Dr. Petri I. Salonen Views on Life, Entrepreneurship, and Software Business

Living a Life of International Business

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Describe happiness question was unexpected to my interviewees

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I spent at least 45 hours interviewing and transcribing the results in Microsoft OneNote (which is the best thing that happened to me as a tool, besides Microsoft Word) and I wanted the interviewee to focus on my questions, so I threw a question on them that they did not expect: “Describe what happiness means to you”. The second question was “Does money and happiness correlate in your mind?”.

Some of the interviewees had issues in giving a direct response to the first question, but most of the people said that happiness for them is “to live in balance with yourself, your family and your work”. I was very happy to hear that as my topic for my book is “how to balance your international life, career and family”.

The second question about money and happiness was clear to everybody. Money has not anything to do with happiness unless you are so poor that you have no money for food or clothing.

I told each interviewee to read the book The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want  from Dr.  Sonja Lyobomirsky. This book explains what is known about happiness from a research perspective and it is written in a very clear and format that anybody of us can understand.

The Power of Interviews when working on a book: new perspectives from each interview

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Today I made two interviews, father and son, they both live in Dallas and they have also lived in the UK. It was fascinating to get two perspectives of living abroad; one from a father that did the decision and one from the son that had to go with the decision. Yesterday I interviewed a person that lives in Madrid, Spain and has lived there since -93.

From an authors perspective, each interview brings new perspective to people’s lives and I am so grateful that these people give the time for this. However, each person has felt the interview to be very interesting as they have not been thinking and reflecting on many of the things that I ask. My plan is to include a person from each continent as part of the interview.. Africa, Asia, Europe, LATAM, USA, Canada. This gives a nice flavor of perspectives of how people feel when living outside their own native country. What has been very interesting to recognize is that everybody has something new to bring to the table, each story is “one of the kind” and this makes my new book so much interesting as well.

The angst of an author and about writing process

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This is my second book (if one does not count my doctoral dissertation of 330 pages as a monograph) and I have to say that I have found my own way of building the content. It is much easier that with the first one, and I now know what works best for me as a person. I like to write, I love to research but I have to learn to be better to control myself with one thing… Everything does not have to be done overnight. I tend to drill down to my work, spend up to 14 hours and that is obviously not good for me nor to my family. I have a few books written by authors and they explain their daily process and one that I like a lot is a book by the famous Stephen King and his book On Writing is a facinating story of his writing process and how he develops his stories.

What I need to learn is to “let go” after a few hours of writing and just trust the fact that I still have it the following day. I believe this model would be much better and more effective. The iterative process that I have in writing is effective and now combining my book research by using Amazon.com Kindle books using Windows desktop application is just a killer combination. I wish I could do this for a living… but it is like with ice-hockey… only a very small crowd make real money in writing books…

Social media and its impact on people living abroad

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Today, I was writing a section about the impact that social media has on our lives. Think about Facebook for example. That has changed completely the way we see the world. Today, I can follow my family and friends in Finland, what they are up to and also about their daily life. Some of you might think that this is silly, but it isn’t. In the same way I can follow and communicate with my friends around the world and see what they are up to and this is very, very inspiring. Last week I learned that my good friend from Mexico City has read a few very good books and by referencing these, he is now sharing his joy with the rest of the world.

There are people that do not want to share anything of their lives. That is fine as well, but the ones that want to live and share, Facebooks, Twitters, and other communities give the possibility to communicate, and spread the joy of life.

How does an author find interesting topics to write about?

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I am sitting in a tram in Helsinki, the sun is shining and I have a bunch of Russian tourists around me on their way to downtown Helsinki (city-center). Observing the environment, wondering how I can transform this environment to my new upcoming book is what I am thinking about. Businesspeople such as me have numerous days in different places around the world and this is something that I have decided to use effectively.

I bought a book (The Art of Creative Nonfiction: Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality)  to my Kindle DX from an author (Lee Gutkind) that describes the process of writing a nonfiction book; what goes in ones mind and what kind of life one can expect when living an authors life. I highly recommend this book for people that want to learn and have an interest to become an author.

 

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Another one is from the worldfamous Stephen King whose book On writing explains how his life as an author feels and looks like. Both of these books can be found from Amazon.com.

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