What a year! I am getting into a reflective mode, doing a year balance (hence the illustration). It’s almost a year since we arrived to London.

Suffice to say, I am starting to evaluate the good things, and after one year the bad things of London appear clearly in front of me. What is getting on my nerves lately is how appalling are all sorts of public services. As a Spaniard, I can’t understand how filthy are things here. Let me explain myself. For Barcelonian standards,…

• the tube is old, dirty, crowded, utterly unreliable and expensive.
• the buildings are old, dirty, oftentimes with mice (see waste collection below), utterly unreliable and incredibly expensive.
• the NHS hospital I go is old, dirty, crowded, service is utterly unreliable and taxes are still high.
• the waste collection system in London collect only twice per week, leaving my neighbourhood of Westminster, 600m away from where Tony Blair leaves, looking old, dirty, and the taxes we pay to the council are quite high. Waste is everywhere, on every single street there are waste bags on the street. No wonder London has a mice problem.

Do you see a trend here? I am starting to believe that people in London have a higher tolerance for dirt than elsewhere. Otherwise, there would be riots…

The good thing has been the 1st year in the MBA. By far, the best decision and learning experience ever. Meeting with great people, opportunities, fun, everything!

Apart from the good vs bad things in London, I am reflecting on my efforts to launch a start up during my 1st year of the MBA. No matter how I put it, it hasn’t launched yet. Of course going through the 1st year is no piece of cake, but I am still frustrated by the delays in going to market.

True, the team is as close as we have ever been to getting to market. Still, we are not there yet. Starting up is hard to do!!!

While I am busy with the internship, I am also enjoying time to redevelop two general skills, with the help of two books.

The first skill is organizing myself: As mentioned in a previous post, I am using GTD, Getting Things Done, by David Allen.

Pros: Fantastic book, loaded with common sense and a lot of experience on how to organize your life to Get Things Done. It contains a very useful framework to understand the day-to-day processes of the “information economy”. And the system for organizing with .txt files that I use, requires minimal maintenance.

Cons: If right after implementing, you end up with a list of actions of around 150-ish lines, quite likely if you have a busy life, you might get stressed and/or anxious and stop doing it. I got the reaction, but I know how to manage it after reading “The Now Habit”, the excellent book by Neil Fiore about procrastination. Everybody procrastinates in some areas of their lives. Everybody.

To sum up the book, eye opening experience with a radical impact on my stress free productivity, assuming you know how to manage your reaction to a 150 next action list.

The second skill is running : I have been an on-off runner, due to chronical pain and tendinitis in my Achilles tendon. Guess what? It can be due to poor running form. I probably have quite a few bad running habits. But I am not alone: Statistics show that 65% of runners in the USA stop running in any year due to injury! So the promise of the book to get back, enjoy running and “Run injury-free for the rest of your life” is incredibly appealing. I am still starting with the book, so I have no final impression about it.

So that is some of the fundamental relearning that I am engaged with at the moment. At some point in life, it is important to relearn things, drop bad habits, strip of the superfluous and get back to the fundamentals.