You see, most people seem to be interested in at least two of the three following things when it comes to choosing their “friends”: social validation (are you one of the cool kids?), monetization (what’s in it for me?) and intellectual / physical confirmation (do I feel I’m better than you?). As if that weren’t bad enough, it is now considered common sense for “friends” to skip the phone call and just write on someone’s wall for their birthday. The “Like” has replaced the email and the Facebook comment has replaced the letter. One shouldn’t expect “friends” to actually show up after confirming their attendance to a birthday party and, obviously, forgetting to cancel a scheduled dinner is totally normal. Via SMS. It seems to me that “friend” is the new “acquaintance” these days. xoxo

A few days ago, someone in my group of acquaintances called me to ask for help with something. I helped him, but it made me think. I could’ve bet that some of the people in the group are much closer friends to him than I am. And yet, here he is, calling me. It’s a sad world we live in, and I blame it all on high school and on Facebook.

For those of us who do wanna grow up though, I think friendships should be based on: honesty (does this person seem trustworthy?), intellectual compatibility (do I feel challenged or bored?) and reliability (can I rely on them not to disappear when I need them most?). But FYI, waking up at 3AM to help a friend in need is much more difficult than clicking “Like” on a Facebook status message.

The graph above shows how I spent my time last week (while in front of the laptop). Email gets by far the most time, which is fine as 90% of my meetings / requests / to-dos arrive that way. But despite spending so much time on email I don’t seem to be coping with all incoming emails that hit the inbox on any given workday. Priority Inbox is a life saviour and I read everything that gets in there, but I find it very difficult to respond to all emails.

Hence my email dilemma: should one answer to all emails or not? On the one side, when I send an email to someone I expect a response, and I believe everyone else thinks the same way. On the other side, many of the emails we get (recruiters, consultants, etc) are completely irrelevant and answering them wouldn’t go anywhere – so what’s the point?

To reply or not to reply, that is the question.

This little experiment has given me a great deal of time to work on more interesting stuff, spend more face to face time with friends and read more. It’s been great, but I have a new challenge.

It seems I spend about five hours each month reading blogs and (mostly technology-related) news. It’s not that bad if you think about it as it’s only fifteen minutes per day, so it’s not about the time. It’s about the noise; this morning, while zapping through my Google Reader feeds, I realised that I couldn’t care less about TechCrunch’s reports on the fact that Zingly, Munglu, Dunglu, Vingli just launched. I’m aware that I might sound like an arrogant prick for saying this, but I just don’t care.

So I’m taking on another experiment in November: delete all my news sources from Google Reader and only keep friends’ blogs, hoping that the great news will somehow make it’s way up. In order to keep up with the world, I’ll continue reading two of my favourite magazines: The New Yorker and The Economist. I’ll also be adding a trade magazine, NMA, and a technology source to the list. But as I can’t think of a technology source that’s brief, relevant and pertinent, I’m wondering if I could get some suggestions from you guys?

That being said, I’ll let you all know in January how things went.

Never in my life have I cried for someone I have never met, before yesterday. There’s no consumer brand I love more than Apple, and there’s no person that has inspired me as much as Steve Jobs.

Rest in peace, mr. Jobs.

I also love my dad’s emails because of the wisdom that breathes through them. Every now and then, in-between a story about an upcoming trip to the countryside and how the weather’s about to get quite cold in Romania, he’ll throw a phrase like “When you’re young, you want to grow up faster. When you get old, you want to grow old slower. And guess what, the process is much faster than you can ever imagine when you’re young. Just so you know.”

Dad – thanks to you, I know.

Last night, while looking at my RescueTime stats for the previous week and putting some meetings in the calendar, I had an epiphany. How awesome would it be to be able to track my offline time as well? You see, I have a rather poor memory so everything from meetings with clients to holidays and dinners with friends goes into the calendar. It has become a habit, which means that I can go back and see what I was doing on September 9, 2009, for example.

I would kill (and pay) for an app or a RescueTime feature (wink, wink, gents) that would import all my calendar entries and automatically add people to categories (eg. Sales, Friends, Business Development, Entertainment, Health – of course, after I’ve indicated what category they should go in). I would then be able to see how I spent my time on a particular week, and optimise based on that. What a killer app that would be, someone should build it.

It was a hot summer day of 2007; I was running a software company and Dragos had just started Greener, an environment-focused NGO. He wanted to build an online community management platform for Greener and a mutual friend told him I was the guy to do it. Fifteen minutes in, we both knew we were going to work together.

Very quickly, our business relationship turned into a friendship. From harmless gossip about previous romances to parties in London, yearly trips to the Danube Delta or polyphasic sleeping experiments, our friendship grew stronger every year. He started making predictions about me and I was secretly stealing his networking secrets. I’ve met many good networkers over the years but never have I seen someone bridge social spheres as naturally and elegantly as Dragos. He’s the kind of guy that on a Wednesday night could easily bring together an actor, an entrepreneur, a student, a politician and the Romanian royal family, on two hours notice. Over the past five years, he’s written a book, starred in at least five prime-time TV shows, raised millions of euros for environment projects, organised workshops on Kahler’s Process Communication Model and built two NGOs. And he’s made it all look casual and effortless, Richard Branson style.

A couple of years ago, on one of our trips to the Danube Delta, he briefly mentioned he’s thinking to do an MBA in the US. I loved the idea, and about a year later I was crossing my fingers for him during the Stanford interview. Today, Dragos is moving to America to pursue an MBA at Stanford University. On the exact same day two years ago, I moved to London. “The date should bode quite well, then” he said when finding out about the coincidence. “I know it will”, I said.

Alex Van Someren, who told me “you should move to London” when we first met in Paris in February 2009. Reshma Sohoni, Saul and Robin Klein, for Seedcamp. Sherry Coutu, for investing in Brainient and connecting me to Arts Alliance. Alex Hoye, for introducing me to the scene. Thomas Hoegh, Dave McClure and Algy Williams, for their trust. Claude London, for the kind words. Jason Goodman, for all the support. Milo Yiannopoulos, for all the entertainment. My flatmates Lucian Tarnowski & Rob Hoare and former flatmate Alasdair Bell, for all the fun barbecues. Sabina, for always being around. And the Brainient team, for everything.

Thanks, guys.

You would say my mom and dad are happy and I believe they are. But whenever we see each other I feel they would like to go back in time, work a bit less and spend a bit more time with the kids. We don’t see each other very often these days and when we do, it’s brief. Mom has plenty of time now but the kids don’t, because we work very hard. Quite ironic, life.

I was chatting to a friend this evening. We hadn’t chatted properly in three months as each time she texted me, I was working hard. Because I have a dream, you see. And I’ll look back in 40 years, with my dream fulfilled and no need of a pension plan, thinking that I wish I had spent a bit less time working and a bit more catching up with friends and family. Or maybe I’ll read this post, think about mom and remind myself that there’s more to life than hard work. No matter how gratifying it is.

It reminds me of when I was a kid. I would come from school, do my homework, write some code, play some games and then watch cartoons, M*A*S*H or Police Academy for about an hour. I didn’t do it every day, so I’m assuming I was spending about 15 – 20hrs per month in front of the TV. I was a kid back then so wasting time in front of the TV wasn’t such an outrageous thing, but it’s amazing how much my social media behaviour today resembles what I was doing with TV as a kid.

Firstly, social media, as TV, stops my brain from thinking about stuff. I remember that when I was watching TV as a kid, my consciousness would stop thinking about school, homework and all the stuff I actually needed to do. Hence I almost never got anything done on time. Secondly, not a lot of interesting stuff ever came out of that TV box. Yes, TV documentaries were sometimes revealing in the same way social media helps me discover interesting news and events today, but that probably only happens in 10% of the time spent on either.

However, the most interesting thing I’ve noticed while looking over the stats this morning is that I consume social media all day long. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s bad, that’s real bad because it’s incredibly distracting. As a kid, I only watched TV in the evening. Which means that, during the day, it wasn’t a distraction. Social media on the other hand interrupts me every other hour, according to RescueTime.

Now, there’s one more thing I remember from when I was a kid. I was in my last year of high-school and had managed to get myself quite busy by doing freelancing work, preparing for final exams and starring in a TV show. I tried cutting back on my TV time, but found it impossible until I made quite an extreme move: threw it out of the flat. And now I’m wondering if I should take the same approach with social media.