The Personal MBA

Several weeks ago, my friend and colleague Jean-Baptiste told me about an interesting website which I was surprised not to have found sooner: the Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman.

Based on the premise that going to a famous business school is not the only way of receiving a good business education, the Personal MBA is a compilation of books (currently 95!), carefully selected by the author, which are supposed to provide you with most of the teachings of an MBA for a fraction of the cost. The list of books is divided in various categories such as productivity, communication, marketing, sales, personal development, etc.

Obviously, learning business concepts is not the only aim of an MBA and books will not help you make the network you would make at a B-School, but I consider that making interesting connections is something you simply also do while pursuing your career, especially when you are an entrepreneur because you frequently meet a lot of different people from various backgrounds.

So, I have personally decided to try and start doing my own Personal MBA. Here are the main reasons:

• as far as I can remember, I have always been obsessed with learning new things and improving myself;
• I am an avid reader and am more comfortable with learning/remembering from books/texts than from lectures/classes/videos;
• being a young entrepreneur, I feel the need to master a lot of business skills in many different topics;
• simply put, I'm a goal-driven person: I love setting goals and trying to complete them.

I would like to read at least 2 of these books per month. It will certainly not be easy, and I have other books to read (more specifically related to my current work, such as technical books) but this is an interesting challenge and as I love reading, I don't think I will abandon it. Besides, most of these books seem to be so interesting that I can't wait to start learning!

I will read the books by section (beginning with the first one in the list, "Productivity & Effectiveness") and, after each book, summarize my findings in this blog. This will help me remember what I have read so that I can try to use the concepts in my everyday work. Hopefully, this will also help you, the reader, discover new interesting books and ideas. There are several books on the list which I have already read, such as The 4-Hour Work-Week, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Getting Things Done, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, etc. but I won't skip them and probably read them again quickly so that I can still summarize them too.

So see you next week for my review of the first book, "10 Days to Faster Reading".

Just started training for the 5K

One of my resolutions for 2009 was to improve my overall fitness.

I have always been interested in running. When I was young, I learned to appreciate it as I accompanied my father during his training. Running outside was pleasant in the village where I grew up (Frasnes-lez-Gosselies), but when I went to the university, I didn't like the environment as much. I didn't like having to run on hard ground, with many people around me, etc. I prefer to run in the calm. Only during the exam periods, while I was studying at my parents', I used to run almost every day to unwind and clear up my mind between studying sessions. Now that I'm living in a village again (Chaumont-Gistoux), it's already much better although I find the close surroundings a bit too hilly (I still have to investigate the environment a little more though!).

Anyway, I bought a treadmill this winter to be able to run even with bad weather conditions, which are unfortunately typical during most of the year in Belgium. Running on a treadmill has several other advantages, such as being able to totally control the difficulty of your workout, and having easy access to a towel and water (without the need to carry them). The main disadvantage, I think, is that it can quickly be boring as you have nothing to look at and you don't really have the feeling of covering any distance. Fortunately, I'm listening to music on my iPod and I've even taken an subscription at Audible.com to listen to some audiobooks, so I don't really find it boring (for the moment anyway).

I have done some workouts during the winter, but I didn't really know what I wanted and where I was going. I figured out that my aim is simply to be a better runner, and I consider that having clear objectives is important to keep myself motivated and see my progress. So I recently learned about the various typical workouts, read a book on the subject (Treadmill Training for Runners, by Rick Morris, apparently the reference for what I was looking for), and I've begun planning my training.

I don't have a very high level, even if I don't consider myself a total newbie either. I can run between 30 and 45 minutes without any pause but that's pretty much it. I would like to progressively improve the distance/time I can cover.

Typical distances for running races are the following:

• 5K : running for 5000 m / 5 km
• 10k: running for 10000 m / 10 km
• half-marathon: running for half the distance of a marathon, i.e. approximately 21km
• full marathon: 42.195 km

Because I've not run in the recent weeks, I've chosen to start at the beginning at train to run the 5K. I can already run a 5K without too much problem but I don't want to cut corners and risk facing too much difficulty too quickly. The program lasts 6 weeks, it is made of workouts of progressive length (from 1 mile - i.e. 1,61km - to, well, 5000m) with 2 days of rest per week (so a total of 30 workouts).

After this program, I'll probably continue by training for the 10K if everything went well. Then we'll see if I am still motivated to go even further :)