The Wisepreneurs Project—where wisdom meets entrepreneurship
April 25, 2024

Tomáš Baránek: Publishing, Knowledge Management, and Well-Being in the Digital Age

Tomáš Baránek: Publishing, Knowledge Management, and Well-Being in the Digital Age

Tomáš Baránek is a prominent Czech publisher who overcame burnout to master the art of thriving as an independent professional in the digital economy.

Tomáš shares the practical strategies and personal insights that reshaped his approach to health, knowledge management, and work-life balance.

Drawing from his experience translating influential books on personal development, productivity, and science into Czech, he introduces listeners to innovative tools like Readwise and Roam Research.

These resources aid in building a "second brain," enhancing our ability to manage and curate information effectively.

Tomáš emphasises the crucial role of self-care and the importance of seeking help, offering actionable advice for anyone navigating the challenges of the digital world.

Discover how to optimise your health, implement effective note-taking techniques, and use tailored self-care strategies to prevent burnout and promote longevity.

Tomáš Baránek, a successful Czech publisher, shares his journey from burnout to adopting effective strategies for health, knowledge management, and work-life balance in the digital age. 

Drawing from his experience translating notable English-language books on personal development, productivity, and science, Tomáš discusses practical tools like Readwise and Roam Research for building a "second brain" and the importance of selective information curation.

He emphasizes the significance of self-care and seeking help when needed, sharing his experience with burnout. Listeners will gain valuable insights and actionable advice for navigating the challenges of working as independent professionals while prioritizing their health and well-being in an increasingly digital world.

Mentioned In This Podcast

  1. Peter Attia, Outlive
    Website: https://peterattiamd.com/
  2. Robert Vlach Episode 38 Wisepreneurs Podcast
    https://www.wisepreneurs.au/robert-vlach-freelance-pricing-and-financial-mastery/
  3. Charlotta Darnell Episode 33 Wisepreneurs Podcast
    https://www.wisepreneurs.au/charlotta-darnell-psychological-strength-trainer/
  4. Readwise (reading and note-taking app)
    Website: https://readwise.io/
  5. Matthew Walker Why We Sleep"
  6. James ClearAtomic Habits
    Website: https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits
  7. Zettelkasten (note-taking and knowledge management method)
  8. Sönke Ahrens How to Take Smart Notes
  9. Niklas Luhmann (German sociologist, creator of the Zettelkasten method)
  10. Roam Research (note-taking and knowledge management software)
    Website: https://roamresearch.com/
  11. Obsidian (note-taking and knowledge management software)
    Website: https://obsidian.md/
  12. Apple Notes (note-taking app by Apple)
    Website: https://support.apple.com/guide/notes/welcome/mac
  13. Clojure (programming language)
  14. ChatGPT (AI language model by OpenAI, used by Tomáš for learning Clojure)
    Website: https://chat.openai.com/
  15. Kindle (e-reader device by Amazon)
  16. DeepL (AI-based language translation service)
    Website: https://www.deepl.com/
  17. The second brain is a personal knowledge management system that helps individuals organize and access information effectively. 
  18. To learn more about building a second brain, readers can explore resources like Tiago Forte's "Building a Second Brain" course (https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/), 
  19. Sönke Ahrens' book, mentioned above, How to Take Smart Notes" (https://takesmartnotes.com/), and 
  20. The Zettelkasten method (https://zettelkasten.de/).

Connect With Tomáš Baránek
Articles on Medium https://lifehacky.net/
About Tomáš Page https://barys.me/
Twitter https://twitter.com/tombarys
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasbaranek/
Publishing Website in Czech https://www.melvil.cz/

Transcript

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

Tomáš Baránek: Hi, I'm from the Czech Republic in Europe, from the city Brno, which is the second largest city of the Czech Republic. I lived here for whole life and I work here and my company is based here. I have my family in Brno.

Nigel Rawlins: So you have a company, I understand you're a publisher. Can you tell us how you got into publishing and some of the things that you like to publish?

Tomáš Baránek: It's probably the main cause is my mother is illustrator book illustrator and Yeah, she's old now, but still is doing her work that she loves and we had a lot of books at home and my father is actually a big reader, not fiction, more like non fiction books. So, there is something inside our family that led me to start not just reading, but writing, and later publishing books.

But the main switch happened when I found that there are books, in English that are, inspiring and bringing some big ideas for me. And that they are not on the Czech market because the Czech market was, after the communist era, which I was born to, after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, it was kind of empty, there were no books like the rest of the world knew, for example, self-help books and nonfiction books about many topics, about entrepreneurship, for example, about psychology. There were some, but not, not these books that I loved. So, I decided to start translating these books from English and publish them, not just for me and for my use, but for people in our country.

So it was like sweet spot connecting my interest in learning and understanding the world and with the business itself with making money. So, actually it's shortened its story, but that that's the point.

Nigel Rawlins: That's a pretty amazing thing. So out of the communist era there was nothing. So you're choosing books. So how did you choose the books? And then you're talking about actually translating them from English to Czech and then getting them printed. That's a lot of work, isn't it?

Tomáš Baránek: Yeah, it is. The problem is that you have to put a price that is still nice, yeah, and that people can buy this book and so on, but you have a huge work to do before you publish the book. You have to translate it, and it's not enough. Translation is usually not as good as it seems.

So then editors do their work. They start improving and fact checking because there is a lot of things lost in translation. Sometimes you have to find some particular facts that have a completely different translation or terminology in your country and in some areas.

So, you have to find, for example, new words. It's not that way now, but sometimes we find very challenging to translate some, some books. That's the first step. Czech Republic is one of the countries with the biggest ratio of book published per year, per person. So, we have a really great readership in the Czech Republic. It's a tradition that was here even during the communist era, because we read books, but, it was more about fiction books.

Nigel Rawlins: Obviously you've got a very literate community. So the teaching of reading must be very high level.

Tomáš Baránek: It is, it is. People read a lot. This is a very frequent question among my friends, for example, because they still can't believe that I can be very successful publishing house. Still very small, we have published 150 books from 2007 when we founded a company.

Three thousand publishing houses in a small country of 10 million people, and they publish 17, 000 book per year here. Still we can be successful because we very carefully choose what to publish, authors, topics, and we have to do topics that have the power to influence or to resonate with huge audience on the market, but still, the level or when you consider quality or the deepness of the books, we choose the best of the best.

So this is like trying to combine mainstream topic with very top level authors. These are translations mostly, but now, several years ago, it started to be much better in the area of Czech authors. It's very interesting development because after the communist era, which ended in nineties there were no stories that people could tell about for example, entrepreneurship, about anything that Communist Party was trying to to suppress. So, then some generations had to come and evolve and learn to start being able to write books. We are like late, but we have several offers of publishing books a week.

Nigel Rawlins: Let's talk about some of the ones that you've published from overseas. One of them is health and wellbeing Peter Attia.

Tomáš Baránek: Yeah, Peter Attia, it's it's Outlive in English, and he's very well known author of books. Peter Attia is doctor and very known for his podcast. He is popular, but when he makes things which are, I don't know, not easily accessible and he makes them accessible, understandable. Yeah.

Okay. He brings topics that are not easy to understand and that people confused about which is very common in the field of medicine and health and eating habits and exercise, for example. And he's very good at explaining what's really important and everything he does is based on a very deep understanding of he these topics He's actually a researcher and he reads studies very diligently and always trying to find some issue before saying that there is something new or undiscovered. He's always very skeptical, which I like because, the world is full of bullshit. So you, you have to be very careful. So Peter Attia wrote a book, Outlive, about keeping healthy.

So we are usually scanning our favorite topics and reading blogs and articles in media and listening podcasts. And so we stumble upon some author will publish a book about expertise. And so we contact him or trying to find the agency which is connected to the particular author. And then we have to negotiate conditions for translation which is not easy and not cheap, but still this is our business.

So then we sign some agreement and we have some time to publish the book translated to Czech and because we are trying to publish every book in available formats like audio book and ebook so that's growing market of audio books and eBooks. That's, that's something that works well and I think that helps the paper books too, because many people can't read, for example, when commuting, they can't take their books, so they use another another modality. So that's really great that these digital technologies help people to to read because without this, I don't know how the readership could work.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's just some concept of thinking about how medicine evolved and, he writes or tells us that there is medicine medicine 1.0 0 that's from the era where people thought that illnesses are are coming from some ghosts or some other events that are outside our world or something like that.

And they, they had some cure which was not connected with the roots of these issues or illnesses. So Medicine 2 is what we, we use now that's the way we cope with understanding our bodies and how we try to cure illness today.

And Medicine 3. 0 is something that is, using the best from the science and applies it not just as some general rule for everyone, but uses it in a more personalized way and long before your issues start, before you become sick. So it's about prevention, but much, much, much sooner. Now it's about strategy. Because we had nothing better. And our estimations of what is needed were based on a many mistakes in a field of health and longevity. What you can eat and what not and many studies are based on a very old methods of investigation. And these are epidemiological studies. These are like, you are asking people, for example, what they ate and, It is now clear that these studies don't work.

You can't get good results with just asking people about their habits. So, you have to consider other modern methods. So, Peter Attia tries to find some new approaches that use the modern science. There is a huge gap between what your doctor suggests when you are going to visit him, and what the science knows or sees now. There are some facts about our metabolism that are absolutely confused.

Nigel Rawlins: So, bringing Peter Attia's book into The Czech Republic ,that's going to inform a lot of people about how to think about their health. Like you I read all the books on longevity, anything on diet when I say diet just about food, and understanding our own bodies. And I think what you're trying to bring into The Czech Republic , and I think it informs you as well, is to think about ourselves and be more informed about ourselves. And I think that's the big issue. Whereas if we go to the doctor, some will give you a pill and that's going to deal with the symptoms, but not deal with the cause.

So what do you do for your health? To look after yourself, because I'm assuming this is a big issue for you, looking after your health and well being. So what do you do to look after yourself?

Tomáš Baránek: Yeah. Many things. And to tell the truth, I had a long history of being anxious about my health because I'm really anxious, that's part of my life and I try to cope with that. It's another story. And my understanding my health was always something that I considered very important, but still I was confused like, like many people are. There is so many suggestions. There are books that are very controversial, so then I found that I have to start with some basic things which to feel better, like, me . So, I added more exercise for example, it was, it was like a game changer and I know it's stupid. It's like everyone tells you, okay, you have to exercise more. Yeah. You, you can't just sit and hope that you will feel good. But okay, I started really exercise every day in many forms and I found very useful tricks for implementing these exercise workout habits into my busy workflow. For example it's from another bestseller because Outlive, from Peter Attia is a bestseller in US and in the world and in our country too now.

And, but another huge bestseller is Atomic Habits by James Clear. You probably know this book or saw this. And there is one great advice, which I again consider game changing, and it is that if you want to do something that is not easy to get used to for you.

You have to somehow, glue it, connect it with something that you like and start with small steps. So I started with on elliptical. You notice you just go and move your hands on this workout machine. And it's very good for, for knees and it's better than, better than just running on, on the treadmill.

Yeah. And I put iPad on the machine and during the day when I usually work and I'm very busy and I can't stop working, I just put there something that I like for example, some TV show and I connected the TV show, which I have no time to watch in the evening, so it's like a pleasure during the day that you inject into your day.

And I started to run on this elliptical machine. And so after several weeks, I stopped using the iPad because I didn't need it anymore. It was like I got used to to my endorphins and the source of the pleasure was actually in the movement and the, in the exercise itself.

So this was trick that helped me to get into moving every day. And then I added another similar, exercises and that's okay, so that's to get the basics about my health and how to get into shape. And when I started doing much more exercise than before, I started to sleep much better.

I had always very bad sleep, I couldn't fall asleep. I frequently wake up and, and so on. So these exercises stopped this behavior completely. So when your sleep improves, then you start to feel much better again, and so step by step, I started to believe that I can really start feeling much better.

And, when you see how it works, you start to be obsessed with this. So, so I'm in this phase now.

Nigel Rawlins: One of the things is obviously you work in an office, you're sitting down a lot. And this is the danger I've, I've noticed now. I think yesterday I spent many, many hours editing, the podcast that's going to go out this Friday. And I noticed it affected my sleep because I had too much screen time.

Now, I did go for two walks and I did do some strength training, but it still didn't counteract that. And that's one of the dangers of many of us today who are knowledge workers. We're sitting at desks, we're working on computers. how do you think that's affecting us?

Tomáš Baránek: Yeah, that's a huge problem. We published another book on health topic and it's Why We Sleep by by Matthew Walker. It's a great, really great book about what is sleep? And is not just some time that you spend in your bed and you hate it because it should be shorter , you should have more time for doing things.

Actually, sleep is, is the only thing that evolution, or not the only thing, but a time consuming thing that evolution did not get rid of, and it's interesting because during night it's risky because you you can be eaten. Why we still need sleep? Because there is so many things that happens in our brain and body that leads to our normal functioning. Without sleeping we die. So, when you sit at the table and you watch display a whole day. You are in a average lighted room, and our bodies were used to be influenced by changing intensity and quality of light during whole day for thousands of years. So the body can't decode what time it is if you are inside and there is just a low light and you watch TV or LCD monitor, or smartphone until you go sleep. The brain still thinks that it's day. He has no information that it needs to understand what time it is. So we are surprised that we can't sleep. But, on the other side, we don't give signals or we don't help body to get the right signals that we want to prepare for sleep.

We work, so our head is really hot inside because we try to push things ahead. We try to think in the night, we eat late again. It's like preparing for some physical activity, but it thinks, okay he or she eats, so it means that we will run probably.

So the body is not releasing melatonin hormone which prepares us for sleeping and so on and so on. So that's it. We are disconnected. We built the world which we want, which we somehow adore, but it kills us.

Nigel Rawlins: And, and that's so much more important today because, we are not outside working unless you're, working in a trade or something or you've got a job that takes you outdoors. A lot of us are working indoors. So I can see why the books you choose are really going well. Would you say a lot of the Czech population are working in the knowledge economy?

Tomáš Baránek: Yeah actually we are, we are in the center of Europe and it's very similar to other Western countries. Now the knowledge economy is growing and our government is trying to make our country more competitive uh, not being just garage for building cars from other countries. So we are really very digitally based country.

Nigel Rawlins: Let's just talk about the knowledge economy a bit more, obviously you're very interested in reading and writing and using tools and you use Roam Research.

Can we talk about your processes for how you read and what you do with what you read?

Tomáš Baránek: Thanks for the question because it's my favorite tool. I read a lot but not always in the same way as many people read. Because I have to check or skim many books to decide if we, for example, publish translation or just for knowing has been published.

So we have, for example, of 100 books that we read every year or skim. And we publish just 10 or 12 of them. So it means 80 percent of books we consider, we don't publish. So, that's something that changes the way how I read because even when I found a book that I want to read that I love, and usually this is the book that we want to publish because we don't publish books that we don't love.

And so when we find a book or author it can be Czech author, starting to write some topic, a topic and about, about some expertise, so we need to have different workflows for all these cases. So when I read non fiction book that I want to extract some information from, I usually I use Readwise or a reader application, and I import the digital version of the book into the Readwise, which is a system for consuming content, but with many clever levels. You can take, just highlights or you can take notes. You can read PDFs, EPUBs uh, YouTube videos, and still make your own notes. It's important because making own notes, in your own words helps the information to stick. You remember when you try to find your own sentence for, for something that was written in a different words.

So it's important because when you start doing this, not just highlighting in books, and you just you try to rewrite what the author wrote, you find very often that you don't understand what he or she are telling you. I think it's very general experience.

You think you understand, you think you remember, but then you close the book and you can't remember, you forget. And when someone asks you what was the book about, you have problem to explain what it was about or when, even when it is the highlighted portion of the book that you are talking about, you have some gaps in, in the knowledge.

So writing your own notes is very time consuming. It's very important for knowledge workers or even for maybe more general person that tries to learn something but it's very important. So Readwise is a very good tool that helps to do this more complex reading easier and it reminds you that you did some highlight in the past in some of your sources, articles, books.

It sends it to by email if you want for example, every day it shows just the fragment of what you highlighted or commented or where you made your note, and you can easily say, okay, this is something that I know and don't, don't remind me again. Or, Oh, I forget it completely and it's important.

So remind me this tomorrow or very soon and it will do. It's great because it circumvents, our memory, yeah, because we are forgetting very easily. So that's the way how I read digital content and how I try to remember it if it is necessary or important for me. Nonfiction books are usually about implementation. It's not just about some pleasure or feeling good about reading.

You read it because you want to change something. Sometimes you read it about you want to understand something which is the same, but it happens just in your head or in your knowledge. But If you read about health or about diet or something or some immunity you want to learn how to live better, how to make changes in your life.

So another level of reading these books is is trying to incorporate these bits of information into your workflow. And this is the part where Roam works well for me because stuff that that I read and that was inspiring for me and that led me to think about changes.

That I put this information into Roam and I make it repeat every day on my daily page, for example, or, I quote some text that I read and put it into my daily page to see it every day and to to do it, yeah, to, to actually implement it in my life. So yeah, that's one way of using Roam.

Another way is that I actually use the technique called Zettelkasten.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh,

Tomáš Baránek: Have you, heard about?

Nigel Rawlins: I struggle to say the word, so I'll have to put it in the show notes so people understand. Sönke Ahrens did you publish his book?

Tomáš Baránek: Yeah. We published. Because we love the book so much that again, we had to publish. Sönke Arends is a great narrator he explained very complicated topic in a very accessible way. Zettelkasten is a method of another German thinker who is dead for 30 years, but he was one of the biggest world sociologists ever, Niklas Luhmann, and he was considered a genius because it seemed like he published several tens of books, and nearly every book was a breakthrough. Yeah. It was very strange. One person can publish so many books that changed the area that they were published in. So he later he explained how he worked and showed his system.

Which consisted of many cards, but they were in a very small, like in a library, you have the box in in a case.

Nigel Rawlins: We don't see them anymore in libraries, do we?

Tomáš Baránek: Yeah. And this is Zettelkasten. This is Zettelkasten. Yeah. So He had a lot of cards and these cards were like a Wikipedia, something like this. There were indexes and links, connections to other cards. And so he created a system that we use every day for now. It's like we can click in the article. And yeah, these are hyperlinks, but there was some, other layers of complexity that he added, and this system helped him to generate a lot of books with great ideas, because he used it like Lego bricks, yeah? He, he just saw that here is some, some bunch of cards that are similar in the topic, and he put them in some order and rewrote them in the book. And so he had thousands of these cards and, was able to understand and search through them.

So you can create digital Zettelkasten and there, there is not just this book, um about it and you can do it. Much less, complex in your digital system like Roam Research or Obsidian or there are other, yeah, even in Apple Notes. And that's great because it helps you to connect information that if you haven't used, you would forget everything. And now you can see connections and create new connections. And it's really like second brain.

Nigel Rawlins: Well, that's an interesting idea of the second brain, is the problem we have is trying to remember stuff. And because we work in a knowledge economy, it means we've got to be able to think, connect, and, a really important skill is to be able to write. Now, a lot of people working in the knowledge economy might not see that as important, but if they're at work and they have to put a report together, they have to write.

So pulling all these facts and all these ideas together and doing some research. Now Roam Research is what we call a relational database, isn't it? We tag things so we can search for, for example, I use everything you mentioned, ReadWise. I read on my Kindle, it goes into ReadWise, and then it goes into my Roam Research.

I go through, if I've got time, and I'm way behind with some of the books I've read, tag things. And then, if I want to write about a topic, I can then search for all the tags from all the different books, which is almost Zettelkasten, I think we call it, and then try to put an article together.

So, is that how you're using it if you're writing an article on wellness?

Tomáš Baránek: I know many people that use similar systems. I even know woman that is probably the best Zettelkasten in the Czech Republic. She's really good in this and she's sharing her knowledge and workflow to others. But there are many people with really simple databases and still the system is working like you described.

What's most important is that you can't put their whole articles or whole books. You have to choose just what resonates with you, because this creates your second brain. It's not just archive or some, some big cloud for everything you saw.

Yeah. So it's about your emotions. It's about your thoughts. It's about connections that you created. And then you have something that is really yours. And when you are trying to create a story or, or write an article or book, you are just searching through everything that, that was touched by you, and thought by you.

Nigel Rawlins: Well, one of the reasons I'm interested in, obviously, the topic is that as knowledge workers and Robert Vlach, who put me onto you, he's also introduced me to Sonke, well I haven't heard back from Sonke, so I'm crossing my fingers I can talk to him. But, independent professionals who work for themselves do need to spread the word about themselves. So they need to write about their area of expertise. So this is a system that can help them. And I don't know how many people do listen to this about doing this, is that you do need a system what we call the second brain, to have your ideas, have your thoughts.

Now reading a Kindle and highlighting, Kindle does limit the amount of highlights you can put in because sometimes I put in a big one and it doesn't appear in my Roam Research, or Readwise, so you do have to limit it. Now this is an interesting thing, and I don't know if you're finding it, if we read digitally, goes into readwise, then goes into our Roam Research. A digital book's not as easy to go back unless you know where you were reading something to revise it. So one of the one of the books I'm reading at the moment is by Peter Compo about, strategy. I did read the Kindle, took lots of notes and processing it in my Roam Research, going through highlighting.

I started to read the book and I'm finding it better reading the actual book because I can go backwards and forwards and just revise. Now, the next thing too, about our notes, is using AI. And I think you've mentioned AI as well . So we've read a book, got it in our Readwise. It's gone into our Roam Research where we can search for stuff. Do you use AI to help you combine stuff or help you write stuff? How are you using AI?

Tomáš Baránek: Not yet. Or not too much? I think that there are many use cases of AI or GPTs for now that are really great. But for example, publishing process that we need, it's not usable. Because, we translate and we could use some digital translators like Deeple or something.

Deepl is a European based startup with great translation services and everything. But still, we see the difference and because the level of what we want to achieve is very high. The threshold is high. We can't use it yet, but I think it's just a matter of time.

And so, when I'm writing an article, I'd rather write with mistakes. Or I'd rather use some figure of speech that is not so frequent or something, than to use generic text. Even I prompted in many ways. I tried many things. So I teach GPT my style or ask to rewrite. And yeah, I like writing. Yeah. So then there is even no, no reason, but I use AI for some more mechanical or repetitive tasks or for finding some connections between concepts. It's great for this. It's not good for the final result of of something of what I do.

I start coding three years ago. I studied at the university Mathematical Informatics. It was in 90s. So, I forgot everything about coding and, and this stuff. I just remember some parts of math and, and so on.

But I loved it for whole my life. I don't know why I'm so addicted to formal languages. But I'm not good at it. And I started to create some small scripts and then bigger programs, even in Roam, later. And to learn the language, actually it's Clojure, I had great help from ChatGPT because I couldn't go through without this.

I have friends that are experienced in Clojure, but when I couldn't ask them for every stupid thing several times a day when I tried on weekends, for example. This is great. I don't know if for real programmers or developers it is so useful as for me, but for me, it's like getting the answer that inspires me to try again in a different way.

Now I see that there is many hallucinations and mistakes and so, and I'm not sure if these LLM models will ever overcome the problem of hallucination, but it's getting better. So, yes, there are many cases that I use, but not the final text.

Nigel Rawlins: I think applying a critical view of AI is very important, but yeah, look, it's a useful tool. I'll be honest. I use it all the time. But, I don't trust it to do a final draft or anything like that, but I will help pull information from my ROAM, feed it into ChatGPT, get it to help me write an outline, get it to help me write, and then I have to spend maybe eight hours going through it to get it to say what I want it to say. and that's my experiment. But it does help me write more.

Tomáš Baránek: And what part of thinking or creating it helps the most?

Nigel Rawlins: I think it helps me do the outline from, say, two or three, books that I might have read. I can feed my Roam Research notes in, and just say, look, put together a thing, and then I might say, look, I really want to concentrate on this. Put another set of notes in, combine this.

And I have to be very, very careful with it. Sometimes it kicks out a quote, or I ask it to put to a bibliography together and I'll ask it, where did that come from? And it tells me it made it up. So if I'm not critical, if I'm not critical, it will put stuff in there. So you do have to be very careful, but by having good notes it can be helpful as long as you're critical. So that's the danger. And I'm assuming there's a lot of people out there just putting rubbish together, straight out of Chat GPT, putting it out on their websites, hoping that Google's going to pick them up or they'll put it into an ebook, hoping some person who's not thinking too much will spend the 99 cents on it. So you probably make money doing that, I suppose. Okay. So, what we're talking about is not just how we survive in this knowledge economy where we've got to use our brains and all that, but to keep being able to work for a long period of time, because the issue of longevity, some of us are going to be still working when we're 80. So, what I'm thinking about is, you know, a healthy lifespan, and what I call cognitive agility, like we're doing now, that we're able to have this conversation about topics and recall stuff. What do you see the future as? I mean, you're still young. You've got young children still.

What do you see for the next, say, 20 to 30 years for you?

Tomáš Baránek: I don't know. I feel much better than 10 years before. That's something for me because I think cognitively I was like very slow. I had a lot of brain fog during morning and I improved it during these years. So I don't know in general what, what will happen with people's way of thinking and their minds, but I know that I can at least keep me going like I am used to.

But I think I can feel good because I will do what's necessary to do this. So, anything can happen happen, but I stopped worrying about my future, about what could happen, because I had a breakdown in a 2016.

And I ended in a hospital with some kind of stroke or something. And that changed my life completely because then I started to think more about about my limits. And I know that there are millions of people that are close to lose their minds or break down but they don't know that what they feel is these are the signals they still think that's just something that they have to overcome. And I was burned out. I was anxious. I was trying to keep some terrifying diet . And there was Trump elections in this year.

And for me, I'm so sensitive to events. I can't read news because it's not easy to understand sometimes, and not be anxious. So. it was great pressure and so I started to take antidepressants after that. I spent whole life struggling and using psychotherapy and I meditated and everything.

But the biggest change was after I start taking antidepressants, which really helped me to get from the worst and I think that there are many people that, should decide, for example, just to go to psychotherapist or to, to some counselor and talk about their problems.

So I started to write about this episode of my life and talk about it more. And I saw there is a huge number of people that are very close to burn out and so on. So now I'm trying to implement not just for me but for our coworkers or for my employees some levels of burn out checking, or assessment.

And we are experimenting with, sabatticals, shorter, not half a year. I spent my last Christmas and some weeks around on sabbatical and It was great. It was my first time, leave for longer than two weeks. Because I, was used to work and get vacation just for a week.

So, when you start to talk about this topic, your age group and you see that there are many other people that are just not talking about it, that's a huge social problem for productive people, that they are getting burnt out. That is something that I want to avoid.

Nigel Rawlins: It's definitely an issue, I think, in knowledge work, and becoming bigger for the independent professionals who are working for themselves. They don't take holidays. In episode 33, Charlotta Darnell, who was from Sweden, talks about this. She said, often men leave it to the last moment.

Women tend to come in a bit earlier, but men tend to keep going until they collapse or it's very close. And then, you can't do exercise to solve it because you're too far gone. You need to rest to, and as you said, maybe take antidepressants to just get through that next period.

And sounding like you're doing some amazing things with publishing in the Czech Republic. Well, we probably should come to an end now because it's getting fairly late where you are. It's early morning here but late at night where you are. Tomáš, how would you like people to connect with you or contact you?

Tomáš Baránek: If there is some interest you can contact me on Twitter. I have a handle @ tombaris, Nigel will probably publish it somewhere. Twitter is okay, or I have a About Me site where is a form and then you can, you can use it too.

Nigel Rawlins: LinkedIn.

Tomáš Baránek: I'm under actual name there. Yes, LinkedIn too.

Nigel Rawlins: And, and you've got a blog where you are writing about some of the health and fitness things too. But look, it sounds fantastic. The books that you're publishing, it's the thing about Europe that I really love is when I talk to Europeans, they are quite deep thinkers, you know, this anxiety is also, I think, part of being human too, is we are thinking about stuff and yeah, we can overthink stuff.

The danger is for a lot of people, they're just going to drink so that they don't think. Well, Tomáš thank you very much for joining me on the podcast. It's been quite fascinating to, to explore your thoughts and your ideas. So thank you for joining me.

Tomáš Baránek: Thank you for having me. I hope you enjoyed it.

Tomáš Baránek Profile Photo

Tomáš Baránek

Publisher, Writer, and lifehacker

Tomáš Baránek (born 1972) is a Czech publisher, blogger, and lifehacker. He studied mathematical informatics at Masaryk University in Brno and founded Computer Press, where he led the legendary magazine Computer for years.

After 2004, Tomáš focused on free literary work, publishing a collection of erotic poetry titled "Bez uzdičky" (Without a Bridle, published by Host Brno) and later writing practical guides "Jak sbalit ženu" (How to Pick Up a Woman) and "Jak sbalit ženu 2.0" (How to Pick Up a Woman 2.0, http://jaksbalitzenu.cz). The latter was adapted into a play of the same name, which was performed on the stage of the Buranteatr theatre in Brno from 2009 to 2013.

In 2007, Tomáš Baránek rekindled his passion for publishing, co-founding Jan Melvil Publishing http://melvil.cz), a renowned publishing house that has become a beacon of personal development literature.

Jan Melvil Publishing has been preparing hundreds of thousands of readers for the future and was among the first publishers in the Czech market to start publishing books in electronic form. Tomáš occasionally lectures on this topic.

In 2021, Tomáš Baránek continued to push the boundaries of the publishing industry, co-founding Servantes, a dynamic spin-off of the publishing company that pioneers smart software for modern publishers worldwide.

In his spare time, Tomáš writes about lifehacking http://lifehacky.cz), a way to simplify life, and creates small, valuable apps in Clojure, such as the Nautilus project.

He lives in Brno with… Read More