Why most people will fail to fulfil their dream career (announcing my webinar)

21 October, 2016 By Anna S E Lundberg Leave a Comment

I watched a Ted talk a few years ago and it’s still one of my favourites. Not only is it absolutely hilarious, thanks to the fabulously dry humour of the ‘dismal’ economist Larry Smith, but it’s also incredibly powerful and potentially life changing. (I’ve embedded it at the end of the post so you can watch it if you have 15 minutes.)

Larry Smith goes through a few excuses that people give for why they can’t pursue their dream career:

“It’s just a matter of luck”
“Only geniuses get to follow their dream”
“I’m normal, I’m not obsessive”
“I can’t now that I have a family”

And, of course, the real reasons that are more likely to be fear related: fear of looking ridiculous, fear of failure…

He ends his talk with that powerful word: UNLESS. You will fail to have a great career; unless…

With that in mind, I’m excited to announce my webinar:

Why Most People Fail to Fulfil Their Dream Career (And How Not to be One of Them)

In this webinar, I’m going to delve into more detail on the reasons why people fail to pursue and achieve their dream career; and I’m going to be grabbing onto that word, ‘unless’, to help you to get over those barriers and to succeed in finding meaningful work that you actually love.

Here’s what we’ll be covering:

The 10 reasons why most people will fail to achieve their dream career
The critical element you need to have in order to succeed
The ONE STEP that will get you on the way to achieving that dream
And more!

You can view the available time slots and sign up to the webinar here:

*June 2017 Update: I ran this webinar for the first time in October 2016 and I’ve recently tweaked it and got it up and running again now to provide even more value.*

I hope to see you there!

Anna

PS Here’s Larry Smith’s excellent Ted talk:

How to Keep Your Gadgets Safe while on the Road: Travel insurance for the digital nomad

24 February, 2015 By Anna S E Lundberg Leave a Comment

When I went off on my first backpacking trip to Asia during my gap year after school … *ahem* 14 years ago … I barely had a phone that worked abroad. I would use it to send some text messages now and then but other than that we would have go to an internet café to send emails and read our Lonely Planet or travel brochures to get information about the availability of hotels, bus timetables, and how to get to various tourist sights. I had a compact camera… and that was it.

Now look at me: do do do do do, Inspector Gadget! My packing list for the digital nomad is long and full of expensive items, notably my Macbook Air, my iPhone, and my D-SLR. And almost everywhere you go, travellers are following suit: they’re using iPads to take pictures of Machu Picchu, holding out their selfie stick over the Iguazú Falls. We’re so addicted that we can’t live without these gadgets even on a holiday that’s supposed to be taking us away from it all; but that doesn’t mean we’re not worried about losing them, or, worse, having them stolen from us. So how can you keep your gadgets safe while on the road?

Preventing theft in the first place is your priority, of course. Padlocks on your hostel locker are crucial if you’re backpacking, and potentially also on the backpack or suitcase itself. Lock things up in the safe if there is one. Make copies of your important documents like your passport and put them in a different place to the original. And stay aware at all times, especially at night and in remote – or super-crowded – areas. Make sure you also read up online about recent scams in the area you’re visiting; if I had been aware of the ploy of putting leaflets down on your table and then sweeping up your phone (or whatever else was on there) with the rest, maybe I would have been more vigilant and acted faster when this happened to me in Mendoza, Argentina.

Travel Insurance

Most travel bloggers will recommend World Nomads. But currently they don’t offer multi-trip insurance, only single trip, and this becomes very expensive very quickly when you’re travelling to a lot of different countries. So, if you want annual coverage for all your different travel plans, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

The year before, I had bought the Deluxe Annual Multi-Trip insurance from Preferential travel insurance, a company that operates in partnership with British Airways. This gave me worldwide coverage at £99 for the year, not bad. The maximum duration of an individual trip, however, was 31 days; and my first trip of the year was 32! Unfortunately I hadn’t thought about that when I booked the flights…

I finally settled on the Virgin Annual Gold cover. At £83.51, this gave me worldwide coverage (it’s a little cheaper if you exclude US, the Caribbean and Canada) with the additional options of ‘baggage and money’ and ‘winter sports’. The winter sports coverage was for my skiing holiday, but it turns out that it also covers self-drive of my dog sledge for my trip to the Arctic Circle next month (otherwise it would cost an additional £27 with JS Insurance, for example). The Gold cover also means that I can be away for as long as 90 days on a single trip (on the cheaper Silver plan it’s still 45 days).

Gadget Insurance

Now I couldn’t find any travel insurance policy that covers single items that are more than a few hundred pounds (e.g. there’s a £300 limit on my Virgin Gold policy), so it’s pretty useless when it comes to your iPhone, your laptop, your flashy camera… For this, you may want to consider specific gadget insurance.

Having researched the options, I decided on Protectyourbubble.com. (If you travel with a lot of photographic equipment then Photoguard might also be an option.) This is quite expensive, especially when you add up the individual monthly cost for lots of different gadgets, but it was the best I could find and I got as far as the final step of entering my details before discovering that it only covered items bought in the UK… Unfortunately, my Macbook Air was bought in Sweden (so that I could get it with the Swedish keyboard). Then I tried an offer that came with my Amex – but they are apparently still in the Dark Ages as the sign-up process of receiving the application in the post and then submitting it and waiting for the final confirmation would have taken six weeks. Not very helpful since I was doing all this just a fortnight before heading off to New Zealand…

I was finally able to confirm with my house insurance that these items were all covered while travelling, whether on the train to work in London or on a bus in Malaysia. Hurrah! No extra cost for travelling. The one ‘watch-out’ here is that if you have to make a claim on lost gadgets while travelling, this may affect your overall insurance. And, of course, if you’re a true digital nomad you may not actually have a house, let alone house insurance…

Backing Things Up

Of course, losing your gadgets is not just a question of money, it’s also about the data you have on there – the photos on your camera, your contacts and notes on your phone, EVERYTHING on your computer. Be sure to back everything up before you leave (I use Apple Time Machine) and bring USB sticks or an external hard drive to copy documents and photos while on the road.

Finally, there’s the question of the integrity of your data and the possibility of identity theft or access to important information. With Mac Yosemite now you can activate FileVault to encrypt your hard drive so that it’s much harder to hack into; on your iPhone, make sure that you have a pass code and touch ID, as well as activating Find your phone so that you can locate, and ideally shut down, your phone once it’s in someone else’s hands.

So with all that, I now have peace of mind when travelling, knowing that my gadgets – we’re living in a material world, after all – are covered. Of course, if you really can’t live with the thought of losing something, whether for practical or sentimental reasons, the answer is simple: don’t bring it!

Did I miss anything? Do you have questions? Tips on additional protection or insurance providers? Get in touch via the comments section below!

Packing List for a Digital Nomad: Travel gadgets for working and blogging on the road

3 February, 2015 By Anna S E Lundberg 3 Comments

It’s the dream that more and more of us fantasise about: working from a beach in Thailand, or maybe from the mountains, with only your laptop for an office. The reality, of course, is that it’s hard to find a job that doesn’t require your presence at all in an employer’s or client’s office, and then when you are abroad you’re often struggling to find a reliable Wi-Fi connection and worried about your computer getting stolen or your data hacked. With that in mind, I’ve amassed a whole lot of paraphernalia for when I’m travelling and need to keep up with emails, presentations, blog posts, not to mention staying in touch with friends and family…

Here’s my take on a packing list for a digital nomad:

Laptop plus charger: I’m an Apple girl and I travel everywhere with my 11-inch Macbook Air. It’s lightweight and slim, fitting into handbags and backpacks but still holding sufficient capacity for my business and blogging needs. (For a long time the memory was full and I couldn’t understand why, until I discovered that iMovie had kept drafts of old videos that I had created or downloaded. I deleted these and since then have had no more problems!) Before travelling to Asia, I bought a Kuzy Hard Cover in black to make it look less like a Mac and the Coodio Laptop Case in grey to protect it (this came with a practical zip pocket as well as a little case where I could put the cables). I also make sure that I’ve backed everything up via Apple Time Machine and with the new FileVault that came with Yosemite I now also encrypt the hard drive to make it harder to hack.

iPhone plus charger and earphones: I always travel with my iPhone, although when I went to Asia I left my new 6 plus at home and travelled with my old 5S. It’s useful for making calls, of course, plus these days there’s Wi-Fi almost everywhere so you can get onto WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, whatever your poison… (Travelling in South America, I had put on a black case to make my phone at the time less conspicuous – but that didn’t prevent it from being stolen!) You may also want to consider bringing an extra battery pack (e.g. Mophie) or solar charger for when you don’t have access to sockets; though I have to say that my phone battery lasts much longer when I’m abroad since I turn roaming off and don’t constantly check it as I do at home.

International adapters: The Apple World Travel Adapter Kit is great for Macs and iPhones, and includes six plugs that work in countries including the US and the UK, Japan, China, continental Europe, Korea, Australia and Hong Kong. It’s also worth bringing along the specific adapters for the countries you’re visiting for any other chargers you have (camera, Kindle etc.) or an all-in-one universal travel adapter.

D-SLR camera: I almost always have my Nikon D5100 with me these days, usually with just my Nikon 18-200mm Lens plus the charger. I also have a Nikon 50mm Lens as well as the Manfrotto Lightweight Travel Tripod and a Hoya polarising filter.

Memory cards: Taking lots of photos and video clips means that you need a lot of memory. I bought large, fast memory cards for both the D-SLR (SanDisk Ultra SDHC 32 GB) and the GoPro (SanDisk Extreme Micro SDXC 32GB). This might seem a bit excessive but since I rarely delete photos and videos from my memory cards, keeping them as an extra back-up, it’s very convenient to have such a large capacity to play with.

Memory card reader: To save photos onto my computer (or rather my USB stick), I bought the Hama SD / MicroSD Card Reader, which connects to the USB port. (I also have one that works directly with my iPad.) That way I can choose and upload photos to this blog while travelling. I still keep all my photos on the memory card, I don’t delete them while travelling, so this means that I have an extra backup in case one or the other is lost or stolen.

USB sticks: Since my Macbook Air doesn’t have a lot of memory, I bought massive USB sticks to be able to put my photos and heavy files on, one 64GB and one 32GB, both from Kingston. I also found a little case to keep the USB sticks, extra memory cards and card reader all together.

Kindle: I no longer bring books when travelling as they just take up too much space, and they’re heavy. I bought a canvas case on NotOnTheHighStreet.com to protect my Kindle, and to make it look less like a Kindle when in South America and Asia. (I did the same with my iPad when I first travelled with it instead of my laptop.) *Update* These days I tend to just read on the Kindle app on my iPhone, but I think if I were travelling in some particular countries I would still prefer to have my less conspicuous and less indispensable Kindle when out and about.

GoPro camcorder plus charger: I’ve recently started bringing my GoPro HERO3+ on trips although I haven’t started doing anything yet with the footage! *Update* I now do my filming on my iPhone so the GoPro generally stays at home.

Selfie stick: A genius invention! For narcissists, yes, but when you’re a solo traveller it’s incredibly useful to have this so that you can get good photos of yourself without (a) having to ask a stranger (who’ll usually take a shitty photo) or (b) having your big fat arm in the picture. I bought the QuikPod Explorer 3 monopod, it’s lightweight and works with both my iPhone 5S and my GoPro. If you’re in the US you can buy it directly from QuikPod, otherwise I found mine on eBay. You can also buy these at much cheaper prices while travelling, especially in Asia – I just don’t quite trust them and when you’re extending it out over the side of a boat, off a mountain, or in a swimming pool at the top of a 55-storey building then you sure as hell want it to be reliable…

*Phew* that’s it! It sounds like a lot but many of the bits are small and don’t take up a lot of space. You also don’t need lots of adapters if you’re only going to one country.

Anything missing from the list that you can’t live without, or that’s made your life easier when travelling as a blogger or while running your business? Share your tips in the comments below!

The story of an extraordinary woman

30 January, 2015 By Anna S E Lundberg Leave a Comment

I was born to a middle class family in Surrey in the UK, I went to private schools and to one of the world’s top universities, I got a good job after my studies, and I’ve lived comfortably since. I’ve travelled to the other side of the world, I’ve been many times to the theatre and to museums, I’ve eaten well – too well, sometimes – and so far had no serious health problems. I have a family that loves me and money in the bank. No, the extraordinary woman is not me, I simply want to draw the comparison to my own quite fortunate life story to date. I may talk of taking risks and making difficult decisions; but this is all within a framework of incredible comfort and security.

Käthe Kühle visiting in England — Tante Käthe visited us in England many times as we were growing up – that’s me on the far right, with my sister in the middle.

This is the story of Käthe Kühle, who last week passed away quietly in her home just weeks before her 100^th birthday. She was like a second mother to my own mum, who came to stay with Käthe and her husband Werner as a 15-year-old schoolgirl in the 1960s and who maintained a close relationship with her for these past 50 years.

Tante Käthe, as I called her, was born in 1915, her father a solder in the First World War. She experienced the Depression, the Second World War and its aftermath, the reconstruction of a country and its development into one of the world’s strongest economies.

She met Theo at a friend’s wedding, and he became the love of her life. “When he entered a room, the sun would rise,” she would say. They married in 1938. Although he had studied business, he found no work during the Depression and, like so many others, joined the army and became an officer.

In 1939, of course, the German army invaded Poland and Theo went to war. Käthe took an administrative post in the army so that she could be as close to him as possible. He died in 1943.

I’ve often heard the story of how, going out into the streets during this uncertain period, Käthe would make herself as unattractive as possible and stay out of sight to avoid the otherwise common fate of being raped or sold into a brothel as the Soviets entered the territory. When Germany lost the war, Käthe escaped Potsdam just in time with her furniture piled onto a wagon, crossing the Glienicke Bridge where Soviet soldiers were already stationed and where the border would run between the Eastern bloc and the American sector of West Berlin. She lived with her family in Berlin in a house without windows and with an undetonated bomb somewhere inside.

She found work in a clothes shop in Stuttgart, working late into the night to learn from the others. She was talented and hard working and soon progressed to a managerial position.

One evening, a friend wanted to bring her to a dance at the local rowing club. Reluctantly she went along – and it was there that she got to know Werner. Not young love this time, but a deep affection between two people who had both lived through difficult circumstances. They married in 1950. “A new love, a new happiness.”

Together they moved to Darmstadt, where they spent some good years together. But he too died young, 67 years old and just a few years into his retirement.

Käthe Kühle — This photo was taken recently when my mum was visiting Tante Käthe, sitting here on her beloved balcony.

“I won’t be beaten,” was Käthe’s motto and though her world had once again imploded she drew on her inner strength. Alone and with others she travelled the world, making new friends and lasting memories, taking photos of everything she saw. She told herself that she’d be able to relive these experiences in her old age, when she could no longer physically travel; and that’s exactly what she did.

I suppose my travels, and blogging, and photography, are partly in that same spirit: making memories for when I’m sitting on my balcony, looking back on the years that have passed. I can only hope that I live such a long life, leaving this world peacefully in my own apartment, having stayed strong through difficult times and made the most of whatever I have, all the while touching the hearts of others.

In memory of Tante Käthe, 1915-2015. I based this blog post on the eulogy my mum delivered yesterday at the funeral in Darmstadt.

I am the One and Only! Over-confidence on The Apprentice

18 November, 2014 By Anna S E Lundberg 2 Comments

This year, for the first time, I’m watching each and every episode of The Apprentice; finally I get what all the fuss is about! (Yes, it’s in its tenth year – I’m not exactly an early adopter…) I find it strangely compelling, painful at times and hilarious at others. It’s particularly interesting to ask myself how I think I would have fared with a given task, as a business owner and marketer myself.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the programme, The Apprentice is a reality TV show with entrepreneur Lord Alan Sugar at the helm, throwing various product, sales and marketing challenges at the candidates with the aim of identifying the best person to be his business partner in a new venture.

What I find most fascinating is the confidence with which all the candidates have put themselves forward in the first place, and their unwavering self-assurance even in the face of having demonstrated their complete incompetence.

“I can sell ice to Eskimos!” is the standard claim made by the candidates, using their own more ludicrous metaphors. This year, the most confident of all was, rather unexpectedly, a social worker, Steven. “I am excellent,” he declared again and again, “I would be excellent if you put me on Mars,” and he simply couldn’t fathom why his colleagues didn’t want to work with him or why Lord Sugar ended up firing him.

Of course, to put yourself forward for a position – any position, though the situation is amplified by the public nature of a reality TV show – you need a certain degree of confidence. You need to believe that you can do the job, and you need to convey that conviction to your would-be-employer or client. A person who doesn’t know you is not going to take a risk and believe in you when you don’t even believe in yourself.

When I was in sixth form, aged 10, I put myself forward for form captain. On election day, I stood in front of the class with the other candidates as we were asked if we would be able to do X, Y, Z as required for this most prestigious of roles. “Um, well, I think so, I don’t know,” mumble, mumble, nervous laugh. Not a very convincing performance. The result? A big fact ‘0’ written in stark white chalk against my name when not one of my friends raised their hand in support of my candidature.

A generalisation is often made that men will overstate their abilities while women understate them. Coming back to The Apprentice, another candidate fired by Lord Sugar was Gemma: the self-proclaimed “nearly girl”, who worked diligently and without a lot of fuss behind the scenes while other more vocal but not necessarily more capable candidates made themselves heard. A classic error, thinking that you can get on quietly with your work and this will be noticed and rewarded.

A model that we used in one of my previous jobs was PIE: in order to do well, you need Performance (great results are fundamental to long-term success), Image (it matters what people think of you, not just what you’re actually doing), and Exposure (you and your work must be visible to your management, or it’s all for nothing). Results alone are not enough, while empty talk that you fail to back up with substance will never work in the long run. To progress, you need to not only deliver results but also think about networking, having an elevator pitch prepared on the impact you’re having on the business, making sure that you’re getting the exposure that you need to the people who are making decisions on your possible promotion, salary increase, or contract extension.

Fast-forward 22 years from that fateful day in the classroom and, faced with a similar barrage of questions, I would now respond with a resounding YES: I would be good at this job, I’m confident that I can deliver great results and make a valuable contribution to the business. This is thanks to some years of personal and professional experience, seeing what I’m capable of, getting positive feedback from managers and clients, and witnessing the comparatively unjustified confidence of peers who resemble some of the worst candidates on The Apprentice.

Some of the things I’ve discovered along the way:

A job interview is not just about whether the employer wants you to work there, it’s also about whether you want to work there. It’s a two-way relationship so ask questions and don’t sell yourself short.
If someone tells you “Well done!” the appropriate reply is, “Thank you, I worked hard and I’m pleased with what I’ve achieved.” Don’t dismiss it, “Oh, it was nothing.”
It’s okay to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them. No one is perfect, and no one expects you to be perfect.

So while I’m not quite at the stage of telling everyone how excellent I am, I do have more confidence in myself and my abilities.

Oh, hell, let me say it, just this once: I am excellent.