Domanik.
The future will ask us to rebuild almost everything.
AI. Nobody knows yet.
How we work, what we believe, what drives us, what we fight for and what we don't care about. Science today is stronger than it has ever been. But with only a few short exceptions, that was true at almost any point in history: it always moved forward. I think the outcome depends less on what we know than on what we don't.
Meanwhile, let's go back to the foundations: take joy in real connection, in real life and locally, not on social media, and build those relationships close to home.
If my experience can help, or you want to talk about a book, or you need something, or I can help in some other way, I'm always happy to meet for a coffee, a bike ride, a run or whatever.
Projects.
Project
Journalism.
Newsroom · 2007–2009 · started at 22 · TVP and regional TVS, Poland
My first job, which I always treated more as a project than a job. It taught me a lot, and it showed me fast that I wasn't built for news.
Skills
- Discipline: one story shot and cut every day, finished by evening.
- Camera sense: what you and the operator see is what the audience gets.
- Fast feedback, sometimes brutal.
- Access to senior people in government, administration and business.
Weaknesses
- I wanted the complicated version. Others had a gift for simple, gripping narrative. I didn't.
- Live broadcasts and breaking events: I was weaker than most people around me.
What I was best at
Interviews. In any setting, from rough neighbourhoods to boardrooms: getting people comfortable enough to talk. A journalist can even end up with a suspect explaining himself before the police catch him.
Bigger picture
The pay was very low, so it was a sacrifice, and I counted it as one. The industry was never my future. Talking to strangers and putting them at ease stayed with me.
Project
Video production.
2009–2012 · Poland · TV spots for companies, cities and municipalities
The first time I felt I'd landed on something that made sense. I didn't get there through analysis. My closest childhood friends studied at film school, and we started making films together.
The setup
Poland was growing fast and the ad market was unformed: either multi-million productions, or people who couldn't produce at all. That left room for good work at reasonable prices. Our films cost up to about US$80k. We won best city film awards, among other wins.
The friends are still in film. Krzysztof Trojnar has several Netflix titles, including Baby Reindeer. Maciej Kawalski produced Lalka, one of the biggest Polish films of the year.
What I learned
- Risk management, sometimes the hard way: hundreds of people for one or two shooting days, and it only works if the weather does. Otherwise you reshoot and pay again.
- Reconciling visions. Gifted creators deliver 100% only if their vision is respected, or at least understood. Clients don't always respect it. A producer has to see that coming and act early.
- Enough technical depth to know what's possible and what isn't, read what the client really expects, and build the right team for it.
In advertising, people order things that seem great to them and are objectively weak. The history of advertising is full of them.
Project
Airlines.
2012–2013 · age 26 · Poland · airline marketing, full service
My first huge contract: running marketing for Eurolot, a regional airline owned by LOT Polish Airlines, Poland's national carrier. It flew to most major European capitals. We were picked as the full-service agency, so we made the decisions, including buying the media.
The numbers
- PLN 4 million over the contract (≈ A$1.6M).
- An airline in a very hard position, against heavy competition.
- A team built from scratch and run under constant pressure.
What went wrong
We worked on a playful redesign of the airline's logo, meant to end up on an aircraft. We didn't know that at this level you need the author's rights, and you have to pay for them. By pure luck, not caution, we had posted the concept on social media first. The author rightly demanded compensation for that publication alone, and it was larger than our monthly fee. The airline covered it, since there were some oversights on its side too. Had it already been painted on a plane, the cost would have been unimaginable. It showed me how fast the consequences can come.
What I understood later
At 26 I thought my skills had won us the job. Looking back, I think the CEO chose us because the project mattered so much to us that he could steer us by hand. When the board changed, the contract ended almost immediately.
What it gave me
- A huge acceleration of experience.
- Building and leading a team under real pressure.
- How hard it is to predict what will work and what won't.
- The price: a lot of effort, a lot of turnover, and some people paid for it with their health.
Project
Scaling.
2009–2023 · Poland · building and scaling businesses
Stories about business often skip this part. Either they follow people who reached the top because they were exceptionally good, or good and lucky, or good and talented. The mix varies, and I want to leave room for all of it. Here is what I can say in hindsight.
The real bottleneck
For most people, what limits growth is not ideas. It's knowing how to scale, and how to carry the risk. It runs through a lot of areas, and some we can influence while others we can't, and they all affect each other.
What it costs
- With little experience, you don't yet see that the past doesn't equal the future. Back then I thought it was a flat line. Now I know it isn't.
- Putting earned money back into growth means walking into a huge unknown, because the margin on each next step is different.
- The biggest projects are the riskiest, and their losses are close to unforgivable. The margin is never big enough to cover them.
- The falls were fast and brutal, and so were the consequences.
- After the second fall I ran a small team and the line went flat. You can hold a level and just stay there.
The team that walks away
In an ad agency, a team that matters to the whole company often works with a single client. It happens all the time that such a team leaves and, even though it's illegal in theory, ends up working for that client through another entity.
You can't fully protect yourself with contracts. The only real protection is your own relationship with the client.
It's common, probably everywhere, even at the very top: Dario Amodei left OpenAI with a group of people and very quickly started something new. Keeping your most talented people is a risk in itself.
The myth of having no boss
You do get more control over culture and decisions, and over what to react to, so more agency and more impact. But someone still tells you what to do. Now it's the clients, and no labour law protects you. Employees can also push you into things with pressure.
What I'd do differently
Today this is common. Back then in Poland the startup model barely existed. I'd consider it the best solution, and not for the money, which in many industries you can raise yourself. Someone who put in their own money and has far more experience will really want to help, and that is worth a lot.
I learned a lot. I don't miss it.
Project
Blue Chip.
2017–2023 · Poland · advertising boutique for pharma
In business I always had two dreams. The first was to build an enterprise company and become a market leader. The second was to work with the best companies, the top brands.
Scoreboard
- ✗An enterprise company, a market leaderNot achieved. In Silesia, my home region and a metro area of several million, I reached the top by size in two years. By size and revenue I soon found myself among the best in the country. But I never came close to leading the market, and I can't say I was even on the right track.
- ✓Work with the top brandsAchieved, and it lasted. For several years I ran a small advertising boutique with dedicated support for product manager teams at the best pharmaceutical companies.
Working with the top brands
Working with these companies was, for the most part, fascinating.
What I loved
- The work itself was fascinating.
- The projects on their own were still a joy to do.
What was missing
- In a region like Poland, the biggest strategic decisions aren't made in Warsaw. We adapted a strategy, we didn't set it.
- After roughly the first year of excitement with the glamour, I felt a bit unfulfilled.
Project
Career transition.
2023–now · from advertising to tech
Everyone knows someone who decided as a child to be a doctor and spent the whole career that way. It's a prestigious job, so it's rarely suffering. But I'm convinced it's often not the best choice for the skills someone actually has.
In my case, most of it happened completely at random.
How it went
- A random jobI never planned to be a journalist. I was looking for work, overestimated myself, and sent my CV to most job offers, including ones I had no chance of getting. One was a reporter job, open to people without experience after an assessment.
- Two years laterI was worn out, and I knew others had far more talent for it. I also remembered how hard it was to find a job. So instead of starting the search again, I kept going with what I'd learned: working with a camera, presenting, a broader understanding of business.
- SalesI used the people around me and focused on what I already knew fascinated me: sales. I was always good at it, and it set off a domino effect: a growing company. I always did what I could to spend my time on sales and not on other things. It was a lot of fun.
- DoubtsOver time I became convinced that in advertising almost everything is relative. It lacks measurable, data-driven arguments, for example when it comes to creative.
- The pull of techI was more and more interested in science fiction books on one side, and the products of tech companies on the other. I watched jobs disappear. The media planner, once a great job, became almost unnecessary in the age of Facebook and social media, because computers did it far better. It soon reached television too. Companies like Adobe and Booking were solving problems at a scale that fascinated me. And AI would only keep developing: I read my first book about it around 2013. I didn't really believe it, but I knew everything was heading towards tech.
- The decisionI wanted to change career and join a top tech company. It's a need that burns inside you, so strong you can't stop it.
What it costs
By any normal, rational measure it isn't a smart move. In everything you do, you slowly collect your marbles:
You have to throw them all away and try again from scratch.
What are your
words worth?
Many of my fascinations end up in one place. What matters is not what you say, but what you do, and how much your words are worth.
Experts on TV
The long study of expert forecasts by Philip Tetlock found that experts were often only slightly more accurate than chance, and the ones with the biggest media profiles were especially bad. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman discusses this work in Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Method versus chance
Nassim Taleb argues in Antifragile that practical trial and error often beats neat theory and sanctioned methods.
Counting your misses
In Superforecasting, by Tetlock and Dan Gardner, the best forecasters watch their language, count every miss, and track even their everyday predictions. That is how your own prediction engine slowly gets better.
Why it matters
The ability to map what will happen has a fundamental effect on private and professional life. For me it's a hobby.
What amazes me is that the language we use already says something: how much room it leaves for error, or how precise it is, is a clue to how accurate a person's forecasts might be.
I'll say upfront: as in many other fields, despite the effort and the fascination, I don't see big steps towards becoming what's called a superforecaster.
Now almost nobody has illusions about how hugely AI will change the way the world works. I want to check whether what I imagine will come true. And in the tensions ahead, it will matter enormously for everyone not to panic, and to tell reality from fiction.
Sport.
I'm a bad athlete. It still matters a lot to me. I've met a huge number of people through it, and it's simply fun.
Traveling.
100 / 195
Nutrition.
I always had a problem with eating too much, and the yo-yo effect followed me for years. Around 2020 an acquaintance recommended keto, and I managed to hack it. It works for me. I'm happy to recommend it, because it might be a game changer for you too.
Diet is almost a religion and everyone believes in something different. I respect that. I wrote this so I can send one page instead of explaining it from scratch every time.
- Keto adaptation is the worst stretch, and the only unpleasant one in the whole process.
- Cut carbs out completely. My advice is to do it brutally, because it shortens the time.
- Every time I come back after a break, I start with the biggest effort I can on day one, to burn off all the glycogen.
- It takes anywhere from a few days to a week, depending on the person.
- Start with a ketone meter from day one. I like a continuous one, such as the SiBio KS3, so you know exactly when it kicks in.
- What I recommend eating in that stretch: eggs and chicken with skin. No spices, no mustard, nothing. You just have to get through it.
- The full feeling and freedom come after about a month.
- Between week 1 and week 4 you should start to feel good, and you can begin using it for sport.
- It takes a while to get used to, and every day gets better.
- Keep it to no more than 40 g of carbs. It still matters at this stage.
- At this stage, eating one meal a day is simple. That's what I do. I count calories and live by that.
- Ketones keep you from feeling hungry and give you more concentration. That part is great.
- I love eating, and from time to time I take a break.
- After a long time on keto you stop getting the spikes and crashes in energy after a meal.
- Since my first keto I've never been off it for more than about two months.
- On holiday I don't keep it, and I take other breaks now and then. They get shorter because I'm more and more used to this way of eating.
- Everyone can do it their own way. It's up to you.
Read more
Sydney.
Not the places you'll find by googling. Only the ones that mean something to me and that I like. I'll keep adding to this over the years.
Books.
When everyone else started reading, I was learning slowly and badly. It scared me and gave me complexes. In the end it worked the other way round: I feel a permanent duty to read, and fulfilling it is a pleasure. For years I've been training my neurons regularly, which is probably popular in the age of AI.
You don't know while reading that some books will matter this much. You come back to them over the years and learn how much they're worth. These are the ones I'd push into everyone's hands. Everything else I read, whenever I find time to update it, is on Goodreads.
Goodreads →- It teaches you to recognise that side, and it prepares you for all sorts of things.
- I don't think anyone has understood human motivation as deeply and precisely as Dostoevsky, here and in his other books.
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- An almost spiritual, religious experience: it tells of a belief that humans can move from the material world to the immaterial.
- Brilliantly written, and it sets the imagination on fire.
- After all these years it may be even more accurate scientifically, and it seems more and more relevant.
- 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke, the first part
- One of a whole cluster of books that together teach humility: how irrational we are, how often we're wrong, which processes we fall for, and what really matters.
- What it teaches comes up every day, with people, in business, even in the simplest conversations.
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (in Polish: Pułapki myślenia)
- Learning about intersubjective reality was incredible: it doesn't really exist, people invented it, and yet it holds all of us together.
- We're willing to die for things like states, religion or money.
- I think it can have a huge positive effect on anyone's life. That's why I recommend it. The most recent of the four for me.
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari