Have you ever heard of the term quake book?

Well, a quake book is a book that shakes you. It profoundly changes the way you think, changes your beliefs and affects your philosophy of life.  

But such an effect is not exclusive to books. It can be a quote, a movie, a question, a song, etc. For me, most profound quake moments came from interesting questions...

Roughly one year ago, I got my first job and consequently my first salary. Overnight my budget literally increased by 5x. As you can imagine, I was super excited to invest in different things on my long wish list, which I have built over time while living on a student budget. 

But four months into it, I was feeling worse than before ...

Two years ago, I read an interesting article about a Wired magazine reporter who got hacked. In just one hour his Google, Twitter, and Apple accounts were broken into. Hackers deleted his Google account and all data on his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook. His entire digital life gone - in 1 hour. 

This got me thinking. What if something like this happened to me? ...

“You are the worst case in my professional career,” my swimming instructor told me.

I do not remember exactly when this happened but I think I was 8 years old and I was taking my first swimming classes. The problem was that I was terrified of swimming in deep water. The thought of not having ground to step down to in the case of emergency was paralysing me. Needless to say, instructor's traditional approach did not work on me... 

In 2012 I decided to pursue my graduate degree abroad. After a year of preparing for various admission tests, writing CVs, writing motivational letters and interviewing I achieved my goal and got accepted at my chosen school and program (WU Vienna, SIMC). 

Lately, many friends and colleagues started asking me questions about GMAT so I've decided to prepare a comprehensive guide that will comprise of my experiences and advices. The guide contains answers to questions such as:

For me, meditation is not a religious act. I see it as a tool for improving the quality of life.

Two months ago, I started meditating, setting aside 10-20 minutes every morning. I have experienced some really cool results so I'd like to share the process so you can try it out as well. 

Before I dive into the steps, let me share just one short example of how meditation helped me. 

You can't. And it's not your fault. 

Do you still remember when you had to decide which high school or university you want to attend? Looking back I can say that neither I nor my colleagues were ready for such an important decision. One of the biggest decisions in our lives is based on a totally skewed image of what a certain profession could bring us. 

One month ago I went travelling around Sri Lanka with my girlfriend. We took a trip around the island, staying in 8 different places in 18 days, including many one night stops. On many occasions, that required unpacking and repacking everything in less than 24 hours. 

Luckily, we were well prepared. In this article I explain what we took and what we wished we had taken, so you can plan for your next trip. The list can serve you as either inspiration or a checklist.

Three years ago, I had a really cool business idea that I fell in love with. I spent 5 months developing it before realizing that it's crap. Right from the beginning I felt that no one was willing to pay for it, but I just kept kicking the can down the road by designing logo, website, etc. Several months later when I finally tried to sell my product, my expectations were confirmed. 

Nobody would buy it. "Why the hell did I lose so much time on this idea" I kept asking myself. 

Trying to avoid the same mistake, I decided to turn my entrepreneurial process upside down. Since then, I've used the system explained in this article to win customers for my ideas even before I had the product.  

In my last idea, which I have tested together with Patrick, we did some basic research, developed the prototype and sold the product (before it was developed!) in less than 10 hours. Our logo was basic, we didn't have a website (and still don’t) and we did not register a company, however, we got the first 5 customers and earned 150€ in one working day.