Happy New Decade ~ 2020

general things

Happy new year and a good start into the 21st century twenties

A healthy and awesome start into the new year to everyone!

As the new decade begins, many people tend to set themselves additional new years resolutions. I thoroughly don’t believe in this particular tradition.

But I believe in kicking bad habits - independently from any specific day of a year. So I did. And encourage everyone to do the same. I got rid of most of my dependencies to social media, a lot of false/negative thinking, and encourage positive mental attitude by the end of Q4. Today I’m migrating fully from Instagram to my own web-based photography portfolio as I learned that this application is capable of sucking me into a stream of smombie (thank you Christian for this awesome new word) like behaviour. Repeatedly finding oneself scrolling for an hour through the fake (or not so fake) life of other people is a great waste of time. It also contributed to making me feel sad in many ways. The FOMO, the “why-isn’t-my-life-full-of-travels”, and many other thoughts are wrong and can easily be ruled out by not taking part in this charade. Even though my Instagram is solely focused around my photography, I still kept on following more and more people just to check out their “life on social media”. So removing this application is my only choice.

Btw. I figured out that I can still post on Instagram via my computer just by using the dev tools of the browser and setting the view size to any Smartphone scaled resolution. However, I usually don’t use my computer to scroll through the feed.

Quick reflection of the last decade

Q1 & Q2

In the first quarter of the last decade I got rid of general laziness and a slight tendency to anti-intellectualism/anti-educationalism due to, again, mainly laziness and I guess a major factor was going through puberty. By deciding to enjoy education, I opened myself a new world: from being a industrial mechanics (nothing speaking against a career in engineering - I just ended up doing this, due to lack of choice resulted by my mediocre performance in middle school) - to being able of leading a product development team in fin/retail-tech just by changing my perspective towards knowledge. After finalising my apprenticeship in 2010/2011, I started making a change for the better.

Firstly by making the leap to move to a new city and conducting my Abitur including additional eduction in IT at the SBSZ in Jena-Göschwitz. To this day I’m grateful for all my peers, friends, and especially the school/educational institution, the teachers, and the people putting all the efforts into this place of knowledge. Special kudos are going to Dustin, Tom, my neighbour Rebecca, Keule, Harry, Mr Dr Zürner, Mr Schurig, Mr Weingart, and many more! Followed (2014) by a great time at the WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management, which helped me understand even better, where my interests reside, and what I want to do.

All of this, just because of a little change in my perspective towards education.

I finally have learned to appreciate studying - although, I must admit that with the age of 20 and in the year 2011, it was a quite late eureka moment. Better late than never.

Q3 & Q4

During my time at WHU, I also got to understand how our economies cogs are working across borders. Doing internships in Australia at Tyroola, studying abroad in Macau, another internship in Hong Kong at Vabella, seeing Shenzhen (China), and the management abroad course in India, helped broaden and brighten my senses heavily. So much, that I had to find myself again in the situation of not being happy with the direction everything is going. This time, it wasn’t laziness, but the fact that I wanted to explore different topics than a business school did provide. I liked the overall content, I simply prefer to work on technological and IT related topics. Highly recommend the university though for any business savvy person!

Again, special kudos are going out to my great friend Tobi, my former flatmate Christian, David and Markina, and way too many people to count. All the people who have contributed heavily to my life and personal development! You guys are awesome! Of course, this includes also all the people that have been part of this journey since day one - all my friends and fools from my hometown, because you are still a major part of my life!

In January 2017 Tillhub and Berlin became a welcoming new challenge and, with the addition of a few more projects, are to this day. Now I’m happily working with a lot of great colleagues at a technologically challenging fin-/retailtech product.

Kicking bad habits and creating positive one’s sort of became the theme for my 2010s, and is going to be a continuous theme.

As of today, I managed successfully to:

and as a result, being productive, and much healthier (physically as well as mentally) person!

Special thanks go out to my family, which supports - no questions asked. No matter where I was, what I was doing, or what I wanted to do, they always have my back. Also to my lovely girlfriend who is putting up with my, by now, very strict work ethic and schedules.

More major highlights, but rather personal experiences where the great summer of weddings in my hometown friendship circle.

Conclusion

The smallest positive changes in mindset can have the biggest results. Positive mental attitude and a healthy appetite for education are an incredible lever on personal development.

After stepping back, and for the first time in the lifetime of mine reflecting on my actions of ten years, I agree with two quotes I have heard so often lately:

“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire

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“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” — Bill Gates

Copyright (c) 2024 Maximilian Nebl