Welcome to my journey!

 This is the final post of 2023. I plan to take a break now. I wish you happy celebrations of 2024 and may next year bring us more joy and prosperity and focus on the most important things.

 I stopped preparing for things since August this year. I decided to go with the flow. With no plans for the New Year, today I received an invitation to a party. Seems like not having any plan was the best plan in the end.

 It is almost the end of the year, and I am close to reaching the end of my experiment to write every single day for a year. What a journey.

 I got hooked on watching some episodes of Dragon Ball Z. Is there someone else who is watching such an old show?

 I am working on some cool library today. I don’t think I will complete it until the end of the year. But I am excited to contribute to the open-source community.

It is still a banking holiday in the Czech Republic and tomorrow all the shops will be opened like nothing happened. Think about what the things are you want to complete before the end of the year.

 What to do once all the presents are opened? Should we just move forward with our goals? As I wrote about recovery day after flying long distance. It is important to plan a recovery day after the holidays. This is your guilty free time.

 Today, I am hosting a dinner party, and I am going to play all the Christmas classics. I hope you are also doing great, and you feel the spirit of the holidays.

 This year I am spending Christmas in Prague with little plans. However, today I am spending the evening with my neighbors, and we will have a home cooked meal and we will catch up on what was going on in our lives for the past few months. It is important to plan catch-up with people around you.

 Nothing to write today, just Happy Friday and I am really looking forward to the Christmas holidays.

 People pay a lot of money to come to Prague, and I just happen to live here. It is way different compared to my hometown that nobody knows about it. Yes, the cost of living is higher in Prague, but you know what else is higher, the opportunities I have access to.

 It is really tempting to believe in everything you hear. The political messages about a better tomorrow are mesmerizing. But once you see that these messages are not true, and every year you hear similar things, it is time to ask yourself, will this ever going to happen? If not, you need to change the party or move to a different place.

 There will be a time that people who fancy you will make advances towards you. It is very important to be respectful about their feelings, but also if you don’t feel the same to state it clearly. I have seen it with many of my colleagues who are unable to state clearly what they feel, and they end up giving the wrong impression to others. This only results in more drama.

 I have colleagues who complain a lot. I have friends who complain a lot as well. But at least with friends I can be upfront. It is not good to be very direct with your colleagues, because it is still a work relationship, and everything must be kept very professional. What I would like to say and be my message is that friends and colleagues usually is good to be separated as much as possible.

 Productivity can be hard. We also might be productive in the wrong things. I know I could write better, but the goal in life is to give your best on the things that matter. And for me, all that matters now with this blog is to write every single day.

 The week before Christmas is one of the hardest weeks of the year. We gotta stay super focused on the work while dreaming of the best Christmas ever.

 How does Seth Godin write one blog post per year? It seems such a hard thing to do. After this year, I plan to refocus my attention on better things and not be so regular here.

 I am still looking for the formula to overcome distractions, but one thing I found to work for me is to schedule things in advance and to work on them.

 Not only working hard but also planning your resting days is so crucial for your wellbeing. Especially if you traveled to a different continent.

Another thing I did while in NYC was to go to 5 th Avenue. All the shops there are not only shops, but an amazing experience. For instance, at the Puma shop you can play arcade games. I had never seen this in any other place I had visited, so maybe this is another thing that made New York so special. 

 I had to move to a different hotel, since my trip was prolonged and this hotel was amazing. I had a huge room which for New York is unheard of. And the hotel was only 2 km away from my previous one, which was located very close to the Empire State Building. Sometimes not being so central really pays off.

 One of the exciting things I could do in New York was to see the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of the States. This is something I dreamed of when I was a little child. It was as exciting in my dreams as it was in real life. So today was another exciting and adventurous day.

 One thing I was excited to try in NYC was the local pizza. Not because it was the best pizza I have ever tasted, but because the locals made it so special. They told me that when you are in New York, you have to try Joe’s pizza. Was it something more special compared to other pizza in NYC, I would politely disagree, but the story and the memory are the things that make it so much more.

 I have never been to NYC; I have been to many other states, but there is something really magical in Manhattan. When and where was the last time, you felt in a magical place? Planning for these experiences will enrich our lives and motivate us to pursue our dreams. My message to my future self would be to plan more such trips in 2024.

Recently I read the following post. Someone hired a good fit for the company only with 1 interview and the comment to this post states " Attitude above skills, always and forever! :)".  The question here is: "Is that really true?" On the internet, you can read a lot of controversial comments, also you must take into an account the fact that people who write might not use English as a first language. This, for example, is my case. However, to simplify a complex interview process and decision making about a candidate with this simple question is very naïve, to say the least. Hiring is though, many companies are not prepared and lack proper hire process. Resulting in having 3+ interviews, which is a lot. However, not having the right technical criteria and to rely to hire someone just because of their attitude, especially for senior position, is not good either. There must be a mixed balance between the positive attitude and the abilities of the person. I am not a big ...

 It is hard to achieve your dreams and it is even harder to move on after you accomplish the things you wanted. This year I feel like I am on the point of moving on. After achieving all my goals it is about time to find more challenges in life and to grow as a person even further. How about you? Do you know when it is time to let go of where you are and find something new?

The art of decision making is fairly simple. You research the problem; you get the pros and cons of each decision, and you make the decision. Emotions, on the other hand are something we rarely think of when we speak about decisions. Emotions are the things that prevent us from achieving an optimal decision regarding career choice, partner, where to live, and so on. But also, emotions are the thing that make us humans. So, we can't just say to someone else that they need to be more rational, because when we are the one who needs to make the decision suddenly it is not so obvious as when we observe our friend or colleague who needs to make that decision. The art of making a decision is to have a conversation with other people. Because you and I won’t be able to remove our emotions from important decisions. Other people’s feedback could provide us with the needed neutrality and different perspective outside of our emotions. This is not as easy as it sounds, because we still need to ...

 Today I was caught with so many things and I feel proud of being productive and less reactive to other things. This is a good sign about the end of the year and the beginning of the next year.

 December is the time to celebrate and to be with your family and close friends. I already wrote about how bad the economy is, but at the same time we can't live constantly in fear. We need to plan how to make next year better than the previous one. And this help us keep our fear and insecurities in balance.

 We are all human beings, with our hopes and dreams. It is important to be respectful to one another. This is also a hard thing to do. You will see many scammers and people who behave badly towards other people and you might even think that this is the norm.  But the only way to change the society is by our own example. It might feel hard, but at the same time, respecting other people and being nice is one of the easiest thing to do.

 One year ago, I started the experiment inspired by Seth Godin to write one post per day. It seems like an impossible task, but I am still going strong and I expect to finish this journey. Everything that has a beginning has an end and this year might be the last year I am doing that. Will see… I prefer to switch to more meaningful posts. But I might keep this space for a daily updates on the cool things I am working on.