The short-term and long-term ROI of thinking positively!

Last week I was having four consecutive flights to get from Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania to Bali in Indonesia. Initially I thought it was crazy to embark on a trip consisting of four flights, but over time I found a lot of excitement in the idea of doing something new for the first time. Unexpectedly though, my third flight from Bangkok to Singapore was delayed and I missed my connection from Singapore to Bali. 

After a lot of back and forth, I got the airline to pay my hotel in Singapore while I had to book myself on the first flight out to Bali the next morning. As my friends were finding out about what had happened, many tried to solace me for the situation I was in. But I wasn't sad or frustrated. Actually, I was quite happy. I found it exciting to be stranded in a new place. As I was thinking about my situation, something dawned on me. Namely that I couldn’t remember the last time I was deeply upset or negative about something.

"Getting angry is punishing yourself with other people's mistakes."

Just a week before this incident I was hiking Mount Kilimanjaro. One of the nights – it was the last night before we would embark on a 16h+ hike within the following 24 hours – I was plagued with terrible stomach issues. I had to wake up 6 times that night to make my way to the restrooms (imagine the hygiene of those restrooms in the middle of nowhere) which were a 5-minute walk away in the bitter cold of 4,000 meters of altitude. How did I keep myself positive? I was excited about seeing the shiny stars at night on my way to the restrooms. 

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the "short-term ROI” of learning to think positively is the ability to deal with these day-to-day situations. Basically, by learning to think positively in life, you are building a certain muscle that can help you deal with these situations that would otherwise cause you to react negatively and frustrated.

So far, so good. But is there also a long-term ROI to thinking positively? I’d like to argue that there is. Thinking positively prepares you for what I would call “match day.” 

A few days ago I messaged my friend whose wedding I had attended a few weeks before. I wanted to see how his honeymoon was going but what I got in return was quite the story. It started with “I spent the last 24 days of my honeymoon hospitalized in Asia and had to undergo abdominal surgery” and it ended with “it’s been an unforgettable experience and great marriage bonding. We took it very positively and with a lot of humor.”

Not necessarily the type of response you would expect, right? And I felt I was living through the same story of the cancelled flight, but now with the roles switched! This time it was me who was trying to be solacing a friend for a negative experience even though he was positive about that experience. Only with the difference that this was a completely different level of experience and one that would be much easier to react negatively to.

What my friend had experienced was something that had been on my mind for a long time: “maybe I can deal with the day-to-day downs of life, but how would I cope with a big downer on match day?” My friend summarized his experience saying that “all the years of training your mind to be positive and happy and all of that are essential when match day arrives and you have to deal with real pressure. So I really don’t feel like it’s been hard or tough or scary, and that’s likely because of all the mental training I put myself through to learn to be happy, positive, and forward thinking.”

To be honest, I couldn’t have said it better. One might reap short-term benefits on a day-to-day basis by learning to think positively, but what happens is that you are building your positive thinking-muscle over time which you will depend on once a real big challenge arrives. 

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The single most important question I ask myself to be productive

I often get asked about my philosophy around getting things done. To the outside, it often seems that I’m uber-productive and constantly doing stuff. While I certainly am, I noticed that it’s really dangerous to fall into the trap of being in a state where it "feels productive to be busy." Busy in itself doesn’t get anything done. When you say you are busy, you can either find yourself in the state of achieving a ton, or in a state where you are not achieving anything at all. So how do you make sure you are actually productive?

One of my approaches actually being productive lies in a task and a question that goes with it. 

The task is simple. I make myself aware of the key task(s) at hand. The emphasis here is on “key.” I might be working on a gazillion projects, but each project is at a different level of importance. As part of this task, I make sure I’m aware of the projects that are important and really need my focus. These are often the ones that are a bit more advanced and have thus taken shape. While I keep nurturing the lesser important projects, I make sure the more important ones are on top of my mind! 

With that, I then ask myself a very simple question. "What have I done today to reach my goal?"

I remember a partnership that I was renegotiating at work. Just by itself it was an important partnership. What made it even more important back then was the fact that we were working against a deadline and that there were a lot of technical details I had to consider. I was running against time and became increasingly worried about my ability to succeed. In order to ensure that we were making progress, I woke up each day wondering what I would do on that very day to ensure that we made progress. By the end of the day, I would then ask myself in retrospective what I had done for us to be successful. 

It is a simple question (and a simple task that goes hand in hand with it), but the task helps you put your attention to the right projects and the question helps you make sure not a single day goes by without you doing a step into the direction of success. 

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My biggest takeaway after over 2,000 days at Google

A few weeks ago I had my last day at Google. I had started with the company in 2009 and made the (difficult) decision this year to move on. I was sitting in my last team meeting when my manager asked me to share some thoughts and reflections from the last ±6 years. 

I should have seen this coming, but I hadn’t … so the question really put me on the spot. I was scrabbling to come up with a compelling list of three things, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there was only one thing I wanted to share with me team. And it had to do with time. 

In those 2,000+ days, there was not a single day that I would look at the clock. Not a single day that I would be at work, yet want it to be time for me to go home. I made that realization because this used to be the case in all the other jobs I had. From consulting gigs to private equity advising – I remember watching the clock and wanting the day to come to an end so I could go home. But in all those 6 years, this has never been the case at Google. 

I found this to be a powerful realization. I’m not saying that I wanted to work 24/7 and I’m not saying that there wasn’t any separation between work and my off-work life (even though there were times when that line was very blurry). That's not the point. The point is that I was doing something that give each of these past 2,000 days a certain sense of purpose. Even though there were days at which I didn't like my job, I wasn't dreading them because I knew my time in the office was well spent doing something meaningful. 

At Google I felt that no matter if I liked or didn't like what I was doing (my actual enjoyment of the work), I knew it was something worthwhile doing. That's why I never felt the urge to run away from it. While I don't know what job will be next in my life and after school, I will try to find something that won't make me want to watch the clock and thus the work day to be over. And with that, I encourage you to ask yourself how you feel about your job based on this very simple idea: are you looking at the clock and hope the work day to be over? If the answer is yes, you might need to rethink what you are doing. 

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How I got invited to speak at TED, rejected it, but then did it anyway…

One of the things in life that I have come to appreciate most is its unpredictability. If someone had told me a few weeks ago that I would soon embark on a trip that would lead me to 5 countries in 5 days, just to give a TED talk to 750 people in no other place than Iran? IMPOSSIBLE.

In this piece I’d like to share with you everything I learned along the way.

A week before my photo exhibition about Iran opened in San Francisco, I was at an event where I ended up having a great conversation with someone whose name I couldn’t remember a few days later. I then tried to find his name on the participant list on Facebook. While doing so, I came across the Persian-sounding name of a girl who had also been there. Curious about who she was, I clicked on her profile and found myself flipping through pictures that she had recently taken in Iran. In case you are wondering, yes, I think this qualifies as Facebook-stalking someone. Since I could see her shared passion for photography and Iran, I allowed myself to invite her to the opening of my exhibition. Three days later I met Asya for the first time.

Since I had to play a social butterfly and greet 200+ people that evening, I we hardly got to talk. Our attempts to meet up in the days following the opening failed due to our busy schedules. So she left for Southern California and I headed to Latin America for work. A few weeks later, Asya reached out to me while I was in Argentina, asking for a chat over the phone.

She told me that she was co-organizing TEDxKish, the first global TEDx in Iran. The “global” qualified the event to go for more than one day and have international speakers and participants. The fact that Kish island was a free-visa zone — despite being under Iranian sovereignty — certainly made it the perfect location. And it didn’t take too long for her to ask me whether I would like to contribute.

My first reaction was: YES OF COURSE!!! So when I got off the phone with her at 11pm, I was awake until 4AM writing different speech proposals. Less than 24 hours later she had my resume, motivation letter and three speech drafts. The following evening I got to talk to Amir, the head curator for TEDxKish. Once again I was on a call that went until 4AM my time.

The conversation with Amir was absolutely daunting. Not only was he taking apart all my three proposals, but for the first time I began to understand the sheer magnitude of that invitation. 750 people in the audience — coming from all over the world. A long list of accomplished speakers with whom I would share the stage. And then the actual opportunity to share an idea with my people… providing an intellectual stimulus in a country that has suffered such a severe brain drain over the last 30+ years. I became incredibly intimidated and was wondering whether I was getting ahead of myself.

My excitement took a massive hit when he told me that I would have to be in Kish 2 days before the event to do all necessary rehearsals, etc. The event was on April 17th and 18th and since I had a speaking engagement in Switzerland on the 17th (an entrepreneurship conference), it was impossible for me to get there ahead of time. I was clear that I had to make a decision between those two events. Absolutely eager to accept the invitation, I told him that I would find “a solution.”

The next morning, I felt absolutely miserable. Not only completely sleep-deprived (second consecutive night with <4hs of sleep) on an already stressful work trip abroad, but also in such a difficult decision-making situation. To make things worse, Amir’s criticism on my topics made me extremely uncomfortable. I was a complete mess the following hours. Constantly ranging between picking up the phone and canceling my speaking engagement in Switzerland and emailing Amir to decline the invitation from TED. It then was a conversation with my friend and mentor John that helped me gain clarity: “it’s not about how you decide, but about what principles and moral framework you base your decision on.”

With that in mind, I asked myself whether I could justify such selfish decision to cancel a commitment just because something “better” had come up… and the answer was no. So I wrote an email to Amir, thankfully declining the invitation so I could honor my commitment in Switzerland. In that moment, I had given him EVERY reason to walk away from me. He had never met me, I didn’t have a proper talk, very little time to rehearse, and we were way past the speaker deadline … as I said, EVERY reason to reply “Thanks Omid, maybe next time.”

But he didn’t. He got back to me, saying that he was willing to make an exception and encouraging me to come if I could make it to the event. So with 2.5 weeks left to the event, I looked into flights and realized that there was a way to make it. Not an easy one, but it was possible. So I booked my flights and took every single minute to prepare my speech which I wanted to be about how we could redefine human interactions by “Breaking the Habit of Smalltalk.” And this is how it went down…

On the Tuesday before the TED event (which took place on the following Saturday) I did my first and only rehearsal in front of 30 colleagues at Google. The day after, Wednesday, I flew out from San Francisco to Zurich on a red-eye. I got there Thursday afternoon and spent the entire day & night (< 3 hours sleep) to write and prepare my speech about “Disrupting the Entrepreneurial Mind” for the START summit in St. Gallen! Then, 45 minutes after my speech (it’s Friday morning), I was already sitting in a car heading to Zurich airport. I then flew to Munich where I had a 5-hour layover. Took a shower, slept for 2 hours, and rehearsed my speech with a bunch of strangers at the Lufthansa Senator Lounge (I literally walked up to them and asked them whether they want to hear a TED talk). I then took a red-eye to Dubai, got there on Saturday morning and had another 5-hour wait for my connection flight to Kish.

That “connection flight to Kish?” Well, it almost broke my neck. Kish island is a 25-minute flight from Dubai and Kish Airways operates a single airplane on that route. I knew I would arrive in Kish at noon and that I would have exactly 4 hours until my scheduled talk at 4pm. As if I wasn’t sleep-deprived, nervous, stressed, exhausted and anxious enough… I looked at the board and MY. JAW. DROPPED. A 90-minute delay…. my heart and mind were racing: are 2.5 hours enough? Would they take me off the program? What if they cancel the flight or have more delays? I WAS SUCH A WRECK.

Fortunately, it was the only delay. I got to Kish, passport stamped, rushed to the Hotel — MY ROOM IS NOT READY YET??!! –, showered, shaved, ironed my shirt and then ran to the convention center to check in: “Scheybani is your name? Sure you are a speaker? Impossible .. they all arrived here a few days ago…” Got him to believe me, ran backstage, tried to power-nap, it didn’t work, took a double shot of espresso, didn’t work either, went through my speech one last time, another shot of espresso — a little better now — got wired up, and then I was pushed on stage….

The day I got invited I had every reason to say no. I had just finished my first photo exhibition, had my parents visiting, was on a stressful work trip in Brazil and Argentina, had finished a speaker engagement in Canada and the one in Switzerland coming up, had plans to go to Coachella — I was really exhausted and had enough reasons to justify to myself that it wouldn’t be a good idea. But there is something absolutely magical about getting the opportunity to contribute to the people and country you hold so dear — despite the energy, effort and cost it requires.

I’m fortunate to look back on an experience that taught me 3 simple things about life. First, taking small risks in life can really pay off. If I had not dared to invite a random girl to my exhibition, I would have never gotten the TED invitation in return. One small message made all the difference. Second, your body and mind are capable of doing things that are nothing short of amazing. I was seriously worried about whether I could get there and get on stage, but when you feel you are doing the right things, your body and mind can pull off an incredible performance. Third, when there is something you are willing to stay up for until 4AM … it’s probably one of your life’s passions. The energy and passion I felt to make this happen were unparalleled and unbound.

As I was bidding farewell to Amir the next day, I looked into his eyes and asked him: “you had every reason to accept my “no” … why did you get back to me, encouraging me to come even though you didn’t know me?” …he just smiled and said: “you sent me all right signals.”

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Building trust-based cultures and environments

I was having breakfast with my friend Raman, who is currently in the process of building a social space, called Good People Homes. Over the past few months he had rented a space and established a group of 500+ people whose members he would regularly invite to organized dinners. He would bring in a great chef, compose a delicious menu, and have interesting people come to the dinners. Only rule to stick to: leave your agenda at the door. So it was all about getting interesting people to meet and converse over great food. He proved the concept and is now in the process of finding a proper space to build out the idea. 

As he was explaining the concept of the space, I realized that much of it was very trust based. He is planning to build a social space that should be accessible to its members (think of a membership-based subscription to the space) to come, sleep, work, hang out and meet other great people. In fact, the bar would be called “honor bar” and one should contribute as much as one would take. So as we were talking, the question quickly became: "how does one make sure that members don’t abuse such offers, respect the trust and contribute as much as (or even more than) they take?” 

The discussion reminded me a lot of our culture at Google. When I have foreign companies visiting the campus, they often ask how the employees can stay so focused despite all the distractions. My answer is always the same: we overemphasize the importance of hiring. In our hiring process, we carefully look for people who have a track record of “not being defined by their job descriptions/responsibilities.” That means that at Google we often look for people who weren’t defined by what they had to do, but always did more than that. People with such profile tend to take their “core responsibilities” very seriously, yet always look for ways to perform beyond them. It’s those type of people who value the freedoms given to them and besides appreciating it, also look for ways to “give back” in return. 

That’s why “adopting a Google-like culture” is so difficult for a company that already has a pool of employees that wasn’t established based on such hiring profile. Turns out that you can’t just forcefully change the mindset and attitude of your employees. Not that it wouldn’t be impossible, but it’s really challenging. That’s why so damn important to care about your culture at the point of foundation. Culture can’t be an afterthought, it really needs to be thoughtfully crafted. And if you are looking to build an environment that is highly trust based, make sure you look for those people who have demonstrated throughout their lives and careers that they were all about “core + x”, meaning that they not only did what they were asked to do, but did much more than that. 

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So.. what is YOUR passion project these days?

I was emailing with a fellow classmate the other day, and we were asking each other about our pre-MBA plans for the summer. At first the conversation was centered around where we would travel, but he later wrote me sharing some of his non-travel plans. Not only was I impressed by what he had lined up (one of the projects was to do a stand-up comedy show at one of the best clubs in NYC), but I was also surprised that he referred to those plans as his “passion projects.” A term that I, too, have been using a lot lately to describe my projects outside of work. 

In the last two years, I have started to pursue a lot of these passion projects, which I would describe as energizing and creative projects that can be pursued next to one's full-time job. Projects that result from your interests when you are simply curious about something and want to validate certain assumptions, hypotheses or ideas that you have, or your passions when you already know what you like to dedicate yourself to. 

Some of the things I did on the side, were for example hosting a photo exhibition, taking a User Experience Design class, or writing a blog. Turns out that really anyone can do such reactive side projects. Sometimes these projects might end up unfinished as we discover that we were not as passionate about them as we thought we would (which is totally awesome .. we had an idea and tried to validate it. Better than just having ideas and not taking any action on them). Yet other times these projects might uncover a completely new side of us and excite us to do even more. The UXD class that I took was a nice experience, but it wasn’t the start of much more to come. The blog, however, really had some deeper meaning for me and became an ongoing effort that grew into even bigger projects. 

I like the concept of having passion projects so much that I even think that it’s a fun question to ask someone as a mean to skip the smalltalk … "so, what is your passion project these days?” I think it can only be healthy to pursue such side passions. In fact, I was talking to a friend earlier today. She is currently traveling the world to speak at various conferences, building her company during every free minute that she has, and searching for investors to keep the project afloat. In other words, she has every reason to solely focus on her “work.” But she told me how she will be spending half of her day tomorrow playing with socially underprivileged children. “It’s my passion project, … it gives me the energy that I need.” 

What she said reminded me of an analogy I once heard. Even race cars that drive at full speed need to make pit stops to refuel. We sometimes put ourselves under pressure to always operate at full energy, but we need such distractions from time to time. Passion projects could be such creative outlet to refill one’s batteries. From scrappy entrepreneurs like my friend to busy VPs at Google (here an example of Clay Bavor), it's important to have such passion projects in life.

If you prove your interests, you might turn them into your passions. And if you pursue those passions, you might actually grow them into your next profession (one of my friend’s companies, The Passion Company, is actually dedicated to helping people pursue that path). But even if you don’t, doing such passion projects will help you keep your mind sharp and have some healthy distraction, your pit stop, from whatever your 9-to-5 is. 

Who knows, maybe my friend ends up becoming a comedian. That’s exactly how some careers are born after all. So ask yourself … what is YOUR passion project these days? 

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How a 86-year old became my role model and a source of inspiration

What kind of person do you normally think of when I ask you about "role models"? Chances are you think of someone who is successful, at the peak of their career, well-connected, mentor-esque. If you are much younger – let's say a student – you might think of someone in their late 20s/30s who is ±10 years ahead of you and whose career path you'd like to replicate for yourself. When we think of role models, we often think of their success and career as the "model" that we aspire to achieve. 

I don't know about you, but I never thought of a role model being old. Like very old. Also, I never considered my definition of a "role model" to go beyond elements such as success and career. But life taught me a pretty cool lesson about this. 

Upon my return from Iran last year, I was on the search for a venue to host my pictures and share the stories we had experienced in Iran. After many conversations, applications, visits and disappointments, I finally found a gallery and an owner who did not respond with "smartphone pictures from Iran? You are nuts!"... well, actually, he *did* say that, but he also said that it's great and that we should do it. That one person is Zach, a 86-year old architect who has become one of my best friends here in San Francisco.

Zach is magic. Zach is a well of energy and inspiration. Zach has become my role model. 

He is someone who is in complete disregard of his age. He comes to work (his gallery space) riding his bicycle. He writes emails like a boss and has taught me one or two things about technology. Zach went to Yale and studied architecture. As a matter of fact he co-worked on the design for the campus Stanford. I also learned that Zach fought in the Korea war from 1950 – 1953. He is full of life lessons, wisdom and experience. And each interaction with him has become a true delight. 

I remember with how much excitement I would come to the gallery space to discuss the logistics of my exhibition. Not because I was getting closer to the event, but because each visit was an opportunity to learn from Zach. Like the one time he pulled out his iPod Touch and showed me this amazing App which was WiFi-connected to the lamps in his gallery. He started changing the lights and said: "look, they even have disco mode" and suddenly the entire gallery turned into a dance floor as the lights were switching from one color to the next. Another time I saw Zach holding a Nest thermostat in his hands with a letter that was "I don't know if the SFFD approves this, but if they do, I want 8 of these!"

I had rarely met someone so full of life. So energetic, sharp, passionate and curious. At that age especially. And in the weeks after the exhibition, I couldn't stop thinking about how much I wanted to be like him once I would be his age. Not sick and tied to a bed, but full of life and energy, doing something I truly love. "Art keeps me alive" he once said – knowing that life is limited and that he needed to keep doing the things that gave him a sense of meaning and purpose. 

As I was thinking about this, I realized that we need more old people as a source of inspiration. Not just role models who are successful in their careers, but role models who show us that nothing should stop us from doing the things we love, especially not our age. That we can and should take risks and be open to the unknown. Similarly how Zach invited me to do a smartphone exhibition about Iran – two things he wasn't familiar with.

Every time we come together to drink a coffee, he asks me about my stories and travels and then often reacts with a flattering line along the lines of "Amazing how you are maximizing your life." Lost in words, I sometimes wish I had a mirror in my hands because that's exactly what *he* is doing with his life – maximizing every second of it. Thanks Zach. 

Seeing Zach being so active and energetic reminded me of an ad that I had once seen and which thematizes this topic. 

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Reason #2473 why I love Google: they donated $24K on my behalf!!!

Something absolutely incredible happened today. Something that reminded me of what makes this company so extremely inspiring and different. Something that made me pause for a second … and realize that the Googs will always be my first and biggest company crush (yes, I just invented that expression… I’m pretty sure though that I’m not the only one with a company crush!). 

Just like myself, there are many people who travel a lot for work. And in order to keep people within budgets and under cap (each destination has certain spending limits for flights and hotels), Google rewards us with credits. If I go to Rio de Janeiro where the hotels have a cap of $240 and I end up in a hotel that costs less, I get some of those savings as "trip credits". This system encourages us to be frugal, but it’s also meant to reward us. I can accumulate credits for being thoughtful in my spending, and I can then take those credits and redeem them … for an upgrade, a better hotel, a flight route that might be more convenient but also more expensive, etc... 

So over the years, I accumulated close to 24K USD of trip credits – a LOT of credits! As I’m approaching my last few weeks with Google before heading to business school, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to best make use of those credits (especially because I don’t have any business trip coming up anymore). So I was delighted to hear that we now have an internal auction system that would allow me to bid on certain loyalty programs with the credits I have accumulated. Sounds great? Believe me it is. 

But today, the really amazing thing happened. I got an email, saying that I’m among those in the company with the largest number of credits… and that I could take those credits and make donations to some specific pre-selected charities. MY. JAW. DROPPED. My company allows me to make monetary donations worth about 24,000 USD??? … YES, Google did just that. And it wasn’t the first year they did, but the first time I got such heads-up to use my credits for a good cause. 

So I clicked on the link and ended up on a portal where I could choose how I wanted my trip credits to be donated. I felt like I was Santa Claus … $5K to Doctor’s without Boarders, $5K to the International Justice Mission, and so on… I really don’t know the last time I was *that* happy. This felt so good, and it felt so “right.” Google could have been dead-quiet about my credits and not encouraged me to use them in any way, but they didn’t. And that’s exactly what makes Google, Google. They wanted to give me a chance to do something good. To reward me for begin frugal and allow me to have impact in this world. 

Google … I’m leaving you this summer, but you will always be my first big company crush. XO, Omid.

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How your resume can suck the fun out of your career!

Looking back on my time as an undergrad student and my first couple years as a young professional, I can very well remember how much my career decisions were driven by one simple thing, my resume. I remember how I wanted my resume to be “comprehensive and complete” … a little bit of consulting, a little bit of finance, some specific industry-experience, and "oh, I need to be president of some sort of student club.” Whatever it took to not be locked down into a specific industry but to keep as many options open as possible – hoping to collect all those puzzle pieces I needed to compose a specific picture that recruiters wanted to see.

Afraid of unexplainable gaps and experiences that might not fit into the “story” I was meaning to tell, I walked around not asking myself whether I was passionate about the work or if I was aligned with the company’s mission, but rather how something would look on my resume. Simply because I cared a great deal about how others would judge my decisions. Fast forward to today, and I can’t even remember the last time I thought about my resume. So what has happened since then …?

Well, I blame Silicon Valley (not the “oh, that’s shitty”-type of blaming but the “feck that’s awesome”-type of blaming)! The last 4+ years here have very much shifted my mindset. The last time I cared about my resume must have been the very decision to move here: “that working experience in the US would certainly look good”… but I feel that the Valley ripped this sort of thinking off me.

Ever since I moved here, I’ve been surrounded by a spirit and by people who deeply care about pursuing the things they are passionate about. People who take risks to follow their dreams and who don’t fear any judgement of others. Folks who decline well-paid jobs to rather do things that make them happy. Not afraid of having to justify anything to anyone, they push themselves to try new things. They know they might fail, but they don’t care … because every little failure gets them closer to pursuing the things they are meant to be doing in their lives.

Of course, not everyone here thinks this way, but there are many. There is one of my best friends who left an amazing full-time job working closely for Google’s Chief Business Officer to learn how to code and then returned to Google working as a Software Engineer (as a contractor!). There is this transgender guy who quit his sales job a few weeks ago explaining: “I decided to leave my job last week so that I can pursue a path that better aligns with my values and my interests.” Or the GSB grad who had a stellar career at AirBnB but then decided to quite her job and help people pursue their passions (shout out to Jessica who runs The Passion Company). There are many examples of people who don’t shy away from making career decisions based on what they desire to do and not what looks good on paper.

And this really got me thinking…. thinking about what a unhappiness trap it can be to make resume-based decisions. I say unhappiness trap because a resume is nothing more than lens through which other people will evaluate and judge you. And there is nothing worse than to make professional decisions based on how others will look on it as opposed to making decisions based on how much a decision brings you closer to what you actually, really want to do in your life.

Don’t believe me that this is a thing? There is even an idiom in English language that describes decisions/opportunities as 'resume builders’: "Oh, you landed a job at X? That’s such a resume builder.” Too often I see young people ending up in companies doing jobs that don’t fulfill them – afraid of quitting because it might not look good on their resumes: "Oh man, how am I going to justify in my next job interview that I worked here for less than a year." They know they are not happy, but their resume paralyzes them to effect some change to the situation they are in.

I have to clarify that there is nothing wrong with trying out different ideas, working in different verticals and industries to gain experience. This can all be part of the process of figuring out what you really want to do in your life… but I *do* caution against making decisions that will help tell a specific story or depict you in a certain light – similar to how I walked around some years ago.

I’ve come to believe that those who don’t care about their resumes end up being happier and, yes, also more successful in their careers. We tend to forget that careers can go for more than 45+ years and that there is nothing more important than to pursue the things that really get us excited and passionate. Those things will not always be clear to us and it will always require some failures and experiments to figure out what our true calling is. Trying new things and potentially taking a “wrong turn” is absolutely human and should be celebrated, not judged. I rather see someone taking three wrong turns until they find their path as opposed to spending a lifetime doing things that they are not aligned with their true spirit.

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After 36 trips to Latin America – here is what I learned

This is it.. my last business trip for Google. Most importantly, my last trip to Latin America. The region that I’ve come to call my home. Actually... not true. I should rather call it my playground. Yeah, that does it more justice.

It all started 3.5 years ago when I got the offer to move to the States to build out our partner ecosystem throughout the region. At that time, my former colleague, friend and mentor, Carlos G, had launched this new team for Latin America out of the US for which he was recruiting Spanish-speakers (talk about the importance of networking). 

Living in the States? Working our of our headquarters? Dedicated to the Latin American region? That sounded like a dream. And yes, looking back, the last few years certainly felt like a dream. But more so, they were an incredible blessing. As I’m reviewing the stamps in my passport which is now filled with the exception of one single page (oh, dang!), I count 36 entries to various countries in the region. I still haven’t visited them all, but the ones I have, I know inside out.

The funniest reactions I get are the ones when people find out that I’m a German-born Iranian living in the US, but working for Latin America. Exemplary reaction (to be read in your surprise-voice): "Wait, what? Latin America? How did that happen? And you speak Spanish and Portuguese?” 

I never really knew what attracted me to this region until I was sitting over my Stanford application essays. People always say that even if you don’t get accepted, at least you wrote those essays. The reason they say that is simply because the essays are known to be very profound and an revealing self-finding process. The main essay topic “What matters most to you and why?” is often considered one of the most difficult business school essay questions. And it was exactly that essay topic which kicked-in a very profound self-finding process for me. 

The very essence was that my exchange semester in Argentina, which was my first-ever experience with Latin America, was an important moment in my life when I realized how close I felt to the Latin American culture. Much closer than I felt to the German culture in which I was raised. In Germany I was often considered a “well-integrated foreigner” where I felt pressure to “fit in.” In Latin America, however, I felt I could just be me and that I was propelled (and not inhibited) by my differences. That exchange semester was like a seed that was planted in my mind and which I nurtured going forward (learning Spanish, then Portuguese, networking with people in the region, reading about it, visiting it, etc.). 

36 trips later, an amazing chapter of my life is coming to an end. But it’s one that is filled with incredible memories: paragliding in Rio (thanks Humberto), surfing at the coast of Chile (thanks Pablo), a date at Bogotá airport in between my connection flights that was followed by a spontaneous “I-hardly-know-you-but-I’m-gonna-buy-a-ticket-and-visit-you-in-San-Francisco" (you know who you are!), my self-finding trip to Machu Picchu (where I never felt so close to human history), 3 visits to Cartagena in less than a year (Carlos R – you are the man!), a $300K wedding in Mexico (aka the Mexican version of Kim & Kanye). The list of experiences I was able to gather knows has no ending. 

Anywhere I went, people welcomed me with an incredibly open heart. The only (negative) experience I had was a cloned credit bard in Brazil. And Salvador airport … uggh! I just can’t stand Salvador airport. Apart from that, I never felt or was exposed to danger during the last years frequenting the region. Not a single thing was stolen or went missing. I can’t recall a single flight that was delayed, yet I do remember how I got to Lima and then realized that I had booked my separate connection flight to Cusco wrong by an entire month (clearly my bad). Almost all over Latin America, I have someone to call and ask for help next time I get there. 

While these experiences look like the effortless perks of a travel-heavy tech job, they did come with a hefty price tag on my personal life. My constant trips to the region oftentimes kept me from living a proper life in San Francisco – anything from taking classes that required continuous participation to many important events that I would miss due to travels. And yes, being gone every other week also made it hard to date. One of my friends, Jessica, actually – and seriously – thought for the first 6 months of our friendship that I was living in Latin America and that she was only seeing me on my business trips to the US (you can’t imagine what an incredibly awkward yet hilarious moment it was when she figured that out). 

Yet no matter how high that price tag was, I always pushed myself to go on every single trip. Sometimes I dreaded them, but I always knew that with each trip I would be investing in my experience and knowledge – two investments with a life-long ROI. 

I learned that São Paulo is the city with the largest number of Japanese immigrants (next to Lima in Peru), I saw how Argentinians managed to live their lives under strict economic regulations (on product imports and trading USD), I experienced first-hand the "respect for authority" that people show in Colombia (which is also cited among the reasons why Avianca flight 52 crashed over New York – Malcolm Gladwell’s "Outliers" has an entire chapter on this). Every cultural insight that I learned, I tried to share through my practice of World Culture Storytelling on Instagram. 

As this chapter is coming to an end, I’m delighted for what the future holds. Each ending is the beginning of something else, and as one of three co-organizers of the unofficial Stanford trip to Colombia, I can’t wait to return to the region – with ±250 fellow classmates! 

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