“Happy Mother’s Day!” – we hear and see everywhere today. Some of us are lucky to celebrate with our child(ren), some with their own mother. Some with the whole family, parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, siblings and other relatives and friends celebrating all mothers, grandmothers, step-mothers together. I am super grateful for my children who make every day special… Being their mom is absolutely the most wonderful experience… However, at the same time, no

Anxiety. Hope. Exhaustion. Optimism. Pessimism. Numbness. These are emotions I feel. And many more. All at the same time. I try to understand people around me. I try to understand people who I think are my friends. I try to understand people who once I thought were my friends. But all the questions go back to one: what was a friendship in the past, is really a friendship today? Will it be a friendship in the future, too? The Past. In this context, “Past” means B.C. Before CO

It was March 4, 2020, when my almost empty flight from Copenhagen, Denmark landed in Budapest, Hungary. The pandemic already had been around us, and already had impacted my travel plans for the rest of March and April — but I had no idea the magnitude of its impact on our lives in the following months. I think, nobody had. March 4, 2020 was 300 days ago. Before that, I had had a life with frequent travel opportunities: mostly for work, but also to relax. In 2019, I traveled

I miss so many things these days. First and foremost, friends and family abroad. With these travel restrictions, I feel I am in a cage. A pleasant one, for sure, safe and sound, with family, and we have lots of joy together. It could be much worse, I know. I cannot complain… But still… I miss traveling. I miss eating out. I miss zillion other things. But today, I had a moment… A moment when I pretended everything was ok. When I could believe everything would be all right agai

Wednesday morning. Wake up at 3:30am to catch my flight at 6am. Work in Antwerp and Brussels Wed and Thu. Thursday evening, two conferences and several meetings later: let’s go home! Massive flight delay on the way back, due to thunderstorms above Europe. Landing at BUD at 1am then driving home. Almost 3am when I finally get to sleep. Actually this is Fri morning already… Less than three hours later, at 5:40am Fri morning: “Mum, mum! Good morning! Mum is back home! Mum is bac

<img decoding="async" src="https://aghy.me/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/working-out-loud-book.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-156 lazyload" width="164" height="250"/> If you haven’t read John Stepper’s book Working Out Loud I highly recommend it. As I was reading it recently, I had to realize, I’ve been doing exactly this in the last fifteen (or even more) years. Probably, not that conscious though. Reading the book, I did not only had numerous “Aha!” moments, but also decided to c

As a mother of three who runs her own business and travels a lot and still keeps sanity I get the question quite often: “How do you do that?” To be honest, sometimes I don’t know :) When I analyze how we live, our family schedule, the way me do exception management (there’s always something unexpected happening in a family of five!) I always conclude the number one “secret formula” is time management. My task lists I have two primary task type: work and personal. I know there

When I was a child, I was always amazed to see the airplanes flying on the sky. I dreamed about a life when I can afford flying over the clouds and see the world. Nobody I knew that time had ever taken a plane, so I didn’t know how it feels and what it looks like in the inside, and couldn’t discuss my dream with anyone. But I didn’t give up. I kept dreaming. Fast forward more than three decades, I am thinking about this dream today. As I have this title “Travel Craziness” wri

Autumn travel season is here. I am in Haarlem, Netherlands these days, speaking at one of my favorite conferences. On the way here, an old lady was sitting next to me on the plane. A typical elderly grandmother-like lady (or great-grandmother), with smiling eyes – however, feeling discomfort during the whole flight. She was nervous, maybe it was even her first time to fly. I tried to talk to and comfort her as much as I could, but the only language she spoke was Romanian whic

In the last few days, I was reading Sheryl Sandberg’s book: Lean In — Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. (Thank you my friend, Vanessa for the recommendation!) I am planning to write a separate post about the book itself, but one sentence of Sheryl resonated me a lot. She writes: “Guilt management can be just as important as time management for mothers.” Guilt. I am sure you know this feeling. Everyone does. I am not an exception either. When I travel and leave my kids home —

Being quite addicted to traveling (yes, I have to admit that!), I love taking my luggage and heading to the airport, visiting new countries or getting back to familiar places. Although I was over 25 when I took my first flight, travel became an addiction soon. I’ve been to more than thirty countries in the last few years, visiting some of them dozens of times. I have friends, sisters, and brothers around the world. I always look forward to seeing them and spend some time toge

People are often surprised when they discover my rather old-fashioned pastime of sewing. I think they find it a bit at odds with my tech-head professional activities. Yet, what could be a better balance, than that of absorbing yourself in both the old and the new? How fortunate to be living in an era where both can be embraced and enjoyed! In one day, I can be working with cutting edge technology and then immersing myself in the age old act of making each tiny stitch. One act

‘Thought Leader’ and ‘Influencer’ are very much buzz words across the digital space (that’s another one!). Very few people who become leaders in this field actually set out to self-style themselves to be a thought leader or influencer in my opinion. I think they just did their thing, shared it, and people began to be interested and a following developed. Digital marketing has made it an aspirational value to be a leader of this style. We are encouraged to now position ourselv

Friendship… there are many kinds… I have friends of many years who I met at the university, through my work, through my family, social circles, activities and of course, those who I have made in the digital space. Can someone you have never actually met become a friend? I have found that yes, it is possible to build a great friendship that way. Before the Internet, there were pen friends. If you are old enough — maybe you can remember being encouraged to engage with a pen fri

One of my favorite Facebook pages, A Mighty Girl, posted a great article recently which really resonated with me as a mom and as a mentor: I’ve mentioned their page before and the reason I especially like it is that it is specifically for our young girls and young women. Their messages are always positive and empowering — you can never have enough of that at any age and for our next up-and-coming generations there are some really wonderful role models and attitude modeling wh

Recently, I’ve been asked this question: “My productivity has been shot the past two days. I am feeling pretty overwhelmed, alone, and depressed. What do you do when you are feeling this way?” I answered this personally of course, and I thought, this is actually something which we all deal with from time to time, so I thought I would share my expanded thoughts here on my blog. When I analyse what I do, I’ve found that it is actually a little strategy comprising of three thing

I share the (quite common) belief that if you don’t have a habit of open and continual communication with your kids, then neither will they with you. I don’t intend to simplify the syndrome typical to many kids who, upon reaching teenage years, think that the last (cool) person on earth to talk to is their mom. What I do hope though, is as my children grow, and grow away from me, when their sense of independence and new influences begin to take precedence, that they will stil

Making a plan vital in order to be able to meet all the children’s needs. If you have to drive the kids to school as well as afternoon activities like we do, it needs to be feasible. First, because you cannot be in two places at the same time. Second, because driving always needs time and you have to be able to allocate this time every week, for years. This is one reason why I work as an entrepreneur — working from home gives me the freedom to be able to spend the afternoons

Some of you might know that I’ve been a Certified Scrum Master for several years. Being passionate about agile techniques has its own benefits in my professional work, but also in my everyday life. Sure, we don’t live our family life in sprints, and don’t start our days with stand-up meetings. But we definitely have some nice challenges that we solve by using agility: I am a working mom and usually travel a lot, about one week per month on average. Sometimes it’s less, but so

The majority of professional women work in a male-dominated industry sector. In areas where the majority of the workforce is made up of women, quite often the power base is held by male bosses. In the IT sector, where I have spent my entire career, it is certainly the case that women are in the minority at all levels of business. We frequently see reports reminding us that women still generally earn less than male counterparts. We know that less women reach positions of senio