The past two weeks I’m in an emotional rollercoaster, private troubles, quiting my job, becoming uncle etc.
Today I went to the vet to check the health of my cat but it was beyond repair. Her throat was so bad there was nothing to do. If I would not have done anything she would have died a horrable suffocating death. So we decided to give her a lethal injection. Man I cried, I’m still crying…. She had a good live and became very old, almost 20 years OLD!. The hardest part is to dig the grave and put your cat in the cold dark earth and cover her with dirt. I did it with my bare hands, that felt better. Like she always slept, with a nice flower in here claws and a flower on her belly. She lies there peacefully the end of suffering. Enjoy life, it’s very short!

Good bye my love until we meet again.

Today is the day that I need ALL of your help. A month ago me and a team of willing and enthousiast TomTom employees decided to apply for the Oxfam Novib Trailwalker event.

The Oxfam Novib Trailwalker is the world´s greatest team challenge. Teams of 4 walk (or run) 100 kilometers in under 30 hours and it is part of an international series also held in Hong Kong, the UK, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland and Belgium. The event has raised more than $70 million internationally with thousands of people competing each year. The second trailwalker will take place in the Netherlands on 5 and 6 June 2010.

The location of the Trailwalker is the well known nature reserve de Veluwe, with start and finish in Ede.

Besides the physical challenge each team is obliged to raise 3000 euro’s with the ultimate goal of each team helping to give 30.000 children education, in countries like Uganda.  Each team has it’s own support team which offers the team all the necessary support during the 100 kilometers, such as food and beverages, warm clothing and most importantly encouragement and motivation when you question if you can walk anymore.

You can support my team by a fixed amount or an amount per KM.

Read the sponsoring amount carefully. You can donate money online directly here: http://2010.trailwalker.nl/AanmeldingSponsor.aspx?teamId=48. (dutch).

Information and how to Donate in English (or internationally money transfer) can be found here: http://2010.trailwalker.nl/Default.aspx?pageName=Engels

Please remember that a lot of countries have a 50% tax deductable if you donate money.

More information about the event and how to sponsor the team can be found at: http://2010.trailwalker.nl/

The official Team TomTom Blog:
http://teamtomtom.tumblr.com/

Please tweet to all your friends to support my team, it’s a good cause. Everything starts with good education!

Thanks

Felix

Last Wednesday was a incredible day!

I started by quitting my job. After 6 years of solid denial and choosing for the “job security”, “certainty of income” etc. I wrote myself a letter. Read it day after day, and made a decision to liberate myself from these delusions and start to take control of my own life.

“From this day forward I will start living my dream. Realize my full potential, cut the fat and become more effective in everything I do.”

“It feels great, I feel liberated”, I tell a colleague in the hallway. Suddenly I get a phone call from my brother in law. “You just became uncle!” My eyes filled with tears of joy. Wednesday was all about being born again and I feel like a million dollar!

In November I started working less with the idea to setup my own company PLANETZER0 (more about that another time). Not for gain but because it is nice to see if a good idea can really work, one big experiment. I’m an idealist, dreamer and hyper-creative dude but I suck at being focussed which renders your creativity pretty useless. Two days ago I picked up a book on my Kindle titled “The 4-Hour Workweek”. I never heard of it, yes I know it is an amazingly well known book and New York Times best-seller, I live in a cave, shoot me. I’m generally very skeptic about all these self help books or people telling me I can become rich in two days, however this book is very different.

The book is about giving you insight into your own life, the decisions you make and offers you a total new way of looking at it and actually taking action to change it. The book is build up around DEAL (Definition, Eliminate, Automate, Liberate). It provides endless amounts of tips, resources, super direct questions, exercises and actions all to unclutter your life. Take back control, be effective, automate income and do the things you want to do in this life. Practice things like getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, or “eyegazing”, calling celebrities.

I’m now halfway through the book. I already meausure my productivity using RescueTime, scan all my paper, audio recs, notes webclippings, pictures of notes in Evernote (which allows me to search through all notes), have a day schedule, Actionlist I’ve created, inspired by the 4 hour work week book which actually works, a low information diet and I’m prepping my first outsourced adventure in India where I will outsource some heavy research work for my startup.

There was no better time than now for me to have found it now. I will post a dedicated review here as soon as finish it. Along the way I will post some nice lifehacking experiences a long the way. My room will become empty, no TV, no PS3, no districations, a super low information diet. It will be a difficult venture to downsize my life and become a true minimalist. However having just a nice sofa with a nice lamp to read and listen to music or dream sounds zen to me.

So my new life starts and now I go to bed, read, sleep, dream.

Sleep tight little “Darius Felix” until we meet in real life. Can’t wait!

“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

I recently came across the blog of Kenny Werner again. For people who make music and having the problem of “the need to sound good” you need to read his book, Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within period. If you are interested in art and improvisation you should also read this classic: Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

Visiting his blog I now learned he is writting a book about free music. In this book he writes about what freedom means in metaphysical context and what freedom in music or a musician means. Can’t wait to read that and added it to my list. But if you want hear some wisdom of a master compressed in 7 minutes. Check out the clip below it is the best 7 minutes you’ve spent today.

I just finished following the Apple “Latest Creation” event through the excellent coverage of the guys @Engadget.
Really it is all nice and fun, look slick, yeah it is “magical” etc. But what would justify buying such a device? I really have a hard time with this device.

I’m the typical nerdo, have an iPhone, Macbook and a Kindle2. I only take my Macbook with me if I need to do some work or have a presentation other than that… it stays put. My iPhone is always on the go with me and so is my Kindle.

Surfing the web. To be honest I do not have extensive surfing sessions in a train. Just checking up on my tweets, check all my RSS feeds, send articles which are to long through instapaper (which I later read on my Kindle2 ;-) )

Email. Checking my mail is like peeking, short glances, short replies on important mails. Big ones, will do ‘m when I get home. I don’t need a big screen for that. My iPhone is the perfect companion. I already have an unlimited data plan with 3G. I sure don’t need an additional 30 bucks connectivity fee and a big mirror in my bag to check my email.

Watching movies and photos. If you have a laptop why would you need an iPad? Okay 10 hours of continuous use is something you can forget with a laptop but would I really want to watch movies 10 hours straight?

iWorks. I was impressed by the demo and running iWorks on such a device really is nice but I can’t seem but help it but when I am editting stuff I need a keyboard so again … laptop.

iBooks. The iPad is made of glass. This means it is heavy. The iPad weighs 730 grams. Holding this device for over an hour starring at a backlit LED screen to read an ebook? I think this is under estimated. The reason why the Kindle is so perfect, is because of the form factor. Ultra thin, ultra lightweight, super battery life and paper like viewing properties makes my Kindle dissapear in my hands. That was the whole design philosophy behind the Kindle. A Kindle weighs 289.2 grams that’s more than 50% lighter than the iPad. Battery life? 1 week with wireless on, 2 weeks with wireless off. The Kindle is focused and targeted for reading no more no less.

Next to that I have 3G/GPRS global coverage, no additional connectivity fees and I can browse the biggest digital bookstore on the planet through 3G and have free unlimited wikipedia access. Books are priced around 8 dollars cheaper than the prices I’ve seen for iBooks. Next to this, the Kindle has a keyboard, fantastic annotation tools a dictionary, and did I mention text-to-speech?

In all honesty I can’t see on why someone would prefer an iPad over an iPhone, Macbook or dedicated ereader. A Macbook Air is far more capable machine has a real keyboard and much more options and is just as portable.

The iPad is a bit schizophrenic; it’s not a phone its not an ereader and its not a netbook…what is it???

So my advice for all those folks considering to make the switch to digital reading; buy a Kindle2 or wait when the flexible color epaper devices come out.

We’ll see maybe I get convinced later but for now I’ll stick to my ultra portable and beloved iPhone and Kindle2.

Guardians of Being by Eckhart Tolle (Author) & Patrick McDonnell (Illustrator)

From the bestselling author of the Power of Now and the creator of Mutts comes a gem. This is meditative reading. Beautiful illustrations from Patrick McDonnell and simple truths of being from Eckhart is a fantastic combination. The book shows how cats and dogs are the masters of zen, the guardians of being. It shows how listening, looking and experiencing them can help us get back in touch with what we have lost so long time ago. To be in the now, no thinking. I just read it on the couch accompanied by my two cats and together we had our little zen moment…I mean my zen moment they are always like that ;-).

Anyways I highly recommend this book, clears the mind and makes you feel good and for 12 bucks is a no brainer.