for all of you Law Of Attraction fans, I know that smile. And I know what you’re thinking: “it came to you when you were prepared to receive it.”. As much as I agree with that, I will still add my own interpretation: “it came to me when I could finally see it, and my visual field wasn’t obfuscated by all those jumping monkeys”. Which is pretty much the same thing, rephrased. I know that. Anyway, go have a look at the articles already published: 7 Not So Obvious Ways To Maximize Your Productivity (which instantly got into the popular area at lifehacker) and The Number One Problem Facing A Digital Nomad (No Pun Intended).

Launched The WordPress Framework WPSumo

That’s by far one of the most important things I did so far this year. WPSumo is an incredible piece of work, and I mean this. My blog is based now on WPSumo, and what you see is just a quick customization. I won’t get into details here because that would mean to write more than 10.000 words on this topic alone. Instead, I will send you directly to WPSumo site.. And I will also let you know about something very, very special. It’s a promotion launch, where you can get an incredible deal. (For those of you who are reading this just a little bit later, apologies, the launch promotion was limited in time).

Got On Board Of WeGetThere

This is one of those startups I was talking about in the above paragraph. I love the idea, I knew the people behind, so I decided to get involved. We’re still in the very early stages with it, but I am confident. If you don’t want to go the WeGetThere home page, let me tell you that this is a revolutionary travel crowdfunding service. Got your interest? Good. 🙂

Got Two Speaking Gigs

Both in the online industry in Romania. At the first one, in Brasov, I was mentor for the teams involved in a local seed funding contest, and at the second one, in Sibiu, I was talking about how you can use technology to accelerate your business. It was in fact a speech about how to build reputation.

I guess I have to mention this here too, I also got a one day long gig for a teambuilding in Sinaia. I don’t sell these services directly (speaking, custom workshops) but I think I will start doing this. The last teambuilding in Sinaia was a very controlled and measurable experience. I’m talking about me and my skills, not about the attendees, which, by the way, seemed to had a lot of fun. So, prepare to see a “Work With Me” link on the navigation menu on this blog soon.

June Monkey

Now, that the May monkey is behind, it’s time to pick the June monkey. As a matter of fact, I already picked it (we’re on the 4th of June today, aren’t we?). It’s about running. I’m not competing for a marathon or something. I just want to incorporate more running into my life.

At various times in my life, running was a central piece of my daily activity. Even when I was a teenager, I remember I used to run miles and miles each day around the nearby lake in my home town. Didn’t followed any performance metrics or been driven by some ambition to win a competition. But running gave me a daily pace for my ideas, for my activities. It was like putting in order my stuff. I kinda miss this, to be honest.

I always had this longing for more running. Last time when I did this in an organized way, for many months, was when I was a student. I guess that’s 15 years ago. There were a few other unfinished projects related to running, during this time, but, as you may’ve already guessed, none of them really did it.

So, in order to have a little bit of a measurable goal, I intend to run for at least 15 days out of the 30 in June.

Already ran in one, 14 more to go.