Welcome to my journey!

 Another month successfully passed. I had been doing some work on organizing an event in Prague for my professional organization. Also, I have been to networking events and as well working remotely and scuba diving. One thing I am exploring is how to be effective when not working from my home. Something I am extremely proud of is sticking to my goals for reducing my weight and improving my BF index. I lost 1 kg and I look even better than before. My ultimate goal is to become leaner (not skinny) and to keep that weight. The learning points for this month are: *Be patient with people. Some people need more time to get the things you already see. *Networking is awkward, but meeting awesome people is great. Keep doing that. *Thinking seriously to start again and complete my Czech skills. Why postpone it *Finished a course on GO programming. *I still need to work on my habits and it seems harder think then what I initially thought it will be.

  This week I passed a course on learning how to develop in the GO program language. I am very impressed with the simplicity of the language (this also means some limitations). I can see good use cases that can be applied for future projects. I am curious to see where I can effectively implement it in my future projects.

Illusions can be fun, but also dangerous. Today I went to the museum of illusions. When you have illusions about your career, this is dangerous. Staying in the same place, without any chance of progress, is usually bad (not always). But when you go to a show, or museum, illusions can be very entertaining. It is also hard to change other people’s illusions. So be careful what illusions you are creating and what illusions you believe in. Because they might cost you a lot.

 I can't imagine a society without laws. There is no such thing in the modern world. But it is even harder to imagine a prosperous society without fair laws and trusted system. This is how big organizations work as well. The HR are not your friends; they are here to protect the senior management and the company. So when you want to make a change or to report a problem, usually you will be the one to be blamed. No wonder why most of the company's defects and problems are found by end users or fraudulence entities. Can we change that and can we make a fair system where people will be truly encouraged to report misconducts? This is something we still need to see. There are many examples of organizations that have an ethics department, just to be fired when they were doing too good job. So next time when AI organization or big media site tells you they comply with ethical standards, first see who are the people who enforce those standards and you might be for a huge surprise. The r

 Who are the motivation sessions organized by organizations for? It feels like a propaganda, because their objective is not to listen to what makes people slow and what processes are obsolete. They want you to know that you, the organization, and everyone around you are the best. Why they serve that purpose? The delusion is a way cheaper method to “solve” issues than actually solving them. Organizations don’t want change, even if this is the only thing they talk about. But sometimes when the attrition level is low, they are forced to do something about it, and always the first plan is to introduce some sort of motivation training. Not to solve the issues, but to try to keep problems “out of sight, out of mind”. Only when this plan backfired it will be time to actually force some sort of change in the organization. Therefore, all the motivation trainings are useless, but needed phase in the organization change and adaptability.

 Remember how everyone convinced us that working remotely is provides the same benefits and even more compare to working in the office? Well… it seems like the things are shifting back to the status quo. And the reason is simple. Control! It is far easier to control people when they are in the office compared to when they are not. Also, there is a risk for many low-level managers to become obsolete if people indeed start to self-organized and solve their own problems. You might ask yourself: “What about the productivity and the benefits for the company? “ It seems like the personal interests and politics supersede the shareholder interests. The era of flexibility and productivity is coming to a close and monitoring and constraints will make a comeback.

 Today I needed to take a train. In the past, I would have gone to the train station and buy it directly, because there is always space in the train. But a friend of mine told me that the reserved seats finished very fast two days ago and therefore it is better to buy it on-line as soon as possible. So I did it, and everything was really good… for me. There were many people who weren’t able to find a seat on that train. Therefore, in today’s world where you can buy a ticket faster and convenient on-line, there is no excuse in being surprised if you can’t find a place to sit. This makes the old generation and people who don’t like or accept innovations in a very disadvantage place. Technologies, like fax and teletext, are already obsolete. We as species need to evolve and adapt to live a convenient life or join the rest who can’t find seats on the train.

 Investing is a complex topic. Don’t just jump on it without first assessing the risk. Ask yourself what is your risk tolerance level, usually low returns equals low risk. Do you want to take a bigger risk? What is your investment window (1,5, 10 years)? Look at your mortgage. What is your current interest rate? Do you plan to refinance it in the next 3,5,10 years? Another alternative is to go 80/20 and pay this extra 2k per month and reduce the time you need to return your mortgage. Would that work for you? Also, look at the cost of the investment instruments. One Financial adviser tried to sell me, unsuccessfully, a ridiculously expensive investment with lots of fees. Don’t fall for such traps and make your own research before trusting the internet for financial advice. I hope those questions help you figure out what you really want to do.

  It is important to achieve a balance between Junior and Senior people in your team. Recently I had to explain to someone why making class abstract is not the way to go when you need to implement a utility class. And today I did an assessment on an implementation we need to extend to another customer. I know the business flow and use cases very well, even if I was working on a UN project for the last few months. But thrilled with the architecture I had created and how easy it is to implement and integrate another customer to the system. The moral is to give the freedom to senior devs to design a solid system that can be extended and give them time to mentor junior people on how to get better.

 One of the easiest and hardest thing to do when you work or build a company is to create a trust. If you hire “A” players, trust is easy. Such people naturally want them and people around them to succeed. If you hire “B” players, this is another issue. They are worried someone else will take over what they do. They will be focused on controlling people and, at the end, trust will never be a norm and a company culture. If you hire “C” players, forget about culture changing. They will over-promise and under-deliver. They won’t know how to approach such task and they rarely are incentive or innovative. Unfortunately, from time to time I need to work with “C” players and it is frustrating, but for the sake of my sanity I am getting better in letting go of my need to innovate and apply the best solutions just to avoid conflicts with people who are unable to process new ideas. Then it is very hard to have trust when you know that people you work with don’t have the same level of passion and

 It is hard to be productive and feel productive when you are stuck in a unproductive meeting. But what you can do is break the script. Change the expectations. Think and do things differently compare to the rest of people who allow themselves to be bored. My philosophy is that life is worth living and then it is important to live better and improve yourself. If we all do what everyone is doing, then we risk to be as mediocre as everyone else. Don’t settle for mediocrity. Do things better than others and create a better life for yourself. In that way, you can become productive with your time.

 One of the huge challenges of being a facilitator is to encourage participation from your participants. It is a vulnerable position to be in, because you, as a facilitator, need to drive the discussion and encourage outcomes, but what if few people speak or you can only hear the loudest voices which mute all other? Then you are in a big trouble. This is how you distinguish between experienced facilitators and wannabes. For experience facilitators, it is important to create activities to encourage extroverts and introverts, the quiet one and the one who needs to speak. In general, companies need to invest in their employees more to increase their skills and make them more productive and effective!

 I am watching a show on Netflix “How to get rich”. I think it is an amazing idea to watch shows that educate you on such topics. I would highly recommend to people to not waste their time, but to find a way to leverage the limited time and build your skills.

 Well, today is raining a lot. I am happy I made the right decision yesterday to enjoy the sun, so today I can actually have a more productive day. It is important to balance the days where we are productive with the days where we need/want to get some “me” time.

 This Saturday, I live on the beach, and it is amazing. I wrote before about the challenge of being productive and posts about being a digital nomad. I experience all those things. I don’t have a solution to how to solve it; I know that having a plan and accepting that I will be unproductive for a while is a healthy thing to do. But still it is a hard choice. I see myself as a very productive person. I am someone who can work and complete a higher education at the same time and on-time. So the challenge I face this Saturday is how to enjoy the most this sunny day and catch up on tasks this Sunday? It still feels frustrating to rest and enjoy the sun and the water, but I am getting better feeling like a digital nomad.

 In the previous post, I wrote about the bad habits and how they kill your productivity. Another issue with productivity is when you are sick and you need to stop doing productive things, and focus on getting healthier.. This is a special kind of challenge, and we all face it at least once per year. Maybe you are always healthy, but your partner or parent is sick and you need to look after them. This is the second thing to look out for when you want to be more productive. Just know when you are off track. Accept it and make a schedule on how slowly to go back on your productive track.

 I am still on my journey to limit the amount of news consumption. I prefer to read financial news and business analysis, but I am so conditions to read local news that I can’t help it. That is why it is important to look at what we are conditioned to do and improve it when this habit stops serving us. In the past, local news was very important to me. I could be always up to date and chose what to do at that date. The more I grow as a person, the more I focus on long-term goals and on that level of understanding, local news is just a noise. Many politicians or other institutions will want your attention. And the easiest thing to do is to say something scandalous. But there is nothing for you and the worse is that you pay with your mental energy and attention. Instead of working on your own goals, you might use this to escape the cool things you need to do. The solution is difficult, but the only possible one, stop practicing bad habits and adopt better one.

 There is something about organizing an event that makes us very lazy. The main idea is great, let’s meet and do cool stuffs. The reality is different. Communicating with participants, gather attendance. Clarify questions. Creating a survival guide. Making people feel welcomed and over-communicate to make things easy for everyone. No wonder the main organizers procrastinate. All these small tasks can overwhelm anyone. But there is also a solution for this. Just book time in your calendar and start working on the tasks.

 Vacation is the process of disconnecting of the current activities and actively recharging yourself. Being a digital nomad is the process of disconnecting from your current environment and moving to a new one, but at the same time working. Digital nomads want to explore different cultures, they are curious about the local cuisine and so on. But if you are constantly busy working, how can you achieve that? And this is the golden path between dreaming of being a digital nomad and actually benefiting from that mindset.

Children need a constant attention and parents need to have some “me” time. When you have two diametrical opposite needs, there will be a conflict. Next time in the workplace, when you see a conflict, think about this example and try to identify the needs that are not met by both parties and help to facilitate a resolution.

I am not a fan of spending a lot of money on fancy stuffs, but also I don’t want to pay for the cheapest garbage ever. When you are an owner of a company, you can choose how to invest your money. If you hire the cheapest on the labor market, you might discover that this will cost your business. Recently I went to a bank in Prague and the service was awful, so bad that I shared with everyone I knew that this bank is no good to make business with. And this is all fault of the bank who didn’t invest enough in training their staff or didn’t motivate them to do a good work. So this is how the cheap mindset will cost your business!

 If the summer is over where you live, you can always move to another warmer place and continue with the summer lifestyle. This is what I did now for this September, and the feeling is amazing. Something I want to achieve in the long term and have a summer home and a winter home and experience 80% of the time during the year as a summer weather.

I travel with Wizzair and what usually happens is one or two people didn’t read the luggage requirements and had to pay extra. Of course those people were upset and of course the airline companies sell cheap tickets and try to generate additional revenue in a different way. And then it is important to know what you are getting into and what are the risks in doing so. For me the risk was only the delay in the flight which Wizzair is very famous for and I was willing to go with them even with this concern. At the end, if you got caught speeding over the limit, with oversize luggage or something else you will be punished and no excuses will save you.

Twitter, or how it is called now X, has all the characteristics of a company that should cease to exist. Catastrophic handover of the assets, chaotic decisions and controversy policy. But it is still operational. How come? Everything we know about the business somehow is not applicable to this eccentric leader. Does it mean that if you have all the money in the world, you can do whatever you want to do? Or does it mean that all the chaos was just another way to attract the attention and to earn free advertisement and attention from the audience? Well Facebook tried to create alternative, but it seems like a colossal flop. Or maybe there is really no business idea and nothing that can make the business with microblogging appealing enough for big players to come and take it. We live in an entrepreneur first business where competition and innovation are a key to success, yet some businesses are immune from an actual competition. And not having a solid alternative is a loss for the end use

 Sometimes working for a company is like being in a relationship. You don't want to be always right and state it. This could affect negatively your position in the organization structure, unless you decide to take the hard path and become a change culture captain.

  While I have received extensive education on earthquake preparedness, I acknowledge the importance of early education. One of those is on fire safety and basic medical aid. Such trainings help us in remembering some key things we might have forgotten, like what fire extinguisher is good for which case.

 One way to generate startup ideas is to start with what you and your team are good/experts at and find problems you can contribute to and solve. The advantage of this approach is that you can quickly find solutions to those problems and scale fast. On the contrary, if you try to solve problem you are not an expert in, it is better to find a co-founder who is an expert in that field.

I saw on LinkedIn that Barclays Prague IT branch is part of the Pride Business forum.  I am so proud that I had worked for Barclays Prague and a few years ago I come up with the idea to establish an ERP chapter for diversity and inclusion. We were part of #Spectrum initiative and promoted events like #IDAHOBIT With everything new my team and I introduced, there is always the doubt if the enormous effort is worth it. Our initiatives to promote LGBTQ+ and inclusion through campaigns, as well as the launch of a leadership program in partnership with #Toastmaster, have exhibited exceptional resilience over time. And this can only make me proud and happy. Good job #Barclays

 Today I did a midday nap, and it felt amazing. I am not sure if because of my high intensive workouts or something else, like the autumn weather, but I am not in my lack of motivation phase and I need to take it a little bit slow. If your body is showing you need a rest, it is better to rest than to push yourself to the limit and be unproductive and tired. A lot of time, we are way too hard on ourselves than we should be. Another tactic is to start small. For example, if you are not used to do 20 pushups, you start with only 1 per day and every week you increase it. This will give you the resilience to continue with your goals and to progress faster than if you had just tried to push yourself.

 My goals for September are to reduce my unhealthy social media usage. To keep the lean focus and to reduce my body fat index, which at the moment is getting to my targeted goal. Do scuba-diving and focus on learning language. Also, restart the podcast and do at least one more video. Let’s see at the end of September what will happen.