Enabling brilliant minds to do the greatest good with their career while taking care of themselves and others.

Coach.

Entrepreneur
Scientist
Human
Coach

Enabling brilliant minds to do the greatest good with their career while taking care of themselves and others.

Coach.

Entrepreneur
Scientist
Human
Coach
/ My mission as a coach is to
Empower altruistic, and ambitious people to lead their fields and industries for the greatest good.
We collaboratively explore and select your domain of leadership and expertise. We develop and continuously update your deliberate practice system to become a thought leader.
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Facilitate the integration of exceptional contributions to humanity while caring for themselves and significant others.
We not only want your ambition but also about your personal life to flourish. You will learn how to integrate your professional and personal life in synergistic ways.
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Nurture wholesome, nuanced, and exemplary personalities.
We do not only want you to be a thought leader but an overall wholesome exemplary human who thinks, feels, and acts in a way that inspires others to pursue their greatness.
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/ Coaching approach
Bringing together ancient wisdom with modern science in a holistic and integrative approach, using traditional coaching techniques and ideas alongside innovative evidence-based tools and models.
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Politicians
09
Career Transitioners
08
Managers
07
Researchers
06
Engineeres
05
Consultants
04
Creatives
03
Directors
02
Leaders
01
I’m here for
Executives & Founders
co-nurture your aspirations, moonshots, and ideas.
My favourite thing is to:
co-solve your pains, problems, and challenges.
work with you to become your most awesome self.
help you add more value to projects you are already working.
My passion
To spark your ethusiasm for your life and your career, nurture your potential and gifts, caringly challenge you, and to empower you to move beyond limiting beliefs.
/ Work method
Combing skillfully deep knowledge and experience with a supportive but challenging approach to build tailored solution-focused sessions that help my coachees reach their goals promptly, effectively, and with long-lasting effects.
Areas of expertise
  • Career decision-making, change/transition, and planning
  • Unlocking creativity
  • Performance enchancement
  • Building stable self-esteem & confidence
  • Leadership development
  • Constructing tailored systems for life areas
  • Stress management
  • Mindful phone and media use
  • Work-life balance and well-being
  • Building healthy realltionships with others and yourself
  • Nuanced models of human psychology and yourself
  • Meditation and awareness
  • Emotional intelligence
  • Effective communication
  • Deepening life purpose and meaning
  • Self-actualization
  • Knowledge management
  • Productivity and focus
  • Optimizing energy and alertness
  • Longevity
  • Dating
Benefits
  • Cultivate confidence
  • Increase happiness
  • Strengthen relationships
  • Improved problem-solving
  • Reduce stress
  • Accomplish goals
  • Build meaning and purpose
  • Decrease unhealthy self-doubt
  • Boost academic achievement
  • Gain self-awareness
  • Learn effective tools
Informed by
Approach
  • Personalized programs & sessions
  • Strong dedication
  • Growth advice & action planning
  • Scientific method (hypotheses & experiments)
  • Measurement and evaluation
/ Process
During our sessions, we will do Q&A’s to better understand coaching, define goals, share insights and impact evaluations.
Onboaring
Helps you better understand coaching
Q&A
Helps us understand how to serve you, given your background and coaching goals
In-take
Sharing what we found works best in coaching
Best practices
What happened since the last session
Review
We determine exactly what objectives we want to achieve in a session
Goals
We will understand where you are and where you want to go and how to close the gap using various mental models and techniques
Work
We will specify how you can maintain and increase your level of personal development
Maintenance
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We will agree on action steps that translate the insights and actions into even more practical value
Actions
We will assess and reflect on your coaching journey thus far
Assessment
We will set goals for the next coaching milestone or quarter
Goal-setting
We will reflect on our coaching collaboration and evaluate the progress
Evaluation
Sessions
Evaluation
Closing
/ Coaching experiences
Strong background in evidence-based models related to humans development and cognitive, emotional, behavioural change as well as design, execution, and evaluation of effective evidence-based psychosocial interventions for individuals and groups.
Hours
Key numbers
Coachee
>500
Years
>7
Hours
Coach
>1500
Years
>6
Very senior coach that has expertise in diverse fields and knows how to empower many different coachees.
/ Client Feedback
I can use many shiny words to explain my coaching approach, but the true essence of the experience is best conveyed through the words of my coachees (LinkedIn).
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Maximilian Schonz
Coaching with Paul transformed overwhelming professional demands in communication, coordination, and prioritization into strong abilities to manage, motivate, and contribute impactfully while flourishing in my non-professional life.

Paul is a role model for dedication to mastery and has my highest recommendations for any researcher, team-lead, or ambitious entrepreneur.
Chief Medical Officer at Alvea
Sebastian Schmidt
Coaching with Paul has been one of the best decisions I've ever made. Our 43 sessions (and counting) have enabled me to substantially increase my lifetime impact by making wiser and more audacious decisions that are aligned with my values and the change I want to see in the world (e.g., pursuing a coaching path and moving to a different country with sparse savings while navigating covid).

Importantly, Paul has also enabled me to appreciate and cultivate self-compassion and self-determinedly discover what real happiness is for me — thereby, incrementally and consistently designing my masterpiece life.
Co-Founder at Impact Academy
Henning Bartsch
Throughout our 150+ sessions, Paul shines as a coach with his thoughtful, highly demanding and compassionate style.

Over the 4+ years that we have worked together he has significantly contributed to my personal and professional development. He guided me in making and implementing transformative career decisions, like switching from electrical engineering to machine learning.

He also enabled me to establish my self-actualisation system and helps me embody my high and joyful standards. In our weekly sessions, he consistently shows up with prime dedication. And I can trust on his deep and nuanced mental models, apt communication, and genuine quest to enable his coachees to actualise their full potential. Thanks my dear friend! Looking forward to all the goodness to come.
Machine Learning Engineer
Friederike Grosse-Holz
Jan Brauner
Paul taught me quite a few of the mental models and (self-)management tools I use today.

I appreciate his focus on (and vast toolbox for) long-term growth, which strongly differentiates him vs. your average productivity coach. Thanks Paul!
Director at Blue Horizon, ex-BCG
Paul is a truly excellent coach.

I had 40 sessions with him over the course of 2 years, then tried some other coaches, and then continued coaching with Paul.

In our sessions, I made transformational progress on topics as broad as motivation, procrastination, communication, teamwork, leadership, time and project management, and decision-making. Paul's science-based and no-bullshit approach aims at long-term growth, not only fixing this week's issues.

Paul has outstanding knowledge about psychology/personal development, which he shares if appropriate without taking ownership of the coaching session away from the coachee.
Machine Learning Manager at RAND
Daniel Lohse
Coaching with Paul had an incredible impact on my performance as well as my well-being. It empowered me to step fully into my new role as a company executive and make my team and myself thrive.

He's not only a great source of useful knowledge and wisdom but also really made sure that I implement the big ideas and tools he taught me into my life. And that's where Paul's greatest strengths lie. Changing thinking and behavioral patterns for the better.
Co-Founder & CTO of Bloom
Ben Snodin
I received coaching from Paul for a little over a year. Paul introduced me to important new concepts and systems for effective self development, planning, and task management, and provided accountability to make sure I implemented these.

This has accelerated my personal growth and provided long-run productivity gains.
Senior Manager at Rethink Priorities
Nadia Montazeri
A confession from a recovering sceptic of most self-development: Paul is an excellent coach and role model.
Due to his coaching, I felt empowered to leap from a safe job into independent research and submitted my first paper with little supervision, setting me up for more impact throughout my career. Before starting coaching, I thought my self-limiting beliefs were merely an accurate judgment of my abilities, based on reality. Paul challenged them successfully over the course of over 30 sessions, never hesitating to call me out on my bullshit and highlighting how I get distracted from my actual goals.

My past self from 6 months ago would be surprised to hear that I joyfully set goals and meet them, track metrics I care about in spreadsheets (I used to hate spreadsheets with passion), and recover from any hardship I encounter within less than 24 hours. Due to the knowledge management and tracking systems we set up, I can stay on this trajectory in the long term. Thank you!
M.D. Biosecurity | UN Office for Disarmament Affairs
Huw Thomas
My 12 sessions with Paul were instrumental in helping me recover during the biggest period of burnout during my life, and in the process helped me develop lifetime habits and mindset shifts that I expect to still be paying dividends years from now.

His focus on self-compassionate experimentation is something that I'm using almost every day, and helped me move away from self-criticism and perfectionism.
Ex-CEA and Longview Philanthropy
Issac Freeman
As a coachee of Paul, my statistics alone demonstrate the magnitude of Paul's impact on my personal productivity: His sessions unlocked 5-8 productive hours in my week compared to my pre-coaching baseline. There's a lot of additional nuance and color to this: Thanks to Paul, I'm less distractable, I generally feel better, and I continue pushing myself sustainably.

Working with Paul has improved my long-term productivity and well-being, and I expect many changes, habits, and lessons to be permanent. In terms of an investment in yourself, I can highly recommend Paul.
Founder of Future Forum
Mrinark Sharma
Coaching with Paul has been transformative. Across fourty sessions, Paul's systems-level approach to coaching has empowered me to implement several systems that produce sustained, long-term value.

We have worked on self-compassion—more constructive, functional, and tender emotional functioning—longer-term goal-setting, developing masterpiece mornings and weeks, and much more.

Regular reflection and discussion on progress, challenges and success with Paul have gifted me a greater sense of agency in my life and increased self-awareness. I find Paul a knowledgeable, kind, and well-versed coach—I would not hesitate to recommend working with him.
Machine Learning Engineer at Anthropic
Dewi Erwan
I used to spends weeks or months in unproductive spirals, feeling sorry for myself, and not working on what I think are the most important things. Working with Paul has given me the tools and self-belief to identify and overcome these challenges, and I'm incredibly excited to continue my coaching journey with him.

My job is to support people to learn about pressing global issues, and to inspire them to take action to solve those problems. I really love my work, but I've found it really challenging to determine what to prioritise, how to maintain focus, how to set ambitious but realistic long-term goals, and develop plans that drive us towards those goals. Before I started coaching with Paul, I felt pretty demoralised about this, and didn't see a pathway to improve. As I walked out of the call booth after my first coaching call, I had a huge smile on my face, and felt more motivated and energised than I had in months, and it's been the same thing every week after our sessions.

Paul's wide-ranging expertise in "life systems", his incisive and piercing questions, and his enduring support and kindness have been transformative for my wellbeing, productivity, and impact. My habits are improving, my decision-making is much more intentional and is leading to better outcomes, and I'm feeling overall much happier with my life. If you aspire to be the best version of yourself, and would like a co-conspirator to support you on that journey, I cannot recommend Paul enough :)
Co-founder & CEO at BlueDot Impact
Simon Möller
Working with Paul has been transformative. We've been collaborating for 3 months and I feel more energetic, motivated and focused than I have in years.

Paul takes a very holistic approach and within a few sessions helped me put in place better frameworks to think about my life that were much more motivating than what I had before.

I've worked with other coaches who had a more held back style of asking questions and letting me figure out the answers. I always thought this was a bit of a wasted opportunity. Paul is more like a sports coach who knows what works and is not afraid to make the calls. Yes, I am in the driving seat of what I want to do, but Paul has strong opinions on how to best get there--and they usually pan out.

Paul has also figured out a great way to structure sessions so that they tie together various tools for thinking and productivity, big picture considerations and finding and fixing small, every-day problems. I feel confident that we discover something meaningful in every session while also I'm building up a better structure for my life and productivity over time.If you are ambitious in trying to make the world a better place, you should consider a coaching experiment with Paul.

Try 6 sessions. If you don't see results, move on. I continued without hesitation.
Senior Software Engineer at Google
Sören Mindermann
Bi-monthly coaching with Paul has substantially improved my productivity. Working with Paul got clearly stronger results for me than working with other coaches. He's also been valuable for my personal life goals like social life and happiness. He's helped me create regular systems and develop helpful mindsets. His intuition and social competence often lets him spot the key issue behind a challenge I face, and he has the tools up his sleeve to fix it. Finishing a coaching session always leaves me invigorated, motivated to overcome challenges I often didn't realize were tractable. Before working with him, I didn't realize being coached would be as enjoyable as it is now.
ML Researcher at Yoshua Bengio’s Lab
/ Ask for a coaching collaboration
/ FAQ
How does life coaching differ from consulting? Therapy? Sports coaching? A best friend?
Consulting vs. Coaching. We can consider coaching a form of consulting. Consulting is often more information and expertise based. For example, you might hire a consultant to help your business with a specific problem. Coaches may not have expertise in your field. A coach is a specialist at helping you improve your professional and/or personal life. Unlike many consultants who propose a solution and leave you to implement it, your coach stays with you to help you integrate the changes, new skills, and goals to make sure they really happen. This makes coaching effective.

Therapy vs. Coaching. Coaching is not therapy. Life coaches don't work on past-based issues or traumas. If you start life coaching and have not resolved an issue from the past, then it is likely you need to work with a therapist to resolve the issue. It is very common for unresolved traumas or addictions to stop us from getting what we want in our lives. Life coaches focus on the present and your goals for the future. We help you move forward and set personal and professional goals that will give you the life and career you really want. Most coaching clients are healthy, successful people who might be stuck or want to make a big change in their lives and want the support of a coach to do so.
Close friends vs. Coaching. Typically, friends are not professionals who are able and who have the time or the concentration to guide you through a structured process to achieve the most important aspects of your personal and professional life.

Sports. Life coaching often includes principles from sports coaching, such as being your best, doing more than you think you can, working with a team, going for the goal. However, unlike sports coaching, coaching is not about comparative competition; it is about incremental a better version of yourself according to your own standards and values.

The underlying philosophy of life coaching: If there is a gap between where you are now and where you want to be, then there is room for life coaching. Obviously, it is possible to close this gap on your own. However, coaching benefits are substantial. First, social and financial commitments increase motivation, focus, and seriousness about one's own personal and professional development. Second, a skillful coach provides a honed outside-view and goal-oriented processability and knowledge that leads to high-quality systems, strategies, and actions consistently. As a result, the gap between valuable theory and daily practice will be closed.
What is a useful length for a coaching commitment?
A coach can help you improve your life, but you still need to take responsibility for the changes you want to make. They will not do the work for you. For that reason, some coaches ask for a three, six, or 12-month commitment. Before they invest the time and energy into working with you, they want to know that the coachee is committed to professional and/or personal development.

For example, Max came to me because he was looking for some accountability and support for his work as a freelancer. Since he worked from home most days, he found it hard to get motivated and to remain focused on his work. He wasted time until deadlines were looming. His procrastinating ways caused him stress and a loss of revenue. Since Jim had previously had good working habits, he needed someone to help him establish new routines and to deal with his client issues in a more constructive way. Within two months, we restored his productivity.

On average, most people find coaching more beneficial than they initially expected after a handful of sessions. As a result, many coaches ask for a three to six-month commitment but, usually, let you stop immediately if coaching is not working for you. It is also not uncommon for coachees to decide to conceptualize coaching as a life-long component in their personal development system and prioritize it accordingly.
Can a dependency be created between coach and client?
Ideally not. Anyone who has big goals can benefit from the structure, advice, and support of a coach. As far as creating an emotional or psychological dependency, coaches work only with people who are healthy and successful on their own. It is impossible for a coachee not to improve his way of thinking if he or she is consistently exposed to a skillful coach. Ultimately, the thinking of the coachee will reach a point where it is like that of the coach. At this point, the benefits related to thinking style are not as strong as before, but the previously mentioned benefits of improved commitment, motivation, focus, seriousness, outside-view, and process guidance remain consistent throughout life.
Why would people who are already successful hire a life coach?
People have reached success and managed life in the past without a coach. So, nobody really "needs" a life coach to become successful in personal and professional domains, but many people want one. One reason for the growing demand for coaching is the complexity of modern-day life. Whereas your parents might have been happy to have a job that paid the bills, most people today want a job that is fulfilling and financially rewarding. They want to find work that is in line with their core values and expresses who they are. They want to combine highly meaningful work with highly meaningful relationships with family, friends, and romantic partners.
Shouldn't I be able to reach my goals on my own?
Are "hard work and doing it on your own" the keys to finding professional and personal success and happiness? People believe that hard work means to sacrifice their health, their time to enjoy life, or their relationships to attain what they want. Well, you can have it all, but maybe not at the same minute. Coaching helps you from a long-term perspective to manage your priorities deliberately and situationally. Typically, you will have cut the unessential things and prioritize high-quality strategies and actions to achieve more fulfilling social relationships and professional and personal success. Elite athletes, performers, CEO's, and presidents all have coaches. They know they need a coach or even a team of experts to help them determine the best priorities, strategies, and actions, and to provide them with high-quality support and feedback. Without this, it is hard to achieve elite or world-class levels of excellence. No athlete would consider going to the Olympics without the support of a coach because the extra edge the coach provides makes all the difference.
Why is coaching more effective than unassisted professional and personal development?
First, coaching creates momentum and keeps the momentum and motivation consistently high. Conversely, unassisted development usually has a strong fluctuation in momentum, motivation, and commitment that lead to ineffective building and sustaining peak performance mindsets and habits. Second, the coach will keep you effectively accountable because he has a highly informed and detailed outside-view on your ambitions, values, and goals. As a result, self-deception and self-delusion are also limited. In contrast, unassisted development usually suffers from a lot of derailing and delaying of high-priority actions until a lucky meta-cognition recognizes that our actions are far off from matching with our ambitions, values, and goals. As a result, we might refocus and re-prioritize, but this may also not last for too long. These are the two key benefits, but there are considerably more gained from coaching.
How much does life coaching cost?
Most life coaches charge rates that are comparable to other (mental) health professionals, such as therapists, doctors, or professional trainers. As a certified coach with five years of experience, relevant university degrees and professional experiences as a change management consultant, I charge 200€/h.
What would you recommend as a first coaching collaboration experiment?
For the first one or two months, another time-related high-importance consideration is that the coaching-sessions will unfold the most impact if they are done on weekly basis because the frequent, spaced repetitions and explorations of the intellectual and practical landscape are essential to move from merely temporary relief and problem-solving to sustainable change (learning) in terms of cognitions, emotions and behaviors. A safe general recommendation is an intensive learning approach that would be 2 hours of weekly coach-facilitated development and at least 2 hours of self-facilitated development (one hour actions and one hour report) for 8 weeks.

The intensive growth “camp” would amount to 3200€ for two months, which is comparable to a few educational courses or events. Afterwards, we or you can evaluate if and how you want to continue (e.g., bi-monthly or monthly).
/ Other roles to read about
Facilitating long-term change in individuals, groups, and organisations based on science while exploring the depths of the inner and outer world.
Human
Developing evidence-based and impactful theoretical and conceptual models for human flourishing.
Scientist
Building a company exclusively focused on ensuring the long-term flourishing of humanity by using cutting-edge technology, science, and wisdom.
Entrepreneur