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...

"Is it true that people who grew up in the 80s cycled around freely, everywhere?" This question keeps appearing on my social media feeds lately, and today, on #WorldBicycleDay, it set off a few reflections. I can say with certainty that I have very fond memories of cycling through the forest with a friend when I was eight or nine. No mobile phones, no tracking, my parents had no idea where I was. But I knew exactly when I had to be home, so it was never a problem. I loved those little discovery tours. Even now, the first word I associate with my bike is freedom. Freedom of movement in the city, often faster than a car or anything else, soooooo flexible (just lock it to a tree or a lamppost), and with all the health benefits that come with exercise and fresh air. Funnily enough, my own children are not cyclists at all. I tried to pass on the enthusiasm, but they simply prefer to walk. You can feel the cultural context they grew up in. In Spain it is completely normal to walk a great deal, and lately there is a growing trend towards e-scooters, too. Still I still believe that bikes will be the future for many cities. I was struck by how close to car-free London felt when I visited again after many years. People say the same about Paris now. A real shift in how we move around our cities. So what is your personal association with cycling? 🚲