Saturday, May 9, about a week ago marked a special milestone in my relationship with sports: After completing Helsinki City Run (1/2 marathon) in 2:23:01, this lifelong non-athlete is now something of a real runner.

Check out my race report on the Train for Humanity blog, and support the cause by sponsoring (or just cheering) my training towards a full marathon in September.

In my series of small thoughts about business, goals and life, here are a few lines on failure.

When I look back to the goals I have set myself during the life time of this blog, I quickly notice that many of them haven’t happened as planned. But there is a funny thing I’ve noticed: I haven’t failed — my goals are just taking longer to achieve than I thought at first.

Read more

What should you do if you want to learn how to use a knife?

Buy a book? Wrong.

Ask a friend to teach you? Better (assuming he knows how to use a knife), but still not quite right

Go to Mad Dog - the guy who makes knives, breathes knives, thinks about nothing else than knives? Correct.

That’s how Neil Strauss would do it.

Emergency is an interesting book about preparing for the worst case scenario when the world falls apart around us and everything comes crumbling down. But interestingly enough, the biggest thing I got out of it was not how to survive in the scary future but how to learn like a pro:

1. Go to the best expert in the field.
2. Take in all the knowledge you get from them.
3. Practice. A lot.

When you find a new skill that you are lacking, write it on a “to learn” list. Then repeat the steps above.

That’s it.

Back in January, I told you I was joining the Train for Humanity team to help redesign the web site to support adding new athletes. Now, the next version is finally up and running, and there are already eight new members training to make a difference – including myself.

Train for Humanity is all about everyday athletes, normal people like you and me using their sports training to collect money for a humanitarian cause by driving people to their sponsorship pages (every athlete is dedicated to collecting $1000) through their blogs, Twitter profiles and other social networks both on and off the line.

Here’s what my friend and Train for Humanity founder Mark Hayward writes about the project’s current goals: 

All funds from phase two will go directly toward supporting the Darfur Peace & Development Organization’s (DPDO) school project. DPDO supports the operation of fifteen elementary schools in North Darfur and they are responsible for teacher salaries and providing classroom supplies (Total Enrollment: 8300 students; Teachers: 160 plus 56 support staff).

I started with just one goal in January, but the training has been so exciting and running so much fun that I decided to add a second goal for later this year:

1. On May 9th, I’m participating in the biggest yearly half marathon event in Finland, Helsinki City Run. 
2. And if everything goes well, I will continue the training, and participate in Finlandia Marathon on September 12th. 

As the first event is getting close, I can’t wait to get to the starting line. But I still have never actually run the 21 kilometers it takes to complete a half marathon. That distance already makes me humble. I’m not even thinking about the full marathon distance yet.

You can help us make Train for Humanity a success and bring relief to the children of Darfur by sponsoring any of the Train for Humanity athletes:

• Laura Palmero
• Bernie Tretta
• Terena Ahlers
• Vaishnav
• Deb Brown
• Claire Bronson
• David Spence
• Jarkko Laine
• Leo Babauta
• Mark Hayward

Also, Train for Humanity is still looking for new people to join the ranks of athletes. If that’s something you’d like to do, you can send a note to trainforhumanity@gmail.com and tell a bit about your plans. I’m pretty sure you’ll be accepted.

In his recent talk at the London School of Economics (listen the podcast here for free), Thomas L. Friedman, bestselling author of The World Is Flat, and Hot, Flat, and Crowded, made a great point about the financial crashes in history and compared to that of today.

His reasoning goes like this:

• In the late 1800’s, when the US railroad bubble collapsed, it left the country with an amazing railroad network.
• In the early 2000, when the dot com bubble burst, it left us with a highly developed Internet infrastructure.
• When this latest credit bubble broke at the end of last year, it left us with nothing more than half-built condos and worthless credit.

This got me thinking: In the end, companies go down all the time, people lose their jobs every day, and there is no such thing as financial security. The world is fragile and unpredictable. If my employer went bankrupt, pretty much no one would notice. Or even more, if my tiny home business didn’t fly, who on earth would care?

That’s why we need to ask ourselves a new question: If your company went down today, what would be the legacy it left behind?

There are days when I think life would be so much easier if I just gave up on my most ambitious goals and gave up to the normal way of life. I could sleep longer in the morning, I would be less stressed out, and in the short term, I would have more free time.

Read more

I’ll start by a contradiction: No matter what the title says, just doing things is no guarantee for success. Read Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers: The Story of Success, and you’ll hear that success is a combination of hard work, one thousand hours of practice, and equally importantly, pure luck. Being in the right place at the right time. And if you want to challenge your thinking even more, check out anything written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (I suggest Fooled by Randomness). He will show you how most of the things we see as cause and effect really are just manifestations of randomness at work.

Read more

Why good people do good things?

I don’t find the question of good people doing bad things nearly as interesting as the one of good people doing good things. We are a greedy, sometimes quite ignorant bunch of people. We seek to do the right thing (which makes us good enough), but still can’t help but think, “What’s in it for me?”

Read more

In his book, The Dip, Seth Godin talks about a period of hard times that you have to get through before you can become the best in what you do.

At first, everything goes smoothly and you seem unstoppable. Then, as if there was some kind of dark magic at play, you hit a wall that you just need to struggle through to get to the next level. 

Read more

Here’s for a merry, peaceful Christmas with your closest ones!

Big thanks for making 2008 special, and see you again in 2009! (It will come sooner than you’d expect…)

- Jarkko