Stress. How to get good at it

"The message that stress is always harmful, and life is fundamentally toxic—that is, I think, a big misread on reality." (Prof. Kelly McGonigal)

As my return to work draws near, as the challenges of balancing childcare, family and professional life, start again, I can feel it, it is the elephant in the room. 

It is the knowledge that stress will come back in our daily life as my husband and I start again the ballet of balancing it all, this time in four: a 5 months old, a nearly 3 year old, long days at work, nursery germs, erm, I meant nursery schools et all. 

But luckily, being this my second maternity leave I think I know better and I hope we are more prepared for what`s to come, for the “house of cards” feeling that majority of parents know very well. And I know that I have been in the best possible school in these past few years, the school of life with children (if you are not a parent, just think karma and trust me :-)

So in preparation for this, beyond securing all the house help I could, I have done some reading on it. Yes. I researched the topic stress.

The month, the week and the night before each and every exam I took in university, before each test in my old beloved Liceo Scientifico, were filled with it. And yet, the more under pressure I felt, the more I knew that if I kept it under control it would help me to perform. As an adult, before every presentation, opening speech I had, I knew it was good to feel that "pressure". Yet it stressed me. I tried not to but did end up complaining about it. Was that “good” stress?

I ended up with an emergency operation when I was 19 because my stomach twisted, literally. Doctors said back then I was lucky as they could put everything back in order easily, I was just left with a scar and the knowledge that this is a very common thing to happen and it can be caused by “stress”.

The stress we experience when we see our loved ones suffer, when we lose someone, when we expect the results of a test, or even simply when our kids are sick. That can`t be surely "good" stress?

So how many types of stress are there and how can we recognize them? Stress is the lining of every day life, we need to learn to live in balance with the pressure that comes from it and that we experience every day.

What follows is an extract of one of the most interesting articles I have read about stress, my main take-away is the following:

"If you understand that what you experience as stress is the biological mechanism by which you are going to learn and grow and develop your strength, now that’s a totally different way to understand why your heart is pounding, or why you’re having trouble falling asleep at night because you’re thinking about something stressful that happened."

For a full list of my summer reading on the topic, just PM me!

“We’ve been so inundated by this belief, this mindset, and this message that stress is toxic, that stress is harmful, that you should avoid or reduce stress, that in moments of feeling stressed out, we think: ‘I shouldn’t be stressed out right now.'”

“And just like with a placebo effect, when you recognize that your body and brain are capable of responding in a way that is helpful or healing, you actually enable it to happen more effectively.”

 “I  was beaten over the head with the concept that stress is a toxic state, that while helpful in the short-term, has long-term effects that are damaging. This was based on a lot of animal research from Hans Selye (see below), which doesn’t really translate to the experience of being human. Ultimately, I think it was all based on a misunderstanding of, or a very narrow definition of stress in terms of what happens in your body and in your brain. I had been taught that every time you experience anything we would call stress, your body shifts into this state that is fundamentally toxic—that flight or fight survival mode, which impairs your insight or ability to make decisions, that’s toxic for your body, that increases inflammation and hormones that in turn suppress your immune system and kill brain cells. We’ve all heard that.

If you go back 10 years to look at interviews I did about stress, I was saying all those same things in magazines and newspapers.

I’ve come to realize that there are many things about that point of view that are not true. The most basic one that’s faulty is the premise that there’s only one stress response, and that every time you experience stress you’re in a toxic state. That’s fundamentally not true. The body has a whole repertoire of stress responses. Sometimes when we experience stress we’re experiencing a state that is healthy, that makes us resilient, that makes us more caring and connected, that makes us more courageous. The experience might be physically similar in some ways to stress states that we would describe as debilitating anxiety or other negative stress states, but they are not toxic. There are a lot of different ways to experience stress.” 

(Prof. Kelly McGonigal, The Upside of Stress)

Full article here.

M.

Do – Rest – Do

I have always been a fairly active person. The to-do-list and whats-the-deadline type. When I hear people say “I have nothing to do today” my face turns into a question mark.  Even if for whatever reason I am off work, I have always plenty to do. 

Years ago I would have not hesitated one minute to think that obviously, if you want to get anywhere, you need to get and keep going, and fast if possible. In short, I was more focused on the goal and less on the journey. Thank God, like everyone, I aged, and learnt. 

I have learnt that rest is as important as action, and that our bodies, as well as our minds, need the occasional day off to better perform. How much time do you allocate to the “dolce far niente” and how much to planning and doing? Do you run parallel projects close to your official job? What do you do in your "time off"?

Today, as a working mum of two, I see my time off work as a good occasion to get more done, but also to take a little break and think of myself. A massage, sitting by the lake doing nothing, one hour on a book during the day? Hey why not. My personal to-do-lists are now done on a weekly basis and I give myself plenty of  more time to “get there”, remembering that if I am well rested I can get double done, be more patient, and walk through my day with a smile.

I still believe in the “getting things done” and “making things happen” motto as, incredibly, when I step back and let things go…well, either I delegate or things just don`t happen! A new investment, a trip planned, a real estate project, fixing a broken toy, writing, sorting family pictures, volunteering for an association, keeping in touch with old and new friends or work acquaintances, keeping strong bonds with the people I love. This too requires effort. As a wife and a mum, I now prioritize family time above everything, but still try and cut out of my day a few pockets for what I call my “hobbies”.

So how do you find the right balance between "slowing down" while "making things happen"?

A few learnings from the past few years (no I do not manage to stick to them all the time, I just try :-)

1. Private victories come before public ones. Keep the promises you make to yourself (that work out, that language course, that healthier diet, etc)
2. If you have a good idea, try to take some action right away (a new house, starting your own company, changing job, etc)
3. Don`t get defensive.
4. If you are serious about something, do not lose attention. Stay focused.
5. There is something valuable to be learned from everything. Make it a habit of finding it.
6. If you are achieving 100% of your goals you should think bigger.
7. If an opportunity arises, seize it.
8. Put yourself in other people`s shoes.
9. Take time for yourself and to be yourself if you feel your body is running out of fuel. The magic recipe for me is sleep (with a 2 months old that`s often interesting!), exercise (Pilates) and shiatsu.
10. Cut as much as possible time spent with negative or false people. They are drainers!
11. If your husband says you are doing too much...you probably are :-)
12. Use diplomacy but be honest to yourself, and to others, some won`t like it, some will thank you.

How to MakeThings Happen in Your Life

Rest: The importance of slowing down

M.

Quiet. The Power of Introverts.

A few months ago, I sat at lunch with two colleagues who, like me, volunteer some of their time for our company`s “women business network” and its events. We discussed chairmanship options for one of our upcoming events and general public speaking-related topics. To the outside world, the three of us would have probably come across as extrovert women discussing business. How wrong can perceptions be? All three of us, in different ways, would probably come across as extroverts in our daily business life too but what we were discussing that day, besides the event, was the effort that is required in our world, to "become" an extrovert, along with the new book by Susan Cain, “Quiet”,  its great success and the meaning of this phenomenon.

When asked, years ago, if I was an extrovert, my initial reply was “yes!”. Surely I am not an introvert? Am I?  I don`t really like standing up on stage, giving a speech, drawing too much attention to myself or wearing bright colors or loud jewelry. Typical signs of an extrovert for many psychology tests. I do like time alone, I like to listen before I make up my mind and as a teenager I would shy away from too much attention. But I now have no problem giving presentations, standing up on stage with a microphone, talking to a lot of different people at events and parties, organizing social get-togethers or feeling comfortable around others. So, what happened? I trained myself over the years, I guess. Now I  fall within the “ambivalent” group.

At a more or less unconscious level,  society sends out clear signs that associate extroverts with winners, with happy people and with people who are successful in business. Society rewards extroversion, unlike Eastern European and Japanese cultures and all the cultures of regions where Orthodox Christianity, Buddhism, Sufism etc. prevail, where much more importance is placed on introversion than extroversion.

“Extroverts think out loud and on their feet; they prefer talking to listening, rarely find themselves at a loss for words and occasionally blurt out things they never meant to say. They are comfortable with conflict but not with solitude.”

“Introverts, by contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings but, after a while, they wish they were at home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family.”

However, humans are complex and unique and because introversion-extroversion varies along a continuum, people may have a mixture of both orientations. A person who may be an introvert in one situation may be an extrovert in another and people can learn to act "against type" in certain situations, falling within what Cain calls “ambivalent types”.

Can introverts be leaders? Is our cultural preference for extroversion in the natural order of things or is it socially determined? Should you devote your energies to activities that come naturally or should you stretch yourself? 

As a recent business TV commercial, featuring an office worker losing out on a plum assignment ran:

BOSS TO TED AND ALICE: “Ted, I am sending Alice to the sales conference because she thinks faster on her feet than you”

TED: (speechless) …

BOSS:  So, Alice, we will send you on Thursday….

TED: She does not!

As Cain puts it, “If we assume that quiet and loud people have roughly the same number of good (and bad) ideas, then we should worry if the louder and more forceful people always carry the day. This would mean that an awful lot of bad ideas prevail while good ones get squashed.” Studies of group dynamics suggest that this is exactly what happens. We perceive talkers as smarter than quiet types even though intelligence test scores reveal this perception to be inaccurate.

Introverts can indeed be leaders. It might be more difficult in our society for them to emerge as such but once there, they will have a sharp set of skills an extrovert probably won’t be able to count on. An introvert leader is likely to show more empathy for his team and be willing to listen to their ideas and implement suggestions. This could motivate the team to work harder. Extrovert leaders, on the other hand, have a natural ability to inspire, will end up doing all the talking and might be able to get better results from more passive workers.

The above topic is now a line of research, still in its early days.

So, should we devote our efforts to improving in activities that don’t come naturally to us? Pushing ourselves out there if we are born or have a tendency to be introverts and trying to keep quiet and listen more if we are born extroverts? 

Research on the topic is ongoing and, while we wait for more studies, we could probably say that becoming aware of who we are and how we come across and pushing ourselves a little further surely can`t hurt us.

Are you an extrovert or an introvert? Take this quick informal quiz to find out!

M.

Sources: Quiet (S.Cain), Wikipedia

Simplify your Life: Mind De-Cluttering Tips

I think we have all been there. Looking at our desk at home, at work, at our personal space anywhere and thinking “Do I really need all this? It is getting a bit cluttered here…” Then looking at our diary and to do list and wondering: “What should I prioritize? What`s the most efficient way of tackling this?”

A life uncluttered by most of the things we fill our life with - tasks or things, would leave more space for what really matters. Many of us know that feeling of tidiness and control that comes after a good clean-up or declutter session, being it for physical spaces or situations. Decluttering spaces and parts of our life is a good exercise for body and mind.

"A life that isn’t constant busy-ness and rushing, but leaves time for thinking, creating, finding new successful paths for your business and for your private life, connecting with people we love or simply admire" is probably the aim of many of us.

Decluttering your diary, your home and work space does lead to a less cluttered mind. Many of the distractions and commitments we have pull on us in more ways than we realize. I will post what I have learnt and I am experiencing with regards to “physical decluttering” in my next blog post. 

For this week`s post, I have a question in mind:

How do I become more effective and avoid mind and life clutter?

I have attended a few interesting workshops on efficiency, focus and brain power in the past few years. I have been asked several times at work and in my private life how I manage to "squeeze" several key activities in a work day while dedicating time to nurturing and creating business relationships. 

I do not manage to be successful on the above every day of course. But when I do it is often because of a few key suggestions I have picked up along the way and made mine.

A few key principles I have found very useful have been mentioned by different speakers and similarly expressed by Stephen Covey, American educator, author and businessman, in his most popular book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. 

The “habits” or principles I like to keep in mind daily are the following:

• Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind. It means to begin each day, task, or project with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination.
• Habit 3: Put first things first
• Habit 4: Seek first to understand, then to be understood
• Habit 6: Synergize. This is the habit of “creative cooperation”. It is teamwork, open-mindedness, and the adventure of finding new solutions to old problems.

From Mind De-Cluttering to Focus and Productivity

How can I clean up and declutter my mind from too many commitments and activities? Again I have found very interesting what I have learnt in past workshops on focus, efficiency and time management.                

• Online distractions. There are a lot of amazing things we can do and find online. Learning from inspiring people, keeping up-to-date with the world news, keeping in touch with friends and family, but also wasting hours on social media, TV, games. As usual, we are in the driver`s seat of our lives so some self control and detached judgment of how we are using our time can help a lot. 
• Time for what is important and over-committing. One concept that has often lately come up for me is the rocks, pebbles and sand metaphor. If you put sand into a cup of water first, and then the pebbles and the rocks, you won’t get everything in.  But if you put the rocks in first, and then the pebbles and, lastly, the sand – the smaller items will fill in the gaps and you will be able to do all of them.  The same goes in life – start with the big priorities and then do the medium and then the smaller items. We have to make time for what’s important to us: time with our kids, time with our friends, partner, time for creating, time for exercise. The rest should be pushed aside to make time. It’s easy to fill up our lives because there are so many things that many do which sound amazing, holidays, sports, get-togethers, projects, etc. And they are often amazing experiences indeed, but by adding so many things to our lives, we are subtracting space. Often I get carried away and would love to do so much more, then remind myself of the rocks metaphor and try and stay “centered” on mine and my family`s priorities and choices, at least for some time. 
• It’s tempting to fill in every little minute of the day with productivity or distractions. Don’t. Leave some emptiness here and there: it turns out it is also a great different way of being productive.
• We often overemphasize productivity. Focus, priorities and effectiveness are more important. So is a nice walk home to reorganize thoughts. Even if catching that bus would have saved you 10 minutes. Do not always rush. It took me years to learn this, but I am getting there.
• Our attention and focus are our most valuable possession. Let`s give it as a gift to the people we love most and to the work that matters most. Distractions and downtime are also a good part of life, for me, they represent the sand of the quoted metaphor.

How many times have we written our to-do list for the day…and then got to the end of the day without having been able to cross off the list half of our to-do`s?

Leaving aside structured working days full of meetings, conversations, work lunches, phone calls, and so on, there are days in which we envisage full focus and productivity to get to the bottom of our to do lists. Then the end of the day comes and that list has probably even got longer.

Planning in detail our “less-structured” days can be a great habit, but not always is synonymous of daily productivity I have found. Why? Because there are too many variables in our days, new urgent priorities, a full inbox, a sick child, a traffic jam, a previous decision that impacts in the wrong way on our day, activities that end up being more time consuming than we had planned. So mostly, if we experience the above we end up our day with a feeling of frustration.

One trick that I have learnt for myself and that on most of my “unstructured” days works, is the “2 hours plan”. Two solid hours or two slots of an hour each during the day set apart for that to do list. Plan for these two hours and block them in your diary, ideally in the first part of the day. Plan also for some extra 30 minutes at the end of the day if you think you might need a backup plan. During these two hours try and respect every (realistic) activity you have planned, no room for distractions, emails, phone, procrastination, etc.

So what activities should be done in that time?

• Important but non urgent activities. Once done you will be able to spend time on the different “fire drills” of your day without feeling you still have all those important to do`s to cross off your list and enjoy that welcome and familiar “sense of control” for the rest of the day. 
• Long and complex activities (see rocks, pebbles, sand metaphor)
• Core activites, ie, all the main activities of your job. If you are working mostly on a project, leave all the admin aside and focus part of the two hours slot on this project.

I won`t lie, it is not easy to stick to any of these and be always disciplined, but it helps a lot to have all this in mind on the one hand, and to let things go every once in a while on the other hand. 

We are fully immersed in too often busy and imperfect lives, but we can learn (a lot) and keep becoming daily better and happier versions of ourselves.

M.

Source: S.Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Expat life, culture clash and cognitive biases

I am an Expat. Not that I ever thought about it in these terms when 8 years ago I traded life in Milan for life in London and purchased that one-way ticket. It never occurred to me back then that leaving your country is a much bigger deal than one would think.

It has been an amazing experience and should I go back I would not change a thing, but the effects of moving abroad might impact you and your closest ones for ever. I had no real reason to leave, I had an interesting permanent job in a beautiful city, many great friends I had grown up with, a flat in a lively area and was enjoying life. But well, I wanted more, experience new places and life in another country for a start. The allure and spice of life abroad and the words of an ex boss who had relocated to London with his family years before, did it. During a lunch in a busy restaurant near Trafalgar square, 8 years ago, he asked me "If not now, when?". 6 months later I was boarding my plane.

It is safe to say that, like many, I became an expat (or just a “world citizen” as a friend would put it) by coincidence.

One of the things that surprise you at the beginning of your life abroad is how differently at times people do and perceive things: a different language structure helps to emphasize this too. I put this down to culture and country of origin the first few years, but 8 years and 3 countries later I can say that in my experience often culture and origin have very little to do with behaviours. Of course we all carry  traits that come straight from what we learnt as children and from where we grew up. But how much does that really influence the adult life of many educated, well travelled people? As I did not move abroad to bring my motherland with me, I have been determined to find out more.

Most importantly, as an Italian married to a German (also an ex Londoner), living in Switzerland and raising a trilingual/tri-cultural family, it has been imperative for my own survival and sanity to get to the bottom of things when it comes to personalities, backgrounds and unconscious biases.

I have had different occasions in the past few years that made me think about what makes people say and behave in a certain way. My typical Italian impulsiveness has long gone and has been replaced by a more open, curious attitude (ok, on most days!). I often take a quick step back and think "what made him/her say that?" Background, personality and where people are in life in that moment are some of the components I believe play a big role in people`s responses to life, rather than where they are from (too simple, too stereotyped), and most times, the real reason is one and only:  unconscious and cognitive biases, I am thinking of you!

So what are they, how do we deal with them and above all which ones do you recognize yourself in?

I am no expert but I have done quite a bit of reading recently on the topic; here is what I have found.

Wikipedia defines cognitive biases as “a pattern of deviation in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion. Individuals create their own "subjective  social reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of social reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behaviour in the social world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality.”

So in short, cognitive biases represent the way our brain distorts reality. But why do we do it?  Our brains are daily bombarded by hundreds of thousands of sensorial inputs and in order to let warnings emerge (especially danger warnings) from the background noise, it has learnt over millennia to adopt some shortcuts.

Normally these are correct shortcuts which allow us to interpret reality quickly and efficiently, but some of these shortcuts lead us to dead-end roads, wrong conclusions on the world around us: these are called “cognitive biases”.

Here is a list of cognitive biases that we stumble upon more often. 

I have picked the ones I believe are more common. There is nothing we can really do to change them or change our perception either, but as always, acknowledging and being aware of how and why we perceive things in a certain way could make our life a lot easier.  

1. Affect heuristic

Our perception of reality is particularly influenced by what we most desire or what we are going through in that precise moment of our lives. 

This is also very true for the many challenges that expat life presents, we perceive realities in a new country also based on how we are feeling and we are giving more importance to in that moment.  

Once you choose to buy a new car, won`t you start seeing that model everywhere? 

2. Bandwagon bias

Our tendency to develop an idea based not so much on its actual reality but in relation to the number of people who share our same idea.

Or to put it differently, sometimes we like to follow without realizing we are doing it.

Especially as expats we will surround ourselves with people who are similar to us. Not necessarily people from the same country we come from, in fact, often the opposite I have come to realize. By sharing the same opinions we will often only reinforce our beliefs in it. This is where being open to confrontation and to constructive feedback from outside of our “circles” comes in handy. 

3. Confirmation bias

It is in our nature to give more relevance to those pieces of information only that can confirm our initial thesis.

It is apparently very easy to be in denial when it comes to this one bias…

4. Clustering illusion

One of the most powerful weapons our brain has is the capacity to spot "patterns" via which we get to quick conclusions (stereotypes, anyone?)

As expats for example, how many times have we been tempted to link behaviours or attitudes of people to their nationality? 

5. Hyperbolic discounting

The hyperbolic discounting is an attitude, the habit to choose immediate gratification over long term satisfaction.

This attitude is often present in 3 main areas of our lives:

• Food choices
• Savings/investments
• Career 

In an experiment of a few years ago scientists asked a group of people to choose a snack, fruit or chocolate, as their snack of the day and their snack in a week. 

As a future snack, 74% of the people chose the fruit. As the snack of the day 70% chose chocolate. Would they have chosen differently the following week if given the choice again? This shows we tend to overestimate our future abilities but the truth is that it is only by changing today`s attitudes that we can hope to be improved versions of ourselves in the future.

Similar experiments have been carried out by scientists on babies and children, the book “Brain Rules for Baby” (J. Medina) has quite a few interesting examples on this topic.

6. Negativity bias

We basically tend to give more importance to the negative aspects of our lives than to the positive ones.

A quick step back to re-evaluate a negative situation (a fight with your partner, a missed promotion, etc) and to regain perspective could only lead to a better life balance. Yep. Not easy to do on the bad days.

7. Placebo effect

This is one of the most famous cognitive bias and my favourite: it consists of trying to influence an event by convincing yourself that that particular event will at some point happen. I call it positive thinking and it does not sound too negative, does it?

8. Reactance

Simply put, the desire to do the opposite that others would like us to do.

It comes from the will to defend one`s freedom of choice. A suggestion could be to avoid to impose a single choice but to offer a range of options that, obviously, go in the desired direction.

Disclaimer: It applies to many situations in life of course. As the mother of a toddler I classify these biases as `tantrums`.

Yes, adults have them too, they are just called in many different ways…

9. Information bias    

Gathering information. Gathering yet more information. Then feeling absolutely stuck and undecided. This insecurity is caused by the information bias, the belief that the more information we have available, the better our choices will be.

Truth is, often the overload of information does not lead us to efficient solutions that work for us. You are the only one in the driver`s seat of your life.  

10. Galatea effect

This bias goes hand in hand with self-fulfilling prophecies. It occurs when a success (or a failure) of a person is influenced by his or her self-esteem.  

In other words, our successes are often determined by how much we believe in ourselves. Others and/or what we consider foreign cultures to our own have very little to do on this matter.

Conclusions

So which bias did you like best? Does any of these particularly influence your life? And your life as an expat or your opinions about the so called `culture clashes`? Which ones have caused you trouble? 

I have personally identified a few that over the years might have influenced my days and my decisions. I am observing them, recognizing them and learning to “manage” them when possible.

Are you ready to start your weekly “bias count”?!

M.  

Next World's Fair: Expo 2015, Milan

So what is an Expo? What can we expect from the next World Exhibition? A little bit of history first. On November 23, 2010, the event was officially announced by the International Exhibitions Bureau (BIE). The BIE General Assembly in Paris decided in favour of the Milanese candidature on March 31, 2008. The Expo Committee later chose that the event will be held under the theme Feeding the planet, energy for life.

Expo 2015 is the next scheduled Universal Exposition after Expo 2012, and will be hosted by Milan, Italy, between 1 May and 31 October 2015. This will be the second time Milan hosts the exposition, the first being the Milan International of 1906.

`The Expo will explore the theme "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life" and is expected to attract over 20 million visitors to its 1.1 million square meters of exhibition area. Over the six-month period, Milan will become a global showcase where more than 140 participating countries will show the best of their technology that offers a concrete answer to a vital need: being able to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone, while respecting the Planet and its equilibrium.` Read more here. 

As I am planning to visit the Expo with my family, I tried to understand whether this is an event that children can also enjoy and learn from. Turns out the organizers did plan in great detail on this too, here is what I have found:

Expo & Children: TheChildren`s Park

The Children’s Park is designed as a forest, housing eight installations, each inspired by the theme. Sabina Cantarelli has curated the Children`s Park project and creation.

Sabina, can you give us three reasons to visit?

Three main reasons to visit the park are the setting, the games and the interaction. Firstly, Expo Milano 2015 aims to offer children a place where they can learn and have fun at the same time. Secondly, the Children’s Park is packed full of games and activities to get children actively involved. Lastly, it provides a wonderful opportunity to develop relationships through the installations, where they are encouraged to interact with others.

What is your vision of the future?

The concept of the Children’s Park is that only through the knowledge of others and the environment and by working together can we solve some of the major challenges that the planet is facing. It’s a powerful message delivered in a powerful setting. (Content by expo2015.org)

Milan – Zurich with SBB:  Milan is only 280 km away from Zurich and from 2017 SBB and Trenitalia will launch the new fast train that will cover that distance in 2 hours. Until then, direct trains run daily every two hours from Zurich HB and will get you to Stazione Centrale in just under 4 hours. A quick cab ride will take you to the city center. Here more details to plan your trip. 

Expo Prices: Two adults one child, open ticket 69 €, one adult open ticket 32€.

Most sought after pavilions: Rumour has it that a few pavilions, with their exhibitions and events, will be a once in a life time must attend: United Arab Emirates, China, Italy, France, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, UK, Switzerland, Czech Republic.

What to do in Milan:

Over the years many friends and colleagues have asked me what to do and where to go while visiting Milan. Here is a quick snapshot of what I would recommend doing in my home town (yes, including the shopping!). 

And here an interesting article (in Italian) with a list if 10 `secret` beauties in the city. 

Enjoy and don`t forget to share your experience!

Simplify your life

The title of this post might be misleading. I am not inviting you to get rid of all the unnecessary items that clutter our lives (although that might require some attention too...) rather, I am often looking for ways to simplify and make our days more efficient (endless to do lists I have you in mind as I write this!) and I'd like to share some latest tips I have come across.

Have you already happend to hear of the `The 4 hour week` one of the New York Times best sellers? If you haven`t, I suggest to start by checking out its blog.

I found it an interesting read and while of course not everyone will be lucky enough to make millions while reducing their 40 plus hour week into a 4 hour week, there are certainly some good tips and useful suggestions in here that we could consider.

For example, how many hours a month do we spend to de-clutter our desks, at home and at work? We will talk about the physical clutter in a separate post, but what about all those emails, reservations, bills, planning that needs to be dealt with? For private home administration or for those of you who are their own boss, how much could we do with the help of an assistant?

What about trying to`outsource life` and use that extra bit of time in our hands for anything more pleasurable than dealing with paperwork and admin? 

The good news is, there is a lot of help at hand for a lot less than you might think. The not so good news is, where do I start from? The positive experience of the author was not enough for me so I did a little bit of digging around, asked for feedback on some of these companies that offer online assistants and the likes, and finally contacted a few and chose one.

`Brickwork` was my choice and can I say so far I can only agree with the positive feedback shared here. 

What did I choose to outsource? I made a list of tasks that fill my to do lists, split them in two, those that it would be a lot more of a hassle to outsource, and those that, after a proper introduction via a Skype call and detailed instructions via mail, could be monthly outsourced. Research for a few personal projects, holidays, updating files, sorting pictures, recurrent updating of websites, etc. 

Another name on my list is Guru, freeing up some time is appealing enough to give these companies a try!

M.