Ready, set, go! It’s been quiet a busy week and I’m ready, happy to just chill today. It’s Saturday, the summer is warm outside and I’m sitting here with the radio playing motown songs. As always, there is a cup of green tea waiting next to me. I’m currently reading a few books of which the one I bought most recently is right across from me on the table. I thought today is a good review of the things that are on my mind: 1. Relaxation I’ve been working hard since last week on building out a completely new section of VA and this weekend I’m just chilling and not doing anymore work. I wrapped up my project, merged my development branch into staging and demo’ed my solution to Adrian. The section I created is called “Business Metrics” and will allow us to survey and benchmark companies on any sort of metric such as Revenue, Marketing Costs, User Counts and, really, anything else we or our users come up with. The system I built stays flexible because it allows us to add, edit and remove groups of metrics and the metrics themselves. If, for example, we decided tomorrow that we wanted to survey “Happiness” metrics, we would simply create a new metric group named “Happiness” and create metric types for that group such as “Customer Happiness” or “Employee Happiness.” I feel proud of my achievement and believe that my contributions this week to VA are going to propel the value upwards. 1. Book #1: Alpha Male Tutorial I decided to re-read the book I followed last year. I do like the little exercises he gives to boost self-esteem and improve ones self-image in relation to women. I don’t think I have a big problem with being Alpha but it’s good to remind myself of what makes a leader. I do listen to the self-hypnosis mp3 and my goal is to listen to it repeatedly over the coming weeks. 1. Book #2: The Ultimate Sales Letter I want to brush up on my sales letter writing and brought with me a few books. My writing has suffered a bit this week but at least I dug into Dan Kennedy’s “The Ultimate Sales Letter” which, like the Boron Letters and Secrets of Advertising Copy helps write better long-form sales copy. Writing sales letters is actually a bunch of fun and now that I’m writing again, I’m looking forward to writing more sales stuff again. I do like Kennedy’s style of writing because it’s very clear and methodical. I haven yet to implement his advice and hope that there will be some exercises to follow besides the general points he makes. I still have and want to re-read Halbert’s letters. 1. Book #3: You Are Your Own Gym This came about by luck. It’s a book that is all about how to use your own body to get fit without the need for any equipment at all. Just use what’s there and what’s around in any normal apartment. It’s a quintessential book in that I’m learning how to stay fit anywhere. I bought it yesterday and started reading today. I’ve decided to try out the exercises today and tomorrow but really start a 10 week program on Monday. I’ve been meaning to get fit again but both, Gym and even Yoga are boring me. 1. Berlin in general My trip is getting better. The first 10 days here were tough, I was annoyed about the lack of internet and I think I really missed Valerie, too. I felt like my flow that I have in New York was completely gone. I tried to give in to Berlin and relax but I still ran into resistances anywhere I turned. Luckily, at least my work flowed, and in a way, that was my goal for my stay here. Have time and space and quietude to really get into my work and kill it. I’m not as social as I intended to be but that usually happens when I’m here. To me, Berlin is a primarily solitary experience. It’s beautiful this time of the year and finally the rain stopped for most of the week and I get to spend time outside, too, and on the bike riding around town. Well, I feel better that’s for sure. I’ve also started to eat healthier with less sugar, better carbs, more protein and much more greens. Here’s to the rest of trip!