Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: Do you actually need ability and skill before you can pursue a goal — or can reflection alone get you started? Dr. Yasemin Yazan, Marc, Jürgen, Sabine, Layla, Holger and Raphael dig into the crucial difference between a goal and a vision using Saint-Exupéry’s longing for the endless sea, an IBM manager who refused to fire an employee after a three-million-dollar mistake, and Brecht’s Mr. Keuner realizing, as the tide rises around him, that he himself is the boat. Along the way: why “we can’t see the forest for the trees” might be the best argument yet for just starting before you feel ready.
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
Yasemin opened with today’s topic: Action and Goals. What relevance does goal management have in the context of action? She used the moment to remind everyone that the next day they’d be meeting on X Spaces instead of Clubhouse, to test out the platform’s features together and gather first impressions — she’d pinned the link, posted it in chat, and added it to her bio, and reminded anyone without the app (formerly Twitter) to download it beforehand so they could actually participate rather than just listen. Turning to today’s topic, she deliberately kept “management” in the subheading and invited everyone to explore what goal management actually means and how it connects to action. She reminded newcomers the room was recorded and would be published, and repeated the three room rules: a recognizable profile photo, first and last name, and at least one sentence in the bio — or, alternatively, contributing via chat.
Marc opened, glad to start the weekend together. He’d found that goal management helps direct action purposefully and effectively, serving as a guide for action — but this immediately raised a question for him, which is why he opened with the quote “we can’t see the forest for the trees”: he finds it easier to approach a topic not just by defining terms, the way Jürgen does, but by asking what he actually wants. Sure, goals need to be defined — but in his experience, we often can’t see the forest for the trees when it comes to which goals we could even set: finding a partner, getting fit, becoming self-employed, or, whether you want to or have to depending on how you look at it, filing your tax return. His first point: once you’ve set a goal, when do you actually start? Not goal management itself, but simply — does this matter to me, and when do I start? If he decides to start tomorrow, then he starts tomorrow. If his goal is to exercise more, he starts tomorrow, on whatever date he’s set, even without workout clothes yet. What he observes in himself and his environment is that people constantly look for justifications, for permission structures, to avoid actually starting the path toward the goal. Classic example: if he announced he was starting to exercise more this Sunday, someone would immediately say “Marc, you don’t even have workout clothes, you can’t possibly run on Sunday.” True — but if his goal is simply to exercise more, he can still spend fifteen minutes at the computer figuring out where to even begin: what running shoes does he need, should he buy the most expensive pair right away even if he loses motivation after a week, is there a running group offering tips on getting started and overcoming inner resistance. What he means by goal management is: first figure out what the goal could even be, then start, even without all the information or documentation in hand — because otherwise you get what he sees so often in his own circle: people dreaming of becoming self-employed, but missing so much information that they never even start, since the sheer flood of information needed feels overwhelming, and they conclude it’ll take months before they’ve ticked every box and can finally act.
Yasemin thanked him, noting how many angles this opens up, and wanted to first ask why setting a goal even matters, or whether it’s essential at all for moving into action — before working through strategies and what management actually means here. She welcomed Sabine.
Sabine said the whole topic had immediately triggered something for her, tying back to Marc’s mention of the “wheel of life” the day before, and his point about setting a goal without immediately rushing off. This brought to mind the concept of goal conflict: she sets certain goals across her different life areas, but they often collide, since her day only has 24 hours — she keeps telling herself “I still need to do this, I still need to do that,” ends up veering off course repeatedly, and doesn’t reach the goal she actually wanted, because something else feels more important in the moment. That, for her, is genuinely important to keep in mind.
Yasemin thanked her, noting goal conflicts can operate on very different levels — sometimes simply about having only 24 hours in a day, which brings in prioritization, but it can also involve different “inner team” parts pulling in different directions, some wanting one thing while others hold us back. She welcomed Jürgen, who’d just joined.
Jürgen greeted everyone and recalled that just a couple of days ago they’d covered Action and Self-Management — managing the self — and now they were on goal management specifically. He’d noted that one of the competencies they’d identified as a prerequisite for self-management was precisely the competence to set goals — so he saw a clear overlap here, not necessarily a sub-function, but an overlap with self-management around this specific competence. This also closed a loop for him, since Yasemin’s opening had specifically emphasized “management” — and the sub-competencies subsumed under it, as he understands them, are goal-setting itself and the specific management of those goals: planning, steering, controlling, evaluating, taking in feedback, and making adjustments as needed. His question: do these generally applicable sub-competencies — steering, controlling, and so on — take on a different character specifically when applied to goals? He found this a fascinating question, especially since goal-setting had already come up as a sub-competency within their earlier management discussion two days prior. So his current status on the topic: is goal management a genuinely special kind of management requiring deliberately different competencies than the ones he’d just listed?
Yasemin thanked him and confirmed his framing, reminding everyone that under action competence, and specifically self-management competence, they’d be working through several distinct areas over the coming days — self-knowledge (covered the day before), and today, goals and goal management. She confirmed this connects directly to why the concept of goals had already come up when discussing self-management generally, and today they were deepening and specifying it. Jürgen said this confirmed he was on the right track, and he was curious where the path would lead.
Yasemin invited Marc to continue, who asked Jürgen a question: given that competence includes both ability and aptitude, to what extent can competence — or the ascription of competence — actually hinder us from reaching a goal? Sticking with the sports example: if he’s never exercised before, has neither the ability nor the aptitude, and has never started a company either, with his entire environment telling him he absolutely lacks the ability, aptitude, and competence to start a company — isn’t it precisely reflection that lets him approach the goal anyway, without ability or aptitude, by questioning which abilities are missing and whether he can acquire them, still pursuing the goal regardless? Otherwise, he might be operating under externally ascribed values that don’t actually match reality, and never even start pursuing the goal, since his whole environment, including himself, insists he lacks the ability and aptitude — meaning he lacks competence, and therefore shouldn’t even try.
Yasemin called it a great question and invited Sabine to add something first before returning to Jürgen and then Layla. Sabine picked up the sports theme again, particularly running: for her, and she suspects this applies across all topics, the crucial thing is simply getting started, taking action. As Marc had said, if you plan forever, another goal inevitably intervenes, or new considerations creep in — it’s raining today, it’s already winter, maybe I won’t go out after all. That happens to her often. With sports, she’d actually followed through, but sometimes competing priorities aren’t really comparable and end up on an entirely different scale, and she finds herself jumping toward whatever feels important in that moment — something she finds genuinely difficult.
Yasemin thanked her, saying they’d return to this later, and invited Jürgen to respond to Marc’s question, before bringing in Layla and Holger. Jürgen said the essential insight Marc had described was itself already a formulated goal: acquiring the ability and aptitude needed to actually carry out the sport he’d set his sights on. That, too, is already a goal in his view. He also picked up something Marc had briefly touched on that he considered very important: setting goals based on a current assessment that one simply isn’t capable, due to lacking ability or aptitude, or because external voices communicate that the goal is essentially obsolete since one supposedly lacks the ability — this, for him, ties into a recurring theme: placing our goal-setting under the “protective cloak,” or really the “yoke,” of external judgment. He said Marc’s example carried another essential component he’d raised before: goal management, on its own, isn’t enough to actually reach the benefit of a goal and connect it to meaningful action — it doesn’t stop at goal-setting. He needs an overarching frame he always calls a “vision.” Marc’s example fit perfectly: deciding to exercise because it’s good for one’s health — that, for him, is the vision: I want to stay healthy. The sub-goal, or goal, is acquiring the ability and aptitude to actually practice the sport, which then becomes the tool and driver of that health vision.
Yasemin thanked him, adding that under the umbrella of competence, even the ability to recognize what one is missing, or what one needs to reach a goal, itself requires competence. She also floated a couple of additional terms as impulses: alongside goals and vision, there’s also the idea of sub-goals and milestones, which they might explore later. She welcomed Layla.
Layla said she’d watched a documentary that morning on the science program “42 — The Answer to Almost Everything,” about what constitutes consciousness and whether animals have it. Tying back to yesterday’s discussion of self-awareness, where she’d confidently claimed it was about not wanting to change — she now realized it’s also simply about perception itself, which is what makes us who we are. Applying that here: if you have to be conscious of your actions, conscious of yourself, and then look at goals on top of that, how do you bring it all together? She’d thought about what she’d always wanted to achieve in life, and how she’d achieved those things — usually either through sheer pressure, wanting it badly enough, with the outcome itself mattering a great deal (since she couldn’t always sustain the success — changes she made weren’t always lasting, and reverted back, classic yo-yo effect: she’s a typical case, size 42/44, then 36, back to 42/44). Now she’s at size 34, having changed something in her approach — the goal stayed the same, but the action had to change.
Yasemin thanked her and welcomed Holger. Holger picked up Jürgen’s earlier question about whether specific abilities or competencies are needed for goals and goal management. He felt Jürgen and Layla had partly answered it already: yes, he believes it takes the ability to actually define goals in the first place, situate them within a vision, and make them tangible. He noted most examples so far had felt self-focused, but the moment you work with a team, the ability to bring people along becomes essential — and goals become even more important to make tangible then. He recalled Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle: why do we do this at all, the “why” before the “how.” His conclusion: yes, this requires specific abilities not everyone naturally has, though they can certainly be learned.
Yasemin thanked him and invited Jürgen to continue. Jürgen thanked Holger and shared one of his favorite quotes — not Goethe this time, but Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” That longing for the endless sea, he said, is the vision. Building the ship is the goal. The vision — the longing for the endless sea — is Saint-Exupéry’s metaphor for freedom. That, he said, was exactly the point Holger had raised: it takes a specific competence to set goals not just for oneself, but also, crucially, in connection with a team.
Yasemin thanked him, noting this illustrates how the goal serves as the vehicle, or transport mechanism, carrying you toward the vision. That means an overarching vision can have multiple goals attached to it — goals and sub-goals — and, tying back to the wheel of life, there can also be entirely different goals across different life areas, which brings in goal conflicts again: whether goals set at the highest level might conflict with each other across different life domains, not just due to time constraints but other factors too. She invited Sabine, then Layla, then Raphael.
Sabine picked up Holger’s team point, wanting to extend “team” to include family, itself a kind of team, and the outside world in general, since detours and distractions can come from anywhere. She also picked up Jürgen’s vision point, applying it to parenting: her younger son is about to start an internship at a psychiatric clinic, having set this as his goal, though whether he ends up pursuing that path long-term is a separate matter. But she felt this wasn’t just a goal for him — it was a vision: he wants to get there and is mobilizing everything to make this internship happen. She admitted she was genuinely a bit surprised, and reflected that she often has a goal without a real vision behind it — whether a particular business deal works out or not ultimately doesn’t matter that much to her; she doesn’t want to fully commit her identity to it, and if a deal falls through, so be it. She felt she’d sometimes over-invested emotionally in things that were really just goals, not visions, which is why she found Jürgen’s quote so valuable. She noted this is exactly where conflicts tend to arise for most people — when something external throws a wrench in things and you have to weigh whether it’s actually important in the moment, or whether pursuing it takes you off course from the broader vision.
Yasemin agreed, noting how relevant a clear vision is precisely for this reason — it becomes much easier to check, whenever life throws something at you, whether it actually fits. She offered an example: we constantly receive offers — a potential collaboration, project, or new task. With a clear vision and clear goals, you can quickly assess whether it fits or not; without that clarity, you might easily say yes to something that doesn’t actually align with the bigger picture. Recognizing that alone is helpful, even though it’s not the only source of goal conflicts — knowing your vision and goals for this year, next year, or whatever timeframe doesn’t mean new goals can’t emerge; they can, and that’s completely fine, even deliberately set to serve the vision. But having that framework makes it easier to check whether something new actually fits into your existing construct of vision and goals, enabling clearer, faster decisions.
She invited Layla to continue, then Raphael. Layla said her head was spinning trying to follow along, joking that’s probably true for many listeners. She loved Sabine’s distinction and, working in advertising herself, joked about asking “do you still have goals, or do you already have visions?” (playing on a famous IKEA ad slogan) — IKEA would be annoyed, but it fit perfectly. She felt this distinction matters: if you have a goal, you don’t yet necessarily have a vision, and the “why” Holger raised is crucial too, since only once you have that can you really initiate meaningful change processes along the way. What she’d realized is that action and goals always come back to asking where we actually want to go — and she believes a good coach asks good questions, and someone advising you well also asks good questions, because the important thing isn’t figuring out, from your own perspective, why something isn’t working for the other person, but figuring out what they themselves think isn’t working, then working on those specific sub-steps. That, she said, is what genuine awareness looks like — being problem-oriented and process-oriented.
Yasemin thanked her and invited Raphael. Raphael said there was a lot to unpack. As a quality-management professional, he immediately thought of the PDCA cycle — Plan, Do, Check, Act — something used constantly in project management to continuously monitor progress with feedback loops. He noted Jürgen and Holger had both moved toward team and project management — the “outer team” — while Yasemin had mentioned the “inner team,” which isn’t really that different: you have to bring the team’s management along, communicate the dream, and get everyone genuinely working together toward the goal. He also picked up Marc and Yasemin’s sports example — wanting to get fit for health reasons is a sensible connecting mechanism between goals: you say “I need to get fitter, I’m out of shape, my kid’s about to have a baby, in three years I need to be able to play soccer with my grandkids.” He added a further layer they hadn’t touched yet: how strong are the goals, and what motives are behind them — distinguishing between epigenetic and sociogenic motives driving us forward. He said there were so many open threads worth continuing to explore.
Yasemin agreed it was fascinating and invited Jürgen, then Layla. Jürgen picked up Sabine’s and Raphael’s contributions, which had moved from the self toward the team and project management, and wanted to add a second important competence around goals, drawn from his professional experience: risk management. This, he explained, is technically a sub-function of the broader steering function within management, but deserves special attention because a goal is a mentally anticipated state of a potential future — meaning it’s neither reality yet, nor 100% guaranteed. This, he said, brings in the concept of scenarios: does a single goal even suffice for solving a complex problem, or, as Yasemin had repeatedly noted, do we need sub-goals? Ultimately, simply settling back once you have a vision (Marc’s “I want to stay healthy, so I need to exercise, that’s my goal”) isn’t truly goal-oriented in the fullest sense, since you might discover you genuinely can’t acquire the necessary abilities to fulfill that vision. So what then? Does the vision collapse, does the goal collapse? Here, he said, is where the mental anticipation of risk management kicks in: reflect, somewhat solemnly put, on what happens if you demonstrably fail to reach this goal — does that mean abandoning the vision too, or, echoing Sabine’s example, adopting a “let it be, let the kids do whatever they want” attitude. That, for him, is a further essential component.
Yasemin thanked him, noting there are different layers here too: on one hand, you could seek outside help to jointly examine things if you’re stuck — back to external support — and on the other, having a vision as the vehicle toward setting goals doesn’t mean goals are set in stone; goals themselves can change. You might also discover, along the way, that a particular goal wasn’t actually the right path toward your vision, gaining new insights that lead you to adjust the goal or sub-goals — viewing this all as a process with feedback loops (again, Plan-Do-Check-Act) to keep checking whether you’re still on the right path, or whether the path needs, and perhaps must, change in order to actually fulfill the overarching vision.
She invited Layla, then Raphael. Layla shared a story she tells her tenth-grade students whenever they cover goals and actions, since it’s such an important point: Bertolt Brecht’s “Mr. Keuner and the Flood.” She asked whether it was okay to read it briefly (about two minutes), and once confirmed, recited: Mr. Keuner was walking through a valley when he suddenly noticed his feet were in water. He realized his valley was actually an arm of the sea, and the tide was coming in. He stopped immediately to look for a boat. As long as he hoped for a boat, he stood still. When no boat appeared, he gave up that hope and hoped instead that the water wouldn’t rise further. When the water reached his chin, he gave up that hope too, and swam. He had realized that he himself was the boat. She connected this directly to action and goals, and always asks her students what exactly Mr. Keuner realized — noting that action is largely about how much we can steer: we can’t control the other person, we can’t control the sea, but we can adjust our sails. That line, she noted, tends to show up on therapy websites, but it’s genuinely true.
Yasemin thanked her warmly and invited Raphael. Raphael shared his own experience starting a business twenty years ago: he’d written a business plan, only to realize fairly quickly, upon reflection, that most of it was nonsense — the direction shifted monthly until it eventually consolidated and moved forward. So essentially, you head in some direction, and when walking no longer works, you swim; once the flood arrives, it’s already too late to plan — you simply do whatever you’re best equipped to do and find your own way through. He connected this to risk tolerance, sharing an IBM anecdote: an employee had sunk three million dollars into a failed project by betting on the wrong product, fully expecting to be fired when his boss called him in. Instead, the boss said, “of course I’m not firing you — I just invested three million in your education. You learned something, we all learned something, and I’m certainly not letting you go now that I’ll benefit from what you bring me in the future.” How big is the risk there, he asked — genuinely large.
Yasemin found the story fascinating, having not heard it before, and invited Marc, Sabine and Jürgen to continue if they liked. Sabine said she loved Layla’s story especially, recalling a similar exercise from a workshop she’d attended, involving a boat and a helmsman: it wasn’t just about the boat itself, but about staying the helmsman despite everything — not being tossed left and right by every wave (tying back to goal management), but watching what happens around you while still keeping your vision, and thus your goal, firmly ahead. This wasn’t told directly at first — everyone was asked to write their own story about their boat, and only afterward did it emerge, through the writing exercise itself, who the helmsman actually was. She found it genuinely revealing, learning a lot about herself in the process.
Yasemin thanked her, and tied this back to why setting goals matters at all: partly it’s about recognizing which abilities and aptitudes you need to reach a certain point, but there are also areas where you can’t yet fully judge that, which brings in the idea of exploration. Since goals are changeable and not set in stone, you can make corrections along the way — and it might even make sense to set a goal you’re not 100% sure serves the overarching vision yet. She was curious what everyone thought, especially since this might apply particularly to young people and adolescents who don’t yet clearly know their vision — they might first need to set various goals just to explore whether a given instrument is fun, whether it’s a hobby where they have real strengths, and so on, deriving insights from that exploration that eventually help develop the vision itself. So the vision isn’t necessarily clear and visible from the very start — it may need to be developed along the way, which means setting goals without yet having a vision can serve a genuinely important function in this whole construct.
Layla picked up several threads here: yes, yes, yes and yes, she said — people might not be consciously aware of their vision yet, which is exactly why offering a range of goals can help, something she does professionally as a teacher, sometimes joking with students that she wants them to become rich and famous, or at least rich if not famous — giving them a shared starting point. She often notices students lack that spark of enthusiasm. She then raised a specific question: sometimes we have a distorted perception (not speaking diagnostically, just in the everyday sense of not seeing the forest for the trees), and if she wants to point this out to someone — fully aware it’s just her personal view, though grounded in her professional experience and qualification — how does she do that without stripping someone of their self-confidence, while still suggesting something could be done differently or better? She knows about “I”-statements, positive communication techniques, the “sandwich” approach — but how do you actually navigate this in practice, especially with very self-confident young people who are genuinely doing something wrong, when she doesn’t want to take away that self-confidence, which she finds such a wonderful trait?
Yasemin noted Jürgen had signaled wanting to respond directly to her previous moderation point, and gave him the floor first. Jürgen admitted he’d lost his train of thought slightly but wanted to circle back to Yasemin’s earlier point about the distinction between goal and vision when a team doesn’t recognize your own goal-setting the same way, leading him to a related point about the connection to action specifically — since their room today was called Action and Goals. For him, a key specific feature of goal management is that the very way you set, communicate, and steer goals — whether within a team or for yourself — constitutes a specific form of action in itself. Put simply: through goal management or goal-setting, we’re already acting, since everything we do impacts our environment (and in project management, the goal itself). The necessary precondition for this is communication, making things transparent — and this, for him, represents an essential “educational” component of being a manager: making transparent how you think, how you formulate goals (drawing on your methodological toolkit), in order to influence the behavior of individuals and the group as a whole. This influencing, this changing of others’ behavior, is itself, for him, an outcome of action — which forms the bridge to today’s theme of goals and action.
Yasemin thanked him, clarifying her earlier point had actually been about the self, not the team — though she didn’t see much difference here, and offered a thesis: whoever can’t lead themselves, can’t manage themselves, is also unable to lead other teams. We’re always, at minimum, leading our own inner team, even before leading external ones. The same aspects Jürgen just described — communication and transparency — apply equally within the self: examining what’s actually happening internally (tying back to mindfulness), the goal conflicts they’d discussed earlier, and so on. Only once you achieve clarity here, gain insight, formulate goals, and clarify your vision internally, are you actually equipped, having managed yourself, to lead teams too — carrying that same internal transparency outward through communication. She didn’t see these as two entirely separate domains; rather, self-management is an important prerequisite for later successfully working with external teams — getting along well with your own inner team first is the foundation.
She also wanted to briefly address Layla’s earlier question about distorted perception: who decides what counts as distorted perception in the first place? That’s already a judgment call. Your impression that it’s distorted comes from your own subjective view, shaped by your own experience — and it doesn’t have to be wrong, but it starts out subjective. One of the most helpful techniques here, in her view, is genuinely working through questions. As an example: her son recently said he wanted to become a YouTuber. She had nothing against it in principle, but knew he doesn’t particularly like being on camera. Rather than telling him he wasn’t suited for it, or that she saw his strengths elsewhere, she deliberately asked him questions instead — steering him to think for himself about what it would actually require and how he felt about it, letting the insights he gathered help him determine whether this was really what he wanted or something else entirely. She added that we shouldn’t forget the external world keeps changing too — until about a year ago, she’d have found it genuinely challenging that someone camera-shy wanted to become a YouTuber, since those two things didn’t seem to align. But now, with AI and similar tools, he doesn’t even need to appear on camera anymore — opening up entirely new ways to reach the same goal. She hadn’t seen that particular development coming so quickly, which ties back to something they’d discussed before: her own experience is always rooted in the past, and she doesn’t actually know what the future holds, which is why she has to stay cautious with her own assessments — she might be right, but not necessarily, and it’s not just about perception or distorted perception, but about ongoing developments that our brains can only ever anchor to past experience, which we can’t automatically project forward as a fixed insight or target for the future. This becomes especially important when we’re responsible for working with other people — as a teacher, coach, or advisor — to always keep this in mind.
With time running short, she moved toward the closing round in reverse order: Raphael, then Layla, Jürgen, Sabine, and Marc, inviting anyone to pick up any remaining thread before their closing thought.
Raphael recalled Julien Backhaus, a recent guest, discussing consultants and the flexibility they need in project management approaches — fascinating, and genuinely true. He noted they hadn’t gone further into milestones: in the automotive world, milestones come with fixed deadlines already set, and you don’t need to worry about the deadline itself, only how to hit it — approvals, safety inspections, and all the associated certifications. Genuinely fascinating. He wished everyone a nice weekend, closing that it’s always lovely being with everyone here.
Layla reflected on action and goals: she’s had many goals and taken many actions, and whether those led to success is really a matter of perspective. She found Yasemin’s earlier point important, tying it to something she constantly laments as a teacher: she doesn’t have a crystal ball, yet people often act as though they do, judging what she can or can’t do based on whatever assumptions they’ve made — something that’s happened to her personally too. That’s exactly why Yasemin’s point mattered so much: always keep in mind that how you show your goals to others is just a reflection, since you can’t fully externalize your inner thoughts and feelings anyway. She thanked Sabine for the boat story tip, wanting to hear more details to use with her own students next year.
Jürgen said he didn’t want to add anything more to the topic itself — so much important ground had been covered, another wonderful room, heartfelt thanks to everyone. He had one request for Yasemin: having only joined X (Twitter) the day before, the link she’d posted kept failing to load properly on his end — how would he find everyone tomorrow if that kept happening?
Yasemin said she’d address that at the end and was already thinking through solutions. Sabine said this sounded like a big challenge, admitting she had zero experience with X or Twitter herself, and was curious how it would go as long as she didn’t oversleep. She closed by praising Layla’s and Jürgen’s stories and philosophical framings, wishing everyone a wonderful day.
Yasemin said she already had a solution for Jürgen’s concern and would come back to it. Marc said he’d also found it a wonderful room, and wanted to close with a tribute to Jürgen’s habit of questioning terminology carefully. Two points for Layla: her joke about wanting students to become rich made him imagine himself, as a student, responding “Dear teacher, I’m already rich — I don’t need money, since I’m already plenty unhappy” — a playful jab at how much comes down to how we define terms. And for Yasemin’s son wanting to become a YouTuber: when exactly does one become a “YouTuber”? After one video, ten, a hundred? What’s the actual purpose — making money, or simply being able to say “I made 20 YouTube videos”? Again, tying back to Jürgen’s point: this kind of terminological clarity helps enormously in communication, whether with your own inner team or a team you’re leading, since otherwise you get stuck — we all carry different mental images and may well be pursuing entirely different visions or goals without realizing it. He wished everyone a great start to the weekend.
Yasemin thanked everyone, agreeing today had been remarkably rich and varied — a genuinely huge topic once you look closely, but she felt they’d managed, toward the end, to build meaningful bridges and pull the various threads back together, even if some aspects hadn’t been explored in full detail today. Since these are individual components under the broader umbrella of self-management, she was confident they’d have further opportunities, especially during the consolidation week ahead, to revisit and deepen anything left open, particularly when connecting reflection, thinking, and action at the end.
She reminded everyone, for anyone who’d missed the start: tomorrow they’d be on X Spaces, the live-audio platform on X (formerly Twitter), and shared the link again in multiple places — pinned, in chat, in her bio, and in yesterday’s newsletter. She then addressed Jürgen’s question about finding the room if something went wrong: her quick solution was to also open a room on LinkedIn that day, streaming the audio there via her phone on Clubhouse, similar to what they do on Sundays with author guests — so if X Spaces failed for anyone, the LinkedIn room would be there as backup, findable through LinkedIn events. This way, she wouldn’t have to keep muting and unmuting different platforms; everyone could listen in regardless, even while she helped troubleshoot X Spaces access for those having trouble. She clarified Clubhouse and X Spaces together wouldn’t work technically given her current audio setup, so they’d decided not to open Clubhouse this time. She suggested, as a tip, that having both a phone (for X Spaces) and a computer (for LinkedIn Live Audio) open simultaneously would likely be the smoothest approach for anyone worried about access issues.
Jürgen thanked her for the reassurance, especially for Sabine’s benefit, reporting he’d just tested the link again and it worked perfectly — he’d even set a reminder. So his conclusion: the link works fine once you’re signed up on X Spaces. Yasemin confirmed that, just to be safe, LinkedIn Live Audio would remain available as a backup regardless — better safe than sorry, in case anyone preferred listening there, or ran into trouble, though she genuinely hoped everyone would take the opportunity to join on X Spaces directly and explore the features together, rather than defaulting to LinkedIn out of caution. That, after all, was the whole point of tomorrow’s session: gathering shared, hands-on experience with the new platform.
She closed by thanking everyone, saying she was looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow morning, admitting she was a newcomer to X Spaces herself despite having tested a few things beforehand, and was genuinely curious how the room would unfold. They were going into it spontaneously, directly in action mode — no elaborate planning, just trying things out, gathering experience, and handling anything that goes wrong with good humor, drawing whatever insights they could from it together. With that, she hoped to see everyone the next morning and wished everyone a wonderful Saturday. Until then, ciao.
