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Tag: 365 challenge

  • Showing Up Every Day For One Year – Dragos Roua

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    That’s it. I made it. I published every single day an article on this blog for an entire year, this is the last one. What started on January 1st, ends on December 31st.

    It’s done.

    How do I feel at the end of this challenge? Good question.

    I don’t feel very different from the beginning of it. Yes, there are specific skills that have been honed during this challenge, and I will write about them in a second. But, overall, I’m the same. Well, a year older, of course.

    What Improved

    So, in terms of skills, obviously discipline was the most important one. Getting back to the task at hand, showing up, doing my job, all this helped me add even more layers to my structured approach. I couldn’t say I was lacking discipline before, but now I know how much more I can improve in this area if I really want to.

    Another skill that improved was, obviously, writing. I don’t know if I write better or worse (that’s for you to decide, the reader), but I find it easier for me. Not only in terms of writer’s block (I only had it a handful of times during the challenge, and it quickly went away) but more in terms of finding it easier to express my thoughts in a clear way.

    Another important thing that happened was the actual material out there now. Out of these 365 articles, at least two thirds are ideas or scaffolds for potential longer essays or books. Having this road ahead, with potholes that I needed to fill every day, forced me to get out of my head a lot of thoughts, to clarify many points of view, to crystalize many structures that may be well developed further in the next years.

    What I Missed

    It wasn’t all good, though. Writing every day requires constant energy spent on the process. In all honesty, I felt quite a few times that I was missing out on other areas of my life.

    Sometimes, during days with lower energy, the most important part of the day was spent on writing, just to make sure I’m not going to miss the article for that day.

    That left me at times a bit depleted (I was also working full time, it wasn’t a sabbatical year), so not much energy left to spend in other areas, like learning to play the guitar, or running. I did ok in these areas, there was some progress, but I could have done so much better.

    The Biggest Takeaway

    If I think more about it, though, there is a significant takeaway at the end of this challenge.

    I starts from this feeling, that I am at the same time relieved and a bit confused. As of tomorrow, there will be no more pressure. I won’t have to show up for this specific task every day.

    On one side, I feel relieved, because there was this constant, daily stress about showing up (not necessarily bad, this stress). On the other side, I feel confused and a bit lost. What am I gonna do? What other task an I going to take up on?

    But as the last words of this article are finding their way out, I realize I don’t really have to take up on a task every day.

    The biggest – and probably the only specific – takeaway of this 365 days challenge is that we can create meaning outside structured behavior too. Yes, having a fixed scaffold to build upon, like a daily task, really helps. It gives a sense of purpose.

    But life goes on regardless.

    Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

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  • Optimize For What’s Necessary – Dragos Roua

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    Technology optimizes for performance.

    Business optimizes for profit.

    Biological evolution optimizes for survival.

    Spirituality optimizes for compassion (non-aggression).

    How does this work out in real life?

    To be successful, any technology must optimize for performance.

    That means running the same process with less energy, in less time, or with greater accuracy.

    Take computers, for instance. They were optimized primarily for performance (measured in speed of CPU and data storage). If you compare the evolution in size of computers from, let’s say, the last two decades, with their evolution in performance, you would get incredible numbers. In terms of size, they probably shrunk 10-20x. A desktop from around 20 years ago is roughly 20x bigger than a laptop. But in terms of processing power and storage, the increase was 100-200x, at least. An order of magnitude higher.

    In technology, all resources are concentrated on performance, and cost is less important.

    A business is measured by the profit it creates. What’s left after you take out investment and operational cost, that’s the core of the business.

    That means a business is running the same process with increasing financial returns.

    Look how business is only slightly overlapping with technology here.

    You don’t always pay the same for the same amount of performance. All smartphones have roughly the same technical characteristics. And yet, some of them are selling for a lot more than others. Optimization done in areas like branding, communication, marketing influences heavily the returns.

    An organism is said to adjust when it functions in such a way that its current structures will be predictably supported.

    That means evolution runs the same process (life) over and over, with increased adaptation to the context.

    We already know that survival is not a feature of the strongest, but of the fittest. And by fittest it means “the one most adapted to the circumstances”.

    It gets interesting now if you combine the previous two optimizations. Sometimes, as a living organism, you need to generate profit (or fat, like bears do to adjust to the winter), and that’s a business type of optimization. Whereas other times you need generate more accuracy (if you’re hunting, for instance), or higher speed (if you run by someone who’s hunting you), which are both technology types of optimization.

    These two optimizations are used differently, based on the context, because that’s what evolution does: it adjusts to the context.

    A spiritual person does no harm (very, very basic description, I know, but bare with me).

    That means spirituality runs the same process (living consciously) by avoiding violence and aiming for unconditional cohesion with other human beings, on the basis that we’re all the same, and we all want the same thing: to be happy.

    Optimizing for spirituality means avoiding contexts in which violence is required, or even accepting loss or wounds, in order to remain in the non-violent space.

    Optimizing for spirituality is also the most complex optimization of all.

    You need to remain alive to be spiritual (dead people are dead, they’re not spiritual in any way), so that means optimizing for evolution.

    You need to become better at your practice (whichever that is) so you need to optimize for better, more accurate processes (just like technology does).

    And, once you understand that your well being is completely interconnected with the well being of all beings, then you also need to optimize for getting more returns, just to be able to give back to the others. Sometimes these returns are financial (the Church is one of the oldest, most profitable institutions in the recent human history), sometimes they’re just reputation (which is more fragile than cash, but also more flexible).

    Optimizing too much on some parts will get you beyond the goal.

    If we talk about spirituality, for instance, optimizing too much on accuracy, like in doing empty prayers and rituals, without understanding the end goal (cohesion) will make you a parrot, at best, and a human bomb, at worst. Optimizing too much on the financial profits, will make you a short lived sect, by triggering greed in your adepts. Optimizing too much on evolution, like adjusting to the context, will probably make you give in to temporary politics, just to remain alive.

    I find it difficult to stick to a definitive answer.

    I think most of the time we are driven to optimize for profit. This is very visible in crypto, with all the apeing and endless hunt for chunky APYs. This is rooted in a legitimate fear that we ain’t gonna make it if we stick to the current context.

    And with that we’re segueing into evolution, as crypto looks like a better bet in terms of adjusting to context. Even if it’s just a hedge, it’s an evolutionary advantage against actors who are using only one basket (government-backed fiat) for their energy storage.

    Sometimes we also need to optimize for technology, which was the dominant trend in crypto for the last 2-3 years, when the main goal was speed and vertical scaling. At some point we will hit a certain wall, in which aiming for too much performance will simply become unnecessary, nobody will use that. 1,000,000 TPS looks sexy now, but who’s going to need that? What’s the use case? Is it worth it?

    What I find extremely interesting, though, is that, somehow, crypto is better positioned for spiritual optimization, as in not doing harm. Hackers and exploiters aside, I think the entire blockchain architecture makes it way easier to just not do harm, it leaves less of an attack surface to greed. It’s as collective as a process can be (the blockchain cannot run without validators). It’s almost frictionless, once you learn how it works (every action produces effects almost immediately). It’s transparent, everybody shares the same ledger.

    It isn’t perfect, far from that, but it’s better than the middle-man in traditional banks, or government created, violence-backed money.

    Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash

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  • 2021 Monthly Recap – December – Dragos Roua

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    Dec 29, 2021 Dec 3, 2025 2021-12-29

    December feels like half a month. I say “feels” and not “felt” because we still have 2 and a half more days from it, yet I decided to write the recap already.

    It feels like half a month for a few reasons.

    First of all, it’s the first time in maybe the last 5 years when I took some holiday during this time of the year. Until now, I was always working during Christmas and New Year.

    Second, the daily writing and publishing challenge became much easier (or predictable, if you want) since 11 days ago, when I started to write these monthly recaps. It almost feels like I don’t have to write anymore, since these recaps are way easier than a regular article.

    And third, my daughter is visiting me for the holidays – another first – and that shifts the atmosphere towards relaxation even more.

    But even if this month feels like half a month, it doesn’t mean it’s not relevant. For instance, during December I came to the conclusion that we’re already experiencing singularity, even if it doesn’t feel that way. Or precisely because it doesn’t feel that way. We’re not supposed to know something that outsmarts us, that’s how outsmarting works.

    The rest of the articles were more or less personal, almost like plain journaling, with some exception now and then, like this Crash Course On Public Keeping Your Moth Shot (if we already have so many courses about public speaking, that is).

    If I would have to define December in one word, it would be “pivoting”. If I would have to define it in a longer sentence, it would be: “shifting towards a new lifestyle, in an harmonious way”.

    Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

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  • 2021 Monthly Recap – November – Dragos Roua

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    November was a pivotal month. Not necessarily in the “upwards pivoting” way, as expected after a very promising October, getting ready for a breakthrough on so many levels. Nope, it was more like “ups, you still have work to do, get back from the unicorn now” way. Like I wrote before, in November I traveled back to Romania for some paperwork and other loose ends that I had to fix. The paperwork went ok, the loose ends not so much, on the contrary. To add a little bit of salt on the wound, I got the news it’s not gonna work as expected on November 10th, which is my birthday. I wrote a few thoughts on that in The Anatomy Of A U-Turn.

    In hindsight, though, everything happened for the best. There might be time in the near future to fix those loose ends, and I already started to work on that, we’ll see how this goes.

    There wasn’t all gloom and doom, if I really think about it. I also got to organize and host (after more than 5 years) a live event, in Lisbon, based on a format I implemented years ago: Open Connect – The International Edition.

    Other than that, November was a tiring month. Traveling back and forth wasn’t fun, and re-observing toxic patterns and behaviors that I thought I was done with for good, also not ideal. But then again, everything is useful if you think in terms of learning opportunities. Some lesson more expensive than others, but also more valuable.

    In terms of writing, it was probably the most consuming month, because the surroundings changed so much, and I wrote in airports, in Aribnbs, and so on, sometimes waking up from bed just an hour before midnight, because I forgot to write for that day. Nevertheless, I was able to write a few articles that were on my mind for quite some time, like Countries versus DAOs or Selling Skills Versus Delegating Capital.

    If I would have to define November in one word, it would be “disappointment”. If I would have to define it in a longer sentence: “adjusting to whatever life offers, and making peace with things not going my way”.

    Photo by Nelly Antoniadou on Unsplash

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  • 2021 Monthly Recap – October – Dragos Roua

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    Dec 27, 2021 Dec 3, 2025 2021-12-27

    In October, the summer was over, and time for reaping the results of what I tried to plant in the previous months finally came. October was a month filled with action, with increased confidence and with some pretty interesting milestones. One of them was the first official marathon since the pandemic started. It was an amazing experience. Surprisingly, the amazement came not from some sort of exhilaration, or excitement, but for the consistency of it all. It was the first marathon in which kilometers succeeded almost linearly, without many major spikes in physical or mental state. Of course I was tired at the end, but it all went way smoother than in previous marathons (here’s a recap of the race).

    In October I also got word about a trip I had to make to Romania, to take care of (some more) paperwork. The trip started at the end of month, and, combined with the part that took place in November, it would make for the longest trip to Romania since I became location independent, 3 years ago (but I’m getting ahead of myself, the bulk of trip was in November).

    My NFT experiments continued, this time with a different chain (Hive) and a different project. Didn’t sell any copy but, again, it was a great learning experience.

    October was also the first month in which I actually composed a short song on the guitar, called, of course, Almost November.

    Like I said, October was a month filled with action, and there were also quite a few posts about location independence and societal evolution, and even a movie review (The Squid Game), you can check them all in the archives.

    If I would have to define October in one word, it would be: “manifestation”. If I would have to define it in a longer sentence, it would be: “reaping the benefits of months long – sometimes years long – streaks of effort”.

    Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

    I’ve been location independent for 15 years

    And I’m sharing my blueprint for free. The no-fluff, no butterflies location independence framework that actually works.

    Plus: weekly insights on productivity, financial resilience, and meaningful relationships.

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    Free. As in free beer.

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  • 2021 Monthly Recap – September – Dragos Roua

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    Dec 26, 2021 Dec 3, 2025 2021-12-26

    September was also a good month. There were a few plans that were overlapping, and going back through my posts I can clearly see them.

    The first plan was about training for the marathon that was about to take place in October. Not too much time left, just around the corner, so I started to push harder. Of course, I also wrote about that: Run It Forward, Run It Early. It was the most consistent month of running. Loads of podcasts listening during those long hours too.

    The second plan was about tech and crypto-currencies, September was a month in which I wrote way more post about these topics combined. From the nostalgic thoughts about the mighty fall of blitz empires, up to the rise of non-fungible tokens, there were quite a few days in which I chose to wrap my mind around these topics.

    And the third plan was the social landscape, which kept dissolving into bits and pieces. Hence, the opportunity for creating the stupidity map. Which I even tried to make it into an NFT itself, which sold zero copies. But it was fun.

    If I would have to define September in one word, it would be: “propelling”. If I would have to define it in a longer sentence, it would be: “going forward leaps and bounds”.

    Photo by Blessing Ri on Unsplash

    I’ve been location independent for 15 years

    And I’m sharing my blueprint for free. The no-fluff, no butterflies location independence framework that actually works.

    Plus: weekly insights on productivity, financial resilience, and meaningful relationships.

    🎉 Success! Check your email to confirm your subscription.

    Free. As in free beer.

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  • 2021 Monthly Recap – August – Dragos Roua

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    Dec 25, 2021 Dec 3, 2025 2021-12-25

    August was a very productive month. Not necessarily in terms of writing, although I consistently wrote abut the base topics on this blog, but mostly in terms of how life unfolded after I settled in. During August I decided to register for my first marathon since Covid-19 clusterfuck turned the world upside down, the Lisbon one, in October. Of course, in August I started to train again, and even wrote a little something about honest beginnings, and honest endings.

    Interestingly enough, August was a month in which the dominant topic was risk. Whether it was about Basic Risk Reward Analysis, or Low Risk, Low Reward, versus High Risk, High Reward, or even the need for A Damage Control Guy, risk analysis seemed to be a lot of my mind during that month. It’s one of the benefits of a year long challenge: you have time to stay with a problem long enough to understand it, and even to solve it. Not to mention that by writing it, you will always have it available, all you have to do is to peruse the archives.

    The second most present topic during August was the social transformation that was enfolding at full speed, again, based on the Covid-19 clusterfuck. I wrote about The Rise Of The Continuous Conflict Age, The Flat Earth Theory, as well as about How To Talk To A Hypnotized Person – The Short, But Very Useful Guide.

    If I would have to define August in a single word, it would be “grip”. If I would have to define it in a longer sentence, it would be: “increasing adherence and speed, while steadily moving forward”.

    Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

    I’ve been location independent for 15 years

    And I’m sharing my blueprint for free. The no-fluff, no butterflies location independence framework that actually works.

    Plus: weekly insights on productivity, financial resilience, and meaningful relationships.

    🎉 Success! Check your email to confirm your subscription.

    Free. As in free beer.

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  • 2021 Monthly Recap – July – Dragos Roua

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    Dec 24, 2021 Dec 3, 2025 2021-12-24

    July was a settling month. A little bit of routine settled in, but I also allocate time for more exploration. Many a posts from this month are about direct experiences had in the new city, like Do Electric Scooter Grow On The Streets and Thinking Outside Of The Loyalty Card. But I had time for more on topic posts like Frugality And Financial Resilience, Location Independence Is Not A Luxury Anymore or Opportunities And Building Up.

    It was also the month in which I dedicated more than 10% of my content to a very specific topic, how to survive social media, and, more recently, mainstream media. I even came up with 3 different terms describing this new way of informational warfare: Main Stream Media, Side Stream Media and Down Stream Media.

    I think July was more or less a flat month, in the sense of the word “plateau”. There was a lot of strategical thinking, then a lot of planning, then a lot more doing, then obviously, at some point, I reached some sort of a plateau. The nice thing about the plateaus is the view. The not so nice thing is that you may get bored, or even think that “you’ve made it”. Soon enough I was about to write exactly about that, about the danger of “I’ve made it”, but that would not be until a couple of months later.

    If I would have to define July in one word, that word would be “accumulation”. If I would have to define it using a longer sentence, it would be: “accumulating experience and preparing for the next step, while enjoying the view”.

    Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

    I’ve been location independent for 15 years

    And I’m sharing my blueprint for free. The no-fluff, no butterflies location independence framework that actually works.

    Plus: weekly insights on productivity, financial resilience, and meaningful relationships.

    🎉 Success! Check your email to confirm your subscription.

    Free. As in free beer.

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  • 2021 Monthly Recap – June – Dragos Roua

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    Dec 23, 2021 Dec 3, 2025 2021-12-23

    After 5 very tumultuous months (although just by looking at the articles here you couldn’t tell) June was finally a month for rest. Not in the sense of vacationing, but more like settling down, re-inserting in a new context. By the end of the month I was already in long term accommodation and all the logistic and paperwork finished.

    June was also one of the hottest months of the year (along with July and August, but we’re not there yet) so a lot of my walking had to take place either very early in the morning, or later in the evening. It was also the month in which I finally figured out a work landscape, combining a few coffee shops into a manageable system. It may seem superfluous, but working is a very important part of my life, and where I work is fundamental. I used to be a digital nomad for years, and I consider myself location independent ever since the Covid-19 clusterfuck hit, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need a good place to work from. On the contrary, where I work from has a big impact of my productivity.

    In terms of writing, June was also a good month. There were quite a few interesting things happening in the world, El Salvador starting to accept Bitcoin as a legal tender being by far the most important one. The world continued to sink into totalitarianism, and truth started to be clogged in a sea of information. As busy I was, I still had time for a little bit of work on addTaskManager, pushing a bugfix release long overdue.

    I also continued to write about location independence and its 5 layers, as well as about financial independence basics, like beautiful budgeting in 3 basic bullet points.

    If would have to define June in a single word, that would be “relaxation”. If I would have to define it in a longer sentence, that would be “accepting rewards and enjoying a short respite”.

    Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

    I’ve been location independent for 15 years

    And I’m sharing my blueprint for free. The no-fluff, no butterflies location independence framework that actually works.

    Plus: weekly insights on productivity, financial resilience, and meaningful relationships.

    🎉 Success! Check your email to confirm your subscription.

    Free. As in free beer.

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  • 2021 Monthly Recap – May – Dragos Roua

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    Dec 22, 2021 Dec 3, 2025 2021-12-22

    May was my first month into a new country, so the move was roughly completed. I didn’t set base into a long term accommodation yet, I was still searching, the long term thing happened only in June, so May was more or less suspended. The course of events is still clear in my mind, because the dates were almost surgically aligned. On the first day of May I crossed into Portugal (like, literally, I came by train / bus), and it was also the first day without restrictions on the ground traffic. Surreal memories.

    By then, a lot of the past was already behind, I was eagerly starting to explore my new life. May was also the month in which most of the logistics that required my presence happened, like obtaining all the paperwork for residency and so on. I also walked more than in any previous month (Camino month excluded, obviously), and this happened on a much hillier terrain. If you ever visited Lisbon, you know what I mean. It’s one thing to walk 10 km per day on a flat terrain, and a completely different one to walk 10km on a level difference of 30 stories every day.

    May was also one of the most consistent months in terms of well defined, on topic, posts. Because I was right in the middle of the process, I wrote a lot about location independence, and also about the big changes that the world went through. For instance, the religious similarities between Covid-19 apostles and Bitcoin maximalists, or the realization that there are idiots at the both side of the spectrum. And, obviously, about the Berlin wall inside our minds, which is still unfolding these days.

    I also wrote about financial resilience, from introductory posts like how to become financially resilient in 3 steps (spoiler alert: there’s more than 3 steps, but you can still do it), up to financial resilience in 3 words.

    But probably the post that was most influenced by this time (and you’ll see by its title why) is Most The World Is Functioning At The Grape Level. A lot of good wine in Portugal.

    If I would have to put May in a single word, it would be: “renewed”. If I would have to put it in a sentence it would be: “learning to walk again, into a new space”.

    Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

    I’ve been location independent for 15 years

    And I’m sharing my blueprint for free. The no-fluff, no butterflies location independence framework that actually works.

    Plus: weekly insights on productivity, financial resilience, and meaningful relationships.

    🎉 Success! Check your email to confirm your subscription.

    Free. As in free beer.

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  • 2021 Monthly Recap – April – Dragos Roua

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    April was a pivotal month, a lot of stuff happened. It was the last month spent in Spain, as of May 1st I was already completely relocated in Portugal. Because of that, many of the actions and decisions during April were related to either gently finishing stuff, or to courageously starting new stuff.

    During the first part of the month I was doing research for moving out, in Porto and Lisbon. The dominant theme was logistics: finding plane tickets, managing tests and best routes, gathering and processing information about housing prices, general cost of living, internet access and so on. I didn’t rent a car, so, once I was in a city, all the movement was basically walking, accounting for an average of 10-11 km / day.

    One of the results of this activity was changing my mind about the city I initially chose: while doing internet research, I was convinced Porto is the place, but once I visited both Porto and Lisbon, I changed my mind. It wasn’t an easy process, because of the time pressure and the entire novelty of the situation, but, 8 months after, I am 100% convinced it was the right decision.

    Although I traveled for two thirds of the month, I did have time to write some timely content that I revisit myself quite often, just to keep the focus on what matters. Short Game Versus Long Game is a good example in this area. Another one that I refer to very often is about the most expensive things in the universe, which aren’t diamonds. Spoiler alert: it’s stupidity. If you want to have a look at all the articles published in April, you can do it here.

    The amount of new stuff that happened in April is unmatched during the year. It was by far the most eventful time in terms of physical experience. I discovered two beautiful cities, managed the logistics and paperwork for moving abroad (again), and experienced 3 different places to live in 30 days.

    If I would have to define April in a single word, it would be: “relocation”. If I would to define it in a longer sentence, it would be: “going forward with confidence, while gently processing the past”.

    Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

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