The author of The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss, has quickly become THE guy to go to when puzzled with questions about lifestyle design. He is never afraid to test and improve his methods, and his experiments show us that it’s possible to go well beyond the ordinary limits of our human minds and bodies.

Still, in many ways, most of us are very different from him and do not seek the same kind of lifestyle Tim is after.

Read the rest of this entry »

How you see the world defines what it is like for you.

On one of my longer runs (21 kilometers, I think) this summer, I was listening to podcasts by Steve Pavlina. I’m not sure how I ended up uploading them to my iPod, as I haven’t been an active reader of Steve’s blog for quite a while, and I think his stuff often goes to extremes that I find hard to agree with. But here I was, listening to Steve talk about fear. It was an interesting talk about how you can learn to control and overcome your fears, first by practicing, and then, ultimately, by changing how you see the world.

Read the rest of this entry »

During my summer vacation, I rediscovered a passion that I had been ignoring for more than half a year: bread.

I thought I had written a lot about bread before, but when I started digging, all I could find was this old sourdough recipe from two years ago. That’s going to change soon: I am working on resurrecting this blog from its on and off hiatus that started pretty much a year ago, and one of the key ingredients in this blog renaissance will be bread.

Stay tuned for my first experimental baking reports, and while at it, check out this baking video of my two years old son Oiva making his first batch of Fougasse (following Richard Bertinet’s dough making principles).

Also, if you are on Facebook and enjoy making real bread, check out the Artisan Bread Bakers group and share your experiments.

Finally, as today is my birthday once again, I thought I’d point you to this old post I wrote on my 27th birthday: 27 Years and Counting. Dad, you still rock!

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 the rest of this entry »

When sitting inside my safe four walls, working on my blog posts, I often forget that not everyone is this fortunate. When I share my dreams, I forget that there are people who couldn’t even imagine dreaming of such things. When I lament on my busy schedule and not being able to spend as much time home with my kid as I’d like to, I forget that there are kids out there who need to work days far longer than my eight hours.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just a bit over a year ago, Glen Allsopp was an 18-year old guy from England, working in a job he hated, doing college courses that bored him to death, and running his own business part-time. In my books, that’s already quite an achievement for someone that young.

But it wasn’t enough for Glen, who wanted to plug into his real identity and live his life to the max. So, he took a job in South Africa, left his old life behind and moved to a whole new country far away from everything he knew.

Read the rest of this entry »

Right after posting my previous batch of insanely interesting links, I found out that Glen Allsop had founded his blog. Because he’s a great guy, I promised that in my next update, I would link to him. 

Well, it wasn’t really because of that. Sure, he is a great guy, but his blog also speaks for itself. His posts truly deserve every promotion they get. Well, now it’s the time for that update.

Read the rest of this entry »

What do you do if you are a fanatic blogger and athlete who wants to use those talents to leave the world a bit better than it was when you got it?

When faced with the question, Mark Hayward decided to go ahead and start a non-profit project to combines these interests: “Getting fit + social media + blogging = social good.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Do you know why it’s so hard for a sushi cook to start a new restaurant that mixes sushi with Russian blinis? According to The Medici Effect, it’s mostly because of association barriers inside the chef’s mind: he is just too used to looking at the world through his specialized sushi master eyes to see the opportunity.

It could also be that sushi and blinis don’t match. But that’s a different story.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the spirit of Insanely Interesting September, I gave myself a simple task: For one day, write down each and every idea that crosses your mind. Then at the end of the day, count how many you got.

It turns out that this wasn’t such an easy experiment after all: with each new idea I was more and more lost trying to figure out if it qualifies as an idea or not.

Read the rest of this entry »