Reading books, doing what you like, and pre-race enjoyment

During the past few weeks, I've been in Japan, it's lovely and I love being here. Now it's like a second home, and I have some habits here.

It was also a kind of vacation for me as I didn't work that much and I was more procrastinating than usual but it's also normal sometimes.

Tomorrow, I'm going to South Korea, I have a race on Saturday, a half marathon, and I can't wait to be there to beat my previous PR.

Reading books

Before going into entrepreneurship, business, personal involvement, and all that stuff, I did not read a lot. I was more like I didn't care about it and I thought that there were only books like poems, novels, and stuff like that.

Then, when I was like 18, I took a book named 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, and it changed a lot of things for me. I discovered a whole new world of knowledge I didn't have. And then I read a lot of books like that.

It can sound like the usual guy who read a lot of personal growth books and it changed his life, but sorry it's also the case for me.

What I've found in all of these books is basically knowledge but not only that, it was more of challenging my mind and how I view the world, my work, and so on. It changed my perspective on a lot of points, and that's why it was interesting.

If I can give you one piece of advice, read, anything but read, and it's better than anything else to be focused on something.

I'm telling it today, because in the past two weeks, I read like 4/5 different books, and sometimes, I just don't like the book and I don't finish it, and sometimes, the book changes my point of view and I find one of them a few days back.

I was reading Shoe Dog, the autobiography of Phil Knight, the creator of Nike ( please read it, it's a masterclass ), and I wanted to read books like that, to change my point of view, cause I was quite lost these past weeks about what I really care and my goals on earth.

And after searching on X and Reddit I found the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. I already heard about this guy, but not that much and I decided to give it a try.

And it was the perfect book for me at this moment. It's about wealth and happiness, and it's very interesting as his point of view can really help you in many fields. I read it in one day, and it changed my mind on some points that I will describe later.

But please, take the time to give it a try, this one is only around 1$ on kindle on amazon which is crazy cheap: https://www.amazon.com/Almanack-Naval-Ravikant-Happiness-English-ebook/dp/B08FF8MTM6

Doing what I want

Since I remember, I always wanted to get a job and be my own boss to be free and do exactly what I want, when I want.

And now, I did it, and I found some stuff I really like to manage my time and get some money with that.

The problem I have faced the last few weeks is that I changed my mind about what I want. And I discovered ( thanks to the book ) that I want stuff that is not me.

I'm totally amazed by the people who find huge bugs, and very technical ones, like the browser stuff and cryptography stuff. I love to read all of them and I always wanted to be like them. Taking the time to craft a huge exploit and take so much time looking at source code to find something huge.

That's what I tried, and I face the reality. I'm not capable of sitting for 12 hours a day reading code, or doing maths, even if I love maths and understanding this kind of stuff.

The problem is not that I don't like hack stuff, it's different as I'm able to work 12 hours a day searching for bugs. But I like it when stuff goes fast, when it's clear, and when I automate stuff to get hints and find new stuff.

I always wanted to be the guy like Johan Carlsson for Gitlab or Blaklis for Swisscom and dig deep so much something. But If I face the reality, it's not me. It hurts but it's the reality, and it's useless for me to force myself trying to be like that as I already tried and it's not working for me.

So what's working for me then? I looked back on my previous years and what I was good and I was on the flow, doing it 12 hours a day for a long period of time. Coding and developing stuff. And for me, it was not sexy, but I was always able to be good at it naturally and to work in that.

I'm not going to give up bug hunting, not at all as I love it so much. I will just take my real skills to level up this and have something cool. I was procrastinating a lot these past weeks due to thinking about that. And I want to develop some interesting tools to help me do it the best way.

To me it was not sexy, to automate stuff on bug bounty, but it's what it is and I don't want to automate stuff to push low-hanging fruits.

Pre-race excitation

I have a half marathon next Saturday, and I'm so excited about doing it. I want to beat my last PR from February, and I trained a lot this past week.

It's always crazy to feel the excitement a few days before the race, and already imagine the result, and see it in your dreams.

It helps a lot to achieve it, the mind is so malleable that's crazy.

See you next week, in South Korea.