dlayf

I ran growth at Codecademy for a few years and wanted to pass along the lessons that I learned along the way.

Love this take on company/product "advice". Great work Ed

Also this site has been helpful for clearing my mind.

http://www.calm.com/

(not affiliated with it)

Yeah that makes sense. I feel like I am most productive if I touch email twice a day.

Also attacking the hardest thing that I have to do between 9am - 11am seems to work well. I have more energy to get it done. Maybe that has to do with waking up at 7, who knows.

Wow, crazy to hear that its still like that. As an American, we take for granted that our economy tends to recover quickly.

Having all of your smart citizens move away has to be terrible for a country. What industries are hit the hardest?

Not not exactly an Expat, but I spent 6 months living in Rome as a student. This doesn't answer all of your questions but I hope it helps.

Pro's: - Great culture, great food. Groceries fresh and reasonably priced.

- Coming from english, Italian is a relatively easy language to learn and people are happy to speak it with you.

- Pretty good infrastructure. Good train systems to move around the country. Rome has a good subway system.

- Lots of walking/biking in daily life keeps you in shape.

Con's:

- Anything ivolving the government is a beaurcratic nightmare. We applied for student permits in August and didn't get them till after we returned home in January. Never tried it but starting a business is probably a lot of paper work.

- Nothing in the city runs on a schedule Buses, People, any type of meetings. The saying that Mussolini did bad things, but he made the trains run on time definatly makes sense after living there.

- Cost of housing his high, though the outskirts of the city are cheaper.

All in all I loved my time there as an experience, but working there may be a challenge.

I always work more efficiently after disconnecting for a while. It helps me forget the mental clutter that builds up over time.