2018 Spring

Hi,

Imagine staying for 2 weeks in an island doing nothing.

I tried a self-retreat in the outskirts of Ubud, an artistic village in Bali, Indonesia – and failed.

Below I share with you why, as well as other learnings, creations & personal news.

Wishing you well,

Miguel

CREATIVITY:

What would you do if you were given “carte blanche” to bring interdisciplinary thinking to Google’s startup spaces? I decided to bring together artists & entrepreneurs. My start of 2018 was intensely focused on creating from scratch and launching the first Campus Creativity Week:

I used to joke that if I’d go work in Spain I’d have culture shock – well I did! It turns out I’ve become anglosaxon in my ways of work: your own land can’t understand you’ve become a foreigner.

The 7 days were a great success though and a tremendous team effort, featuring world-class artists & entrepreneurs, changing the walls Campus Madrid and picked up by Google’s global blog, but ironically it left my creative batteries burned out…

So I took 2 weeks off in Ubud to be alone in Nature, read, draw & meditate (here where I stayed, now friends with the inspiring owner Christina). The self-retreat did not go as expected, perhaps due to packing my laptop… however I gained a crucial insight.

Above is my fiancee (yes, we got engaged!) helping turn our home in Tokyo (yes, we moved to Japan!) into a space for daily renewal. The aspiration? To feel like stepping into a temple.

After 2 years pondering whether I should take photography more seriously I gave up and asked pro photographer Juan Herrero for advice. One hour later I had a Fujifilm X100F in my hands. The above is not a painting, but a photograph of the flower arrangement in our local soba shop.

I’m enjoying capturing beauty and sharing it, so will continue to play with this new medium.

INSIGHT:

Having thousands of unpublished notes doesn’t help anyone.
Publishing them online could help someone.
So I’m posting more frequently on my blog:
–Set your own constraints
–Responsive vs Proactiveness
–Meaning does not come from reason

Also I started indulging in reading again, these are my favorite books from this period:

–The righteous mind – “the researchers looked for signs that this increased in-group love would be paired with increased out-group hate… but they failed to find it. Oxytocin simply makes people love their in-group more.” (this view corrects the us vs them into us & them)

–Einstein – “I could not resist the temptation to accept a position in which I am relieved of all responsibilities so that I can give myself over completely to rumination.” “one of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness”

–Principles: Life & Work – “Radically open-minded people know that coming up with the right questions and asking other smart people what they think is as important as having all the answers. They understand that you can’t make a great decision without swimming for a while in a state of “not knowing”.”

–Skin in the game – “One may be risk loving yet completely averse to ruin. In a strategy that entails ruin, benefits never offset risks of ruin. Ruin and other changes in condition are different animals.”

–The reason i jump – “I’ve learnt that every human being, with or without disabilities, needs to strive to do their best, and by striving for happiness you will arrive at happiness… so long as we can learn to love ourselves, I’m not sure how much it matters whether we’re normal or autistic.”

NEXT

I have started working at Google Japan’s new Olympics & Startups team.
Very cool stuff, the kind I cannot write about publicly yet 🙂
I’m learning Japanese and trying to limit western travel.
Jetlag in the months ahead though!:

Hanoi – Vietnam
David – Panama
Fontainebleau – France
Marbella – Spain