1. What is a daily habit you love doing?
We have a pull-up bar in the office, near the kitchen. On normal days I do sets of pull-ups at least 3 times a day when I pass by it. It doesn’t only keep me active throughout the day, but also reminds me to push myself all the time to get better, and gives me a second to rethink before I eat sweets and thus makes me eat healthier. During the Corona outbreak, I replaced it with sets of handstand push-ups at home.
2. What piece of advice would you give yourself when you started? What advice would you ignore?
Don’t get too upset when you hit an obstacle, don’t get too excited when things are looking up. Both are just part of a long journey. I would ignore the advice to quantify everything. The trick is to know where to trust your intuition. While I’m a great believer in quantification, in many cases you find that making a fast decision and running with it is better than taking the time to quantify, which can lead to missed opportunities or finding out that the reality changed while you were collecting data.
3. What piece of content (book/podcast/Ted Talk) is your favorite or has influenced your life?
‘Flowers for Algernon‘ – Both a short story and a novel written by Daniel Keyes. It affected me in several ways:
1. Taught me about looking at the long term impact of actions
2. Taught me about compassion
3. Taught me how to be moved to tears from art, which has since then happened many times.
4. What is the most valuable investment that you’ve ever made?
Studying Physics and Math. It taught me how to learn new subjects, how to struggle and how to sit with a problem.
5. Is there a quote, mantra or message you live your life by and that you resonate with?
My internal drive comes from wanting to look back at my life before I die, and feel like I made a change for the better in the world. That keeps me focused on the long run, instead of the small steps along the way.
6. What helps you stay motivated on good and hard days?
I just love what I do and who I’m doing it with. So even when I’m down, I process it and then go back to work. Because at the end of the day that is what I’d choose to do, over and over again.
7. What are you passionate about other than managing your own company?
There are many things, I love studying and improving. I’ll mention just 3:
1. Writing poetry
2. Cooking
3. Sports
8. What have you recently thrown away or released from your life that made a positive impact and why?
I’m constantly trying to purchase less and only buy what I need. Better for the planet, and requires less of my attention. 🙂
9. Share a failure you have experienced and what you learned from it.
It’s not a single mistake but a mistaken belief that I carried. When I was young, I had a hard time giving compliments. It took me a long time to understand that it’s not a zero-sum game, elevating others elevates you as well.
10. If you could have anyone in the world answer these questions who would it be and why?
I would love to hear Bill Gates’ answers, he transitioned from building one of the world’s biggest companies to philanthropy, always with such a clear compass.
