Thriving in the Age of AI with Filip Drimalka

Nigel Rawlins: [00:00:00] Phillip, welcome to the Wisepreneurs podcast. Could you tell us something about yourself and where you're from?

Filip Drimalka: Nigel. My name is Filip Drimalka. Sometimes it's hard to pronounce. But I'm from the Czech Republic. And a little bit about myself. I love digital innovation. For the last 15 or almost 20 years, I've been helping organizations to adopt new technologies and new ways of working. Actually, I'm a lawyer.

I studied law, but never practiced because I got interested in improving workflows and improving how people work very soon. So even though I finished school, I fell in love with all stuff digital. So this is what I'm doing now.

Nigel Rawlins: Okay. And at the moment, are you traveling?

Filip Drimalka: Yeah, I'm on a workation, which is part of work and part of vacation. And I'm traveling, I'm now in Sri Lanka, [00:01:00] and then I will travel to Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and I will end end my trip in South by Southwest in Austin Texas.

Nigel Rawlins: Okay. What made you do the trip?

Filip Drimalka: Okay so this is special occasion I do this. vacation every year for at least four to five weeks, but this time is different because I have I have a 17 years old daughter and next year she will finish high school. So I took it as opportunity to spend some quality time with her. So we are here with the whole family, but the next week my wife and my baby boy will come back to the Czech Republic and then I will have almost five weeks with my daughter.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, lovely. So where in the Czech Republic do you actually live?

Filip Drimalka: In Brno in a city called Brno. And the whole region is sometimes called the South or Central European Silicon Valley, because there are many tech companies and startups and the whole city is buzzing. Yeah, I love Brno and the whole area. It's close to Vienna. It's close to Prague. [00:02:00] So basically everything in Europe is pretty close, but I think Brno is in the middle of everything.

Nigel Rawlins: I think some of the people from the Czech Republic I've spoken to from the area. I came across your book through Thomas Baranek I think it is. Your book was The Future Of No Work and I read it and I'm thinking, wow, it was it was, put it this way, it had a lot of depth so it took a lot of reading, but I found that as I was reading it, I was clicking on all these different sites and spending lots of money on little programs that you mentioned, but we did talk about believe it or not, one of the books that I read many years ago Tim Ferriss's The 4 Hour Week, which was published in 2007.

And his idea was to create more time for activities that matter. And your book about The Future Of No Work, because when I read Tim Ferriss's book, I thought, how can you, cause he talked about doing everything in four hours. And I'm thinking that's impossible [00:03:00] because at that time, which was many years ago, actually I was running a probably a larger marketing services company.

It's down to me now. And I was thinking how can I suddenly get my business down to running in four hours? I can't even do the accounts in four hours, but I think your book can actually make that happen. So let's talk a little bit about The Future Of No Work, your book that was published last year. How did that come about?

Filip Drimalka: Okay. I founded two companies and both are related to digital skills and technology adoption. And what I see, is that people have all these amazing apps and softwares and all this technology around themselves, but they are not using them and they are using just like fraction of what it is capable of doing.

And I was influenced by Tim Ferriss a lot and I love his podcast and everything. And I think there are two differences. The one is that he's talking [00:04:00] about escaping. And I'm talking about doing better work, and I think what AI does is enabling us to, to work smarter and faster, but to do better work and with better outputs and create more value.

And the second difference is that I think it's, yeah, it is not maybe about working four hours because I found it impossible as well. But about increasing the value we create in those hours we spent working. And I think with AI you can really create enormous value in a couple of minutes, actually.

So now all those ideas from Four Hour WorkWeek are even, easier to implement with the help of AI. But what is I important to to notice or to say is that, sometimes it's not about AI at all. It's about maybe doing less or maybe maybe not doing at all. So I think that, how I came up with this idea is that when I tried ChatGPT for the first time, it was one day, it was the very first day actually,[00:05:00]

when it was published. So I did two things. I purchased some NVIDIA stocks, because I knew that this would change everything. And I also purchased the futureofnowork. com domain because I realized that this is how work will look like in a couple of years, that we will be just orchestrating AI that will do most of the work.

So this is how I came up with the whole No Work Movement and I needed to write this book immediately because I knew that it would change everything.

Nigel Rawlins: I think it is going to, and the most amazing thing is we connected up today, and within a couple of hours, we're on the podcast, and I was able to use my AI. Luckily, I had read your book and taken lots of notes, but I was able to use ChatGPT to create some summaries and create some talking points and also help me with The Four Hour Work Week from Tim Ferris and blend those together and think about this conference you're [00:06:00] heading off to.

And that helped me. So you're right. There's an interesting chap called, I don't know if you've come across him, Ethan Mollick. And he talks about centaurs and cyborgs, about people who use AI or Chat GPT. Cyborgs blend the machine and the person, so they're on and using AI all the time. And centaurs, they do their little bit, and occasionally they'll do some AI.

And that's what I think you're, that's what got me about your work is, yeah, let's just dive in and use this. So let's go through a little bit about what do you think work means nowadays, in that regard.

Filip Drimalka: Before I start, I think it's not only about AI that helped you to prepare for this session, but also, I booked this session through SavvyCal, your smart link that, allow me to check your calendar and so on. You will do a summary after. So I think we can now use [00:07:00] technology in almost every step of any process.

And this is amazing. So I think that the when people are able to connect all these apps and smart services together. Then, the magic happens. And sorry, what was the question? Because I was, I was just so amazed by this, I know Ethan Mollick and I think yeah, I remember now.

So I think the what we see in our programs, there are people and there's just I think, a couple of people that really get into the symbiosis with AI. I call it symbiosis with AI. That means that I'm not thinking if to use it or not. I'm just using that in every single step of the process.

I have linked to my favorite AI apps in my browser, so I just click and I just use it and basically it is something like extension of my brain of my mind. And I think those people when you watch how they work, this [00:08:00] is the future for the rest of us because in the future where when AI will be present everywhere in every single device it will be part of our smartphones.

You won't need to think if to use your, or you will just talk to your device. Now it still requires a couple of steps, go to the website and then type. I dictate a lot. Basically, there are some barriers. They're small. But I think if you watch innovators, people like these cyborgs as Ethan Mollick names it, or people that live and work in symbiosis with AI when you watch startups, what they work on agents and so on.

So I think this helps you to understand how the future of work will look like. And I, we can talk about many concrete examples that basically show us where the world of work is heading, especially knowledge work.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, definitely. That, that's an area where I'm very interested in. Look, I'll give you an [00:09:00] example of how I use ChatTP the other day. I look after 18 websites for my clients because I run a marketing services company. But my Wisepreneur's work is a little bit different.

I've got a marketing services company and I write a lot of specialised or expert articles and I put them on their websites and I do all the SEO.

So I do the research and I use AI to help me a lot with that. I write all their articles, but without AI, I couldn't do that.

Filip Drimalka: No, but this is the extension. This is the extension, not only of our brain, but also about the topics that you can tackle somehow. And I think it is also reflected in my book when I talk about generalists, because I think the process and workflows are very similar, no matter what company do you work for.

So when we talk about knowledge work, basically. SEO and customer or client communication. Everything is just play with information, right? It's just, you create [00:10:00] information, you absorb it, you learn, you somehow transform it from text to a different text or to voice or video. So basically everything is about information.

That's why it's information or knowledge workers. And I think this is one of the fields where AI will hit, or it already hit very hard.

Nigel Rawlins: Yes, I was going to say, and one of the things I had to do is we had a problem with a domain name. We weren't allowed to continue using the old domain name, so we had to create a new domain name. And I had to redirect everything from the old one. to a new one. And now this is going to confuse people.

I had to technically figure out how to redirect the old site to the new site from cloudflare then do all the other technical work so that it doesn't get lost to the search engines. ChatGPT guided me the whole way through. Normally, I would have had to pay hundreds of US dollars to get a technical [00:11:00] expert to do all that.

And I would have been up for a lot of money. So Yeah, in that respect, the danger though for knowledge work is if you have expertise, you've spent a lot of time learning your deep knowledge and obviously using it the danger is, yeah, you can be a generalist and use ChatGPT to solve those sorts of problems.

I may never have to solve those problems again. But if you're an expert, and a generalist can do your job, what happens to work? And what happens to expertise?

Filip Drimalka: I think this is one of the most important questions we need to ask, because what happens, what will happen if the price of intelligence will go to almost zero, right? So there will be people who won't get over it because they even like they will feel that they are not bringing value and they have new bunch [00:12:00] of competitors from those generalities who are not afraid to promote their services, even though they are executed by AI but also I think people with entrepreneurial mind will come up with new services.

They will serve those customers with the help of AI. So I believe in market. I believe in market and I think this will, bring so many new opportunities, but I think it also brings another question and I one of the most important takeaway from my book is that, nowadays, and I believe that in a couple of years, maybe three, five, seven years, AI will be super useful in not through the whole process.

So you said, okay, so I need to find out how to redirect hundreds of sites or maybe by pages and so on. So nowadays, you brainstorm with AI, then you maybe build some automation, how to create different links for each of the previous [00:13:00] web pages and so on. So again, you use AI within this process, but AI doesn't, doesn't do the whole work.

So sometimes people expect that AI will do the whole work like, okay, so I have this old website and new website do the redirect. Maybe in five years it will be capable of doing that, but still you're the one who is orchestrating that and it brings you the opportunity to do more work yourself. So again, you could offer it as a service to new clients.

You don't have to pay for experts or maybe pay just for consultation or advisory. So I think the work itself will not disappear, but people who will learn how to use AI within the process and, that it will be not scared or afraid to use it it will have so many new options and opportunities.

This is amazing.

Nigel Rawlins: That's the point. As I mentioned that I'm turning 69 this year. Wisepreneurs is aimed at the older professional who [00:14:00] wants to work for themselves. And this is where I think your book comes into itself, is one, one of the issues, obviously, for probably my age group, is that we were born in an analog age.

As young kids we had a black and white TV and I cannot remember if we had a phone in the house. Now everyone's got a phone and they carry it with them and they look at it all the time. So my generation has grown into a digital world. And for some it's overwhelming, but for others it's really exciting.

And one of the things that you mentioned there was really important is brainstorming with Chat GPT or AI or talking to it or discussing what you're doing. Which is what I do a lot now.

Filip Drimalka: Yeah. I think the thinking, not only brainstorming, but the thinking as we know it has ended. And I give you one example. One of my teams is working on [00:15:00] a project called Amy. Amy is an AI consultant. So basically what we do is that we do analysis of digital opportunities before our consultants sat down with our clients, talked about how they work, what they do.

What holds them back and so on. And then we prepared the presentation. How can we, improve the work? What can be automated and so on. Now we replace the first part of the process, the discussion with our clients with AI. And we needed to improve the way AI is asking questions because some people responded, Okay, so I spent, I spent hours creating presentation.

But what does it mean? Is it like every single week or is it for clients? Is it for internal purpose and so on? We needed to improve the way AI is asking. And my colleagues were discussing this during internal workshop. And when I came in, I found out that they discussed it for two hours. And what I did, I [00:16:00] uploaded like hundreds of pages of this, of all conversations with one of our clients team to NotebookLM it's brilliant tool from Google.

And basically I asked, okay, analyze those conversations and give us some tips and hints how we could improve them. And in 15 seconds, NotebookLM came up with much better ideas than my whole team in two hours. And I realized that really thinking as we know it has ended because now I know that even what you think, let's compare The future Of No Work and Four Hour Work Week.

Now you can upload both books to Notebook LM and talk about the differences. It will still be you who will be orchestrating the discussion, but I think, the AI is so powerful nowadays that we really need to get used to it as extension of our brain and extension of our capabilities.

Nigel Rawlins: Now that's a very interesting point. Because one of the reasons we're [00:17:00] reading stuff is because obviously if we're discerning and one of the, again, problems of my age group is that we're running out of time. I don't know when my use by date's coming up. At my age, I could still be doing this at 80 or 90, or I could be gone tomorrow for all I know.

So we've got a finite use of time. So it's really important what we read and what we do for my particular age group. Now, obviously if somebody is only 20 or 30 and they're listening to this, they're thinking, what the hell is he talking about? Our time is really important. So what are we going to read?

And if AI can help us with that, but again, in terms of knowledge work, it is having some sort of expertise, but maybe what you're saying is have some sort of expertise and an ability to recognize when discussions are not going to be useful. You mentioned Notebook LLM what did you do with it once you got that knowledge.

Filip Drimalka: That was interesting because we needed to change the system prompt of [00:18:00] Amy, of that of that AI assistant. So what we did is that we went through the ideas, we uploaded the old system prompt, And we said, based on those findings, improve the system prompts.

Nigel Rawlins: Okay, yeah.

Filip Drimalka: So again, what would take weeks now to a couple of seconds, and then the whole problem was improved.

And now Amy is much better. But I need to stress out one thing, Nigel, you said you are 69. And I think you are a great example that It is really about mindset because I know people who are in their thirties who are not using that at all and they feel that it doesn't work and if they feel threatened and so on.

And I believe really 90 maybe 95 percent of AI skill or the whole AI skills topic is about having the right mindset and when you [00:19:00] combine your life experience and you are good at what you do. And when you combine it with AI, this is where the magic happens. But it also brings some issues. For example, junior employees.

They have much less opportunities to learn and gain this experience because managers are turning to AI instead of junior people, right and interns and so on. So I think we that there are many more questions that we need to find answers for. But I think it's really about mindset. And it's about using AI for your own expertise.

This is, this is very important

Nigel Rawlins: Now that's a very interesting point you made there, because my mother was a typist, using a typewriter, years and years ago. And then we got computers, so you lost all the typists, so you had to end up doing the typing yourself, as a manager or a worker. Now what you're saying [00:20:00] is, you're not going to have interns, and you're not going to have junior staff, you've now got a computer keyboard, or a microphone.

And AI. That's narrowing, we're not using as many people. And the other thing, interesting thing about that, with working from home, a lot of people are not, unless they're using it at home, not getting that work environment where that sort of stuff gets spread around. The nature of work is really changing, but yeah I agree what you're saying there.

So let's talk a little bit more about mindset there because that's part of your book. If they haven't got a mindset towards that, what are they missing out on?

Filip Drimalka: That is an interesting question. I think maybe I would first describe what I mean by AI mindset. So it starts with acknowledging that there is an AI for almost everything, right? In 2009 Apple registered a trademark 'There's An App For That' in what it was 15 years ago. And there were, thousands of apps.

But now AI there, there is a website [00:21:00] called 'There Is An AI For That'. It's a catalog of 20,000 apps with AI. So now it starts with understanding that I should try AI no matter what I do. If I need to brainstorm or if I need to create a video avatar of myself, there is a high probability, maybe 99 percent chance that there is an app or AI for that.

The second is, it all starts with small tasks. Part of this mindset is trying to use AI here and there. Not for the whole word or process or workflow, but really for specific part of the process. And then I don't have to think. I can outsource part of the thinking to, to AI. So sometimes people ask me how to prompt properly.

So I tell them, okay, so what did not work? And when they explain, they say, okay, so you need to explain that to AI. And this is what I call the [00:22:00] symbiosis with AI. So you need to learn how to get into the symbiosis because it's not that complicated. And there are more parts of the whole AI mindset. I would expand that chapter after one year or maybe even more that the book is on the market.

I would expand the chapter because I see that during our programs where hundreds and thousands of employees participate, that when you combine all these little things, this is when AI starts working properly, it's not about spending four hours at a workshop and learning like Excel formulas.

It's really getting to this symbiosis and learning how to co- live or co- work with AI. And if you miss that, then you are still asking the same questions like where to start or how to prompt or what people ask me, is there an app for this? Or is AI capable of doing that? And you know what I respond?

I tell [00:23:00] them, why do you ask me? Just go and give it a try. So you are basically without this mindset you are missing the whole thing. And the last last thing is that I received feedback after one of my webinars from a guy and he said, I'm 77 and now I just want to work more because this is so amazing.

So it's not about the age is not about the gender is really about curiosity and willingness to learn new things and maybe even unlearning the old ways of working.

Nigel Rawlins: I think what you just said is don't use ChatGPT as a Google.

Filip Drimalka: Yes. You can and in the future I think many people will use it. But now I think this is one of the worst one of the worst examples how to use AI. And to be honest I'm big fan of Claude and I use Claude for 95 percent of the time when I use AI. And I think it [00:24:00] has a different personality.

So this is also interesting topic that you need to choose AI, maybe try different AI tools for the very same prompt or very same task. And then based on the output and how you like it, how you like the tone of voice and so on. You should pick the right tool.

Nigel Rawlins: A prompt generator one of our guests provides and it's quite a detailed prompt and I'll use it for editing general stuff, or I'll use one for editing my Wisepreneurs topics. I discuss the prompt with the prompt generator and say it didn't kick out three examples, so it rewrites it.

And then I try that. So it's like a work in process. So yeah, I think that's the secret of it. It is not to be used to, Oh, tell me how to do this. And even though I had have done it like that, but when I'm doing my creative work or my writing work, or in the case of putting together questionnaires that I might like to ask people to work with I'll refine it through having conversations [00:25:00] with ChatGPT and say, Okay that's not really that simple, could you simplify it? Could you help me work out, for example, with knowledge work, I'm looking at a lot of information about how we can be more meta effective, so using the information that we get, and how can we be better at using that information. So I discuss for example, I'm really getting stuck into, what should I be eating and what sort of exercise should I do, I be doing, which I've been doing for many years and I'm clarifying it and so I'm saying, look, this is this and this is this and I'm taking these things, how can I just be sensible about all this? And again, because I do read a lot and take a lot of notes, I'm able to feed my notes in and say look, here's the latest information.

And that's what I think is really exciting about your book and what you're saying is, Hey, you can refine stuff. All right, in one of your chapters, you said upgrade your potential.

Filip Drimalka: Yeah, this is, no, you're right. And I think. Most [00:26:00] people like what most people like about the book is that it's really about the mindset, not about the tools because the tools change, right? The Microsoft loves renaming all their tools like once per couple of years. But it's really about mindset and may give you three tips based on what you just said about working with AI.

The first one is you can have AI writing prompts for you. So what I do sometimes I said, okay, create assignment for my colleague whose task will be this and that. And AI creates the assignment and I use it as a prompt. So this is like a prompt generator. So this is amazing that you don't have to think about prompt crafting anymore.

The second is what really helps me is to combine dictating, that means that I talk to AI, so I use the, I use iPhone and MacBook but there is a feature for Windows as well. I sometimes use advanced voice mode that AI talks, but I [00:27:00] found it slow and I like when I talk, and AI just, writes it down.

I dictate, sometimes I dictate more. I talk about the context and so on. And I think the answers are better afterwards. And the second one is that I use external data. This is exactly what you said and mentioned, like provide examples. What I can do, I can go to a website, I just select all the text, copy paste it, and say okay get inspiration from this, or basically I take a screenshot put it to AI.

And these three little things, like use AI for writing prompts, dictate, and use external data, this is something that you know, really helps to get the most of out of AI.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, I totally agree. I've been taking screenshots and feeding it and it just reads them perfectly. And I'm going, this is amazing because I'll just say every month I do a SEO report for my clients. I just take all the screenshots, feed it [00:28:00] in and give me a report and it does it beautifully and it'll point out things that you can overlook.

That's amazing.

Filip Drimalka: And maybe imagine one more thing, and this is a great example. You said you are doing SEO reports, and this is exactly the, let's say, the moment where AI helps you not only to make your work easier, but to provide better service for your clients. And I think sometimes we forget about this.

Sometimes we talk a lot about automating the boring stuff and so on. I don't think, I don't care about boring stuff. I care about my clients and the service I provide. So this is exactly that now you can take a couple of screenshots feed it to AI, include some of your ideas, and it just creates beautiful report for your client, which means better service.

And I think this is, why I love AI so much.

Nigel Rawlins: It used to take me a [00:29:00] couple of days to do those reports. I can kick the whole lot out in a day. Now I did do some automation with Google, but it's just not as good as running it through AI now. Yeah, so I wasted a lot of money spending it on getting somebody to automate stuff when I could really do it myself, but that's what you have to learn.

In your book again, one of your topics was new reality, new mindset, new superpowers, and we are talking about a superpower here, which is the power of tech. Now, it's really interesting, people are spending lots of money to go to universities and stuff like that. You've got a 17 year old daughter, so what skills do you think she needs, her cohort, now, these people are 50 years younger than me, or more than 50 years. Can you imagine your daughter, 70, in 60 years time?

Filip Drimalka: Nigel, I cannot imagine her like in 10 years. So I think the whole imagination and the gap where we can [00:30:00] imagine is just shortening. I would start with the strengths and talent. So I know that she's better at math, right? And, whole STEM, but she's very good in languages. She's very good in psychology.

She likes talking about psychology. I think this is where she should focus. And basically she should study that. But I also let her facilitate some of our events, because I believe these skills to, to be able to present, give a presentation and be a moderator, and so on.

So this will be valuable. But yesterday I I posted a new positions on LinkedIn and when I was thinking what skills I want from people, I realized that digital skills are not that important anymore for me. For me, there are three very important skills. The first one is agency or ownership or this ability of getting things done because so many people, they [00:31:00] don't have it.

When I talk to people like, okay, so what about this customer? I'm waiting for his response for how long, like three weeks. So I want people that just pick up the phone and do the thing, right? Or that come up with idea and then next day start to implement it. So ownership and agency, high agency people, this is, this is a must.

Then the second is communication. And communication is being able to express yourself to formulate ideas, communicate clearly and being able to communicate for some people like written communication is far more important, for some people it's video communication being able to present when you are in the room with the customer and so on.

But also what I found interesting is, ability to flirt because flirting is about social. It's about empathy. It's about verbal communication and also about self confidence. [00:32:00] So I wrote to that posting that I want people who are able to flirt. Because communication with AI is also flirting like, dude, show your hand, this is perfect, let's move on, and so on.

And the last is ability to learn. One of the things that really works in my companies is that we call it AI Check- In, and what we do is that every week we meet, and people show how they work and how they used AI. And then we roast each other. So we said, hey why you did it this way? So there is much better way.

But some people are not able to get this, to receive this feedback. Because we don't show each other how we work. We show the output and so on. But I think the way we work is getting more and more important. So this ability to learn, ability to improve almost anything and being able to learn on the go.

That's what I call, I [00:33:00] didn't invent it, but 'Just In Time Learning' that with the help of AI, you can learn anything like redirecting websites and writing report and so on. So drive and ownership. Communication and ability to learn. I think these are the most important skills of the future.

And then, of course, ability to build systems and all the things I write about in the book. But these are the soft skills that are getting more and more important in the age of AI.

Nigel Rawlins: oh, I think they're critical ones. And it, look it's very interesting. I'm not too sure where you find people like that. But what I do know, because I've I have, spoken on on the podcast with four of your colleagues from the Czech Republic, every one of them has those abilities, the ability to talk, be warm to be empathetic and communicate and. I'm thinking about my wife's four year old grandchild and what does she learn? And will she [00:34:00] learn through school? Are our schools going to allow these kids? And I must admit, more than 25 years ago, I was an elementary school teacher, a primary school

teacher, and I taught kids. But the sort of teaching I did was basically sit down and do this work.

Don't necessarily think for yourself. And some kids, no matter what, if you shut them up, would still burst out with their personality and they'll come through. But I'm glad I'm not teaching anymore. And I just hope that teaching is not like that anymore, but , You know, to find those sort of capabilities that you're talking about, those people are out there, but maybe they've had a different upbringing or a different cultural upbringing, like you're having in the Czech Republic, because those and yourself you blow me away with you, the smarts and the intelligence and the ability to communicate and be really clear, and, do things. You guys have all done interesting things, [00:35:00] at a world level and in a little tiny country.

Filip Drimalka: Thank you, appreciate it. I want to be a teacher in the future. I thought for a year, it's just like one subject. I think, it's my plan B or maybe plan A to spend, some time in the future. But when I think about my kids and about school, my strategy is that basically what they learn at school, it's a bonus. And that is my responsibility to not teach them but prepare them somehow, not to be super successful entrepreneurs and so on, but basically find their way how to be happy and live fulfilling life. So this is why I take them from school every year for a couple of weeks because I think that what we experience, and the conversations we have, it's maybe even more [00:36:00] important than the rest of the school year. But still, I think it's important to have some, let's say, broader knowledge. And being able to connect the dots. And I wrote about this in the book as well, that if you want AI to write in the tone of voice of someone who wrote a book, you need to first know that person, right?

If I love art. So when I want to create a design the cover of the book I get inspiration from a Basquiat. So if I want AI to create something in the combination of Basquiat and someone else. First, I need to know who Basquiat was. So I think that the education is important.

I don't like the whole idea of dropout thing, but I think there are valuable lessons in the world out there, and I think it's important to combine formal education with all those activities outside the school.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh yeah, I think so. And look, I think [00:37:00] for young people, I think one of the best things to do is to before they go to university, get out and do some work. Now I, I have two, I have three grown up children and two of my boys, because I was a primary school teacher. One thing I did notice was that the fathers of the children, who were tradespeople, were happier.

They'd come to all the working bees and work all day. And I said to my boys, don't go to uni, become a tradesperson and they're both tradies and they're living a really good life. They've got money, they travel they're practical they learn on the job and that's an interesting thing to do.

I left high school. I went straight into teacher's college to become a teacher. So I never left and got out. So it was only when I quit 25 years ago to start this business that I've had to learn stuff. And that's what I think the young people have got to do. They've got to get out and do something out of the education system before they choose to go back in.

But the [00:38:00] biggest danger today is the cost. If you've got a a university debt of several hundred thousand dollars that's not a good future for them.

Filip Drimalka: We don't have that in the Czech Republic. Our system of education is free. I know that some people said there is no such thing as a free lunch. But you can apply to university and get the best universities for free. So I think there is a huge difference. But also, I also believe that, and I tell my kids do as many things as possible, because then you find out, what is the one thing that you really feel that this is the thing that I should do.

And also, I think we need to get more flexible, not only in terms of studying, but also living. And we travel a lot and there are differences and now you can get amazing life in different parts of Europe where, for example, real estate. Is maybe even 10 times less expensive than in the States.

And I think this is also what I took away from [00:39:00] Tim Ferriss book is that you can really, I think he said that the best thing you can do is earn money in dollars, you invoice earning dollars, you spend in rupees, right? And I think you can do that now. That you can travel, you can work from anywhere and then we might get more flexible in terms of where we study, where we live and how we work. There are some professions that are basically you need to do that in person in the office and so on. But I think what I really like about my work that I can do these workations and work from anywhere because this opens up so many new opportunities and you can really live life that was unimaginable before.

And one last note is that when I was writing the book The Future of No Work, I left and I spent one month or five weeks in in Spain, in Canary Island, and I was just writing and surfing. And it was almost two years ago now, but [00:40:00] I met so many people that were working for corporations.

And those corporations allow them to spend four to five weeks abroad working from abroad, which is amazing because before this Tim Ferriss spoke about freelancers. Escape. And now I think people working for corporations, in large organizations can do the same. Of course not all of them, but I think this changed a lot.

So no matter what company you work for, you can leave for a couple of weeks, and work from anywhere.

Nigel Rawlins: I think Age group, because they have retired from work. You know, If they've got valuable skills as a professional and they're keeping themselves up to date, there's no reason why they can't go and live in Bali for four months. And in the nicer weather, that is.

Because there's fabulous workplaces there now that you can work out of or [00:41:00] Thailand or Vietnam, which are all wonderful. Canary Islands a fair way away from Australia. I mean I can only wish if I was paid in American dollars. Australian dollar is not worth a very lot compared to the American dollar.

All the apps that I buy are in American dollars. So it costs me twice as much which is really annoying. So one of the things I want to talk to you is, we've been talking about the challenges for the younger people, for their futures and all that. What do you see happening now? Now, Obviously, since you wrote the book, AI has improved probably 10 times over and even more. We've got the Google LLM, which I haven't really got into yet.

I use just OpenAI's stuff at the moment. What are the challenges do you think that are coming for the future? What's happening in the nature of work do you think that, are going to be challenging people?

Filip Drimalka: Even though the capabilities of AI improved a lot, I think people still work the same. So I think the biggest [00:42:00] shift will come with advanced AI that will be part of the processes within larger corporations and larger organizations, because then I think we will see two extremes. The first will be the situation where very small amount of people will create enormous value.

Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, he says that they have this closed WhatsApp chat and they are betting when there will be one person company, you know earning $1 billion or making $1 billion turnover. So small group of people will do amazing startups and will build amazing companies. And on the other hand, there will be the whole departments like Klarna.

One of the FinTech startups, they said that with the implementation of AI, they were able to replace the equivalent of 700 FTEs, full-time employees. And, of course, those are [00:43:00] extremes, right? The rarity will be in the middle. And we will see that some professions, they will be replaced for sure.

The typewriting profession does not exist anymore, but there are so many professions or maybe people that do just copy paste work and they are hiding from this whole automation and they will not be able to hide anymore. And they will need to find new job, new way of working and living.

And it will be tough. On the other hand, I think what we see already, and they're smart people who just create a new startups, offer new new services for their clients. And when we talked about the skills, you said it's super valuable and it's very hard to find those people. And I think that sometimes we need this external push like, I was going around my clients for 15 years telling them you need to allow your people [00:44:00] to work from home.

And then when COVID came in three days, all organizations allowed it. So I think that we don't see the impact of AI yet. So we are at the beginning. What do we now use as A. I. Tools is this is the dumbest is the is let's say the stupidest version of A. I. And I think what we will see not this year, but next year, and let's say in two years is that there will be really huge changes in this workforce when the whole departments will shrink by the 20, 30, 40%. And then the big question is what will those people do? Especially knowledge workers, like call centers and not only call centers accountants and so on. So I think, I don't have answers for that But I think we don't see it.

We don't see but we will see it in the next two years. But the good thing is [00:45:00] that we can prepare because all those predictions they basically are far away from what we can influence, but what we can influence and what we, everybody can control is what I learn, how I learn, how to work with AI. What skill, what skills do I need in order to be valuable in the job market and we still have time?

So I always tell my clients like what you can do is create AI vision. Imagine that you have the best AI you have it available It learns from you. You can just tell what you want and it does that. How will your work look like in three years? What will you do? What will AI do? And then if you do this AI vision, then you can prepare because this is basically the North Star where your life should, aim at.

So this is I think the biggest impact will come. And I think it will really [00:46:00] change the way we work and how we work. And now is the best time to to get prepared.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, I totally agree. And the thing that keeps hitting me. And I talk about meta effectiveness is being our best selves. If we're not healthy, if we're not fit and we're on medications, we're not going to be able to cope with this. So we've got to look after ourselves, emotionally and physically to start with.

And I keep saying these are fundamentals. If you're going to survive and be open to these things you've obviously got to look after yourself to start with. If you're stressing and not sleeping and you're drinking too much, you're already in trouble.

Filip Drimalka: Absolutely. And what I really recommend is to once per a while, change the perspective. Leave the office for a week, for a couple of days, just change the perspective because it really helps. And, I'm really digital, but I still take my Moleskin (notebook) with myself. And, the why [00:47:00] I love traveling is that this perspective thing, it really helps you to look at your work from above, right?

And then you see that things are really different than when you are at the office, like chasing all the busy work and all the to- do lists, because if you think about your future, you really need to think not about the tasks, but about the bigger picture. And this is where traveling and not only traveling, just go to your nearest coworking space.

And work from there and you, you will start seeing those little things and opportunities, and you will also become less stressed, because there is a huge difference when you change the community. And I think that changing the perspective and joining communities is something that really helps, no matter what you do.

Nigel Rawlins: You're going to laugh. I'm heading off to Japan in a couple of weeks, but I'm doing a cruise to get there for three weeks. So I'll be on a boat.

Filip Drimalka: This is what I'm talking about.[00:48:00]

Nigel Rawlins: But, I had to pay a fortune for the internet. It was AUD$800 for three weeks of internet on the ship, and then I've got a week travelling in Japan, so I'll have to buy another internet device there.

Because I'll still need to do my work, but hopefully not too much.

Filip Drimalka: Nigel so we talked about this, so I know that you will use Starlink, if it's okay that I say, but 10 years ago, you would need to pay 1000 maybe for a day. Yeah. And now you can buy Starlink Mini. And many of my friends are buying them when they are traveling.

And then you can just have the fast internet everywhere for a couple of hundreds of bucks. So it's amazing.

Nigel Rawlins: Yeah, it's still it's about AUD$137 a month here to get the Starlink. And I'm paying about 90 a month for not the best internet. I'd rather have Starlink, but the extra $50 starts to get to be expensive I think. We haven't got the best internet in Australia yet, unfortunately.

It's sad, really because there's these small countries like yours [00:49:00] that are doing amazing things. And we're just a little bit slow, I think, even though we've got an amazing country. You'll love it. So you're coming to Australia soon, so where are you visiting?

Filip Drimalka: I'm going to Sydney and Melbourne. And also maybe I will have another because I always have a presentation or workshop there. Maybe I will have two there. And then we are heading to New Zealand. And then to Hawaii and then finally to Austin. And I think Hawaii is the only place where I will just, you know, surf and hike and so on.

But we have I have fans and people who are really interested in the whole No Work Movement. So we use, the location where they are. And they are inviting their customers and their friends. If you are interested and you want to organize a No Work Workshop, or a presentation, or just a meetup, just let us know, because we organize so many of interesting events.

And it's really amazing to meet [00:50:00] people who are interested in this new ways of working and using AI because it's so fresh and they also tell this that they also say in my work, everybody is just so close minded and they don't see the opportunities. So it's really different when you meet people like yourself that are open and that you can talk about how to use it even and how to move this even further.

So this is so refreshing.

Nigel Rawlins: So what dates will you be in Sydney?

Filip Drimalka: I will be there from, I think, the 14th to 22, I think it's two days 20 to 23, and then we'll move to Melbourne for three days, and then two days are without any plan. Actually, I don't have, I just have a date of the presentation and then I don't have even the hotel. We always, book the hotel like one or two days in advance, which is also a great thing about about having all these apps in your mobile.

Nigel Rawlins: That's the day I fly to Sydney on the 20th. [00:51:00] So I don't know if we'll get a chance to catch up because the next day I've got to get on the boat in the morning. Is there anything else you'd like to mention?

Filip Drimalka: Okay, so sorry. So yeah, so I've got the presentation in Sydney, the 19th.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, okay. That's the day before I get there. That sounds fantastic. You're going to be in Sydney and Melbourne, so what's the best way for people to contact you then?

Filip Drimalka: Okay, I use LinkedIn a lot. I'm also active on Twitter, not that much. So LinkedIn, Twitter, or on my website https://drimalka.com/. I'm also writing a newsletter. I wrote it in Czech, but now I'm I've started an English one so you can sign up. And I think, drimalka.com or nowork.ai

So this is I think, the easiest way is to go to nowork. ai and sign up for my newsletter and also connect with me on LinkedIn.

Nigel Rawlins: We'll do that. I get Eliska Sestakova's newsletter in Czech and Google, Gmail translates into English for me. So it doesn't matter what language you send it at it [00:52:00] anymore. I think we can still read it, which is really good. Thank you very much Filip for joining me, this has been fantastic.

You're part of the new world of work that's occurring, and you're going to stimulate a whole range of people to think differently. And what I'm hoping is that people my age are going to get excited about this and realize they can do so much more too. And obviously, if we do have some young people listening to this they can see a future as well, and as I say to young people, you're going to be around for next 30, 40, 50 years.

Filip Drimalka: Yeah. And you are a great inspiration, Nigel, really. And thank you for everything you do. And of course, thank you for having me. And I think what I like is the whole midlife movement. Because I'm 41 but even if you are 50, you still have 20 years of work ahead. And I think, I don't want to stop working, because I think, it's part of me and what I just love doing things.

And I think [00:53:00] people need to understand this, that even they are in their 50s. They still have plenty of time ahead and they really need to learn not only, how to be fit and so on, but how to work with AI. So it's really important for everybody.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, totally agree. It, it is for the long run. So thanks Filip for joining me.

Filip Drimalka: Thank you. Thank you so much.