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Productivity

Why Not to Start New Year’s Resolutions Now?

When I write this article it’s the middle of November 2022. Wars all around the globe, sky rocking inflation, upcoming recession, many different diseases – depression and anxiety on the top of the list. Let’s be honest – it isn’t the best landscape that we could’ve imagined for ourselves to live in. What does that have to do with the New Year’s resolutions? When the times are hard, we prefer to stay low, to wait until the situation improves. We wait. And we wait. And we wait a little bit more. And guess what? There is always SOMETHING. Politics, wars, pandemics, environment pollution, education crisis. You name it. There is always something that is going on that we can treat as an excuse to not taking uncomfortable action, to change something, to get a new job or to end a relationship that isn’t working anymore. So the real question is, what can we do to stick to the New Year’s resolutions that most of us make at the very beginning of the year? Let’s start to work on them now. Why most of the New Year’s resolutions don’t stick? We are so motivated, have a lot of energy, sometimes even a great plan. We wait until January 1 and… Only about 16% of us are sticking to the resolutions we make at the beginning of the year, most of us give up during the first 6 weeks. Why? “I don’t have time”, “I don’t have money”, “I need to focus on different things now”, “I am not motivated enough to do this”, “Nobody supports me in this”. That’s just some of the most frequent ones. And it doesn’t really matter if we are talking about getting rid of bad elements of our life or building new, good ones. Excuses are one thing. Why else those resolutions don’t stick?  Which of those is applicable to yourself? More than one? All of them? What can we do differently? Each bullet point can be resolved – some of those are easier to manage, some are more complex and difficult. But altogether, it’s possible to finish with the old, bad habits and beliefs about resolutions, and start with being better with them, starting today. 1. We use magical thinking of the New-Year-new-me situation that only lasts few days. This is the reason why I encourage you to start today, not to wait until January 1. Magical thinking can be connected to some traditions, rituals, habits taken from family, religion or society. New Year’s resolutions are part of our social life – media talk about it, we talk about it every year with our friends, the subject is always there when the year starts. Stop it and change the way of thinking and doing. Don’t wait for a perfect timing, it can never come. 2. The resolutions are too big. There is nothing wrong with thinking and dreaming big. My advice is: dream big, plan small. Divide your dreams and goals for smaller chunks that are more achievable. Don’t underestimate the small – sometimes we value only the big things, and it is a crime to our well-being and a sense of self-recognition. Remember, small is better than zero, and a sum of small things makes the whole big thing happen. 3. Those things we want to change are not connected to anything that is already in our life. It is always harder to create a new habit or skill when we start from scratch, then to develop the thing that is already there. When you plan new things you would like to have, always choose the existing habit, activity or a simple thing you do every day. Glue a new thing to the old one, it makes it stick. 4. We want to achieve a resolution in a really short period of time. I know that we all like quick results. We want to believe in losing 10kg in one month or in learning how to read a book per day in two weeks. Try to divide the bigger dreams to the smaller chunks that you can achieve faster. It’ll give you constant boost of motivation and will keep you on track to not quit before you see any results. 5. We assume 0/1 situation (either I achieve it or not – there is nothing in between, no space for flexibility, change or not being perfect all the time). We punish ourselves when we eat a piece of candy when we wanted to quit. Let’s say that you’ve decided to quit eating it starting Monday, and on Thursday you ate a small piece of chocolate. What most people do? “Screw it, I’ve already slipped, so I’ll eat the whole thing and start my diet on Monday”. And it goes on and on, as a never-ending story. What about that: “all right, I’ve slipped – it can happen to anyone”, and keep continue not eating candy after the event. Nobody is perfect and there is no point in punishing ourselves for it every single day. 6. We don’t differentiate goals from habits. A goal is a thing we want to achieve, and a habit is a repetitive, sometimes even unconscious sequence of behavior that can lead us to reach the goal. It’s important that we differentiate those two elements, just to make sure that we build habits that are going to be useful while achieving the goals we want.   7. The resolution is not about us, it’s about other people or things that we have zero influence on. We often quit on things because we don’t see result of our actions. And we don’t see the results, because we want to change something (or someone) that is way out of our influence zone. Remember that we can only change things that are in our scope of control – how we react on certain things, how we communicate, set boundaries or use our time. Focus on that, don’t waste time on something that won’t

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Productivity

5 Time Management Myths You Need to Stop Believing

Most of us want to spend those 24h we all have in the best possible way. We try to be good at time management, more efficient, cut the “time wasters” or use Pomodoro technique. And with all that we are still surprised that we are not as good with time as we want, we don’t achieve as much as we want, personally or professionally. It’s happening mostly because we have many convictions and false believes in our heads about the right approach to the time itself. We’ve read or heard something without deeper reflection on the idea, we put it in the brain and sticked to it. Now is the time to challenge 5 of the most crucial statements that we have in our heads and that are stopping us from being successful. 1. Being always busy is a sign of your high value Being busy makes us feel important, needed. We often have this impression that if our calendars are fully packed, we are more valuable. And when we see free slots, we feel guilty, sometimes scared of “not doing anything”. It is a symptom of modern times that assesses the usefulness and importance of an employee by level of their calendar’s “busyness”.   And that’s crazy, since we know how many of those meetings are pointless and could’ve been an e-mail or a Teams message. And on the flip side, we know how much we can do when we are undistracted, focused, when we have time and space for taking a step back and actually THINK about what we want to achieve and how. So I would like to encourage you to reflect on what you are thinking about being busy all the time – advantage or disadvantage? Be honest with yourself, nobody is going to judge you. Then think to which meeting you can say “no” to, to gain some of your time back to build a real value? 2. People always understand “I don’t have time” answer Speaking of saying “no” to things. This subject was discussed in a more detailed way in this article, but this excuse is being treated as a universal sentence on every situation when we don’t want or don’t know how to deal with something. When a manager has a conflict in a team, she/he often says: “I don’t have time for that right now, we have more urgent business cases to cover”. When a person doesn’t feel very good, has headaches or feels tired all the time, he/she just takes a pill or have another cup of coffee. “I don’t have time for that right now, I need to take care of work/home/kids/parents”. You name it. “I don’t have time” is a false friend. As mentioned many times on this blog, we are not victims or slaves of the time, we are its owners. And as owners, it’s our decision what to do with the time we have – every single minute that we spend on this planet is in our scope of control. It’s our choice what we do with it and with whom. Put some effort in and find the time you’ve lost when you started using “I don’t have time” excuse. What can you do differently to stop saying that? 3. Scheduling the hardest tasks first is always a good time strategy How you schedule your day should be connected with your internal level of energy, named the circadian rhythm. Each person on the planet at 9:00AM has different body temperature, heart rate, metabolism or blood pressure. The time of the day will affect behavior and intellectual performance differently regarding each of us. Till Roenneberg created a set of chronotypes that describe our energy cycle throughout the day, taking into consideration how we differ and what can we do about it to live a better live. We do know that it’s not possible to wake up whenever we fell like it, work when we feel the most effective and go to bed when we feel asleep (including naps during the day). We have 9-5 jobs, we need to get up at a certain time to work, take care of other things in the morning, afterwork etc. So for those of us who are Wolfes (going to bed around 12AM, waking up around 7:30-9AM) the deep or creative work will be the most efficient around 12-2PM. On the other hand, for those of us who are Lions (going to bed around 10PM, waking up around 6-7AM) the highest efficiency will be around 8AM-12PM. You can read more about where you land on the scale in this article. Regarding that, the idea of working on the biggest task first thing in the morning is not applicable or healthy for everyone. For some of us it’ll work, for some of us it’ll be the worse thing you can do. Check which type you are and decide what can you do differently to live more in harmony with your natural cycle. Maybe it’s just one little thing, like scheduling time for deep work in the different time during the day? 4. Multitasking is a good way of getting done more faster Several years back, multitasking was a skill listed in the job advertisements as a requirement of a good candidate. Doing more than one thing at the same time appeared as a “competence of the future” and was a real thing that employers was looking for regarding increasing number of tasks in the workplace. Nowadays we should be smarter about it, since we have more research that tells us that there is no such thing as multitasking. It’s impossible to do two things at the same time, we can only switch between the tasks, sometimes really quickly. But each time we get distracted, we lose focus, and we need more and more time to get back to where we were a minute ago. So in a consequence of that, we think we save some time and do things faster, but

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Self-Development

Do you want to boost your career? 3 easy ways to make a change

We talk a lot about the changes we want to make in our lives, relations, career. We share with others our dreams, goals and visions about how we would like our live to look. And yet, 80% of the cases stop at this stage – talking, dreaming and not taking any action to actually change something. Why? Because we don’t like changes. We don’t like to feel uncomfortable, or to make decisions that put our current situation at work at risk. Even if it’s not perfect, even if it’s frustrating and we are not happy. “Better known enemy than unknown friend”, they say. So we stick to the job we don’t enjoy, years are passing through while we still wish for the best, crossing our fingers under the table (maybe next year will be better?). And what happens? Nothing changes. And we are upset, disappointed and miserable that we didn’t get different income from the same behavior. So today, let’s do something about it in a simple, easy way. These are 3 things you can do to make an actual change in your career that will boost your energy level, bring back your passion and high level of internal motivation. Interested? 1. Choose one small habit that can improve your life and career. A success, whatever it means to each of us is a sum of many small decisions, habits, choices, people who helped or supported us, opportunities we took and investments we made. We see successful people and we often think that they are so extraordinary, special, talented, rich. And there is no such thing. Each of those people worked and worked, and worked, they’ve spent tremendous number of hours on learning, making mistakes, trying again, building a decision-making muscle and succeed at the end of the day. And every person on the planet can do the same thing. Everything starts with one, small thing, a habit that improves our life in overall, and a career as a side effect at the very beginning. Choose one thing you would like to do that you don’t do today. Remember to keep it very small, extremely simple. You can use some of those or create your own example. The important thing here is that this new habit needs to be linked to the existing one, that you already have. So for example if you get up every day at 6:00AM, you can sit at bed for 5 minutes and meditate before you start your day. If you drink a cup of coffee with your breakfast, read 5 pages of a chosen book (it can be anything you want) while drinking it. If you take a shower every morning, before your water is warm enough, do 5 pushups. Better habits mean better health, better health means better energy and better energy means better decisions about your life and career. 2. Cut one thing from your career that drives you crazy. We all have things we don’t like or don’t want to do. Always was, always will be that way. But the ratio should be 80/20 – 80% of the things at work that are inspiring, interesting or developmental and 20% of those that are not really amusing, but we know that they need to be done. If it’s the other way around, there is a straight way to the burnout zone, and we need to quickly do something about it to avoid feeling this way. Try to pick one thing that drives you crazy at work. It can be one task, one project, one report or even one person that notoriously exceeds your boundaries. You can use Influence Matrix to see where it lands regarding influence and importance level. Can you pass it to someone else, maybe delegate if you are a manager? Can you let it go, since it is really not important at all and “it has always been done this way”, so you’ve been doing it? Can you talk to your manager so the task may be transformed somehow? Can you set your boundaries better? Think about one thing that bothers you the most and about the way you can cut it. It’ll give you less negative energy, frustration and will make space for better energy, more potential and enthusiasm or more positive people with a good influence. 3. Find one person with an extraordinary career to follow. A great inspiration is something that can move us forward, to give us a boost of internal motivation, to create a space for our brain to think and act bigger, to have more courage. Sometimes it’s right there – we have those people at work, great managers, colleagues, mentors. Sometimes those people are in our private lives – our friends, family members or mentors from the outside (i.e. local communities). But quite often we live and work in less inspiring environment, so we need to find it on our own somewhere else. Find one person who can be an inspiration for you. It can be somebody from your work or home, it can be somebody you don’t know, and you’ll never have a chance to meet. It doesn’t matter. You can start with a book of this person, a podcast, an interview or an article. Use one of the examples  here and here or ask your colleagues or friends who is inspiring for them and use it as you seem it fit to your current situation. See what you can apply to your life and career, connect it with the point 1 of this article. Sometimes this first spark means more than anything else. The bottom line Simplifying, making things easier, in a faster way, yet impactful. That’s something we all can use more. Focusing on that can bring us a lot of good, positive energy that will transform our actions into the value we give ourselves or others. Choose one thing you can do for yourself, starting today, add to it cutting one thing that you are going to

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Transactional Analysis

Transactional Analyst’s Story: Drivers

I’ve started to talk about drivers in one the previous articles created to address the issue of saying “no” to things in order to get our time back. Just one out of five drivers that are a part of Transactional Analysis was covered then, and today we’ll have all of them to see, what they are about and where you can use the knowledge about it to life a better life. Regarding TA there are 5 Drivers: Be Strong, Be Perfect, Please People, Try Hard and Hurry Up. Each of those has its own characteristics and roots, as well as the ways they can do us harm or support us as a source of potential and skills. Today we are going to dig deeper to get to know how we can use them as allies, instead of treating them as enemies. What are Drivers? Drivers are orders that we give ourselves. These are messages like “you should…”, “you must…” or “you be like…” that often take on a character of a compulsory principle pushing us to do a certain action. Drivers have roots in our childhood, they are mostly based on what we’ve heard from our parents or others who raised us, unconsciously taken as a proper way to behave to get recognition. There are 5 Drivers. Each person can live with all of them, but most of us has 1-2 main ones that become our dominant behavior, a reaction to a certain stimuli, context or situation. Read all 5 short descriptions below and see which one is telling the most truth about yourself. Each driver can be an order that pushes us to do things in a certain way, mostly making a negative outcome. But we can also use drivers as “work styles”. In that case we decide, consciously, how to take advantage of their potential and treat them as a source of talent, strength and skills. To be the owner, not the victim. Driver no. 1: Be Strong Be Strong is when we don’t like to admit that we don’t know something. We rather don’t ask for help or opinion of others, since it might look like we are weak, or not able to deal with something. Be Strong is very critical of yourself and others, often says: “I can handle it”, even when they know it’s not true. They spend a lot of time on finding proper data, answers or information, instead of asking somebody, because of the fear of being judged as incompetent or not good enough. When “Be Strong” is a work style? People with strong “Be Strong” are reliable, trustworthy, very skilled. They are great when working under pressure, they are dealing amazingly well with highly stressful, demanding situations. They are persistent, focused and they don’t give up. These are great qualities when we put them that way. Use them to be a strong, skilled partner, to have a seat at the table. Be Strong can help us to achieve extraordinary things, to grow every day, to look for new solutions or ideas and actually implement them. Be Strong with your goals, plans and things you want to do and learn. Follow this path with persistence and you’ll quickly see the results. Driver no. 2: Be Perfect Be Perfect is when we only accept perfection in actions, results, products regarding ourselves and others as well. When we do something, it’s all or nothing – every different result is not good enough. We constantly strive for perfection, without tolerating the slightest flaws, since those are the signs of weakness. Without careful preparation, we can not start a task at all, and once we do, we will do it for as long as it’s needed to be perfect. Based on that, it’s hard to meet the deadlines for us, so we are not as efficient as we should be at the end of the day. We also have the highest standards so it’s often very hard to delegate tasks, since we don’t believe in other peoples’ capabilities to do it like we would do it – perfect. When “Be Perfect” is a work style? People with strong “Be Perfect” have the highest standards and quality of their work. They predict different scenarios, and they are prepared for the worse. They are focused on delivering the best result possible and they’ll do everything to keep it that way. Use it to be concentrated on what really matters, on not wasting time on things without a certain level of importance or influence. Be the best version of yourself and deliver great value. Add to it a little touch of being Ok-Ok with not finishing everything perfect. Set yourself a goal that you’ll let go 20% of the things that are not super important, and the rest 80% of what you’re doing will be “perfect” (whatever perfect means to you). You can use the Influence Matrix and focus of the top right quadrant. Letting go is an important part of using “Be Perfect” to serve us, not the other way around. Driver no. 3: Please People Please People is when we put the needs of others ahead of our owns. If somebody is asking us for help, we quit what we’re doing at the moment, and we start supporting them. We often cover other peoples’ work, sometimes even without asking if anyone needs it. We want to avoid hurting people by being unhelpful, we are not saying directly when something is not fine with us, we don’t question the necessity or urgency of doing something. We don’t set boundaries to protect ourselves, because we are afraid of stop being likable or supportive as a person. We work long hours, are exhausted, frustrated and tired of being pushed all the time. When “Please People” is a work style? People with strong “Please People” are amazing when it comes to building trust, relations and atmosphere. They have a high credit of social trust, others like being around them, they have

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Self-Development

What to invest into when the times are tough?

When the times are tough, we often turn on the “survival” mode. Staying low, not making any sudden moves, waiting for the better conditions. We often don’t invest but just take our time, we withdraw with a fear of losing what we already got. Is it smart? What do we lose acting that way? Can we manage the situation differently? Let’s take a look on what we can invest into to use our time the best possible way and protect our future at the same time. Invest in your skills To invest in your skills is always a good way, no matter what is happening in the world, what kind of war or crisis there is out there at the moment. Regarding a lot of studies, we need to be prepared to learn new things, unlearn the old ones and it basically becomes a real competence of future. There is a prediction that 40% of jobs that exist now, will be automated and replaced by technology in less than 10 years. But the same number (or more) of new ones will be created, and it will require different set of competences and abilities to cooperate with technology and other people, that’s for sure. And that’s why we don’t have a luxury to wait until the times will be better to start learning. Create an image of your future self as a professional. Who is this person? What kind of skills and knowledge she/he has? Then go back to the current situation. What do you already know and what do you need to learn? What are 3 the most important things that you want to invest your time and money into in the next 12 months? And what you want to start with? Pick one thing and start acting on it. Today. Remember that you don’t need to necessarily spend tons of money on education if you don’t want or you don’t have it at the moment. These are many low-cost sources of knowledge, the main goal here is to find the proper one that will support you achieving your developmental OKRs. Here are some possibilities: And of course you can add to that list workshops, training programs, certifications, formal education (master, post-graduation studies, MBA etc.) if you have space, capacity and money to invest more in yourself. It is always the best way to spend your money since you invest now to earn more and live better life in the future. Invest in your health We have only one health and one body. If we are not treating it well, it will fail and we’ll be miserable, disabled and we die sooner than later. There are plenty of examples of people over 80 years old, that are champions in sports, checks, sudoku tournaments and so on. You can find them and get inspired, because there are a lot of them, living long and healthy life all over the world. But it’s not a story about them. It’s a story about you, your decisions that you make about your life. Investing in health, mental and physical is one of the most crucial things we need to spend our time on. And yet, we often forget about it, treat our bodies like trash cans, eating badly, sleeping badly, not drinking water, scrolling social media all the time, nourishing our brains with rubbish. It’s not about perfection. We all can eat candy, pizza or having a wine night from time to time. 80/20 rule should be used here – take care of yourself really well 80% of the time, and have this 20% stock on the unexpected, bad moods, pizza Fridays or whatever. Invest in your health by eating fresh ingredients, get rid of candy, processed food and everything that makes you feel bad after having a meal. Drink water, go to bed and wake up approximately the same time every day. Do regular medical checkups, don’t wait until you are sick. Don’t treat your body like you have more than one. Respect it, learn how to listen to its needs and how to respond to them in the best possible way. You will see the changes really quickly. Invest in your relations We are social animals, we like it or not. Regardless our personality type, whether we are more extraverted or more introverted, we all need to be in a group. This group can be a group of 2, can be a group of 1000. Every person needs something different and the beauty of it is that we can actually choose in which relations we want to invest and when. To invest in relations means to intentionally decide to spend quality time with somebody. Either it is a partner, child, parent, friend or a manager, coworker, mentor/coach at work. Relations are everywhere, in each area of our lives. Even when we go to yoga class, we spend time with people, having the same goal – doing a workout to be healthier, stronger or more flexible. Check with yourself, how you spend time with people. Ask those questions to yourself, be honest with the answers. It’s fine that we are not perfect. It’s not possible to be mindful every minute of every day, but it’s all about our priorities. If we want to really invest the most valuable thing we have – time, we need to be wise about it and put the energy where it is really valuable. For us, for our minds, bodies and relations with other people. The bottom line When the times are tough, it’s natural to want to take a step back, to wait for better times, to not risk more than necessary. But with this attitude, we can lose more than we think, so I strongly encourage you to not waste any more time. Invest in yourself, be smarter and healthier every single day. If you do it when the times are hard, imagine what you could do after, when the times are better.

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Productivity

How to start saying “no” to things to get your time back?

In the previous article, I’ve started the story about “I don’t have time” excuse. I got inspired by a structure that we can make around this excuse, and how many areas of our live it might influence, making us thoughtless and unhappy at the end of the day. In this article, we are going to get on the record one of the most difficult and important things there are regarding getting our time back – saying “no” to things. It’s crucial for us, as people, employees, partners, parents or friends to set healthy boundaries, with a good intention to ourselves and the world that is around us. Might seems easy, but believe me that a lot of people are struggling with this every single day. Do you want to know how to do it and don’t feel guilty? How saying “no” to things at work can help? It is a natural instinct that tells us to stay in the group at work, it has its roots in history and biology and it comes from our need to survive and not be eaten by a tiger. So we stick together, and when somebody is asking us for supporting them in their tasks, or give us a task to cover that is totally crushing our plan for the day (especially if this person is our manager or somebody even higher in the hierarchy), we stop doing what we were doing, and jump right into the new assignment. Sounds familiar? We just want other people to like us, we want to be seen as reliable, helpful individuals, and it’s natural. But with what cost? The cost is being behind with our own tasks or projects, working extra hours to fill everything out, feeling frustrated that another day brought the same scenario – we planned everything, and it ended like always. Ruined. I’m not surprised when people who I teach about making a structure around their day to focus their energy on the right things, are saying to me: “Alex, it’s not working for me. I can plan my day, but then my manager/board member/colleague from my team comes to me and give me something that is urgent and what needs to be done ASAP”. And they agree to do it. Because they don’t want to be seen as lazy, not supportive, selfish, inflexible. Setting boundaries at work is a real skill and its goal is to protect our time from other people who wants to get their job done, using our skills, readiness to help and ability to do things efficiently and effectively. If somebody comes to you or sends you something that requires an investment of your time and focus (even if it’s just 5 minutes), take a step back before you dive into doing it. Ask yourself: “Is it my job to do it? Is it that important for the organization that I should resign from what I do and do this instead? Is it that urgent that I should do it now?”. You can use your own examples, but remember to always stay in OK-OK position, with a good intention. What people are most afraid of is if they start setting the boundaries and protect themselves, other people will stop liking them, or coming to them when they need help. It’s not true. Keeping the good intention, clear communication about the division of responsibilities and clear timeline is a main key to avoid conflicts, misunderstanding and to build equality in treating each other’s time and skills. How saying “no” to things at home can help? It’s different from country to country, from culture to culture how we are functioning at our homes. In some cultures, with more patriarchal touch, traditional, conservative way of living is when women are staying at home, raising children and taking care of everything what’s connected to the “house”, without ever saying “no” to anything. They also take care of older members of the family, while men are supposed to earn money and bring it to them. Nowadays it’s changing, but – taking as an example Poland, my country of birth and living at the moment, the beliefs and convictions about the “classical” roles of men and women in the society are really deeply rooted. And based on that, we often have beliefs and convictions in our heads about what we SHOULD do or who SHOULD we be in a certain context. It is connected to the conservative and post conservative thinking mindset, but even if we are in post conservative stage, we often have strong second thoughts about how we should set boundaries at our homes. And statistically, more of those tasks are on the women’s shoulders, so we have more troubles with saying “no” to things, not agreeing to do something what should be “natural” to us. But it’s not about what we SHOULD do. It’s about what we want to do, and what we want to share with others, as we live together, and maybe what to withdraw completely to not thinking about it and focus on that really matter to us. Make a list of things that you do at home at the moment. It can be connected to the cleaning, cooking, shopping for groceries, taking care of pets or kids. You name it, it’s your list. Ask people in your house to do the same things, include the children if you want. If you live alone, do it as well. Then, underline those things that are crucial to you, that are the closest to your heart and you would never let them go. See what is left on the list. Decide what to do with those items – how to share responsibilities with other people in your house or maybe take someone from the outside to help, if you can afford it? What I’m sure you cannot afford is to do everything on your own and not ask for support. I know asking for help for some of us is

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Productivity

Do you want to spend your time better? Use OKRs.

I can risk a statement that most of us would like to spend time better. Be more focused, less distracted by the endless notifications on our phones or computers, countless e-mails and messages, other peoples’ needs and asks. To be more efficient and more effective – professionally and privately. What OKRs have to do with that? OKRs are one of the best time/performance management tools that I know, use and teach. Today I would like to share that knowledge with you. It’s all about using our time wisely, on things that really matter and to measure the outcome, so we know that this energy is well-spend. Let’s begin and know more about this creature. What are OKRs? OKRs are Objectives and Key Results. Objectives are answering the question: “What I would like to do/achieve?”. Key Results are answering the question: “How I am going to measure my success?” or “When will I know that I’ve achieved what I wanted?”. Basically, it’s a really simple tool that supports us in focusing on the right things and giving us evidence that we constantly achieving what we aim for. OKRs have several elements that are important to know for better understanding the whole idea before we move into the creation part. Here are 3 of them, the most crucial from my perspective: Bored Zone is when you are bored to death with your work. You do the same tasks all the time, answering the same questions every single day, solving the same problems. Don’t get me wrong – for some people it’s fine and they like to have structure and safety. But for some, it’s a straight way to feel burned out, bored all the time and loose their efficiency. Comfort Zone is the most well-known one I think, thanks to this sentence: “you need to go outside of your comfort zone to achieve something”. True, but it’s not the whole story about this one. In the Comfort Zone we are Subject Matter Experts, we feel competent and comfortable in our scope of responsibilities, expertise or skills. We can work efficiently, without wasting time on things that are not in our area of expertise. Staying all the time in this one is not developmental, since we only use the knowledge that we already have and not learning anything new. Stretch Zone is where the growth magic happens. When we stretch, we need to take an uncomfortable action from time to time, to learn new things, to grow, to meet new people. We are using our existing skills and we build new ones on them, to achieve different, extraordinary things. It requires courage, investing time to learn and keep attention on something new, but it’s worth the effort, since it is the place where we can actually grow and change our lives. Burnout Zone is when we are in the Stretch or Bored Zone for too long. It can happen when we have a really monotonous work or when we have too much on our plate. We feel constantly overstressed, frustrated, tired – it can be different for all of us. We are not efficient, we can’t focus and sometimes we even can go into depression or other mental health issues, especially being here longer. And it can have a huge impact on our health. From my experience, I would advice you to maneuver between Comfort and Stretch Zone – it’s the best configuration, taking into consideration the risk of going to far to the Burnout Zone and to not fall into the Bored Zone. Try to define what is comfort and what is stretch for you and move between those two to check how it work. How can we use OKRs professionally? OKRs are great if we use them well. The key is to understand that they cannot be business as usual tasks – since we need to stretch ourselves to achieve them. What’s the most important that Key Results are most of the time not actions that you are going to take. They are measurements that you use to see if you’re achieving your goals or not. Let me give you some examples to visualize the whole thing. Objective 1: Grow my skillset from Specialist to Expert by the end of Q1 2023. Key Results 1: Objective 2: Improve managerial skills by the end of Q4 2022. Key Results 2: The Objectives can be big, should be ambitious. They can stay the same from quarter to quarter, we can only change the Key Results, to be applicable to the specific, individual situation. As included in the examples, measurements are here to support us with making sure that we are staying on the right track. Sometimes there are 0/1 situations (either I do something, or not), but I encourage you to find concrete numbers, indicators that will be influenced by your specific actions. Once you have your goals and the specific results that you want to achieve, you can make a plan of activities that will allow you to gain what you want or need. How can we use OKRs personally? Professional area is more intuitive for us to use, since OKRs were made to support the business in tech world and might seem easier to use at work. But there are super useful not only in organizational area, but also in every other aspect of our life. How can we use them? Let me give you some examples. Objective 3: Become the healthiest possible version on myself by the end of Q4 2023. Key Results 3: Objective 4: Become an early riser by the end of Q1 2023. Key Results 4: As you can see – some of those Key Results are actions, some of them are clear measurements and we need to figure out what kind of activities we should take to reach them. Create a mixed list of Key Results will be the best option and I really encourage you to check if they are diverse, before moving to

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Productivity

How to kill “I don’t have time” excuse?

A couple weeks ago, my dear friend told me that she sees that there is one common thing in my Instagram posts and articles that I create: a subject of wasting time. And it dawned on me that it is so true. One of the most things that I hate the most on this planet is wasted time AND the excuse that a lot of people use that they don’t have time. To do something with their lives, their careers, their development. To read. Or to give their parents a 5-minute call. We are so busy that we forget what’s really important. We focus on wrong things, instead of spend energy on those that actually matter. The question is, what you can say “no” to, to get your time back? When we say “I don’t have time” excuse at work Do you ever feel that you spend a really busy day (or week), you participated in several different meetings, answered countless e-mails and other messages, covered some tasks from your to-do list, but at the end of the day (or week) you can’t tell that you have actually done something? That you’ve created any value? It’s happening when people are “busy” and not “productive”. We can be busy and not create anything important. And it really doesn’t matter if we work in a creative space or not. Each job should have a space where we can create a value, something that really matters. If it’s not your current job, maybe it’s time for you to think about reskilling/upskilling yourself and find another place where you’ll have this opportunity. “I don’t have time” excuse at work is when we are busy, often spending time on little things, procrastinating bigger ones, those that can actually brings value to other people in the organization, clients, the company itself, the environment. We think that we covered so much, because we were busy the whole day, but did we really? The solution for that is to have a structure around your workday. Make a list of the tasks that you want to cover within the day (or a week). Divide them into two categories: big ones and small ones. Choose 1-2 big ones and 3-4 small ones from the list. Make baby steps – if you choose too many, you are going to procrastinate the whole thing, and nothing will get done. Always start with big ones. It’ll give you more motivation to keep going when you’ll see actual results of your work. Then move to the next one. Don’t check your e-mail inbox every minute. Turn off notifications, check it only 2-3 times a day. Create a space in your calendar for “deep work”, let’s say the first 2 hours of your workday. It will allow you to get things done, before meetings, training sessions, calls, 1:1s, e-mails etc. You can find more about this approach in a book “Deep Work” by Cal Newport (I wrote about slots for deep work HERE as well). Which tasks, e-mails, asks from other people you can say “no” to, to get some of your work time back? When we say “I don’t have time” excuse in professional development Working in learning & development area, or in HR in overall for years now, showed me that when people get stuck with their careers, they use the I-don’t-have-time excuse a lot. They have no opportunities to grow in the organization. There is nothing new for them to learn. They don’t know what to do with themselves. And when I ask the question: “What you actually want to do with your career?” the most common answer is: “Oh, I don’t know. Develop me.”. It’s amazing how people’s brain works, and how often we just let some of our areas of life go, because we just don’t want to take any uncomfortable action, we just making excuse after excuse. We live in a bored zone or comfort zone for years, keep saying that we don’t have time to read, to take a course, to start a business, to listen to a podcast. That’s crazy, taking into consideration how many hours per week we spend on Netflix or other platform watching movies and series. Don’t get me wrong, I watch things too and I love it. But I am mindful about my time, and I use it wisely, taking care of a balance between each area in my life. Create a structure around your professional development. What kind of healthy habits for your brain you would like to build? Make a list. Choose an app that’s going to support you in building those habits (I use Habitica at the moment and I love it). Make some of them daily, some of them weekly habits. Make it a challenge, but not too much – remember that when we want to build habits, we need to take baby steps to convince our brain that it’s worth the effort. Check in settings how much time do you spend daily using your phone. And how much of it you can cut and spend it for reading for instance? Which bad habits, ways of spending (or wasting) your day you can say “no” to, to get some of your after (or before) work time back? When we say “I don’t have time” excuse in health When we say “I don’t have time” excuse to the things that are important to keep us in a good health and shape as long as it’s possible, we wake up one day and it’s too late. We have cardiovascular issues, high blood pressure or high cholesterol level, diabetes, obesity – you name it. We can’t climb couple of steps without a pause or two somewhere in between. And we are only in our 30s or 40s. Sitting all day every day is not helpful. It wasn’t even an issue for our parents, and for us it is a huge one. And it influences not only our physical health, but also

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Self-Development

Can we live simple lives?

We live in a time when we have an infinite access to almost everything with one simple click. Of course it depends where you are on the planet, how much money you have and how strong and stable your internet connection is. But yet, we note one of the highest rates of depression, anxiety and loneliness ever. Why is that happening?Because it is too much. Our lives are too complex. We have too many roles to play, too many tasks on our task lists (professional and personal ones) to cover. We need to be perfect in every single area of our lives. We want to have everything, so we work 60 hours per week, and then we are so tired that we don’t have strengths to get up from bed on Saturday morning and spend quality time with our families, friends or on our own. We have too many choices to make, and we are tired of making them all the time. It all sounds pretty tiring. So what can we do about it?   We can make it simpler. Simplify our lives and cut most of the complexity of it, so we can focus on what really matters. How? Let’s find out together. Why we make simple things complicated? It’s easier to add more things to something, than to simplify it. We have so much information to process in our brains every day, countless tasks, decisions to make, projects to finish. It’s a never-ending story. We make things more complicated because we are afraid of the simplicity. We are scared that simple will be worse, less meaningful, weaker. We say that we are so busy, doing more and more and more to not have to confront ourselves with our real thoughts, emotions, needs. To not need to answer hard questions. It is really visible when we think about really busy people at work (they say they busy all the time, no matter if it’s true or not). They are at the meetings all the time. Full calendars, week after week. So busy. But, when we ask them a question: “okay, you are busy, but what kind of value do you bring to the table?” it really often appears that those people bring no value. Don’t create anything, any product, innovation, service, process. Just being busy. And the truth is, “busyness” is not a value or a quality, it’s just a mask. To feel protected, important, needed. The other example can be from home. Let’s say I’m a single mother. I want to be a great mom, employee, friend, daughter, I include myself to organize school picnics, redecorate house. And why I do that to myself when it’s a job for at least 5 people? Because I don’t want to think about my real emotions. That I’m lonely. Exhausted. That I just want one day alone, in silence, with a book and a cup of coffee. Or I just want to prove other people that I can do it all. Prove what? To what people? And why? That’s what we do as humans – we complicate simple things to not confront with reality, because it’s scary, might be painful, might be hard. Sometimes we complicate things because we don’t have competences, skills to deal with the essence of the real issue. And our ego won’t allow us to say it out loud, because IT’S SO UNPROFESSIONAL to admit that we don’t know something. THAT WE NEED TO BE STRONG. That way we start running on and on in circles, without any chance to stop. How to change that? What elements of our lives can be simple again? To start simplifying our lives, we need to choose what actually we want to change and WHY. What kind of value it will bring? And what to choose to make the best of it? I would say every single element of our live can be simple again, but it might be an exaggeration for some of you. Let’s make a list of examples then. And many more. You can use your own examples that you think are important in your context, individual situation that you are at right now. Make things simple to improve your life, not somebody else’s. How to create simple without losing value? As you can see above, simplicity is not a story about losing a value of life. It is about creating different value, focusing energy on right things, instead of doing everything and burn ourselves out on constant want to have more. It is about choosing the right things, that give us the best possible outcome. It’s about being smarter about our time since it’s not infinite. If you are afraid of losing value when you simplify your life, think if this fear is real. Is it your fear, or is it just a social conviction or a belief that somebody put into our heads years ago? The belief: “I need to be busy to be valuable” is a strong one. But it’s not true. Busyness often is just an excuse to do meaningless things, instead of doing what’s really important. Do what’s important, choose it consciously, don’t let life just to happen to you. The bottom line Endless possibilities, endless choices. Wasn’t it what we all always wanted? It appears that it only makes things harder, instead of making it easier. To stop this vicious circle, we need to make better decisions. About what we spend time on, how we structure our day, what we eat, how we build our relationships. We need to spend our time well, doing what serves us, not what hurts us. If you think that’s hard, imagine that yourself on a quiet, sandy beach. You don’t need to do anything. You can choose whatever you want right now. What would you choose? These are the things that you should start from – if they came to your mind, they are really important. Start from there and keep it simple to get

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Transactional Analysis

Transactional Analyst’s Story: The Hungers

We all know physical hunger. Because it is one of the basic human needs, when we are hungry, we can’t think straight, we are less efficient, we can’t focus on what other people say to us. It’s natural from evolutionary point of view, since what all our ancestors needed centuries ago was to survive and get food – to feed that kind of hungers. But we can also be psychologically hungry. It’s different type of hunger, sometimes we don’t even realize it until we name it, because it sits somewhere deep in our brain and body, whispering to our inner selves from time to time. Continuing our path on Transactional Analysis’ tools and parts of the framework, today I would like to introduce to you a concept of Eric Berne’s Hungers that all of us have. We are going to answer the question what these hungers are, how to feed them and what happens to us when we are “hungry”. Let’s go and find out what it is all about. What are Eric Berne’s Hungers? Eric Berne, as a father of Transactional Analysis, thought about three hungers that all people have, regardless of their background, age, color of skin, country they live or company they work for at the moment: Recognition, Structure and Stimulus. Recognition Hunger. As human beings we need to be seen and acknowledge as important parts of the ecosystem we live and work in. It builds our sense of identity as we know that our existence matters and gives value to other people. A mindful “Thank you” can be the easiest way to show somebody that she/he is noticed. Structure Hunger. We all know that we have a certain amount of time to live our lives and we want it to be meaningful. We find comfort in the regularity of the events, of celebration days from birthdays to New Year’s. We worry about wasting time and worry about not having enough time. We plan and want to know what is going to happen, and when. We also want to have space in which we can be relaxed and less ordered, though we often still want to organize this space. Stimulus Hunger. Stimulation can be physical or intellectual, it really depends on our needs and the way our individual nervous system is built, hence how we should or want to be stimulated. Stimulus Hunger is about having something new, experiencing and feeling a thing that affects us, and it really can be anything. Starting from a new task, job, hobby or habit, going through an interesting book or workshop, to inspiring conversation with another person. What is really important that all those 3 hungers always make 100%. It depends on a person how strong a certain need is, based on individual preferences. One person can have a ratio 30%-30%-40% (recognition-structure-stimulus), another 10%-60%-30% (recognition-structure-stimulus) and that’s perfectly fine. There is no questionnaire to measure it (maybe it should be one though), we need to estimate for ourselves how this ratio looks like for us. It is a first step to build self-awareness and doing something to improve our live. What’s happening when we are “hungry”? There is a term connected to this topic named “frustrated hungers” (it starts to look like those hungers are actual human beings). Frustrated hungers are when we know that we have a strong hunger for structure (for instance), and we work in a company when there is a huge mess. Or when we have a strong hunger for stimulus, and we live with a person who wants to go on vacation to the same place every single year. When we are “hungry” we cannot focus, we miss opportunities that live gives us, we cannot concentrate on a single thing. We are less efficient, less innovative, sometimes we don’t have an energy to get up from bed, because “WHAT’S THE POINT? My life suck anyways, so I don’t need to bother cleaning my teeth”. We can get depressed, push people away, we don’t work well. Or we can get angry, mad on the world that is around us or certain people who (in our opinion) are responsible for the current situation. Both ways, it’s not healthy (physically or psychologically), it has a huge negative impact on our general well-being and on how we use our potential. With frustrated hungers our potential is blocked, asleep somewhere under all those emotions and thoughts. We waste time that we can spend on something meaningful, creative or what gives value to other people. What can we do to “feed the hungers”? First thing that we need to do is to define what is the source of our frustration. Which of those hungers we need to feed? Can we do it at work or at home? Or somewhere else? The next thing is answering the question: “Who can support me in this?”. Can I do anything on my own to improve the situation? If not, who is around and have an influence on the current state of things? What can we do together to decrease the frustration? If it’s recognition area, maybe I can get more feedback from my manager or people in my team? Maybe I don’t have enough “thank you” for my hard work? I can tell my manager about it, let’s see what we can do together to change that. If it’s structure area, maybe I struggle with getting organized? What can I do to structure my day better? Do I schedule “deep work” time to cover the most important things without interruption? Maybe the processes in my organization don’t work very well – do I have any influence on that? Whom can I talk to for providing some ideas to change it? If it’s a stimulus area, maybe I have monotonous days, every single one is 90% the same as the one before. What can I do to change it? Maybe I can take some new responsibilities at work, a work with new people in a different

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Self-Development

How to become the best version of yourself?

We all have idols. People who we admire, out loud and/or in hiding. They can be our role models in different areas of life – perfect businessperson, entrepreneur, manager, expert, parent, partner, singer, actor, photographer, you name it. A lot of us want to be perfect in every role we have in our lives, even when we know that it is not possible. The best possible version. What if I told you that it is possible? But in a different way. We all can be the best version of ourselves in all the roles that we have at the moment. What does it mean? And how to achieve it? Let’s dig deeper and find out together. What is this best version actually? The best version of yourself is the person that you want, and you can be. The beauty of it is that YOU define who is this person by yourself. Not the society, culture, country, your parents, other people WHO KNOW BETTER. You. Because you live this life, not anybody else. And you should know what is the best for you and how you want to live this life. There are two types of mindsets that influence this subject. And there are not strictly connected to religion, sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. The first one is conservative mindset. This one is all about keeping the status quo. Taking for granted everything that we have been taught: our role in society as men and women, our role in society as children (boys and girls separately), adolescents, adults and elderly people. The cycle of life (school, work, marriage, kids, sickness, death) or the beliefs we have about the position certain elements in life (how we should treat certain things, with what kind of priority they should have): family, work, country, church, house etc. It means that we live certain values, priorities that were given to us, until the end. It’s easier for most people, we don’t need to think about it, because it’s there. We don’t need to create anything new, since it’s all already there. It is what it is, no need to discuss it. The second one is post conservative mindset. This is the place for people who have been in conservative space, took what they needed or wanted to take from it, and move further. They challenge the status quo, don’t agree to what is given, but looking for the best shape of reality that fits them, individually or as a group of people. They want something more from life, don’t want to spend their lives because somebody told them to do it in a certain way. It is harder, since we need to go way beyond our comfort zone to reach out for what’s over there, and we don’t actually know what we’re going to discover. But it’s worth the risk, sometimes a person discovers something, sometimes not – and that’s perfectly fine. It is all about living lifelong learning value: try, fail, make conclusions from it and move forward. To be the best possible version of yourself you can be in both stages. It all depends on what “best version” means to you, individually. Though, I am a huge avocat of the post conservative mindset, since I can see how much more we can do when we challenge ourselves, ask hard questions, reach for more. Again, depends on what “more” means to every single one of us. What to focus on to become this best version? We can really use the structure of process thinking to become the best version of ourselves. These are the steps that can help you in making a plan to achieve what you want. What to avoid to not waste time? We all need time to rest. To reset our brains, to watch a less ambitious movie or make fun of cute cats on Instagram. But there is a line between a need to have a little break and wasting time. When I know that I’m wasting time? When I do something repetitively, every day and it’s not giving me any value (i.e. scrolling social media). When I get distracted all the time, since people ask me to do several things at the same time, and I can’t focus on one thing. When I spend time with people who are energy vampires, and not creating any value to my life, often only whining about the world and other people. So what can we do to avoid it and not wasting time? Cut it. Set healthy boundaries, protect ourselves and our time. If you do it right, it’s not rude or selfish (it can be seen that way at first though since people around you are not familiar with that kind of reaction; but no worries, they’ll get used to it). That’s the way of taking care of yourself, to be better in what you do, more efficient, more satisfied, healthier. Spend time on things that really matter, that get you closer to achieving your goals. Cut everything else, especially if it’s not helpful at all. You will see the difference really quickly. The bottom line To become the best version of yourself you need to make a choice. Now. Who I want to be? What is the best version of myself? What do I need to achieve that? What I need to sacrifice to achieve that? Yes, sacrifice is necessary if we really want to change something. We should replace bad habits with good ones, bad people with good one. Only then our life will be full, happy, healthy and meaningful. Isn’t it a thing that we all want at the end?

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Transactional Analysis

Transactional Analyst’s Story: Contracting

As a huge advocate of Transactional Analysis (TA) as a concept, I am going to start sharing tools or elements from it in an easy and understandable way, since I believe that every person can use it. And you don’t have to necessarily be a psychologist to use it, especially for using contracting, which is a subject of today’s article. TA as a theory was developed by Eric Berne in 1950s. It was purely a method of psychotherapy back then, but really quickly people realized that it can be used in educational and organizational context as well. I use it for my personal development, but also in the organizations that I support, while I teach mostly managers how to be smarter, understand their people better and to know more about why and when employees react in a certain way. The first tool that I found particularly useful was contracting. I teach it while I can and to whom I can because I see how much it can change relations, ways of communication or the way we are working within a team, when we are more mindful about the structure of how we talk to each other. It prevents people from guessing, wasting time on finding the right person or the right information and playing psychological games. In this article I’ll give you basics about the tool and I’ll answer on a question WHY you should use it. Let’s get started then. What is contracting regarding Eric Berne? Levels of contract Contracting is a tool. It can have different value for every person that uses it, since all of us have different needs, thinking preferences, personality and environment that we grew in or live and work in right now. A contract is an agreement between two (or more) sides, in which each party agrees to do a specific thing. Pretty similar to a regular definition of a contract, i.e. while we are signing a contract of employment, we agree to do a certain task list and the organization agrees to pay us a certain amount of money in exchange for it. But contracting regarding Berne is something more than just a transaction. It has more layers, there are more details underneath the surface which will have an influence on a person in the future. Berne says there are 3 basic layers of a good contract: administrative, professional and psychological. All 3 need to be covered if we want to talk about a proper contract. Let’s use the example of a new employee in the team to make it clearer. On an administrative level we are going to give new employee a contract of employment, information about payroll cycle, bonus system, benefits, working hours, procedures that are valid in this particular organization. Basically, all details that a new employee should know to start a job. On a professional level we are going to give this new employee ways of working, scope of responsibilities and decision making that she/he can do on their own on their position. Goals, objectives and KPIs, ways and tools of communication, ways and frequency of reporting, as well as 1:1 and team meetings. On a psychological level we are going to talk about expectations of both sides, needs, past experiences (good or bad) with a decision what to keep, and what to cut from current cooperation. This is the space where we talk about motivation, values and all the thigs that are important while thinking about comfort and efficiency of work. First two layers are quite simple, intuitive and most of us cover them, more or less. The last one might seem the most difficult, since we need more insight, coaching skills, we need to listen and be open to other person to do it properly. It can be hard, sometimes people don’t want to talk about it, but it is crucial to take it into consideration. Without that we will be relying on guesses and beliefs, instead of facts and real needs that this new person has. What are the rules of a good contract? When we think about contracting, there are few elements that we need to take care of every time. If we cover all of those, the contract will be fully transparent, have a good intention and an aim to create a value for engaged parties and/or for somebody else as a result of common work. Where can I use contracting? Contracts can be used practically everywhere, that’s the magic of them. This is a really universal tool, and it depends on our individual needs where we want to start trying them out. The areas of usage can be either personal or professional, here are few examples: As you can see there are many opportunities, in endless contexts where we can use contracting. The essence of it (besides the elements that were already covered) is: This is a tool for us, not we are here for the tool. It should support us with having clear, transparent communication and structure around what we do, how and when. The bottom line I don’t like to waste my time. I think that it’s too valuable and I don’t have a luxury to spend it on the things that can be done better, faster, simpler or with less energy. Contracting is a tool that can help us to have better, more clear and transparent communication, prevent us from playing psychological games, privately and professionally. It is here for us to stop guessing and start mindfully talk to each other and set together what needs to be done. It is a life changer. Try it and teach others to do the same. The world is going to be a better place thanks to that. Do you want to know more about TA? Stay tuned for more articles here, visit my Instagram or check out official TA Association.

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Self-Development

10 things that can change your life

There are thousands of articles, books, podcasts and YT videos in the subject: “how to change your life”. A lot of them have its ultimate goal to magically change everything, starting with losing a lot of extra weight, through finding a perfect partner, to having a perfect job. And ideally all of those things should happen overnight. But we are adults, and even if we love good stories with a happy ending, those things never happen just like that. All we can do is to work on them to happen. Make conscious decisions about using our time, spending it well – regardless of what “well” means to each of us. In this article I would like to share 10 things that works for me in making my life better every single day. What makes me feel that I spend my time well, that I choose what serves me the best and what helps to have this though in my head at the end of the day: “yes, it was a good day”. 1. Getting up at 6AM every day First live changer from my list. Getting up at 6AM every single day, not sleeping off on the weekends made my day better structured than before. I discovered that 5AM club is too early for me, and I’ve decided to try 6AM and it appeared perfect. I never had problems with getting up early, but I missed the regularity and I needed to change that. After making this change, I found out how many things I can do before starting my business day and it is beautiful. Yes, it can be harder in the fall and winter, when the days are short and many hours during the day is dark or gray outside (it sure is in Poland), but it is worth it. When you are wondering if this is something you can do, think about one thing that you always say you don’t have time for? This is the thing that you can do when you get up earlier. It doesn’t necessarily be 6AM – it can be 5AM, 5:30AM or 7:30AM. It all depends on your life, all the things that you need to do  during the day, so it’s your choice. Try 15 minutes earlier than usually for a start. And do it every day, sleeping off on the weekends it the worst thing you can do to your body, because you don’t give yourself a chance to regulate your day cycle. 2. Morning workout and meditation Since I work with different time zones in my job and I have naturally more energy in the morning than in the evening, I do as many things as I can in the first half of my day. I built a habit of 5-minute meditation by sticking it to my morning workout, which was already there. You can read more about building good habits by sticking them together in a great book by Charles Duhigg “The Power of Habit”. I do six workouts every week, with one rest day somewhere in between, depends on the weather and other plans I have. After that I meditate for 5 minutes – it is the maximum time that I can focus on my brain for now. It gives me power and energy for the rest of the day, and I don’t need to worry about this area after a hard workday when I need to rest. 3. Short journaling with 2 gains lists I discovered that writing in a journal, even if it’s just one page per day, give me a structure that I need for my thoughts or experiences from the previous day. And I added additional thing after reading a great book by Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan  “The Gap and The Gain”. The exercise is really simple. Make a list of gains from yesterday. Write down all the things that you achieved, even if it’s something super small, like reading 5 pages of a book, waking up 15 minutes earlier than usually or taking your vitamins. Every single thing matters. Recognize yourself for everything you do every day. Then make a list of 3 gains that you would like to achieve today. It can be connected to all areas of your life: mental, physical, digital or financial well-being, relations, work, professional development etc. Choose 3 things, no more, no less, and focus on achieving them – you’ll check the accomplishments with yourself the next morning. You can also do this in the evening (the authors are talking about evenings, after finishing the current day and before starting the next one in the morning), but mornings are just working better for me. Choose by yourself, spend 5 minutes on that – it will be worth it. 4. Having daily / weekly / monthly / yearly goals I am a really structured person. I love making plans, paths how to get to the goals, and I hate when people are messy and indecisive. I discovered in another Ben Hardy’s book “Being Your Future Self Now” the idea of having 5-year goals, when you choose 3 areas of your life or 3 elements you would like to achieve and you do everything to get to them. I connected it with my daily goals (gains) and I use the monthly list of experiences (the idea of a Polish author Edyta Zajac – you can find her work in PL HERE) for years now and it works brilliantly for me. So I connected all the dots and I create different goals for different periods of time, with being mindful about my bigger 5-year goals. That way I make sure that I spend my time wisely, and not wasting it for the things that are not bringing me closer to achieving what I want. By making that change, you can do more with less. 5. Having slots for deep work Being distracted is one of the worst habits of our times. We have millions of information

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Self-Development

Can we worry less? 3 elements to transform your mindset

Does it help when we worry? Let’s be honest, there will always be plenty of things that we can be worried about. We can see it clearly now, probably in one of the brightest lights. What can it be? Our health. Health of our family, friends or other people who we care about. Pandemic. Wars. Financial crisis. Inflation. Increased prices and not so increased salaries. Environmental crisis. Endangered species of animals and plants. Social crisis. Deepening social inequalities. Governments that enact laws that discriminate against certain groups of people. Choose the part of the world where you live right now, and you name it. It can differ regarding where we live, which gender we represent or what color of skin we have. But in overall, we worry a lot nowadays. Does it help when we worry? And who is it helping? I learn through the years that worrying too much can eat me alive. When I saw how much time I spend on being worried, thinking over and over again about those things that, to be honest, mostly I didn’t have any influence on, I’ve decided to stop it. In this article I would like to tell you about 3 things, that helped me in transforming the mindset from being constantly worried to become constantly seeking for solutions. 1. Make a list of your worries. How many of the list above you worry about right now? And what others do you have on your mind? Remember, if it is only in your head, it is harder to manage – since our brains have infinite capacity to think about anything, as long as possible. Make a list of all of your worries that are in your head. Then, you can use the Influence Matrix (I wrote about this tool HERE), or you can just rank them, starting from the one that you think about the most frequently, is the most stressful or has other negative impact on you. The last one on the list should be the one with the smallest impact. Do you see all of them? Good. Now, I know that it’s hard, but you need to cut those that you don’t have any influence on. Can I do anything about the war in Ukraine? No. Can I do anything about global financial situation? Not at all. Can I do anything about local inflation rate? It’s a hard no. Decide on what you have ZERO influence on, and just decide to cut it. I guarantee you that it will free so much energy and space in your brain, that you can be confused about what’s going on at the very beginning. But it will be worth it. 2. Transform worries into potential solutions / areas of opportunity. Now, when you cut part of your list, let’s take care of those worries that you have an influence on, wholly, or partially. Pose a question to each of those to reflect on what your can do with it INSTEAD of just be worried. I worry that I will be sick / disabled. Okay, so what can I do to stay healthy and operational as long as possible? I worry about the money. I am living paycheck-to-paycheck and I don’t have any savings. Okay, so what can I do to manage my home budget better? What can I do to cut from monthly costs to save 5 / 10 / 20% of my salary? You got the idea. Transform the worry into something you can actually do, and what is in your area of influence. Small elements, baby steps – it is always the best way to start. When you start small, it is easier to stick to it, since you see quick results and stay motivated to keep moving. While you start doing something what actually supports you, your health, your financial situation, relations with your family or friends, the environment that you live in is changing as well. Being worried is not good for you, nor for your environment. Being in that state often makes you less patient, you get irritated and explode faster, rarely adequately to the situation. And people who are closest to you suffer the most because they have regular contact with you. From my experience, this is one of the fastest ways to lose those who we care about, since no one wants to be around energy vampire longer that necessary. Take a look on how your attitude is influencing relations – your relations with yourself, but also with those who are around. How changing the attitude will influence those relations, maybe improve them or make new ones? You can also check out a great book that is really close to the subject: “How to stop worrying and Start Living” by Dale Carnegie. 3. Create a simple process to check with yourself when you see that a worry is coming. Being self-aware is a starting point. But we also need a plan that will support us in the future, when a new worry shows up (or the old one returns). Sometimes a trigger appears out of nowhere and wakes up old demons, that we think we dealt with already. Make a list of 3-5 steps that you are going to do every single time when a worry comes to your head. You can create your own, use this one that I’ve created or take a part of it and recreate it, so it fits you. Simple, to the point. Try it out and you’ll see how it will change your life. The bottom line We all have a lot of things that we can be worried about. But endless worrying doesn’t do anything good to anyone. So, try to break the vicious circle, take ownership of your own life. At the end, it’s important to remember that the things are happening FOR us not TO us. From my perspective it’s one of the hardest mindset switches to implement, but it’s so worth it. Worth an

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Self-Development

How to feel more empowered?

Do you remember the last time when you felt great about yourself, empowered? You were walking on the street with your head high, your back straight up, maybe with a smile on your face. Or when you delivered a great value at work, somebody recognized you for that and you told yourself ‘Well, it was worth the time and energy. I’m proud of myself’. And how many times, on each of those great moments, you felt bad about yourself? That you are not good enough, smart enough, thin or tall enough. That you are not sophisticated enough, or rich enough. How many times you achieved something, and right after doing it you thought ‘meh, I could’ve done better’? We beat ourselves too much, instead of being proud of what we achieve every single day. Let’s see what we can do about it. Let’s answer the question: How to feel more empowered? Define the moments when you feel most empowered Each of us is different. We have different personality types, different skills, levels of energy during the day. We are more extroverted or introverted. We like different things, and we structure our time around different elements every day. We have different values, beliefs, experiences that shaped us. We live different lives. Look how many things make us unique in this huge world. It means that there is no such thing as one, beautiful list of elements that you can do to feel better about yourself. You need to be curious. Turn on a developer mode and explore yourself to decide what is accurate to you, in this certain moment of your life. Think about moments / situations when you feel the most empowered and you think the best about yourself. Take a closer look on different categories of your life, take into consideration: Take anything you want because we all can be empowered by something completely different. What empowers me does not necessarily make you feel the same way. Make a list of those moments or elements. Pick 3 of them that you can do again, soon. Then pick 1 of those three and plan it for this week. Your brain needs to see some quick results to believe that this feeling can be true. And once you start, it will be easier to do more of them, to see what works for you and what makes your life better. Check if you are in OK-OK place Transactional Analysis as a concept has many tools. Some of them are more complex, some of them are really simple and easy to use. I am going to introduce to you those simple ones in my articles, so you can implement them right away, without having a degree in psychology. The OK-Not OK Matrix is one of my favorite tools in TA. It is an easy way to check where you are with your beliefs and emotions in a certain moment, since it effects your behavior, decision making process and your way of communication. Check with yourself, in how many daily situations you are OK-OK, and in how many of them you are somewhere else in the matrix. What can you do to move more of those situations or beliefs you have to OK-OK quadrant? Find a person that can support your empowerment It is a common said that ‘we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with’ (here is a great article about that statement: https://maartenvandoorn.medium.com/you-are-the-average-of-the-five-people-you-spend-the-most-time-with-a2ea32d08c72). And it is so true. People can be your biggest support and inspiration. Or they may be energy vampires, who want to bring you down to their level, since they cannot stand that somebody can be successful, wealthy, happy. It is cultural though; I can tell you that we have a lot of the second attitude in Poland. Make a list of those 5 people that you spend the most of your time with. Take a look on that list. Which of those people are good influence, which of those are bad? Giving you energy or sucking you out of it? Inspire you or making you come back to bed and just go to sleep? Then, think about one inspiring or successful (in your own definition of inspiration or success) person that you know, but you are not so close. Maybe you were in the past, but then you changed your job, you moved to another city, or you had a child and stopped going out and meeting people. Make a contact with that person. Write on social media, make a call. Ask ‘how are you’? Have a coffee. Make an influence on this group of 5 people. Be reactive, don’t wait for something to happen to you. Choose what’s happening. The bottom line It is not about feeling inspired, energized or full of ideas every single minute of every day. I would like to encourage you to take a closer, more mindful look on how you live your life. When you live the most of it? When you feel the best? And what can you do to feel that way more often? Ask yourself those questions and decide on what to do next to feel empowered and in charge of your own destination.  

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Self-Development

4 elements of well-being to boost your fulfillment

People are complex species. And even that we are a part of a certain family, society, country or culture, we are all individuals, having different needs, thoughts and beliefs, based on our unique experiences. And yet, there are several elements that are pretty common and universal and being more aware of them can support us in having high level of motivation, efficiency and health. Today, I have 4 dots for you to connect to have a better, more balanced life – taking care of those simple elements will calm you and I believe will be helpful, especially while living in a constant change and uncertainty that most of us experience right now. 1. Digital well-being Technological changes are present in our lives. Those devices, tools or software are here is support us, to automate necessary but time-consuming tasks, to make our life easier and better. And that’s amazing how many things most of us have access to, without even moving a toe from home.   The latest BankMyCell research shows that almost 84% of the world’s population own a smartphone and almost 92% of the world’s population own a mobile phone (you can find more information about the research here: https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world). And we use it a lot –  3 hours and 15 minutes in average. Though, it is different from generation to generation, i.e. Millennials are on their phones approximately 5,7 hours per day (more statistics about that here: https://kommandotech.com/statistics/how-much-time-does-the-average-person-spend-on-their-phone/). It is insane. Of course, it depends on the person how it’s used (there are many educational apps, i.e. those that support foreign language education are super useful), but let’s be honest – most of us are just scrolling through social media without any bigger goal. And while we think about the excuse ‘I don’t have the time’ for reading, doing sports or spending more time with friends of family, I believe that we can save some time here and invest it somewhere else. So check on your phone – how many minutes / hours you spend on certain apps (and using phone in overall). First thing is awareness, then it’s action. Make a goal about cutting app time which don’t have any positive impact on your life. If you need, you can use the ‘app limits’ option and set daytime limits for certain category of apps on your phone. Do it for a week. Then review and make it a month. You will see how much time you actually have and how many things you can do while not scrolling. 2. Financial well-being To be completely honest with you, financial well-being is for me the hardest of all the areas covered in this article. When we worry about living from paycheck to paycheck, not having an emergency fund in case of anything happen or while we are watching the inflation rate increasing from month to month, like right now, we use a lot of energy on this. We are preoccupied, sometimes can’t sleep while running different scenarios in our heads, pretty often even having long periods of bad mood, which – in many cases, end in depression or other mental disorders. Remember the Influence Matrix that I described HERE and think about all financially connected elements that you are worried about at the moment. Do you have any influence on them? I would say that we don’t have any influence on the rising inflation, but we do have a lot of influence on our personal home budget. Use a simple excel spreadsheet to track your monthly costs in different categories. Home food, eating out, alcohol, cosmetics, gas and car expenses, clothes, apartment stuff, paying debts. Use those that are applicable to your individual situation and put every single expense in the file. It needs to be done daily, in a systematic way, but I can assure you that it’ll be a life changer. If definitely change my life and did allow me to pay debts faster and limit unnecessary costs. You can use a similar template that I use – you can find it below: 3. Mental well-being Mental health is a complex area. It is not only about being healthy or experiencing mental disorders. From my perspective taking care of mental well-being means to take care of ourselves holistically. Being mindful about our spirit and body, since it is all connected. Listening to our emotions, needs and to what is happening in our heads. Are you calm or agitated (meaning overstimulated)? Are you stressed? If yes, why? What kind of symptoms are you feeling in the body? Which of 4 basic emotions do you feel right now? (happiness, sadness, anger, fear) What makes you feel that way? What do you need at the moment? Being with people? Silence? Being alone? Having a task list to feel more grounded and have a purpose? Being recognized for your hard work? A new, exciting stimuli? Sleep? Are those needs covered or frustrated? What can you do to take care of them better – by yourself or with help of other people? What kind of beliefs do you have about yourself and the world that is around you? Are you in OK-OK position (I am OK AND the others / the world is OK)? (I am going to tell you more about the ‘OK-Not OK Matrix’ in the next article). Are those convictions supportive or quite the opposite? What can you do about it? If you don’t feel well, it is getting longer and longer and you don’t know what to do, ask for help. It can be a friend. A manager, colleague or HR person at work. It can be a coach, psychologist of therapist. It really depends on what you need at the moment, what kind of resources you have available and what can you afford. Remember that mental health issues are as important as those connected to our bodies and they need to be treated accordingly, so you can be healthy and live your life as best as

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Self-Development

5 things to do when you feel demotivated

We all know that. Today is not the day. Too much work, not enough time, too rainy to go outside, too tired to pick up any activity, or just feeling demotivated. And all of the sudden, we realize that several weeks or months passed, and we didn’t do anything. For ourselves, our relations, our health, or our development. All of our beautiful plans and wish lists are buried deep somewhere in a drawer waiting for a better tomorrow. It is not possible to be super effective, active and positive all the time. Even the most positive and ambitious people have those days when they just want to stay home and be a human burrito. And that’s perfectly fine. But when it is becoming more frequent or appearing regularly, I would encourage you to take a closer look to find out what is going on under the surface. Here are my personal 5 things that I do when feeling demotivated or having lower level of energy. 1. Find the source of you being demotivated. Every single thought, emotion, reaction or belief has its root. There are many possibilities that you feel or think in a certain way and all of them are very individual. They are connected to our history, experiences from the past (professional and personal ones), beliefs about ourselves and the world that we gained mostly in our early childhood (most of them until the age of 6) listening to our parents or other people who were raising us and other children. Basically all the people who were some kinds of authority for us at the time or we did seek for their attention, love or acceptance. From my experience, we remember the best and we have the easiest access to bad beliefs. Not smart enough. Not pretty enough. Not fast enough. Not thin enough. Not having the best grades. Not good enough (meaning nice, not causing any trouble). (name yours, there are mostly unconscious before we start to think and name them). And all of those beliefs that we gained in our lives, have an influence on what kind of thoughts we have as adults. And it is connected to what do we think about ourselves and the world that is around us. Of course the beliefs are just one factor of us being demotivated but as far as I’m concerned, it is the strongest one – I would risk the hypothesis that those beliefs are responsible for 80% of our lower moments. So I encourage you to have a piece of paper (or a Word document) and ask yourself those questions to find the source of your demotivation: 2. Fill out the Influence Matrix. Once you have all the answers on the question above, you can check their position in the Influence Matrix that I’ve created. This is a simple tool that you can use every time when you are stuck, you feel over worried or tired and you don’t know what to do. The matrix will help you to see in a clearer way the connections between having/not having an influence on a certain situation and its importance at the moment. It might seem similar to Eisenhower Matrix but this one uses different variables and its main goal is psychological support, rather than efficiency itself. Here is the Influence Matrix that you can use to put those elements that you discovered in the previous section. You can draw matrix on your own or you can use ready PDF file that you can download: Example 1: let’s say you’ve discovered that you worry about high inflation rate. Is it important? Yes. Do you have any influence on that? No, literally zero influence. So you put it in the upper-left quadrant. Then, you need to decide what can you do to reduce the high stress level that is connected to the high inflation rate. Maybe you can check on your home budget i.e. by using an easy excel spreadsheet to see how do you spend your money monthly? Based on that you can temporarily quit on some costs, so you have more financial freedom, and you are less stressed at the end of the day. Example 2: let’s say you discovered that you did 0 hours of sports activity last week. Is it important? Yes. Do you have any influence on that? Yes. So you put it in the upper-right quadrant. Then, you need to decide what to do to be more active. Pick one thing at the time, i.e. 15-minute walk after lunch every day. If the weather is bad, play a 15-minute workout on YouTube. No excuses! 3. Choose one thing that you have influence on and pick it up right away. I am a huge advocate of small things. Baby steps. I know from my own experience and from experience of those many people I’ve worked with through the years that we need ambitious goals to achieve extraordinary things. But we also need a simple plan, achievable steps that will keep our internal motivation level high, so we don’t feel exhausted or frustrated that we don’t see effects right away. That’s why I encourage you to pick one thing at the time. When that one becomes a habit, you can add another one, and then another. Seeing quick results will show your brain that the change is possible and worth the effort. Choose one thing from your list and pick it up right away. Not tomorrow. Not on Monday. Not January 1st. Right away. Research shows that if we wait for a ‘magical’ moment (like January 1st, for example), it is less probable that we are going to achieve it since it is only ‘a power of this magical moment’. Not very helpful, especially from a long-term perspective. 4. Glue things together to feel less demotivated. There is an amazing book about building habits: ‘The Power of Habit’ by Charles Duhigg. He writes very specifically about building new habits really closely to the existing

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Self-Development

How to start learning more?

The idea about this space is to encourage all of you to take care of your development and learning more on a daily basis. I see a lot of people with a huge potential who are struggling with ‘finding’ time to do it. Because they are so busy. Because they don’t have time. Because they have kids so how on Earth they find even a minute for that. I say: stop the excuses. I say as well that statement (a lot): ‘You don’t have the time? You make the time.’. Since it is all about making decisions how we spend our time, we can make better ones. Of course, we all live in our individual, unique circumstances but I do believe that we can find a way to work within them. To live our lives fully. How to make more time?   ‘I don’t have the time’ is a strong belief. And it is extremely easy to use, universal, always good. Because people will understand, right? We are all busy nowadays. And yet, as I work with many individuals, teams and organizations, I can see that we have a tendency to use easy excuses to not make an effort. Of course, change is hard. And uncomfortable. It is demanding because we need to invest in it – time, money, effort, learning you name it. But most of the changes that aren’t successful are just too big from the very beginning. We have huge dreams, and that’s good – we should dream big. But we need to cut those dreams into smaller, more achievable pieces. Sounds obvious? Of course it is, but believe me – I see people every day who are doing the exact opposite thing, wishing that the outcome will be different. They are not using the easiest ways, feeling frustrated after first couple of days and just quit trying. I am going to teach you here how to use the easiest ways to achieve great results. What are you going to get here? In this blog I am going to show you the easiest. I will divide bigger tools, frameworks and ideas to smaller, more useful elements that you can use right away. I know that there are countless books, courses, conferences and digital learning spaces all over the internet. And I do know that sometimes it is just too much. We don’t know what to choose so we are not choosing at all. So I’ll be your guide through the infinity of knowledge and propose you those solutions that I believe can work. I am a lifelong learner but also a lifelong reader. Based on that statement, I am going to share with you my thoughts and recommendations regarding books that I read. Again – making a structure on the infinity of books and giving you a WHY on choosing certain position to invest your time well. I am also a manager and I support managers on a daily basis. Using that experience, I am going to share with you a lot of knowledge, tools and solutions that you can use if you want to become a manager, or you are one at the moment. It is really hard to find a good leadership training, so I hope that would support you on the way. Shall we start? If you want to take care of yourself better, it is a space for you. If you want to make more time, it is a space for you. If you feel stuck and you really want to change that, it is a space for you. We need more simplicity, light and inspiration in our lives – so why don’t we start here to gain it together?

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