I woke up in the future

I had a very interesting dream recently and wanted to share it with you…

I was driving to visit a friend, when suddenly my car fell off the road and I woke up .. in the future. I didn’t realise at first. I got out of the car and started searching for people around to lend me a phone, so I could call my friend. No one on the roadside or a nearby bus stop had any phones. They didn’t even know what mobiles are. So I decided to take a bus back to the city. Further along the road, I could see a strange sight. It was a field, covered with little white tents, small, to fit just one person and there were smartly dressed people (city boys and gals) sitting individually inside those tents with their smartphones, tablets and other devices. Anyways, my bus arrived and I got on, again looking for someone with a phone. However, instead of the usual sight of people staring at their mobiles, listening to music or texting, I could see people talking to each other, reading newspapers and books. No mobile phone in sight. Finally when I got to the city, I got hold of my friend who explained everything to me. We were in the future, not so distant, maybe 50 years away. People worked less, as they used technology to automate many things, and only in jobs they actually enjoyed. They had more time to relax, enjoy life, spend time with other people and outdoors, within the nature. They only used mobile phones for work and then straight after, they’d unplugged. The strange field outside the city, was  a ‘digital detox camp’, built to separate the ‘addicts’ from the rest of people.  The camp managers were locking up the people in the tents with their devices until they had enough of them. Also, there was no need for mobile devices in life outside of work, because the cities and homes were already smart and connected.. 

I woke up relieved that the vision of ‘my future’ isn’t one of a sci-fi movies. And I don’t think we’re too far from this sort of vision. Our lives have become filled with devices, gadgets, we’re ‘always on’. But how much data, information, email, social messages are too much? I think we’re close to the breaking point. I got to the point that on a one single phone I have 8 applications that I communicate on. If I see a message and don’t respond to it immediately, I then don’t remember which app the message came on and end up checking all 8 one by one. By the time I get to the 3rd one, I get distracted and lose track of what I was looking on. Technology is great if it makes our lives easier, but it is overcomplicating it most of these days. We’d be much more relaxed without mobile phones and ‘forced’  to talk to each other.

Face the Future

Some countries are already experimenting with shorter working hours. Nordics are testing 6 hour working days and tend to have quite long summer breaks. Yet, they are still being considered as one of the most innovative and productive countries in the world.

And finally, ‘digital detox’ breaks have become so popular that people actually pay to have their mobile phones removed and locked away for few days. I do this most weekends. If you haven’t made plans with me ahead, chances are you won’t hear back from me over the weekend. No one suffered from this move, and I actually have much more fun fully immersing myself in what I chose to do, or really focus on people I chose to spend time with.

 

How do you like this version of ‘the future’ from my dream? I’m keen to hear your thoughts either here or on social media!

 

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Photo credits: http://www.segura-inc.com/portfolio/387/neocon_24

Decision Making & What to Wear?

I realised that I started, unconsciously, applying my professional decision making techniques to personal choices in fashion.

I have never been a big fashion follower, and while doing a spring clear I noticed that my wardrobe became very simplified. I prefer classic, timeless pieces. No patterns, no special materials, no bright colours, no white. I like dresses. All of my trousers and skirts are pretty much in the same colour: black or navy. I only have shoes in 3 colours: black, nude and grey.

Doesn’t sound too exciting – but hey – whatever I grab from my wardrobe it all fits together. There is no extra thinking required, especially at those difficult morning hours. And in case I am suddenly unable to even select which top should go with which bottoms, I just grab a dress: all in one piece, no hassle.

I’ve only realised what I had been doing when I read Anna Vital’s experiment. Anna is the co-founder of Funders and Founders and amazing infographic creator. I bet you’ve heard about her before. The experiment, if I remember well, was to wear the same black dress for 60 days – make it her uniform to save time on selecting what to wear. Then it clicked, my wardrobe is my ‘black dress’. I have minimised the number of choices available to make the decision making process as quick as possible. It works efficiently, but the chances are if you are a guy you probably still don’t understand what I’m talking about 😉 The lesson here is to apply the same technique to all other part of life: eliminate unnecessary choices and ones that overcomplicate the situation, simplify,  make quick decisions and move on.

 

High-Potential Women = Underutilized Talent?

I have just read report from Catalyst about ‘Underutilized Talent of  High-Potential Women in Europe’. I wanted to get your thoughts on it…

I’m embedding the infographic with the key stats. Basically, what it says is that women despite trying harder (seeking out mentors, actively developing their skills, finding ways to advance their careers) still perform way worse than men in terms of progression of their career, responsibilities and salary of course. Now – it doesn’t really make much sense. Shouldn’t input = output?

Well seams like it isn’t all so simple.. But why?

• Is it because women are less ambitious? They care about careers less than men? Less naturally driven?
• Is it because they’re think about having a family early and pull back on work commitments, just in case, ahead of the time?
• Do they not ‘lean in’ enough? Not confident to stand up, speak up, ask for promotion?

I don’t know answers to any of those questions. I aspire to be a ‘high-potential woman’ and so are most of my girlfriends. In all fairness, I am not sure how reliable this survey is, considering that only 124 women were interviewed compared to 526 men.

Anyways – look forward to your thoughts and comments!

 

Poland Day in Silicon Valley

On Thursday I’ve attended a ‘Poland Day’ in Stanford, organised by US-Polish Trade Council. It was a big deal for me. Here’s why:

Poland Day

1) I left Poland as soon as I could, 2 days after my final high school exams I bought myself a one-way ticket… There used to be a lot of talk about all those young people leaving, being selfish and not caring about the country. I really didn’t care what politicians, economists and journalists had to say about it. Poland could not offer me life and career I wanted at that time. I does not mean that I didn’t care. I still have family and friends in Poland and I care about them a lot, I want life to be better for them. I contribute to Polish economy by brining money into the country and whenever I have a choice to buy something locally in Poland or not – I’ll buy it there. I wish I could start a cross-border business, but the bureaucracy scares me away. However, whenever I come across a Polish entrepreneur, I always try to help. So it was great to be part of a group of Polish expats, with similar stories, all wanting to help.

2) Few years ago I started noticing how entrepreneurial Poland has become and how many startup accelerators were popping up around Poland to support ever-increasing demand from startups. At that time, I was in Dreamstake, running an accelerator for London startups. We organised a Startup Weekend, followed by a Global Startup Battle, where I’ve met Polish representation with really great startups. I even joined one of them as an ambassador (My Guidie, it was ran by an amazing Ola Sitarska and closed down a year later). That’s where I met Piotr Wilam, who’s running an incubator and accelerator Innovation Nest in Krakow. Piotr is one of the very few Polish entrepreneurs who’s run multiple startups, which went on to be extremely successful (including the biggest Polish news portal Onet). We don’t get many serial entrepreneurs in the digital space. Piotr is using his skills and experience to help other startups achieve the same – and again, with great success. I keep hearing about his portfolio startups around the world. Certainly: the world is their oyster, no limits.  It was a great pleasure to catch up with Piotr and hear how well all those guys are doing.

3) I was just amazed how much US-Polish Trade Council is doing for Poland. They have a co-working space for startups setting themselves up in Silicon Valley or just visiting. But what is most important is the support they provide to Polish academics. They run ‘Top 500 Innovators’ programme in Stanford, which brings Polish professors and academic staff to Stanford for couple of weeks. Why is it so important? Well, universities around the world engage in knowledge and technology transfer. What it means is that once they do their own research, they write academic paper to literally transfer the knowledge they possess to anyone who would read it. Similar ‘transfer’ occurs with technology. If through research, they come across a new technology process or product, they are able to patent it creating intellectual property. It can transferred to anyone (individual, organisation) by sharing the details of the patent in return for a licencing fee. This is an important source of income for most of universities around the world. However, not so much in Poland, as Polish universities are publicly funded and as a result there is not much pressure for their academics to innovate and create income for their university. Bringing Polish academics to Stanford and inspiring them to action by showing how the process works in US, is creating a ripple effect. After few weeks in US, they return to Poland and not only change their own actions but also educate their colleagues. So far 320 academics have been trained in Stanford. How incredible this approach is! Instead of changing policies and hoping for the best, this creates a real bottom-up impact.

 

There are few more reasons why Poland Day was such a great day for me, but I will share them as they become a public knowledge. Well done to the USPTC team for running such a great initiative. I am now inspired to get involved in similar activities in UK and if you are a Polish startup and coming to London – Holla at me and I’ll try to help you succeed!

 

Remind yourself to Thrive

Update 1 : I wrote this post on a plane to Israel, which was end of March and it took me over 6 weeks to upload it here – that’s a big red flag! Where has this time gone! Especially that the post was about thriving and living a balanced life – serves me well as a reminder. Hope you’ll enjoy and share with me your tips for thriving.

Update 2: I have gone down from reading 9 books to reading 3 books as of now and if you’re such a big book worm as me let’s become friends on Goodreads. Over there I keep a list of books I’ve read, currently reading and would like to read.

So here’s the original post, dated 28/03/2014. I’m hopping on a twice longer flight tomorrow, so hopefully more to come soon..

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Arianna Huffington is right.

As if I’m not already reading 9 different books right now (in parallel, depending on my mood), I couldn’t stop myself from picking out the latest book by Arianna Huffington at the airport. ‘Thrive’ is about all the things other than money and power that drive us and give satisfaction. According to Arianna our 4 key ‘life goals’ should also be: well-being, wonder, wisdom and giving. I realised that I’ve actually been discussing them all at different times with most of my friends; and it links well with plenty other books I read in the last couple of months. Take ‘Drive’ which explains what drives people and guess what – only half is driven by extrinsic rewards, others are mostly driven and happy when they do something meaningful.

Why am I writing about this… I believe that our generation will massively change how people work. Hell yeah – we’re already doing it. Check out what folks do at Netflix and how they re-invented HR: no one counts your holiday (why should they, do you count your evenings spent working), they always look for A players and reward them accordingly (forget the bell curve appraisals, it work only if you also have B, C and D players in your team or is greatly unjust).

Millennials setting up companies know that work must be fun or we’ll all get bored or burnt out. We know we can work hard, but it needs to be recognised. We also know we need balance, as when we have time to do things we like, take care of our physical and mental well being, and hang out with people who enrich us – we perform better. I’m not even going to attach any scientific or research references to this, as there has been too many to choose form.

So let’s not forget about the importance of well-being, wonder, wisdom and giving and may this post serve you as a reminder to thrive. 

Hello Stranger.

Don’t Talk to Strangers. 

Few weeks back I’ve discovered that my mind is little bit stuck. I was working with the same people every day, socialising with the same group of friends and, as much as I enjoy and adore all these people, I started feeling stuck in my way of thinking and doing things. As a result, I decided that it’s time to step out of the circle of people I know start talking to strangers. At least once a day.

Now… how do you approach strangers? Firstly, look around where you are. There are probably people in your own office whom you haven’t met yet – approach and introduce yourself. If you’re at home or out and about – you can always start chatting with your neighbours or the corner shop owner. Your hairdresser, taxi driver, receptionist, anyone really… You never know who you could meet and everyone has got an interesting story to share. There are also plenty of networking events you could go to, check out Eventbrite or Meetup.com to find a group of your liking. Having closer relationships with people in your society, as well as being part of interest groups or associations is what makes Danes the happiest nation on Earth after all. Worth trying!

Secondly – there are plenty of strangers out there on the internet. The benefit here is you can ‘screen’ them in the comfort of your own sofa while you browse through their social media profiles. I’m sure there are people who inspire you and you wish you could just talk to them and ask few questions. I’m sure there are people who’ve done things you would like to do in your career and life. People with skills compatible to yours. People with businesses you’d like to work for. Reach out to them – introduce yourself, explain why you’d like to talk to them. Most likely they wouldn’t mind spending half an hour on a call or Skype with you; or if you’re nearby, maybe you could even meet for a coffee? Some won’t respond at all, but it really doesn’t hurt to try.

So what have I achieved through approaching and talking with strangers? Well first of all – I have learnt loads, they suggested other people I should meet or places/resources I could learn more. Secondly, by providing different perspectives, they expand the way I think, which helps me to be more creative and more innovative. Most importantly – this way I have made some friends and met my mentors. Although, there’s still a long way till I meet and speak with all the people I want to, but I already feel more connected with my online network. I feel more inspired and motivated. I have a better clarity of where I want to go. Even today I had an ‘Eureka’ moment while speaking with one fascinating person I reached out to on LinkedIn – but that’s another story for another blog…

Me talking to strangers… 😉

It’s worth trying – forget what your mum told you about strangers and go, talk to them. Share your stories in comments.

Which brain wave are you on?

I learnt about brainwaves quite late in my life. Somehow we never covered them at school or at least I don’t remember. I was researching creativity and what makes us more creative than others, or why in some situations or time we are better at coming up with ideas. The famous ‘Eureka’ moment in a bathtub – is it true? And when I discovered the brainwaves , I had my own ‘A-ha!’ moment. I’m sure there’s plenty of scientific material on the web so what I’m going to share today is a rough summary of it and mostly my insights.

Alpha, Beta, Theta, Delta

First of all brainwaves are not to be mistaken with REM phases, this is a different topic. When we’re asleep our brain produces Delta waves. This is the state of unconsciousness. And you know that feeling before you fall asleep, when you’re drifting away but are still awake and conscious – this is when you’re in Theta. This phase doesn’t last too long, but it is definitely a moment of deep relaxation and creativity. Your brain is able to produce vivid visualizations and you might have some extraordinary thoughts. It’s useful to keep a notepad by your bed to write them down before you fall asleep. Theta can be also reached during deep meditation. You must have heard about all those ‘mind programming’ courses which promise to teach you a foreign language in a month or something like that – what they do is trying to induce Theta through relaxation so your brain can absorb more and you learn faster.

However, most important for us is to be aware of the brainwaves our brain produces during the waking hours : Alpha and Beta. Beta are the fast brainwaves and we on them most of the time during the day. They make us alert and logical, but they also makes us stressed and anxious. The moment we have enough, close our eyes, drift into daydreaming and just simply try to relax – our brain switches to Alpha frequency. This is when we’re creative – in Alpha we have a better imagination, generate more ideas, we can concentrate and we learn more. I hope that explains why you get ‘Eureka’ moments in a bathtub?

This was my breakthrough insight – you cannot be creative when you’re in Beta, no matter how hard you try. When you’re in highly demanding job, trying to meet deadlines, sales targets, juggling five things at once – you will not be creative. Sure, you will reach your targets, but you won’t come up with any innovative ideas. Understanding the effect of brainwaves on how our mind works made me realise:

1. You cannot just walk into a brainstorming meeting or creative workshops and expect everyone to throw ideas. You first have to help your team (and yourself) switch to Alpha. This is when, normally pointless to me, ‘small talk’ comes in handy. Help your team relax, crack a joke, talk about the weekend, last holidays, or anything else which will put people into a more relaxed phase. Lowering the brainwaves frequency even a little bit will help you to be more creative.

2. If you’re desperately trying to come up with a solution to a problem, or an idea – go on and have a bath. Or go for a walk. Or have a nap. Don’t feel bad for ‘wasting’ your time.

3. Meditate. Even if you’re not interested in spiritual aspects of it, it will help you to relax and be more creative. If you don’t know how, search for guided meditations on YouTube – there are plenty of helpful people who will talk you through it. I can recommend Calm – it’s a great website & app, which will help you relax in as little as 2 minutes.

You can thank me later 😉 Have a nice , relaxing day!

Photo credits: http://www.topnews.in/health/high-brain-waves-linked-better-memory-recall-212456

Life lessons learnt while skiing

I could not be happier! In 24h I will be heading to the airport to hit the slopes in French Alps 🙂 If I could live there, I’d be skiing every single weekend… But this is not a blog about my love of skiing, but rather what skiing (surprisingly!) taught me in life and business. I love skiing now, but the beginnings were not easy.

1. Feel the fear and do it anyway! 

Three years ago I went for a weekend skiing trip with my then new boyfriend and his friends. No idea what the hell I was thinking. Never skied before, and there I am with a group of advanced skiers. Biggest objective of that weekend: do not make a total idiot of myself.

I had a 4-hour crash course to skiing and then I just had to go ahead and ski…. I was *paralysed* with fear. And I mean PARALYSED. I could stand on the piste and be so terrified that I could not move, too scared to face the mountain downhill. I was counting down the hours to après-ski so I could indulge in couple of glasses of mulled wine and finally relax.

But eventually it would always come to the same point: ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it, I’m too scared, I can’t to it… [half an hour later]… F*ck it! I CAN do it’ and go down easily. Every. Single. Time.

It’s incredible how big effect fear has got on our lives. For some it is motivating, but for most – paralysing. It stops you from doing things, that deep down you feel you should or actually want to do. Every hour I stood there on the piste scared was an hour wasted. Don’t waste your time on being scared. You will do all those things anyway, it will just take a long time to overcome the fear. So screw it, feel the fear and do it anyway!

For those interested in the subject more, there’s actually a great book titled ‘Feel the fear and so it anyway‘ which I read few years back.

2. Practice makes the master

Initially, each piste would be a massive challenge, with many stops and ‘I can’t do it’- type monologues. But every single time I came back to the same piste, I noticed that I would be little bit more confident, faster, with fewer stops and eventually I would be able to do the whole piste in one go after few tries.

It applies to everything. If you’re scared of something or are not good at – do it frequently! This is the reason why I started this blog. I was very bad at writing so I decided to practice regularly by writing blogs and become better at it. And there you – now I even have you reading it! If you’re terrified of public speaking, sign up for Toastmasters or other public speaking meet-ups. If you’re not applying for jobs because you’re scared of interviews, then just go to a few for jobs that you’re not that interested. You can become great at anything. Research says you need 10,000 hours of practice to master something, but even few hours will help you to become better than you are now.

3. You can trick your mind

Few days ago at a dinner with friends someone asked me how after a year of not skiing (since last winter) I could still do it well or even better than last year. And I responded that it’s because I practised in my dreams! They all laughed at me a lot. But the truth is that because I was looking forward to the next skiing trip so much and thinking about it all the time, I would dream about skiing very often. I would do my best turns and be able to go really fast in my dreams. And then when I hit the slopes, I would do just that in real. I was amazed. I know this sounds very silly, but think about the last important meeting or presentation you had. The time when, on the way to work, you were going over and over through what you want to say in your head. See – you do it as well – you practised in your head. Your mind usually doesn’t differentiate between something happening in real life and something in your head (either thoughts or dreams). You can trick yourself. Not really sure yet how you can apply it in your life, so I’ll leave you to ponder on this idea…

Not enough time? Try this.

‘I don’t have time’ is our best excuse for almost everything, especially our dreams, aspirations, or New Year resolutions. Isn’t is sad? We sabotage ourselves and make this lame excuse to not do things that actually make us happy. So what’s the solution? I’d like to share my 3 ‘time-stretching’ strategies I have and also recommend 2 best books on the topic:  4 hour working week by Tim Ferriss & No BS time management for entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy. The books helped to organise myself better and work more efficiently, but the techniques I want to share with you today go beyond working hours. So here we go…

1. Wake up earlier.

Do not dismiss this idea too soon. I am a night owl and my favourite time of the week is Sat & Sun lie-in… but believe me it is possible. When I was doing my masters while working full time, the only time I had free was before work. I forced myself to get up 2 hours earlier than usual to study, research and write my thesis before I began my usual work. I already finished my degree, but I continue doing this as it gives me extra 2 hours to work on my own business ideas. It takes discipline to develop this habit, but it’s great – you can do your morning workout, do your writing, or whatever it is that you don’t have time for. Here are 3 things that  help me to get up:

a) UP Jawbone. I got it for Christmas and I love it. Not only it tracks my physical activity but also sleep patterns. It shows my deep and light sleep phases. I programmed it so that it vibrates to gently wake me up within 30 mins of my selected wake-up time. It smartly chooses the best possible time to wake me up, as it’s easier to get up if you’re woken up from a light sleep, than deep sleep (when dreaming).

b) Philips Hue lightbulbs. I have them installed in the bedroom and programmed to slowly light up in the morning to imitate sunrise, way before the sun is up on those winter mornings… It  helps to wake up more naturally, the light will trick your body into thinking it’s daytime and become more awake.

c) Coffee machine with a timer. It’s so nice to wake up to a smell of coffee mmm… I’m very lucky that I usually find a freshly brewed cup of coffee by my bedside when I wake up, because my boyfriend beats all the records in waking up early. But you can also have it done by programming coffee machine for brewing few minutes before your wake up time. Make sure it’s close enough so you can smell it!

I also set a normal alarm, just in case all of the above fails! And I have cats who climb on top of my head if I don’t get up soon enough to feed them 😉 Whatever works!

2. Eliminate something.

You can only stretch a day by little bit, but the simplest and harshest truths is that if you want to make time for something, you’ve

Watching the time go by

got to eliminate something else. Write down things you do within a week. How much time do you need to do things you want? How can you eliminate something else? Let’s say you want to learn to play piano and you need 3 hours of practice a week. Maybe you could ask your manager to work from home once a week and that will save you 3 hours of commuting time. Maybe you can hire a cleaner to save you 3 hours of weekly cleaning? Maybe you could not go to Fri after-work drinks? You get the idea. But make sure that once you make time/financial commitment – you stick to it!

3. Plan for the future.

I always get disappointed when I can’t squeeze enough into my schedule; or spread myself too thinly not achieving anything. One good solution which gives me psychological comfort is planning for the future. So let’s say there is no way I can find those extra 3 hours a week to practice piano right now. The earliest I could start is in April when my dancing courses / important work project/ language classes finish. Then book it for April. Or next year or whenever you can. At least it gives you a feeling that you have it planned and will do it in the near future. You can go as far as creating a 3 year plan of all the things you always wanted to do. I got this idea from Barbara Sheer’s book What do I do when I want to do everything? and I must say it works. As silly as it may sound in the first place, it does help you to prioritise your ideas and make an actionable plan on how to make them happen.

Good luck. I hope some of my tips will help you stretch the time a little bit so you can make your dreams happen. I am super curious to hear what works for you, so please share that in response!

Photo credits: http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/inspiration/conceptual-photo-manipulations/

We all need to do a lot more leaning in

I hope you’ve all read Sheryl Sandberg’s book ‘Lean In’. If you have not, go to Amazon, order it and read it right now; and I mean ALL of you. The book is not only for women. If you are a man, but manage or work with women, or would like to support your wife/girlfriend or daughter in their careers – you have to read it too. You can also watch her amazing TED talk on ‘Why we have too few women leaders?’.

Straight after I read the book back in April last year, I handed it over to my boyfriend and ask him to read it. He was confused… ‘why should I read it?’. My answer was ‘because you run a business and employ women, you need to understand how they think and work’. So he read it and soon after he put it on the ‘suggested reading list for new joiners’. No kidding. Now everyone in his company needs to read the book (95% men). On top of that, they were trying to figure out how to attract more women into their business. They’ve increased their efforts to attract more female graduates, but they realised that at this stage it is too late. Much fewer women study mathematics, statistics, engineering, and science in general; and these are the kind of backgrounds they’re looking for. They realised they need to help much younger girls before they make a choice on what to study. To be proactive, they got involved in organising Stemmetes hackathon taking place in Oxford in October. It was an event aimed at attracting more girls age 7 to 21 to science and IT. It was a great success and I was just so proud they made it happen. They continue to make efforts to attract more women to work with them and give them equal chances – and it all started with a man reading ‘Lean in’. What an incredible ripple effect.

When it comes to the effect the book had on me, I can certainly say I’ve become more confident and outspoken about what I want and need. I asked for a promotion and pay rise in 2013 and I got it. I leaned in, I took initiative, I sat at the table. Initially people ‘discount you’ – you’re a women and you’re young. Why should you have a voice in the room full of older, more experienced men (if you work in IT, like I do)? But I remembered the lessons learnt from the book and did my thing anyway. I was called arrogant and aggressive. I didn’t get upset because I realised that if I was a man no one would call me like that. They would call me ambitious.

According to Sandberg, an average salary for women and men is at ratio 77:100 – exactly the same as last year. This hasn’t increased since 2002. But here I need to explain that it is an annual median salary of all women to men, and not a ratio of woman’s salary to man’s in the same position. It is easier to explain the gap this way, because more women are in part time jobs or freelancing and more men work in highly demanding and rewarding jobs with huge bonuses. So 77% might not be a good reflection of reality, but the gap is there. Another study measured earnings of young professionals a year after graduating from the same university. Women were getting 93% of what men where getting. That just shows we value ourselves much less than men and we’re worse at negotiating entry salaries (or any salaries in fact). What can you do about it? Well, there’s no point asking or campaigning for equality and if we don’t start from ourselves. So, go on, lean in. I’ve got a lot of work to do on myself as well.

Photo credit: http://leanin.org/