<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

As a mother of three, unexpected things are constantly part of our lives. Someone gets sick. Something is needed for the school — the very next day. Something gets lost. You name it. The only way I’ve found to work for us is to expect these unexpected things. Of course, I don’t mean to worry all day and night about what can get wrong the next minute. Not at all! But getting prepared, and being flexible to make a plan “B” or plan “C”… or even plan “Z” (the alphabet has 26 lett

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

As you might know from my previous post, I was over 20 when I started to learn English. Before that, I had to study Russian (yeah, I was born during the years of communism in Hungary), German as well as French in the school — but you can guess I don’t really speak any of them (maybe German a little bit). When I went to my first job interview during my early university years, I got a one-page English text to test how much I can understand it. I tried to read it at least, then

I have to admit it’s not easy to focus here while I’m writing these words. Although I’m sitting in my home office, there are too many distractions. My youngest boy is sleeping in the room next to me, and there’s a good chance he wakes up in only a few minutes. My eldest son is watching the Olympic games next to me, and one of his judo friends is fighting now. Therefore my son is more than excited. I guess he’s got an almost as big adrenaline rush as if he were the one on the

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

Like any journey, achieving professional success can take a round-about route. In my mentoring work, it is not uncommon to hear of frustration when dealing with this reality. We all tend to imagine (especially when we are young), that the point from which we start out, to the point of reaching our professional goal(s), is a straight line, upward, trajectory. For some people, this can be the case, but this is rare. In most cases, circumstances occur which have the potential to

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

The English have a saying ‘It’s all Greek to me’. It means: I have understood so little of what you’re saying that it is as if you are speaking to me in a foreign language. Have you ever felt like that when listening to a speaker? I know that this is often experienced, for instance, at a workshop or a conference, especially where the subject matter being delivered is IT related. Sometimes, as an audience member, I find the content delivery engrossing, only to look around me t