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Tossek's introduction

Tossek

Bronze Contributor
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User Power
Value/Post Ratio
118%
May 5, 2019
116
137
Germany
Hello everyone,

my name is Thorsten but most people call me by my nickname Tossek. I am German and 32 years old. I have listened to unscripted and fastlane recently and felt some urgent need to join. I studied physics in Germany and Great Britain and made a PhD in Electrical Engineering. Also, I had some business courses - mostly in Entrepreneurship. My entrepreneur professor was a self made billionaire (Götz Werner) who actually shared a lot of MJ'S views.

I am working as a group leader at one of the biggest automotive suppliers but you have to know that I quitted recently my job - around 5 weeks ago. I was heavily overworked and I am disagreeing on a lot of the decisions my superiors have done the last few months. I had to help out every single week by driving away and staying the whole week in the factory. I felt burned out and thought that they lost the caring aspect of their leadership style if they ever had any. For over a year I have not been sent to a training. However, I have a stay time of around 6 months and I openly communicated it at some point that I leave. Still, I am respected specialist of my field and though my direct superiors did not seem to care much, other people of other departments with a broader view offer me basically anything that I stay. And honestly to say I an ok with less money but more freedom. My fioncee (engaged since 6 weeks) said that I should go back into a work union contract with 35 h of work cutting effectively my earnings by a third which would still be plenty (~100k$). (and I guess also the working time ;-) )

But the freetime is worth it, I guess. I have gained 15 kg working making my phd and working - I barely dont do any sports anymore and I am out of power in the evening. My 50 h week is not healthy and brings me nowhere. So I decided that step now down more. I think that cutting some of the work by such an union contract will help me to get back into shape - physically and mentally.

ON the other hand, I feel the need of getting freedom. I would like to bring up my own company but I have not found a good idea yet. I am a very scientific yet empathical person (that is why I make a good group leader btw ...). One business idea is something that I by chance did for my own company and that is to correlate system performance parameters at the end of line in production with system performance parameters. Effectivly with this software and my system understanding I could reduce scrap rates massively (this is why they did not want me to go :p ). But it is very difficult to find business partners I guess and the software that I would need to interface with costs millions. Plus, most of my analyses and its impact has not been understood by even the longest system engineers - they were just happy that I crushed it.

I recently started a blog about leadership (Leadership investigated!) mainly because I was disappointed with the leading style I found in my company and I wanted to learn more about how to lead people, so I decided that the best way to learn is to work with the topic. Hell, I know, it is a bs blog and I am not totally commited and blablabla but for me it is just a hobby with educational purpose.

Moneywise I am quite fine. I was raised in a middle class family. My parents have a house and paid it off but I remember that we struggled at times to pay off when there were striking situtations. For example, there was once a fire at the oil tank and boiler room of the house. Luckily, my mother saw the fire hanging up some washed clothes already early, so the fire did not do much harm. Still, we needed a new boiler but did not have the money. I remember that we used that autumn and winter water boiler + watering canes to shower. We survived somehow. But it taughted me to be very cautios on spendings. I am not frugal at all, I earned much in recent times but did not adapted my living style. My fioncee is an engineer as well. She earnes an average income but together we are mutiple times over the average. I saved my money so far and did not have any morgage taken. In fact, I can live right now over let's say around 8 years from this money without working for a single dollar ... erm euro. So, in a way I already succeded partially in getting freedom.

So, that is it right now in a nut shell.
 
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Tossek

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
118%
May 5, 2019
116
137
Germany
Hi,

after nearly a year, I would like to take some progress checks:

1) yes, I did change the job to 9 to 5 (improvement) which opened up a lot of time benefits

2) I published a book on studying in Germany but it was not a monetary success. Still, ratings were good bis ok. I am bad in advertising it, I guess. But I am proud. I finished something and that is all I asked for. I would like to rework it and make a nicer appearance until the end of the year.

3) I would like to make an audiobook out of it. However, living in Germany, there is no possibility to use ACX to upload something to audible. You have to live in Ireland, USA or UK. I hope someone knows how to overcome this issue. Highly appreciated! I have already my mic and am enthuastic of succeeding here.

4) I regularly post something in my leadership blog but I do not like the graphical style much and it does not resonate well. I would need here some input and help as well to benefit better. Maybe I can hit a deal with someone on the forum?!

5) I am getting more and more interested in data analysis and I am seeing that a lot of companies and industries cannot handle the complexity of their products in factory. I am thinking of trying to build a suitable tool, maybe even an SAAS. I could advertise this by using a website and offer consulting. But I think that is a big project that I have to structure well.

6) It looks like short term work is ahead. HUGE OPPORTUNITY !!! I made a bucketlist of things that I want to achieve in this time and it is quite long. First and upmost, I would like to finish my project manager training to guarantee that I have more choice at other companies if I got laid off. However, this is very unlikely in my personal opinion. I guess that I will have at least 40% of reduction time for at least 6 months. Other things on my bucket list for this time are:
- writing a chapter about automotive sensors in a professional engineering book (credibility and advertisement)
- doing sports more regularly
- painting and learning ukulele
- learning chinese
- reading (but I do this anyways regularly ...)

7) I like to talk and make some philosophy. I thought about building up a youtube channel in which I just walk around and talk a bit about my observations. At work, people are always super interested in what my opinion is because I try always to be very abstract and factual. On the other hand, I think that most people in the public find that boring ...

So, we will see at the end of the year what worked out. I think, I have too much on my hands to focus but in the end, I have to structure, prioritize and work the list down. As I do in my job quite successfully...

So any positive criticism, help and suggestions on the points are appreciated.
 

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