Also, there were other interesting shifts: with remote work setup and all the online and async technology we started to spend less time in live conversations, offline, together. With the development of delivery services and self-checkouts there is no more need to interact with people that much. You just push the button — and that works.

The challenge is though that we have evolved in the way that we are social, and this is so fundamental to human nature and wired into our hormone system, that it affects our mental and physical well-being. Also, there was a research that says that the relations and community are among the top factors affecting our happiness and longevity.

For me personally it has been also evident in the recent times how the significant decrease in interaction with people and lack of close relations resulted in a visible decrease of my happiness. Speaking about the work as well.

My fundamental belief is that we still need other people to do the work together, also because it’s much more fun. So, here are my personal tips.

1. Spend time in-person. Try to do it as much as possible for building connections, trust and having some fun and truly shared experiences. I was very much sceptical that sport challenges or quizzes can build trust in pre-covid era, now I realize how important and valuable it is.

2. Inject a little bit of weirdness. Being human means not being right all the time, being human means that you can create a mess (then clean it up — maybe), being human means you can do wild stuff together.

3. Create shared rules, norms, traditions. Sense of belonging matters, and one way to do that is to create a list of values and principles you commit to, list of shared beliefs that guide how you do things and reflect who you are and aspire to be. This is also important not only for sense of belonging, but also for a joint growth journey. And when we grow together, we create very tight bonds that can last for life.

4. Be curious. All these humans around have stories behind, just like you and I do. Why are they here in this moment? Why are they wearing this black suit for work? What keeps them up at night? And what are they thinking of all these AI things? Seeing human behind the role and Slack avatar and practicing a bit of empathy uncovers so much — and partially the reflections of ourselves.

5. Enjoy unpredictability. What makes human interaction so attractive and so addictive is a variable reward — humans are complex, and every time you don’t know what to expect 100%. While it can be frustrating, exactly this makes all of our interactions so meaningful to us and so important. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

   Humans are beautiful 🖤

So when he left the house this year, Kering office hosted an amazing exhibition featuring the shows invitations and some of his remarkable pieces. It was there only for two weeks and it was enough reason for me to buy tickets to Paris and explore.

So, let’s enjoy some of them.

#1. A message Demna received after he applied for internship. An automated message, do not reply. And we know the story after.

#2. Invitation to Winter’22 show. A used iPhone 6.

#3. The invitation to 54 Couture show.

#4. Ikea-like leather bag.

#5. A bag with A LOT of stuff.

#6. Signature sock shoe. We saw them (and copies of them) a lot on the streets.

#7. This is how you do layering. Balenciaga way.

#8. Balenciaga couture. Summer 2002, look 1.

#9.Summer 2024, look 88. Upcycled wedding dress made of vintage wedding dresses.

#10. Summer 2022, look 64.

Thank you, Demna 🖤.

Excited to see what you do at Gucci now.

It’s written a lot about the power of small steps and consistency, and this is yet another note about that. The Why behind writing this is incredibly simple — every time I practice this, it pays off, and it’s even a reminder to myself how much you can do and improve with the small steps applied consistently. Anna, please read it every time you are in doubt.

This story started (at least what I remember) from the picture that impressed me about 10 years ago and still top of mind:

How powerful it is, really! One side of this is that small improvement applied consistently leads to great outcomes, on the other hand if you consistently do just one percent less, you are also in the situation when the outcomes are becoming worse. This tells a lot about consistency and how much small effort, but done regularly over time, can create a huge change.

Another thing I often tell to myself and others, that the only difference and gap between the idea and the outcome is action. Small step every day, small fucking step every fucking day. Most of the greatest things are not the results of pure accident, but consistent iteration over time.

The only way to write a book is… to write a book, the only way to build connections with people is to build those connections, the only way to become fit in a healthy way is to focus on nutrition and exercise consistently. Armen Petrosian, one of the people who inspired me a lot, often writes in his blog: “Fast is slow without a break”. I couldn’t agree more — every time I started doing instead of just thinking, it led to incredible results. Another idea here is that you really need to spend time with the thing to truly integrate it into your life, so it’s natural. In this case I believe much more that if you can do small steps (i.e. 5 minutes of exercise, reading or whatever), the likelihood of it becoming a part of you is much higher. 

Some of the things this approach helped / helping me with so far:

• Running: i do it consistently (yes, more or less) since 2014, and started with modest 2 or 3k, but now I run at least 600k per year and my fav distance is 10k (and I even completed a half marathon, which I could never imagine);

• Losing weight: I did it twice, more than 10kg both times, and changing nutrition and exercise and apply it consistently helped to change the overall eating and movement habits. The thing that happened between these two losing weight periods is also a perfect illustration of 0.99 applied consistently, over time. In both cases every day changes are so minimal, that you sometimes even do notice them, while the outcome is dramatically different;

• Learning language: I’m currently on almost 600 days of strike in Duolingo. I started with Dutch, but then switched to Spanish. My effort is minimal, almost zero, sometimes it’s just 2-3 minutes per day, and of course I’m not fluent in the language, but now I can read and understand the context more or less, the menu is not a problem at all, and I can hold a simple conversation. Not a bad outcome for almost zero effort, right? 

• Writing poems: when COVID-19 pandemic started, some of my friends and I created a group chat where we were sharing our creative efforts every day. This way I wrote about 100 poems, some of them were good, some were mediocre at most, but every time it was a practice, and over time the way I write improved quite a lot as well as effort needed.

I tried the same with stretching, writing (a bit), yoga, all works, but some things just don’t stick. While you can integrate almost everything in your life, sometimes it’s just not your thing or not the right timing. But every time I look back at things, it reminds me where I started and how far I came. I probably won’t be the best in a lot of things, but I will definitely enjoy those that I can do and like to do. To optimism and small steps!

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