David Nyeste

As a habit  I take my time and sit down every Friday and reflect on the past week. For this task I have a journal where I take some notes. I am not a hundred percent consequential to be honest even though the effects it had on my life are severe. As a standard scheme I ask myself five questions. 1. What was the most important change? For me it was my inoculation, which I had today. It wasn't the event itself, but more the perspective it triggered. The hope to see and meet friends and family, clients and colleagues again some day soon overwhelmed me. I am absolutely convinced that I belong to the lucky ones who benefited tremendously from the pandemic with all its ups and downs, so I don't want to sound self pitying. But like everyone I have been hurting. Hurting to see my kids not being able to visit their Granny, hurting not being able to meet with loved ones far away once in a while. Compared to that the restrictions at work felt miniscule. And now for the first time in 18 mo...

The Power of Inclusion My first post on this blog was in German. At the time it was a spontaneous idea to share a unique experience that I knew would mark a significant moment in my life. I shared it foremost with my friends and the members of my sports club. Later I started to write posts in English just to test how it feels. As a German native speaker I only speak English as a second language, so why would I write in English? A simple and obvious explanation is that English is spoken by a lot more people than German. I do not intend this blog exclusively for a German speaking audience. In order to grant access to this content for as many people as possible is of course a very obvious, however not my most important reason. More Eloquence is More Potential for Clutter During my professional experience on multiple international projects and assignments I have realized that English native speakers can sometimes fall into a squabble where they talk a lot but say very little. Especially Am...

Writing Helps Clarify Your Thinking I started this blog in 2010. It was without any specific agenda or strategy. (Yeah, I used to do that :-) In my first post you can read about my humbling experience at the Ironman Spain in Lanzarote. I still like that article because that specific experience has forever changed the way I compete. If I would not have written that article, I might never have realized in all clarity why I love to compete. According to the statistics it has some hundred views. Judging merely by the lack of public interest one might suggest I should never have written that article. I am convinced that is a wrong conclusion.  Clarity of mind is invaluable. Up until a few weeks ago I was not seriously committed to blogging. It was a sporadic pastime I used to engage in whenever I felt like sharing something important or even trivial. It has been almost one year since I started writing on a daily basis. For the longest time I only wrote for myself in order to clear my th...

Murphy's Law Working Last week I had a small IT hick-up and had to reset my computer. While I was staring at the progress bars and only occasionally hit 'ENTER' for the downloads and installations to proceed, I contemplated that besides all the configuration that needed to be done again to become productive (Outlook, Powerpoint, file structures, software installations, etc.), I would have to recreate some of the work I had lost because it had not been backed up yet - no lives in danger sure; only a few hours of my lifetime wasted. Other than that all incoming work would also queue up during the downtime until my PC would be up and running again. So much for the grim outlook of the potential devaluation of my work time. Instead of banging my head into a wall, I made a different plan: I focused on getting as much done as possible in the meantime.  Power of Pen and Paper Luckily I always have pen and paper with me, mostly because I like to scribble. There was a time when I tho...

Start with a purpose Any business related document should start with a purpose. Unless the purpose of the document is not entirely, 100% clear, don't put any effort into the creation process. The typical archetypes of purposes of most business documents can be summarized into three categories: 1. create deeper insight into a subject matter, 2. trigger some decision, 3. trigger some action. Once you are clear on the purpose part, you're free to start into the creation process. Structure your creation process There are certainly myriads of ways and methodologies to create business documents. Chances are you will develop your own approach along with your own style and flavour to create business related documents eventually, once you have sufficient experience. However, as long as you have not created a ton of great ones, a standard framework is a great way to start off and to acquire some practice. In my career I have created more than more than 10.000 slides and hundreds of pro...