My Day in Three for today:

1. I had an intense and lengthy day filled with work today. I started at 7AM, connecting with the team in Australia, who are 10 hours ahead of me. I handled people-related topics at midday and then focused on my team’s offsite agenda early in the evening.
2. Spring arrived today with clear blue skies and comfortable temperatures when sitting in the sun. I took advantage of the nice weather by working for a little over an hour from our backyard porch. It worked out very well thanks to the outdoor wifi antenna I installed in the garden last fall.
3. My wife and I took a long walk in the evening around our neighborhood to catch up on family life and get some exercise.

My Day in Three for today:

1. Early start of the day at the dentist today. I had two appointments, one at 7:30 AM and one over lunch, for needed dental maintenance. I combined the dentist appointments with a second GP visit for our second series of jabs for Costa Rica.
2. Chuck Norris passed away (in Dutch). Or as the BBC writes: ‘Whether you know him for memes, movies or martial arts, Chuck Norris’ fame spanned several genres and generations.’
3. I’m considering the impact and necessary actions at work to manage the increased output of our engineering department, driven by the code assistants the engineers use. The ‘downstream’ business impact is substantial. It’s if we in technology are expanding a highway from 2 to 10 lanes but then neglecting to replace a 2-lane bridge 10 kilometers away road. Anyway, food for thought for the weekend, I’m calling it a day now.

My Day in Three for today:

1. I started my day at the gym, doing 2×10 minutes of cycling, 15 minutes on the treadmill, and 10 minutes of core training on the Sensopro.
2. I had lunch outside in the sun with a longtime friend in Rotterdam. The spring vibes put me in a good mood, so I listened to some cool SoundCloud DJ mixes on the way home. I love that spring is starting to kick in.
3. I visited my parents tonight with my daughter. I hadn’t seen them in a few weeks. We made sure to be home in time for “Wie is de Mol? (Dutch)“

My Day in Three for today:

1. My wife and I drove to Amsterdam this morning for a brunch with a friend. She lives on an ark just outside the city for 5 months a year, and the other 7 months she lives in Italy. We enjoyed the spring sun from her boat; it was great.
2. From Amsterdam, we went to the field hockey field to see my son play this afternoon. His team won 5-1. Hoorah!
3. I listened to some old-school Grandmixes from Ben Liebrand. I found the files on my NAS two weeks ago while cleaning up my photo storage. Now that I have Navidrome running as a self-hosted music server, it’s quite easy to stream them to my phone.

My Day in Three for today:

1. I began my week at the gym this morning to maintain my fitness routine, with 20 minutes of indoor cycling, 10 minutes on the Sensopro, 10 minutes of physiotherapy exercises, and a 10-minute run on the treadmill.
2. As the quarter is ending, my agenda for today and tomorrow is all about financial forecast meetings of my business unit. As all these meetings are virtual, I decided to work from home today.
3. Tonight, we celebrated Charlotte’s 18th birthday, our son’s longest-lasting friend. It was a memorable evening, marking nearly 18 years of their friendship.

The questions fall into three categories: (1) career vision & personal purpose, (2) personal strengths and traits, and (3) growth choices. Think about them deeply, discuss with others close to you, and take your time writing down your answers.

1. If anything were possible, what would your ideal career look like in the next decade? Don’t limit yourself to your current employer when answering this question.
2. What unique strengths or qualities do you want to be known for in your professional life? How much are you already using these strengths today?
3. The year is January 2029. What would make you proud of the choices you’ve made starting today?

My Day in Three for today:

1. 101 days in a row of posting on my blog as of today! Let’s see where this journey takes me.
2. People at work often ask me for career advice. I always respond because I believe it’s part of my responsibility as a senior executive to help others advance in their careers. It’s important for both them and me to be honest about what they should or shouldn’t pursue based on the talents I and others see. To start these conversations, I usually send three questions for them to consider. These are the same questions I often think about myself. Today, I thought, why not share them here for others too?
3. Gym time again tonight. Working on my core strength for the second time this week.

My Day in Three for today:

1. Following up on my 101st post from yesterday I wanted to share this post from Robert Birming. I follow Robert’s blog via RSS; it’s fun and encouraging to read his daily posts about keeping blogging momentum. If you are already into blogging or thinking about starting, it’s worth following Robert for inspiration.
2. I had a good day in the office. I was there early and didn’t leave too late to make sure I could join my family for dinner tonight.
3. ‘Adults lose skills to AI. Children never build them’ is an article I read this evening out of professional and personal interest. AI cognitive atrophy is something I think about a lot as we continue to introduce more AI into both our professional and personal lives. There is a difference in how people in my age group use AI versus, for instance, my children. I mainly use AI to offload tasks I already know how to perform. While I see my children offload tasks (math homework), they never learned to perform. If I had to perform the same task again without AI, I would still be able to do it (less quick), because I acquired the skills through education and/or practice. In the case of my children, they probably couldn’t, as you can’t atrophy a muscle that was never built. What applies to math homework applies in my professional context when working with engineers, too.

My Day in Three for today:

1. I exercised at the gym this morning before going to work. The treadmill was already occupied, so unfortunately, no running for me today. I’m starting to get into a new rhythm with this whole gym routine, but I don’t think I’ll ever really like it.
2. I had a forward-looking career discussion with a team member today. We went outside for a walk, which always helps shift the conversation into a different mindset.
3. I received a voucher for another year of full access to the New York Times through my Dutch newspaper subscription. Awesome! Supporting journalism is important to me; we’ve had a newspaper in our household for as long as we’ve been able to afford one.

My Day in Three for today:

1. I enjoyed reading this article by Reuters on the identity of British street artist Banksy. Banksy’s identity has been debated and closely guarded for decades. A quest to solve the riddle took Reuters from a bombed-out Ukrainian village to London and downtown Manhattan, and uncovered much more than a name.
2. I spent some time today organizing my work for April. I have some busy weeks ahead of me.
3. The kids are out tonight to meet up with their friends. This is a new thing for us: my wife and I are together on Friday night, and we only hear what they’ve been up to halfway through Saturday morning. It’s great to see them become young adults, and I can definitely get used to this phase in life.

My Day in Three for today:

1. I completed a more intense training in the gym this morning. My body, especially my injured leg, seems to hold well, which is good. If the weather is good tomorrow morning, I will go for a slow, longer run outside.
2. My son will be turning 18 in a little over two weeks from today. As both kids, my wife and I went out this afternoon to buy (and hide) his birthday gift.
3. We had some sunshine late afternoon in the garden. I went outside to work a little in the garden and to put up the lights around our terrace before the trees start growing again.

This 35-minute recovery run was my first outdoor run after two weeks of treadmill training. Mentally, it didn’t go as well as I hoped. I’m frustrated with my current results, but I know I need to stay patient and consistent without overextending myself. Moving on to the next week, my goal is to continue balancing strength training at the gym with one or two recovery runs outside.

My Day in Three for today:

1. 1. This 35-minute recovery run was my first outdoor run after two weeks of treadmill training. Mentally, it didn’t go as well as I hoped. Moving on to the next week, my goal is to continue balancing strength training at the gym with one or two recovery runs outside.
   2. I did my annual taxes today and admin today.
   3. I didn’t mind not watching the F1 race in Japan later in the day. While the circuit is exciting to watch, I don’t like the new racing rules at all, and they’re taking away my enjoyment of the sport. I’m hoping for better times after the April break since the races in the Middle East have been canceled.

My Day in Three for today:

1. I started at the gym today at 7 AM and plan to go again tomorrow, given a busy week ahead. I combined 20 minutes of cycling, 15 minutes of core strength training, and 10 minutes of running.
2. I enjoyed catching up over lunch with Thijs (), where we discussed product, strategy, AI, and running.
3. I worked late into the CET evening with my team in the US and am now logging off to give my mind some well-deserved rest.

My Day in Three for today:

1. I talked about budgets for most of the day. Not my favorite topic, but it comes with the job.
2. There was a surprise gift in the kitchen when I got home today. It was from our friends with whom we are traveling to Costa Rica this summer. To prepare for the trip they send us a beautiful magazine about Costa Rica.
3. Reading tip for today (NRC, in Dutch, no paywall) about the war in the middle-east: Trump heeft in Iran alleen nog slechte opties en daarvoor ‘zullen we allemaal een prijs betalen’.

My Day in Three for today:

1. Again, a long and energizing day at work today. I enjoyed connecting with my colleagues from Australia early in the morning and checking out with the team in the US early and evening. There is a lot going on right now and it’s important for me to stay (virtually) close to my team.
2. I started reading and learning more about Costa Rica in preparation of our upcoming vacation.
3. Watched ‘Het verhaal over Nederland in oorlogstijd’ (Dutch) to relax from work.

My Day in Three for today:

1. I woke up very early to say goodbye to my daughter, who went on a school field trip to Lille, France today. I should have gone to the gym, but instead, I decided to go to the office because I have too much work to finish before the weekend.
2. I was introduced to and demoed an Agentic Development LifeCycle (ADLC) by some of our lead software developers today. They combined the roles of product owner, developer, and UX designer into three agents that turned a query from me into a complete working prototype within five minutes. Wow!
3. My son had his high school prom tonight. As parents, we were invited to watch all the graduates enter the venue. A friend of my son managed to arrange for a 1963 Ford Galaxie as their ride to the red carpet.

My Day in Three for today:

1. I started my last working day of the week in the gym to compensate for the late hours and lack of movement this week. I worked out for a little over an hour and enjoyed it.
2. I didn’t have a lot of meetings to attend today which gave some time to work with one of my product leaders on our product strategy. I enjoyed the time spend and the content we produced.
3. I went out to see Joe Speedboot (IMDB) tonight. Joe Speedboot is a celebrated 2005 novel by Dutch author Tommy Wieringa about a kinetic young visionary transforming life in a small town. Known for its humor, fast pace, and themes of friendship and invention, the book has sold over 300,000 copies. This is one of my favorite books.

My Day in Three for today:

1. I’ve been thinking about further optimizing my home energy use by adding a battery to store the energy generated by my solar panels. I considered creating a business case to model this setup, but instead I found this Home Assistant plugin that simulates the presence of a battery in my home and uses the actual energy produced and consumed to calculate the savings.
2. I exchanged cars with a friend so he can use our bigger family car to drive to Austria tomorrow to go skiing (again).
3. Tonights sixth episode of Wie is de Mol (NL) was a good one.

My Day in Three for today:

1. I was awake early today because of the winds hitting the house. I took the opportunity to go downstairs early to prepare our family’s Easter breakfast. We had breakfast for three as my son woke up at his girlfriend’s family today.
2. I headed out to the gym after breakfast, where I cycled for 30 minutes, worked on my core for 20 minutes, and finished with a fartlek run on the treadmill.
3. The rest of today was quite relaxing with a short visit to my in-laws and my parents and spending the rest of the afternoon at home in front of the television to watch the Tour of Flanders.