"𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁" - this was the vision I had when we bought and renovated our place in the mountains close to Valencia a few years ago. My idea was always about more than a nice location where I could flee the urban heat in summer. I wanted to create a place that invited my international friends to pass by and pause for a moment, to gather with like-minded people, get inspired and co-create. We have already come quite far with this vision. We have held one-day retreats and organised several small events here. This summer, we are going one step further: we have opened our house to an 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲, and we are very excited to welcome @pezothepoet from Toronto, Canada. Together we will organise an 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 in our garden on 𝟰 𝗔𝘂𝗴𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲!! You don't have to consider yourself an artist - let's just come together, share our thoughts and skills, and have some fun. And in the end: we are all artists, Phil has written a really nice book about this which I can highly recommend:-)! So if you are close to Valencia, or know somebody who is, get in touch. #artistinresidence #canada #spain #creativesummer

It was so much more than a holiday. It was a journey back to ourselves. At the end of June, I walked through the Alps with a small group of women, along the river Lech between Austria and Germany. Six days on foot. One of Europe's last wild rivers. The conversations. The long silences. The rain on day two that soaked us to the skin and somehow became the best day of all. For one week, we were nobody's mother, boss, daughter or partner. Just ourselves. #WomenWhoInspireTheWorld #WomensCoaching #WalkingInNature #Lechweg #Alps

What do a washing machine and artificial intelligence have in common? Both promised to give us our time back. Both, somehow, did the opposite. In the early decades of the last century, when the first electric appliances reached ordinary homes, the advertisements promised a housewife's paradise. Finally women could spend their afternoons on the sofa, reading or chatting with friends, while mothers’ new little helpers magically washed the clothes and the dishes. It never happened. The historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan called this the irony of household technology: the time the machines freed up was rapidly filled again. Standards rose, the helping hands disappeared, and in many cases work outside the house took its place. Today we can hardly picture how anyone could manage without them. The same thing is happening with AI. In the first months it felt like magic - a 40-page report drafted in a day, meeting notes ready in minutes. And yet none of us ended up with a three-day work week. Expectations climbed instead. I have never written more concept notes, summary reports and strategies than I do now. What used to be a nice-to-have, kept for the really important moments or projects, has become the new normal. For every small event I am now expected to produce an elaborate communication plan, when the real output is still a few social media posts and a press release. I notice a new digital divide opening inside teams, too, between the colleagues who have integrated the new tools into their daily work methodology and those who haven't. And in the end it all comes down to expectation management. Once we adjust to the new speed, no time is really saved. It just fills up again, and not always with things that matter. Twelve years ago, I became my own boss and chose freedom over security. One of the things I have always valued most is deciding on my own schedule: when and where I work, and also, how much. So productivity definitely matters to me. But so does protecting the space in my agenda for the people and the activities that are really important to me. And these boundaries have to be set by humans, not by the machines that make us faster.

What's your take on your Second Life?? Full article in my profile...