So, picture this: I live in a relatively new house in what I thought was a quiet and safe neighborhood. The kind of place where you’d never expect anything bad to happen. Our houses are a bit on the pricey side, which added to the illusion of security. That’s why, when my garden gate broke, I didn’t rush to fix it. Instead, I did a quick fix with some binders, thinking it would do the Read more
Productivity. The eternal quest to do more without increasing the available resources. Whether it is through new apps, off site leadership training programs, cold showers, intermittent fasting or a combination of the above, people seem to be obsessed with living better, leaner, faster, more effective and more efficient. And, in all honesty, I think I am among them. Why all the Productivity Fuzz? So what’s all the fun? Or fuzz? What is that glimmering pot Read more
As we are nearing the end of 2020, I would like to look back to the “Avocado case” one more time. This small project was something I worked on in 2019 and it brought great traction with many of those that saw it. In all honesty, it surprised me big time. I sure liked the idea we came up within the team but never imagined that months later, people would continue to reach out to Read more
So… I had a week off. Which I can recommend to anybody. I know it is too bad that you can’t fly away to the holiday destination of your dreams but really, take some days off. You deserved it, looking at your performance under COVID working from home during the past few months. Now whenever I go on holiday, I tend to bring my laptop (okay, I had one call I had to attend) to Read more
Upfront note: I am not writing this article to curse the airline concerned. I understand these are strange times and strange things happen as such. I hope we can all learn from it and reconsider how we approach the ones we care about, both in personal and business relations. We had planned a trip to Italy in June.One that we really looked forward to.We had to cancel it. Okay, Corona is way worse for many Read more
For months now, probably even years, my website (williamvanzweeden.nl) has been running as a WordPress application, hosted on my NAS. In order to get it up and running, I installed the pretty-much-one-click-install-package that is available in Package Center. Works like a charm! For sure, the response rates of my webserver weren’t always super fast but hey, since this was mostly a hobby-project, nobody cared about it. I was happy too until I decided to make Read more
Okay, I’ll keep this one short. However, I do want to share a quick overview of the most interesting books I read over the past few months. I’ll admit it straight away that the majority of them are probably known to you by know but that doesn’t mean they still can’t be on my list of favourite books. Before we dive into the list of books, I do like to mention I have read most Read more
Individualism. The topic of this article has been on my list of articles to write for a long time. So, the fact that you are actually seeing this is, to me, quite an achievement. The reason it took so long to get it out was because I feel I touch quite a big problem in society. Here’s the thing: I believe today’s western society is structurally broken and individualism is one of the major causes. Read more
I know what you’re thinking. Not another COVID-19 blog. Yet, if I drew your attention, feel free to carry on as I describe how I used COVID-19, and the whole working from home period to gear up my life in ways I had not expected. First of all, I have to admit I sometimes feel left out of the rain while scrolling through Medium. I am an avid productivity geek and read as many productivity-improving Read more
I guess I should start by congratulating all of you who weren’t used to being on multiple conference calls a day. Congrats! You have all survived a very steep learning curve over the past few weeks or probably months. Good job. I guess something that is bound to a steep learning curve is a bumpy ride. You’ve likely been educating yourself on the job and on the fly, meaning you do not necessarily get all Read more