Languages and blogging

Foreign languages have been my passion since I was a teenager. I started to learn them at primary school. I speak / I learn: Polish, English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, German, Arabic. At certain stages I also learned others but I had to put them aside for the lack of time.

I began to write a language blog several years ago. It was meant to be an additional motivation for learning and an opportunity to share my thoughts and experiences with others. Later I also started a traveling blog, and more recently a blog where I write about my experiences in learning Arabic.

Next came a podcast and blog called Podcast polski which aim is to help foreigners to practice Polish. Podcast is a free but for those interested I offer conversational lessons as a tutor on Italki – in Polish, English and Spanish.

Productivity

A few years ago, I began my path to better productivity. A big milestone for me came with the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. This book helped me setup my system, based on the principles of the system created by Allen. From the beginning I used digital apps.

In search for perfect tools, I tried various apps, looking for something that could combine various functions, especially task and knowledge management. There isn’t an ideal app for this, but at least I can try to find something that will suit my needs.

Now I am using Notion – for information management to which I added task management system. Yes, you can build your project and task manager, but it requires some work and knowledge. A big plus of Notion is that what you create on desktop you will have also on mobile.

Another app I am “flirting” with is ClickUp. I like some functionalities of this app but… The biggest downsize is that a mobile version is extremely poor and doesn’t reflect even half of the functions present in web and desktop versions. Nowadays when we do many things on the go, a good mobile app is necessary! Good thing is that they added Docs functionality with some better and some worse options than in Notion.

There are much more applications of this type. They have become very trendy now and it looks like everybody wants to offer a complex knowledge management system. I think that especially Notion and ClickUp (they are often compared one to the other) race to be an app of the first choice, offering many functionalities for teamwork.

Traveling

Another of my passions. I used to travel more earlier. Now I travel less, and not only because of the pandemic. The real reason is that I no longer want to put a lot of effort, money, and time to get to a place where I spend only a few moments.

Nowadays, I focus more on activities, experiences and emotions than just visiting museums and castles.