Work in Progress with Dagmara Reczka
Three quick questions on building better futures through work, change and hope. Chatting this week, is Dagmara Reczka of Very Opinionated, Senior Creative Producer at Pinterest and all-round smart-yet-humble human based in Berlin, sharing what’s currently a work in progress.
What are you working on right now?
I would like to say “a book” just to keep myself accountable for something for once but this is more wishful thinking.
In an act of anti-new-year-resolutions I recently stopped writing my Substack Very Opinionated, that centred mostly around the books I read, after I realised that in the sea of new publications I rarely had something original or truly mine to say. Right now, I am trying to understand myself deeper as a writer - what is it that I want to be writing about at my core and what’s just outside noise?
Besides that, my regular 9-6, creative producing over at the positive corner of the Internet.
Top tip: working for a cool company will make people think you’re cool too.
If you could change one thing about the world of work right now, what would it be, and why?
Pay teachers more! (Hi, mum!).
For our creative/tech bubble specifically: Besides regaining the power balance between the employee and employer that lately skews so much to the latter, I’d love for all of us to do ourselves a little favour by collectively admitting that IT’S NOT THAT DEEP.
I went through a layoff back in 2019, when it wasn’t as much of a common occurrence (the only time in my life when I was an early adopter), and there’s nothing that taught me more about the fact that your job can be fun, fulfilling and additive to your life, but it should never be a sole part of your identity.
Realising this empowered me to not stay in working environments that did not align with my values and lets me take a deep breath before I get too stressed about something minor that happened at work (kind of important when your day job is literally being in control and predicting things that can go wrong).
What’s giving you hope right now?
As the resident introvert, my New Year’s mantra is “the price of community is your own inconvenience” and I love seeing this sentiment echoed in more and more digital content and conversations around me.
Living in Germany I can see the dangers of rampant individualism firsthand, so there’s lots of hope in me that if there’s something positive to come out these times of permacrisis, it’s the heightened sense of collectivity and taking care of one another (please invite me to your book club).
The best ideas rarely arrive fully formed.
The good stuff happens somewhere in the messy middle, where ideas are still taking shape and optimism is a choice we make daily. If you’re navigating change and want a thinking partner along the way, explore how we work.