“Money and power by themselves are a two-legged stool — you can balance on them for a while, but eventually you’re going to topple over.” Read more: Brain Pickings.

When and why did you start blogging?

We graduated in 2010 and at the time, newspapers were full of gloomy headlines about a generation of graduates without any prospects. Warnings stated that we would be wallowing in debt and self-pity until we retired aged 90, but this didn’t reflect how we felt at all. We were (and are!) surrounded by young, smart and successful women, who were bucking the trends of unemployment and endless negativity.

After graduating, whenever we caught up with our female friends, the conversation always veered towards careers, salaries and promotions, rather than boys and bodycon. This seemed to be the same for everyone we knew, but while we devoured career profiles and advice, we found that lots of careers content in conventional media was aimed either at people who have already made it a few rungs up the career ladder, or current students. After lots of plotting and rounding up career profiles, we started Professionelles in August 2012 to try and address this.

What’s your blog about?

Professionelles profiles the daily working lives of women in their early twenties. We also offer careers advice that’s relevant to females in their first or second job after education (nothing here about juggling the school run with the boardroom!), and we also try to round-up further inspiration from across the web.

Who inspires you?

Spending our days reading and writing about the careers of other early twentysomethings is continually inspiring, and really makes us think harder and more critically about how we work ourselves. Tons of our friends are doing all sorts of excellent things both in and out of work, so spending time with them always gets our creative juices flowing. We’re also regularly inspired by our brilliant northern mothers who get more done before breakfast than we do all day, by other bloggers and by other women who are doing something different.

What’s your day job?

Olivia: I’m a public affairs consultant in London, focusing on healthcare policy.
Natalie: I’m a consumer PR account manager at a big integrated advertising agency.

What do your family and friends think about your blog?

Our families love it – Natalie’s mum has even had Professionelles mugs and phone covers made! If women in their fifties were our target demographic, we’d be golden. Our friends have been forced into liking the blog by being featured as career profiles; it’s pretty handy being surrounded by women with excellent jobs, but they’re all probably a bit fed up of us talking about it every time we meet up and using their birthday parties as fertile recruiting ground for new career profiles.

Do you read any other blogs?

We try and round-up the best careers advice from across the web every Friday in Work Wide Web, so we read a lot of careers focused blogs like the Levo League.

O: I read a lot of news and current affairs as part of my job and I really struggle to find the time to fit in reading much of anything else! I love reading food and lifestyle blogs though – Salad Club is my current favourite (partly because I enjoy their outpost in Brixton Village so regularly), and I occasionally browse through The Londoner and Decorator’s Notebook.

N: I read so many blogs as part of my job – predominantly mummy, lifestyle and foodie blogs such as The Botanical Baker. In my spare time, Suri’s Burn Book is my absolute favourite pastime. It’s genius. I work in PR is also excellent (and by excellent, I mean hilarious). Miss Thrifty is also fantastic for money-saving tips and tricks.

How do you use Twitter and has it changed how you blog?

Natalie: Since I work in PR, social media is a huge part of my day job, so I’ve essentially started to treat Professionelles as a client in its own right. I’ve added it to my Hootsuite account so I can schedule tweets, and I refresh who we follow from the account on a daily basis. Since I work full time, I don’t get as much time as I would like to spend promoting Professionelles on Twitter, but it’s been unbelievably handy in helping us to make contact with potential career profiles. We’ve met some amazing women on Twitter, and we’ve also had a lot of reactive requests come through to us from ladies interested in featuring, so it really is an essential cog in how Professionelles works. We also Tweet all of the blogs and companies featured in Work Wide Web, which always goes down really well and has scored us a number of RTs on feeds with huge follower numbers.

What couldn’t you live without?

Olivia: My Filofax and my bed – double duvet, three blankets, six pillows and four cushions. Like sleeping in a cloud!
Natalie: My morning cup of tea. Don’t speak to me until the mug is empty.

How do you stay motivated?

Blogging with a friend is brilliant because when you really can’t be bothered to get your brain back into gear again when you get home from work, you know that you’re letting someone else down if you don’t bother – and when things are going well, it’s good to share the fun! That, and lots of coffee.

Typical blog wardrobe?

Olivia: Most of my blogging gets done in my lunch break, so the same as my work wardrobe! Lots of dresses from Whistles and blazers from Zara (and heels!).
Natalie: As Olivia said, we generally blog while we’re on lunch at our day jobs. I tend to wear jazzy trousers (you cannot beat patterned hareems; hello comfort), flats and a casual tee or jumper. It’s really relaxed in our office.

Blog soundtrack?

O: In reality, the sound of my colleagues eating lunch and BBC Parliament in the background. In my head, a mixture of Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Bastille and Diana Ross.
N: Radio 1. It’s on ALL DAY, so at the moment while Fearne’s off, it’s a mixture of Sara Cox and Scott Mills – and the same songs that I heard on Grimmy’s show earlier the same day (and the day before…and the day before that…).

Favourite European city and why?

N: Ahh, so many to choose from, and Olivia and I are lucky enough to have visited lots of places there. I think I’d either have to say Budapest or Munich, because I like thermal spas, Goulash and steins of German beer.
O: I like Amsterdam lots – pretty but not pretentious, and you can cycle everywhere! I’m also a big fan of Budapest.

What do you think is the biggest problem in British society today and what is the most positive thing?

O: I work in politics so I’m pretty biased, but I think that the lack of engagement in politics (both formally and informally) amongst the public is a huge problem. I don’t think it’s anything new, but I do think it’s something that isn’t addressed enough, and I think that there are huge swathes of the population with a really poor understanding of how what goes on in Westminster, Brussels or across the globe impacts on their lives. I’d love to see politics lessons as part of the curriculum throughout school!

In terms of the positive, I think that the ongoing impact of the recession has had the unintended consequence of encouraging people to appreciate local businesses rather than global monoliths and think more sustainably about consumption – you really get a sense of this in London and hopefully it will continue.

Do you ever get blog block?

O: There are always days when blogging feels like a chore, but looking through old posts often sparks a burst of motivation! We keep a big list of post ideas which we add to whenever we’re inspired so we can always draw off that if we’re feeling stuck, which is helpful for when a post just isn’t going anywhere.

Dream purchase?

O: A flat somewhere lovely, with a roof terrace.
N: A Sunseeker yacht. One day…

Is blogging a viable career?

It certainly has worked out for other bloggers! From our perspective, it’s certainly not an option at the moment. We run Professionelles as a hobby and we’re perfectly content with our day jobs, but it would definitely be nice to make some pocket money moving forwards. Further into the future, who knows?

Where do you see yourself in five years?

N: Hopefully I’ll be sailing around the Caribbean on my Sunseeker yacht. It’s certainly motivation to work hard! In reality, I’d like to be nearing the top of my game in PR and have worked abroad.
O: I’d like to be higher up the career ladder and better at doing grown up things like getting regular haircuts, poaching eggs and getting up early. I don’t like to plan too far ahead in case I miss out on an adventure!

Can you run in heels?

O: Without a doubt.
N: Only when I’m drunk.

Ron Gutman reviews a raft of studies about smiling, and reveals some surprising results. Did you know your smile can be a predictor of how long you’ll live — and that a simple smile has a measurable effect on your overall well-being? View on TED Talks.

Italy’s female politicians: breakthrough or tokenism? In Italy, one third of cabinet members are women. And they are women of substance. But do they have power? Read more: The Guardian.

Taking mindfulness into the 21st century, welcome to a new way of being: the quantified self.

Self-hacking can be about self-awareness in the moment, rather than always trying to move towards a significant longer-term goal — a way of creating beneficial everyday habits…. What to eat, when to meditate and whether to call your parents: can self-monitoring tools make a difference? Read more: Aeon Magazine.

The best laid plans

I have to say that my occasionally annoying urge to structure, label and list is really coming in handy right now, and the Beloved has been, to a lesser extent, bitten by the bug too. He’s a maths and computer whizz so my simple spreadsheets now have formulae to calculate the numbers of guests sure to come, the number of children likely to be there, marquee price comparisons…

The thing with a wedding is that there really is a lot to think about, a lot to do and – crucially – most tasks depend on other tasks. For example, we need to book a date at the town hall for the civil wedding, which is obligatory in France. Before we can do that, I need to obtain a certified translation of my birth certificate, but before I can get it translated, I need to get a special version dated within the last six months… So, you see, you can’t just attack your to-do list (which is often my approach – a blind blitz attack); you have to do things in the right order. You can’t book a DJ until you have a date, but can’t set a date until you find the venue, and know it’s available. My college friend Rachel (for whose wedding I received an invitation the very day the Beloved and I first met) encapsulated the beauty and ephemeral nature of wedding planning when she wrote to me: “You have to acquire very specific knowledge very quickly, learning a huge of amount of stuff that you’ll never use again”.

A very specific skill set

Rachel was right. I now have a working knowledge of venue contracts, and I know all the French words for the various shades of a colour I once just referred to as “white”. But, in the midst of tasting desserts and trying on dresses and addressing envelopes, the biggest lesson I am currently learning is one of perspective. When the Beloved proposed, I was over the moon, simply thrilled to know we were to be joined forever in matrimony and that we’d be making our commitment public and sharing the day with all our friends and family. But as The Day draws near and decisions have to be made and friends and family start offering helpful tips and opinions about how things really should be done, the pressure builds.

Online forums are full of women whipping each other into a frenzy about the traditional meaning of different flowers, the take-his-name/keep-your-own debate, and the “right” number of bridesmaids. Films like Bridesmaids with their incredibly opulent weddings make your own somewhat humbler proceedings feel shabby by comparison, and having seen the once hilarious, but now that I’m engaged, frankly petrifying film The Hangover, I break out in a cold sweat whenever the words ‘stag night’ are uttered in my presence.

Enjoy the process

With all that going on (plus, you know, little things like holding down a full-time job, writing columns, washing, shopping, hauling myself to the gym…) it’s easy to lose sight of the endgame. Which is – we’re getting married. Never a weekend free from some kind of wedding errand? Deal with it – you’ve met the love of your life! Hand aching from addressing envelopes? For heaven’s sake – you’re lucky to have so many loved ones with whom to share the day. And as for arguing with the Beloved over buttonholes and seating arrangements – well, I’d rather avoid the irony of having cross words over how/when/where/with whom we are to declare our undying love.

I only intend to get married once in my life, so I am determined to enjoy the process as much as the day itself. I refuse to squabble for a year while we plan what is supposed to be the happiest day of our lives. And a wedding is just one example of how keeping sight of the endgame and maintaining a sense of perspective prevent you from undermining the ultimate joy of what you’re doing. Quarrelling over holiday plans falls into the same category for me, as does getting uptight about taking the wrong route out of the city for a weekend away. The drive is part of the trip – enjoy the process, put it in perspective, and remember to buy a more up-to-date map when you get back.

Lucky you

Whenever I feel overwhelmed by all the stuff I have to juggle in life, I remember the words of my wise friend Pam. Once, as I complained about how I was behind in my novel for book club, didn’t have an evening without a commitment for the next two weeks, had only half-written my latest column, and couldn’t even find time to get to the bank to pay in a cheque, she looked me in the eye and said: “Wow, it must be fun to be in a book club! And you’ve loads of social nights out planned? Nice! You’re already half-way done on your column? And someone gave you some money that you need to put in the bank? What a lot of lucky burdens to carry.” Pam’s point, simply stated, has proved very hard to forget. Luckily.

When I started the Everyday Sexism Project a year ago, I never imagined that by now it would have attracted some 25,000 entries and be about to spread to 15 countries. Nor even that I’d be writing about it in the Guardian – or that this would be the latest in a chain of articles that has encompassed the Times of India, Gulf News, Grazia South Africa, the Toronto Standard, French Glamour and the LA Times. Read more: The Guardian.

What’s the School for Creative Startups all about?

School for Creative Startups is my answer to the knowledge gap that occurs in art and design schools in this and many other countries , which means that creatives aren’t being taught the skills to live from what they make or do. The course is a part- time year-long interactive and hands-on course delivering all the business know-how that creative people need to build sustainable startups, without all the technical gibberish, pesky acronyms and theoretical rhetoric. It’s just the stuff you need to grow your own successful startup – taught the way you like to learn it.

Who’s the programme for?

Any creative person, or team of people, who have an idea for a creative business, or already have a creative startup, and want to improve their business skills and grow their startup into a long-term success. We consider the creative industry to be a broad sector, which includes areas such as broadcast media, communications, craft, culinary arts, design, digital, fashion, fine art, music and the performing arts.

What type of businesses have taken part in the past?

We’ve had everyone from fashion designers to web developers and a few folks that might surprise you like a magician and a perfumer. We’ve had mums who are maternity leave who don’t want to go back and people who’ve been made redundant and now want to pursue their dreams. We’ve had young folks, old folks, people changing direction and people starting again. We even have a girl who comes over from Dubai each month for class. The bottom line is that if you have a brilliant creative business idea – and need help getting it off the ground – this is a great support and training programme for you.

How can I get involved?

It’s easy enough. All you need to do is visit our website and click on apply now. The application is a bit long, but it’s really rather friendly and if you know what you want to do, it shouldn’t be too hard to complete. If you’re not ready to apply just yet and you’d like to learn more, you can sign up to our monthly newsletter or follow us on Meetup to get details on free upcoming information events.

This must be really expensive right?

We understand that people starting businesses tend to be cash poor, but since we can’t charge nothing for what we do, we try to be as accommodating as possible. To that end we offer two different tuition rates: Our full tuition rate is £3,500 but we also offer scholarships at a reduced rate of £1,00 for those who make a strong case for support in their application. To make life even easier, we also offer monthly payment plans.

We’re told that women are risk-averse and not assertive enough. How do you feel about female entrepreneurship?

I don’t know what the rest of the world is like, but the creative sector tends to be women-led. In fact around three-quarters of our students are female and they seem pretty savvy and skilful to me. I think all creative people – male or female – suffer from a lack of confidence when it comes to business and that manifests itself in funny ways. It’s hard to take big risks or be assertive when you don’t know what you’re doing – perhaps women just recognise that fact sooner than men.

There’s a recession on – is now really a good time to set up a business?

Absolutely! There has never been a better time to start a business than right now and there is nowhere better in the world than the UK to start your business in. There are more amazing tax incentives, loan programmes and training schemes available now in the UK then anywhere. Programmes like Launcher which offers loans to people under the age of 30 enabling them start up new businesses, or the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme which help make startups more attractive investments for Angels; these are just some of the many ways that this country is making it easier to access capital.

To find out more and apply, see the School For Creative Startups website. You can also follow on Twitter @CreativeS4S, or become a fan on Facebook.

One woman’s success does not mean a step forward for women. Far from ‘smashing the glass ceiling’, Thatcher made it through and pulled the ladder up after her. Read more: Comment Is Free.