Archive of all the articles on the blog

Welcome to the AgileLeanLife blog archives. Here you can browse all the published articles by topic and headline. Under each topic, the articles are listed by date from the first to the latest one published (on top). Before going through all the articles, you are kindly invited to read more about the blog and me – the author.

If you are interested in mastering a certain topic that this blog covers, I suggest you check out the learning tracks. You can imagine tracks as going to a structured course that teaches you to master a certain topic step by step.

You’re still doing nothing else than reading blog posts one by one and doing different exercises along the way, but you’re doing it in a strict recommended order together with the context explaining why a certain article is important.

Nevertheless, if you want to go through all the published articles or just find the one right article that might help you with your current life situation, you are on the right page.

Below you will find more than 200 blog posts on different topics, all aimed to help you improve yourself, your life and your relationships. The purpose of every article is to inspire you or give you ideas on how to solve challenging life problems.

Archives: List of all articles ordered by subject and date published (this page)
Tracks: Recommended order of reading articles on a certain topic with context

Blog posts are divided into the following categories (in alphabetical order):

Browse articles by topic or headline and discover more.

Agile and lean life

The Agile & Lean Life category is a collection of all blog posts about applying advanced startup management and software development techniques in personal life to improve personal productivity and odds of success.

Why is that important? There is no harder challenge in business than to build a new disruptive high-tech startup. Building a new startup doesn’t only take courage, innovative ideas and attracting a lot of funding, but also a systematic scientific approach to finding the right product – the market fit.

Managing personal life and becoming successful is also not a piece of cake. Many techniques, approaches and lessons from the lean startup and agile development can be applied to personal life. They can help you achieve a completely new level of personal performance, productivity and success.

Sounds interesting? Before browsing the articles posted under this category, I suggest you read the main idea of how you can benefit from the transference of advanced business knowledge to personal life management.

Blog posts under this category are organized by date published. As a better alternative, you can check out the AgileLeanLife Productivity framework track, where blog posts are arranged in a more logical and systematic sequence, so you can acquire knowledge and concepts for applying lean and agile methodologies into your personal life in a more step-by-step way.

Besides that, the AgileLeanLife productivity track also offers a collection of other productivity tips and tricks, outside the scope of agile and lean life.

Blogging

Blogging is a very important part of my life. I’ve been blogging for more than ten years. In September 2006, I posted my first blogpost in my native language. In the next five years, I built one of the most visited and successful blogs in my country.

In the beginning, blogging was one of my hobbies and I was writing mainly about starting a successful business, career development and personal growth. But deep down, I also wanted to help people from all over the world and make a living out of blogging.

Thus, I published my first article in the English language on this blog in September 2014. And in January 2016, I decided to go full time blogging.

The main topics I write about on this blog concern:

Employing the best business practices in personal life management,
teaching established psychological techniques to better manage mind and emotions, and
setting goals based on understanding market paradigms, the quantified self, and following cold hardcore metrics that prevent any fake feeling of progress.

Altogether, I’ve published more than 700 blog posts (200+ on this blog and 500+ in my native language) and written more than 2,000 A4 pages (which is equal to around 8 books).

Along the way, I learned a lot about blogging and how to build a successful blog. Everything from small technical tricks to how to optimize your blog for search engines and promote it.

The blogging category is a collection of all blog posts sharing knowledge on how to build and promote your personal blog. It can save you thousands of dollars I spent learning different blogging lessons. At the end of the day, building a successful blog takes a lot of dedication, hard work and tech knowledge.

You can browse all the posts about blogging here, ordered by date published, or as an alternative you can go to the Blogging track where posts are arranged in a more logical way, so you can upgrade your knowledge step by step (starting your own blog, publishing your first post and then promoting your blog and measuring your progress).

Book summaries

I love to read, and I read a lot. My goal is to read around 50 – 55 books per year (or one book per week), especially on various psychology, personal development, business and IT topics.

To get the most out of my favorite books or books that genuinely changed my life, I prepare book summaries, mind maps and sometimes even flashcards or other learning aids. That enables me to refresh knowledge chunks in regular intervals, which is one of the best learning practices.

I am happy to share all the materials with you, in hopes that they will positively influence your life too. Book summaries are not that short, but they are prepared in a very structured and detailed way, so you can really get a grasp on what the books are all about.

The book summaries serve two main purposes – to understand what a book is all about and encourage you to read it, and as a way to refresh your knowledge once you’ve read the book.

Brainpower & skills

The Brainpower & Skills category consists of all the articles teaching you how to become more resourceful and competent. You are the investment with the highest potential yield in your life you will ever find, and that means you must regularly invest in yourself and your skills. The more you invest in yourself, the more rewards you can enjoy.

There is a simple reason why. With inner resources (knowledge, skills etc.), you can always create more outer resources (money, status etc.). And even if you lose your (outer) assets, you can always rebuild them with enough competences and knowledge.

If you believe in yourself, you will invest in yourself and then make sure that your investment pays off with proper market transactions.

There are two important ways to develop your inner resources. (1) The first way is to get the most out of your brain. That includes learning how to study properly, developing creative and analytical skills, and taking good care of your brain.

(2) The second way is to develop competences that are in short supply on the market and in high demand. You have to become dedicated to lifelong learning, constantly developing new skills, acquiring new knowledge, and improving yourself by finding new ways how to do things better. Blog posts under this category will teach you all that.

The creative society worships talented people, and blog posts below will teach you how to join the talented ones.

Career and work

The career & Work category is all about the following quote said by Freud: Love and work, work and love, that’s all there is. You spend more than 1/3 of your life at work.

Work should present an opportunity for you to create value, express yourself, contribute to the society, love what you do and do different things that you are good at (talented for). But at the same time, work should also enable you to earn enough money for a decent living.

But unfortunately, many people get caught in lousy jobs they hate, going to work only for money. By accumulating debt, not investing enough in themselves, and lacking the courage to expose themselves to better opportunities, they get stuck in a rat race that makes their lives more miserable every day.

It’s a form of contemporary slavery that nobody deserves. You weren’t born to work in order to pay your bills and then die.

The Career & Work category is dedicated to blog posts that will teach you how to build a successful career based on your talents and things you love to do in life, while making enough money to escape the rat race and living from paycheck to paycheck.

Blog posts below are ordered by date published. Enjoy reading the articles and may they inspire you to improve your Career & Work life.

Health & Biohacking

We all agree how important health is. And at the same time, we all often neglect our health until we crash or become very ill. Only then do we start to really value health. But when it comes to health, prevention is a way better life strategy than cure. Luckily it doesn’t take a lot to take good care of your health.

There are three fundamentals of taking care of your health – (1) regular exercise, (2) healthy diet and (3) moderate lifestyle. It doesn’t take much effort to exercise a few times per week, and you feel excellent after it. Remember, you are always only one workout away from the god mode.

And a healthy diet in combination with regular exercise brings you high energy levels, good digestion, glowing skin and loss of excessive fat. You can finally be proud of yourself when you look in the mirror.

We all assume that it takes a great sacrifice to take good care of your health, but that isn’t true. All you have to do are small daily investments that accumulate into a healthy body, mind and soul in the long term. I was obese, absolutely hated exercise and sports, Wiener Schnitzel with French fries was my favorite food, and I puffed like a shunting engine when I had to walk up 20 stairs.

My health was in a terrible condition, even though I hated to admit that. So a few years ago, I decided to take better care of my health. Today, broccoli is my favorite food, my favorite sport is hiking, and I went from obese to a normal BMI. I read many books about health, tested many different diets and sports and under this category, I share everything I learn.

Besides that, we live in amazing times with all the technology giving you the feedback on what’s happening to your body when you make lifestyle changes. It’s called biohacking or biofeedback. Biofeedback is a big part of quantifying self and better understanding how certain actions affect your health as an individual.

Your body is unique, and the first step towards better health is understanding yourself and your body. Solid health metrics that measure your improvements can be a great source of motivation and understanding what works best for your body so you can progress in the fastest way.

That’s what this category is all about – a healthy lifestyle based on measuring different data that can help you make smart decisions about which sports to take, which food to eat based on what pattern, how to sleep well and, in the end, how to maximize your energy levels.

Learning to code

Learning a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world. The more languages you know, the more you are a person. Learn a new language and get a new soul.

These are only some of the quotes emphasizing the importance of learning and knowing different languages. Computer languages are no exception in this regard. Mastering a programming language is like mastering an additional human language.

Computers can do amazing things, as long as you know how to talk to them. By knowing how to program, you can build websites, create mobile applications, give instructions to robots, automate different computer tasks, design cool things, and much more.

When you know how to communicate with machines, there are unlimited opportunities for creation and using technology to your advantage. Besides that, knowing how to code can be a very profitable competence.

I decided to learn to code in my 30s, which is very late. I figured out very quickly that learning how to code is not an easy job, it’s actually pretty difficult and it takes a lot of brainpower, time, stamina and persistence. I even wanted to give up a few times. I’m not an expert programmer at this point, but I am slowly advancing in my knowledge.

Under this category, I share important insights into learning how to code – from all the things I wish I knew from the beginning to recommended best resources, and even where to start, if you are a complete beginner.

Sorry there are no articles posted under this category yet :/

Marketing & Sales

Sales and marketing are everything. No matter your job title, you are in marketing and sales. At least if you want to stay in business, grow (with) your company, land a dream job or be promoted.

If you don’t know how to build a personal brand, how to sell your own ideas and all the competences you can provide and of course sell, and how to market actual products and services, you will rarely get noticed on the market.

Creating value is about innovating and solving problems. Delivering value means clearly and assertively communicating what value you can provide. Capturing value means getting paid for value created and delivered.

When it comes to delivering value, there are two simple rules: (1) No money equals no value created. And the second, (2) if you believe in yourself or the company you work for, you should never work a day in your life without selling. If you believe in something, sell it and sell it hard.

Under this category, you will find a collection of blog posts that will teach you all about personal branding and about authentic non-intrusive marketing and sales in general.

Money & Wealth

Money alone can rarely make you happy, but a lack of money can definitely make you miserable. Quality relationships, wealth and health are three core fundamentals of a quality and happy life.

If one of these areas collapses, it most often has great negative influence on other areas of life as well. An important part of setting a superior life strategy is proper management of your money, wealth and other resources.

When it comes to money, there are three important skills to master – (1) earning money, (2) keeping money and (3) growing your wealth.

The best way to earn money are passive and portfolio income, the best way to keep money is a frugal and minimalistic lifestyle while avoiding bad investments, and the best way to make profitable investments is to find opportunities with low risk and huge potential yield.

The Money & Wealth category is all about increasing your long-term net worth, by being a value producer, smart investor and frugal consumer.

Under this category, you will find all kinds of personal finance-related posts, from how to upgrade your general psychological money blueprint, to practical tips for increasing your earning potential and properly managing your assets.

The important fact is that money is like love: if you don’t pay attention to it, it goes somewhere else; and you don’t want that to happen.

Passion & Emotions

Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away. In other words, your life is either daring adventure full of exciting experiences, or nothing. What makes life so colorful and remarkable are emotions.

Events and experiences loaded with positive emotions are the ones that usually make our lives worthwhile – when we create, climb mountains, dive oceans or feel a deep connection with people, these are all moments that stay with us forever and that people love to remember in their final years of life.

We all want to be logical beings, but we are driven by emotions. Emotions are the ones that motivate us and help us persevere through tough challenges, emotions are the ones driving us across oceans to be united with our loved ones, emotions help us survive and avoid danger.

They lead us down the right path and help us understand, relate and connect with others. They can also make our lives very tough, but only if we don’t know how to properly manage them.

This is where emotional intelligence comes into play. A person with a high EQ has a great capacity to be aware of, control and express their emotions.

In addition to that, a high EQ means having good skills in interpersonal relationships when it comes to emotions – from being empathic, sympathetic and supportive, to being able to transform negative relationship energies into positive ones.

The Passion & Emotions category is devoted to blog posts that explain the importance of emotions in our lives and how to make sure that severe negative emotions aren’t hindering your life and potential, but are rather making it worthwhile.

This category is all about how to improve your emotional intelligence in terms of understanding your own feelings and relating to feelings of others, and how to live a passionate life.

Personal development

You are here on this planet for four basic reasons – (1) to create value, (2) to enjoy life, (3) to connect with other people and to (4) learn and grow.

The “learn and grow” part of the mission you have in your life is the duty to become the best version of yourself and leave a positive legacy behind. And the way to become the best version of yourself is to commit to regular personal development and constant improvement.

Personal development is about getting to know yourself, examining your life and your past, understanding your strengths and weaknesses, and then building strong foundations for a happy and successful life in the future. Day by day, you improve different areas of life and your character, and over time that accumulates in great results and accomplishments.

The good news is that improving yourself is a rewarding and fun experience by itself. Well, personal development is far from an easy task, but when you learn to enjoy the path itself and accept your limits, personal development becomes one of the most divine experiences on the planet – because you positively influence your own life, the people around you and maybe even succeed in making a dent in the universe.

There is no greater legacy than changing the world by changing yourself.

This category is a collection of blog posts dedicated to general personal development. The articles below are organized by date published. If you want to just skim the headlines of the articles to find the right one for yourself, go ahead.

But if you want to learn everything about personal development in a systematic step-by-step way, I suggest you go to the Personal development track, where personal development blog posts are grouped logically by different sub-topics of personal development.

Productivity and goals

You have only two options in life. Either you follow your own goals, or you follow the goals of other people. If you don’t build and follow your own dream life, someone else will try to engage you or hire you to help build theirs.

There’s nothing wrong with helping other people achieve their dreams, but you absolutely want to make sure you also have your own goals and that you live your own dream life.

You want to wake up every day with determination and go to bed with deep satisfaction. You want to be maximally creative during the day and produce, deliver and capture as much value on the markets as possible.

You want to make sure you have many hobbies and personal goals that empower you and make your life worthwhile. It feels so good to be productive, to see the fruits of hard and smart work, and cross things off your vision list.

Blog posts under the Productivity & Goals category will help you make sure that you don’t only have a hunch of what your dream life could be, but to carefully define your dream life and build a superior life strategy and plan for how you will achieve all of your dreams.

Reading blog posts under this category will help you achieve a completely new level of personal performance – an elite productivity and goal achieving oriented daily life, while enjoying the path and hard work.

Many of the productivity and goal setting techniques described in the blog posts are inspired by lean startup and agile development approaches in business. If companies aren’t productive, they go out of business.

Superior innovation and organization are thus an important part of every successful company. So, there is no better way to learn how to be productive than from successful companies.

Psychology

Psychology is an academic discipline and social science that strives to understand unconscious and conscious behavior and mind of individuals and groups.

Psychologists explore different types of behavioral and mental processes, including perception, attention, cognition, emotion, intelligence and motivation. We also must not forget the examination of how personality and interpersonal relationships develop, as they are an important part of psychology.

On the practical individual level, psychology is all about making people’s life experience happier, more productive and fulfilling. It somehow includes more scientific, systematic and long‑term approaches of personal development to tackle bigger emotional challenges like depression, anxiety, isolation and procrastination.

Psychology (especially psychiatry) also deals with mental illnesses that are treated as serious medical conditions with a combination of medications, therapy and other techniques.

This category is a collection of psychology articles that discuss issues and solutions beyond the power of popular psychology and more superficial personal development tools; however, the articles don’t deal with issues that require medical attention (schizophrenia, chronic depression etc.), since I am not a doctor.

The articles present different types of psychological therapy (psychoanalysis, CBT, transactional analysis etc.), their tools and how they can be applied in personal life. If you are interested in psychology and different types of therapy, these category is the perfect choice for you.

Relationships

We humans are social beings and healthy relationships are a very important part of a peaceful and happy life – private and business one. People are the ones who can make life on this planet heaven or hell for us.

Everybody wants to have loving relationships and trustworthy people around them, yet relationships are so hard to manage. Additionally, every relationship goes through a series of ups and downs, and faces relationship crises.

The good news is that if you are proactive in relationships, you can dramatically increase their quality, even with difficult people. Relationship management is a skill and once you learn it, you can enjoy a variety of different relationships that lead to feelings of love, belonging, co-creation and connectedness, without too much drama.

Quality relationships lead to happiness, and long‑term isolation leads to misery.

This category is a collection of relationship tips, hacks and advice. The articles discuss topics like setting boundaries and realistic expectations in relationships as well as practical advice on how to manage key business and personal relationships.

People in your life will either inspire you or drain you, and relationship posts on this blog and under this category will help you choose and build relationships wisely so they will become the greatest source of inspiration in your life.

Blog posts under this category are organized by date published. Under the Relationship track, you will find the articles organized in a more systematic way, so you can learn relationship management step by step.

Startups & Business

For more than 10 years, I built businesses and helped high-tech startups grow globally. Building a new business is one of the most demanding career challenges and unfortunately, the majority of new companies go out of business in a few years.

I’ve seen thousands of companies fail, and only a handful succeed. Most of the successful startups followed the lean startup practice, by the way.

It takes quite some luck to build a globally successful business, but even more it takes a systematic approach to understanding the markets, and properly setting up and optimizing different business functions. In different stages of company’s growth, you must focus on different milestones, and being able to engage people with a different set of competences.

Building or running a business is half art, half science. This category is devoted to different tips, tricks, guides and general advice on how to successfully start a new business or manage an existing one, on both sides of the equation – art and science.

Technology & Trends

Technology is an important leverage in life. Companies with the biggest market capitalization and the most profitable companies today are technological companies.

Competences in the highest demand on the market are directly or indirectly connected to being good with certain technology or software. In order to be successful today, you must use technology to your advantage. And in the future, the importance of technology will be even greater.

Much like technology is an important leverage, so are trends – market trends. When market trends and paradigms work in your favor, they are like an accelerator that enables you to achieve your goals faster and become even more successful than you imagined.

And if you find yourself on the wrong markets (small, in fall), they cause you nothing but a headache – from loss of jobs, money, status, potential and struggle. No matter how competent you are, markets always win.

This category is all about understanding technology and trends in a way that you can make them your allies. Knowledge posted under this category will help you make sure technology and trends are working to your advantage and that they don’t hinder your potential.

Enjoy reading the articles.