Category: Blog

This morning I was going to Milan for work and in the time between two train connections I stopped in a bar to take a cappuccino. 

While drinking it I realized it was cold. Way too cold.

It was 7am in the morning and outside it was freezing and one door of the bar was open. The door lead to the bus arrivals terminal.

I exclaimed “it’s cold, why would they let us freeze like that” pointing at the open door and my colleague instantly replied “it’s not cold. It’s marketing”

Marketing? It took me a while to realize that it was such a nice move. An open door is a clear, unmistakable indicator that a bar is open.

It also invites you to enter. In addition to that, smells are often the best way to attract clients. The smell of a good pizza or a coffe are enough to stimulate you to indulge and stop by.

In town festivals sellers use ventilators  to spread odor of cooked food.

Marketing, great marketing, hides itself from the eye. It hides into the appearance so much it blends into the forniture and you don’t know it’s there.

It’s so great that it’s not even trying to sell in the usual sense, instead it just shows. It appeals to senses and mind and it gets you by your own free will.

There’s no better work than one in which you help other people directly. That’s why coaching is so mainstream

Today I read something written by a former Opera employee (the web browser).
I remember he talked about how injecting ads into the desktop browser was a bad move for him (and later on he was right).

In his words there was something that resonated with me deeply, he then said that he somewhat felt bad because he didn’t see the silicon valley behavior he expected.

This is the bad thing about expectation vs reality, it puts you down if you don’t consider the outcome and the reality.
Luckily there are solutions to this. Namely being honest with yourself every day.

Understanding what’s good and what’s not. Keeping in mind of what really is the work you’re doing.
Accepting is the hardest part, but you won’t be left without a choice.
You can always choose to change, to do a different work that resonates more with you.

Today Dropbox announced that Mailbox and Carousel would shut down.
It’s hard not to think about the value that these two services brought to user, yet they are still shutting down and I can see why.

There’s no innovation anymore. Once the idea is grasped and becomes mainstream, you need to be in a field where you can innovate quickly and effectively to potentially continue working there.

Otherwise you need to change and start from zero and I guess this was the choice behind the shut down.
When service aren’t paid by subscription you rely on the fact that the company will do their best to support you in the future, but that isn’t a guarantee.
As it often happens, companies change plans, ideas, they break things and build new ones.

This is why I love the take Basecamp has on the subject. They build things for the long run and don’t leave users alone.
In a world where free seems so convenient, this revolutionary thinking makes me feel at home.

There’s one thing I knew but didn’t really realize until this night, and that thing is that during life we all strive to do our best.

Yes, even those people that you think are slacking are, in fact, trying their best.
Even if they are not doing their best, they are fighting every single day as we are, only on a different level (it’s not comparable with terms like “More” or “Less”).

When we say you can do better we are thinking about our version of better. The one that we would strive for.

Given that we could not even be compatible with each other the other thing to note is: “Aren’t we all struggling?”
Yes, we are. Each and every one of us is doing his or her best to live the life the best we can.
And we fail often.
Often the life beats us and we feel without hope, without future, without solutions to our problems.

This part of the story is the one that doesn’t appear outside.
Outside, we might “slack”. But inside there’s this emotional turmoil that dig inside us to damage even deeper.

It’s easy to say you can do better, right?
But what do we answer when we get the same question?
We have many reasons right? We have excuses, justifications, things that influenced the results.
We weren’t guilty, just unlucky.

If we think about it for a moment we could realize that we were doing our best like everyone else in the world.
And if you think about it the next time your boss (or my boss btw) makes you angry, you might just realize that we’re all in the same boat.

There isn’t any script for life, we just go with what we’ve got.
We do our best, and the result is the best we could have.

And for that we should be thankful, because the life we’re living is good even if it sucks.
We open our eyes every days and admire the beauty of the sun.
The work might be shitty but you know what? They are doing their best too.
Maybe they’re trying to figure out how to save the marriage, or while cheating they’re simply trying to be happy.

These are not excuses, these are the words that define our lives. I’m not trying to justify our actions, but we still do our best every day.
And that best, even if it’s not perfect, is our best, the maximum, the zenit.
It’s the top of our life up until now, it represents the beauty and the imperfection of human being.

Whatever you do, wherever you live, whichever you meet, remember: they’re doing their best.