The best way I found to face the pandemic period was to maintain my daily routines, particularly the ones that involved physical exercise. So every day, early in the morning, I was putting my running shoes on and heading for a run or doing some intense circuit training at home. In the beginning, it was a bit hard to adapt to a 100% remote work since it seemed like we spent more time connected, but these regular activities allowed me to maintain physical and mental health.

I need to go with routine tasks, the ones that you already know that following a specific path will give you the same result. I see them as unimaginative and I don’t see myself bringing value while doing them. I see these tasks as the main candidates for automation and allow people to focus their time on more valuable activities.

It’s always possible to keep doing the things we like doing in our personal life, we need to reserve the time to do them and commit to that. Our industry is very demanding but we also need to be very demanding with ourselves, we can only be great professionals if we are able to keep a good work-life balance.

The same way we have professional duties and goals we should also keep our personal duties and goals. Even when it seems we are going through a peak of work and it feels as if we don’t have time for anything else - I can tell you that it’s still possible to make the time.

The most demanding period of my professional life was during a project in Turkey between 2014 and 2017, it was also during this period  that I ran my first Marathon (2014), I ran my best time in a half-marathon ever (2015) and completed two marathons in the same year (2016).  The harder I push myself professionally the more I need to balance that in my personal life, high demanding physical workouts is what works for me, what works for you?

It’s all about goals, priorities and commitments. Participating in long distance races demands following a plan with a tight weekly schedule with different workouts in specific days, merging this plan with your work agenda allows you to make sure you keep the necessary time slots reserved. Eventually it will all just feel natural.

The half Iron Man has the particularity of having 3 different activities in sequence (swim, bike, run), so it requires specific workouts and  some days you need to get in two of the activities, so it’s really important to keep things organised and well planned. Sometimes unexpected things happen so you need to adapt, but I learned that training early in the morning helps because unexpected things usually only happen during the day. I also recommend, and it’s in fact one of the most important advises, sharing your goals with your family, friends and co-workers, they will also help to keep your motivation and in some moments join you in the challenge.

Despite talking about work-life balance and providing some advises, this was always my weakness, I was always found it difficult to manage, sometimes I get too obsessed and focused on work and forget everything else (even to have lunch).

But I learned to use this since it requires also a lot of focus and a bit of (healthy) obsession to follow a training plan to achieve a goal as finishing a Marathon or a Iron Man.

Francesinha, seems weird because it’s not considered a healthy dish but a francesinha without that amazing sauce is just a big meat sandwich. The same with work, if you only focus on work your only going to be another big sandwich, find the sauce in your life that makes the perfect balance, that will improve your work and your life.