17 questions for... Aleksandra Sroka-Krzyżak, VP Strategy and Corporate Development at Allegro

For me, work life balance is... an acceptable division between career and life that makes us happy at a given moment.

My 3 most important daily health habits are… firstly, waking up early to stretch and exercise, which may sound trivial, but greatly improves health and satisfaction. Secondly, finding time for more sports activity, which does not happen every day, but helps us build this habit. Thirdly – ​​supplementation. If I know that I can help my body in certain things, it is worth doing it.

The sport I practice regularly is... running, which I don't like, but I see that it works. I also love yoga, but it's hard to find time for it, so I've developed the habit of waking up in the morning. I try to go to an organized fitness camp from time to time, which gets me used to these habits.

I devote myself to physical activity during the week... it varies. Sometimes there are good weeks where I devote more than 2 hours to sports, but there are also weeks when I do nothing. This makes you sick for a very long time.

What motivates me to play sports is... how magically it works well to cleanse the body and mind.

I meditate and try… to do one session a week, under all circumstances. I recently listened to a nice meditation while driving on a long car ride. A lot depends on how we spend every minute of our lives. We can say that we don't have time and we are just scrolling the Internet, and all we need to do is exchange these 15 minutes to gain a new perspective.

My diet is based on... ready-made catering and this happens for two reasons - it is time-efficient for me and makes it easier to count calories, which I cannot do on my own, but I care about it. I choose different diets and experiment so as not to get bored.

I end the day by... unfortunately, checking emails late in the evening, but I fight it.

I spend… 7-8 hours sleeping. This requires discipline and is not always successful.

The thing I do only for myself is… the first dozen or so minutes of the morning are my time. Then I go out on the terrace, water the flowers and drink coffee. This is a very important moment of the day for me. After many years, I also returned to dancing, which made me very happy, and to playing the piano. My nature is such that I need to have tasks that I do every day, but I also need to return to artistic tasks that I have a lot of fun with.

My little sins are... sweets (unfortunately!) and going out to restaurants with friends for late dinners. Let's not give up small, cool things for the sake of some goal.

Happiness for me is... the feeling that I don't want to be anywhere else, with someone else and in different circumstances than I am at a given moment. The ability to stop and say to yourself “Wow, this is great!”

Luxury for me is… at the moment – ​​health and time. These are things that are harder to obtain than money.

My small daily steps in taking care of the planet are... sorting garbage, thoughtful shopping. I am very glad that I think we all have this reflection and that we are learning it from the young generation to think critically about our consumption. A few years ago we bought a caravan and observing the camping community, I have the feeling that they teach nicely that repairing something can be a better solution than buying something new.

The advice I would give myself if I was 20 again is... if you want to do something, don't ask for permission, do it. You can always apologize later and it will be fine. “Ask for forgiveness - not for permission.” It sounds controversial, but this advice helped me a lot and if I had received it earlier, I would have been even braver in life, I would have tried many things and probably made a few more mistakes - but I think we always regret more the things we didn't do.

The book/podcast I recently read/listened to and recommend is... "How Women Rise" is a book for women about habits that have led us to higher levels of our careers over the years, but now don't necessarily help us. This book opened my eyes to several things that women do to themselves - we have a set of certain habits that can automatically eliminate us from a career or a happy life, and this book was a new opening for me.