Why I wrote a book about my hands

It was 2015 and my Startup had just got acquired by Splunk, a multi-billion dollar Company in the Silicon Valley.

I was in Athens/Greece at that point and for the first time, I didn’t have to think 24/7 about customers, bugs and scaling the company. That was someone’s else problem now.

With all that free mental cycles, I decided to focus my energy to something new (at least for me): a book. Or as I’ve been saying since then

THE BOOK

I pitched What I do With My Hands to my friend, Anastasia and she loved the idea.

Ok, I loved the idea - she just played along.

These 10 little Celebrities

We met at my Airbnb in Athens (oh yes, I was staying in Airbnb all over the world for the last three years - hashtag StartupLife) and we came up with these cool(?) things that you can do with your hands. Why? Seriously, I don’t know why.

After that, the book spent five years in my Trello todo list, taunting at me, laughing at me and promising eternal glory and recognition. The main reason was me, over-engineering the whole process.

I had to find the perfect layout, website, page, intro everything.

And as we all know, being a perfectionist is how you get things done.

Ship the fricking book!

2019 has been a shifting year for me. I reevaluated so many things in my life but more importantly I decided that taking yourself seriously is the worst thing it can happen to your personal growth.

I decided to go back to basics and start creating more. And then some more. And then add on that. And the first step was releasing that book.

My friend Vivi, made sure that it renders correctly on even the oldest of Amazon Kindle and then fought with the Amazon’s layout creator.

I used a free template for the website, got the domain, hosted the website on Github Pages and here you go. Available on Amazon and (in the next couple of weeks) available as a coffee table book. You’ll be able to read it soon in all the hipster coffee places in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

So, now what?

I don’t intend to make money from the book - I keep running “free book” promotions on Amazon but I can do only five days every 90 days. If you want to read it and don’t want to spend $2 on Amazon, send me an email and I’ll send you a PDF version.

I found out that whenever I do “soul projects” expecting returns or outside validation I hate the process and I end up getting bored. I know, it is kind of obvious but I keep forgetting.

- Mon 30 December 2019