Turning to a Human Side
Kinda welcome and Why story of this Human Side Space
Hello and welcome to the space for all things human: friendships, building connections at work and in life, understanding ourselves and others.
Why I am here
Hi, I am Anna, product builder, entrepreneur, investor, writer, mentor and tech executive. The most significant chapter of my professional life so far belongs to Miro, a collaboration platform for teams (of humans and AI) where I spent over 15 years building teams, product experiences, operating systems and learning these while creating — all alongside with people.
For years, the most rewarding part of the work I do is connected to the human side: whether it’s customers using the tool to brainstorm their next big thing, or an event I run, or team problem solving, or hiring and mentoring, or going through a big transformation together. It’s rewarding not because it’s easy and fun — but because this type of work is very emotional and touches the deepest layers of the personality (if you allow) and is the biggest growth driver.
For me relations at work and in personal life have become a defining factor of well-being and overall quality of life, which has gotten especially clear with going through hard times and persistent states of loneliness. For years I’ve been reading, experimenting, learning, coaching and talking about the human side of work, and over the last couple of years I realized that the context is wider than professional — it extends to how I approach friendships, communities and relations, with myself included.
After some thinking, and, most importantly, feeling, I am now researching friendships and human connections to explore the meaning, tools and practices for myself, my close circle and share with anyone who needs it or might need it in the future. I am doing this as a student, not as a professor, so learning and getting through lived experiences as well.
Being a builder at heart, I am using this part of my identity to explore the world and play with the concepts, so I am now working on nowtellmemore.com / @now.tellmemore, a website and an app with tools and questions that help us build better relations through conversations.
I believe that we as humans are wired for connection, and our social health is as important as our physical and mental health for a fulfilling, meaningful life. While it’s true, we are still in the early days of developing our toolkit for dealing with one of the most important parts of our lives. So this Human Side Space is my contribution to the realm of building relations.
Why now
There are two groups of reasons why I’m starting this now — one comes from my personal learnings and experiences, and the other one from observations on the world trends and society.
What I observe in the world
I see more and more content about two things: loneliness pandemic and longevity. The loneliness rates (especially it is shown in the US data) are the highest and we spend more and more time by ourselves. At the same time, the topic of longevity is becoming increasingly popular, and one of the defining factors of our lifespan and healthspan is the quality of our relationships and social life. If we combine these two data points, it’s easy to see that there is a gap between our desire to live longer and healthier and lonely reality.
Technology is creating more friction for connection. Being in tech myself and also using the technology for various genuinely useful purposes, I notice how social media are substituting live connection. Like scrolling through Instagram feeds gives us a feeling that we are connected to the person, while in reality we didn’t have any interaction and honestly see only a facade (i call it junk connection).
AI also contributes to this and deserves a separate paragraph: in personal lives many many people turn to LLM of choice for advice on almost anything, relationships included. At work a lot of projects are starting with people brainstorming with LLM, continuing with solo building and we have some transactional meetings for “alignment”. There is even some speculation on solo builders, human orchestrators of agents and one-man-show overall. This reality looks very lonely and isolated, and it’s not a surprise that in such a world people feel more exhausted. Not only because of high tempo or uncertainty, but also because we are going through this more alone than ever probably.
The topic of lacking friendships and deep connections is stigmatized. Most of us long for a deep authentic connection, and we are not talking about it. Because nobody around us does. Sometimes it looks like everyone has figured out how to build friendships, especially as an adult, all the people are having a great social life except you. Looks like we are born with having friends as a feature, and if you don’t have them — it’s a bug and something is wrong with you. We don’t want to look “wrong”: weak, lonely, isolated, so we keep pretending. While the data on loneliness shows the opposite: it can be even more likely to meet someone who struggles with friendships now than someone who is happy with their social circle.
What I observe in myself
Pivots are challenging for social life. Over the past years I went through several changes, including moving to a different country, professional changes and more that affected my social circle, which became non-existent at some point. It felt very painful at times, and ironically I didn’t know that loneliness is the source of the pain. When changes happen, we don’t have headspace for our social life and this makes things worse, way worse. I believe that awareness is helpful here and might shorten someone’s suffering.
Relations are creating a meaningful difference in the quality of life. Later, my explorations on the topic and real-life experiments showed clearly that community and friendships play a big role in how we feel. I am learning this as a skill and practice, and I am thinking that sharing is really caring in this case. As a side effect, the practice of building connections helps me learn a lot about myself and heal.
I focus on the human side because I simply cannot stay away from doing this. For years, I have been drawn to joining (and lately running) communities, creating human-to-human experiences (aka events), connecting with people and diving deeper into emotional life. In the corporate life, company culture, leadership, community and marketing have been things that I was doing regardless of the formal role, and the topic of connection is something that I am getting back to for years.
It’s hard. While these “touchy-feely” topics may sound like everything but “real work” or “real life”, our human, emotional side is playing the leading role in how we are making decisions, how and if we are achieving our goals and how we are experiencing this life. Rewriting the narratives, changing habits and authentically connecting with others is the way to live a better life, and it’s an intense work that sometimes feels like staying in the same place. It’s hard, and also extremely rewarding.
What to expect on the Human Side
Human Side Space is here for explorations on friendships, communities, emotional life and all things human. As Brené Brown says, “I am a traveler, not a mapmaker”, so it’s not a how-to guide written by someone who knows it all — it’s something that I find interesting and useful while walking the path.
Topics to expect and explore:
Friendships, especially adult friendships: what is that, why it’s important and how we can be better and building, maintaining and — potentially — letting go;
Human side at work: building teams and organizations based on trust, acknowledging vulnerability (big fan of Brené Brown’s work) and growing personally on the journey;
Connections at large and Communities: how we are wired as humans, why and how we are uniting into groups, how we evolve and maintain communities;
Connection with self: exploring the world of emotions, self narratives and habits leading to better (or worse) connection with ourselves — and eventually others.
Technology impact on the human side: observations on how social media, AI and other tech affect our social life and what we can do about that.
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P.S. If you have insights, topics to discuss or story to share, please send me an email at boyarkina.anna@gmail.com, I am always curious to hear from anyone who is passionate about the human side of things.
P.P.S. And yes, it’s scary and cringy at times to share something that is very personal, relatively new in its form and cannot hide behind your titles and achievements. At the same time, it is probably one of the most exciting and fulfilling things to do. So here I am, on the Human Side.