Tag: Work

Harnessing Productivity: Personal Techniques That May Just Work for You | February 17 2026, 22:21

I formulated for myself how I manage to get a lot done (actually, I don’t). It’s not a fact that it will work for others. But still, here are the points:

1. Do what you like. You need to do what your heart is in at the moment. If you force yourself, efficiency drops tenfold.

2. Sports anger as a catalyst. You need to treat failure not as a tragedy, but as a personal insult from the task. Anger is the quickest way to enter a state of hyper-focus, turning “didn’t work out” into “oh really, now watch me”.

3. Seamless switching. As soon as energy in one task has waned or the task is done — leap to the next funnel that beckons right now. It might not always be work-related. For instance, I might play the piano, draw, program, write a book, or do work.

4. Completing. Take a chunk that you can chew and bring it to a plus-minus norm. Don’t drop it midway, while there’s still momentum. Finish and refine – that’s a task for the next “high”.

5. If you can’t break through a wall — don’t smash your head against it. Mark the point of stopping, say “I’ll remember you” and retreat to return with a different tool or a different mood. The main thing is to keep this “open gestalt” in active memory and not tuck it away for too long.

6. An external promise is sacred. If you promised a deadline by Monday, personal comfort (like sleep on Saturday) is sacrificed. This pain teaches you to filter promises in the future. Your word must have physical weight.

7. The plus one principle. Always do a bit more than expected of you. How much more is a question of context, resources, desire, but the delta should be tangible.

8. The principle of useful output. Any product of activity should be in a form that can be delivered. The English word for this is ‘deliverable’. Simply getting to grips with something is not a product. But understanding it and documenting it in Confluence is a product. A letter, an article, code – anything.

9. “You gotta, Fedya, you gotta.” Perform mandatory ceremonies and necessary bureaucracy as an inevitable evil that simply has to be done anyway. Need to pass some stupid training every six months? Allocate an hour for it and suffer through.

10. Have the best tools for the task. If you don’t have them, strive to possess them and learn to use them.

Three more principles, which seem unteachable but are very helpful:

0. Don’t get irritated and don’t irritate others.

1. The ability to instantly separate the important from the junk, and the urgent from the hustle. This is an intuition that only develops with years “in the field”. And total curiosity – the ability to find excitement in any topic. This applies to everything – including who to talk to and when to go to the store.

2. If you’re bored — it means you just haven’t dug deep enough. Interest is a matter of immersion scale and having the right people, books, YouTube videos, etc. Eventually, there simply are no topics that seem boring.

3. Lifetime learning principle. Any project is a legal excuse to become smarter at someone else’s expense. Look for what ignites you in routine and what you’ve long wanted to learn. See a task that would be more elegantly solved with a script in Haskell, a language you’ve never seen before? Then today, we are learning Haskell. True, enthusiasm should not bury the deadline. You need to deliver results, even if the experiment completely fails. Promise foundation first, then decorate with the new skill.

These principles have a downside. For instance, I progress very slowly in playing the piano because good progress requires two other principles that don’t “get along” with my principles above:

1. The “one more lap” principle. If you sat down, and got tired after an hour, you need to spend two more, and then you can get up.

2. The “clenched teeth – go” principle. If you’ve taken on learning something, do it regularly, preferably at the same time, and if necessary, through “I don’t want to”.

A Decade at EPAM: Thriving Through Change and Challenge | January 05 2026, 13:43

10 years at EPAM.

I would have never thought that I would enjoy working in the same place for an entire decade. What’s the secret? At EPAM, I am always evolving: projects change one after another, never letting me get bored.

I am currently on a project at a giant company: over 100 thousand employees and revenue of 30 billion dollars. Before this, it was the automotive industry — a behemoth with a staff of 175 thousand and a turnover of 150 billion. Somewhere around, there was a contract with a company of 80 thousand employees and 35 billion in revenue. True scale and genuinely serious challenges. And earlier, there were cosmetics brands, biotech, and the oil sector. In total, more than 20 projects of various calibers. Despite having over 100% workload every single day. And it seems that this year, I had more vacation than usual, yet still less than I could have taken. I traveled to Costa Rica, Mexico, Seattle, Antalya.

The point is, at each new place you learn something, sometimes from scratch. And that’s freaking awesome. It gives much more energy than if I had been “rooted” in any of these corporations for all 10 years. Perhaps, from a purely financial standpoint, people who stayed in one place at these companies earned more than me, but money isn’t the priority if it means sacrificing interest and enthusiasm. Living life at a job from which you are utterly exhausted is a questionable pleasure.

Last year at EPAM was maximally intense, and I sincerely hope that 2026 will not slow down.

Exploring the “Christmas Tree” in Oil & Gas | December 18 2025, 18:34

Oh, how many wonderful discoveries the spirit of enlightenment brings…

it turns out, Christmas tree in the oil & gas industry is a wellhead equipment. I am testing this search for work

Alien Encounter and Parking Woes: A Bizarre Day | December 07 2025, 01:21

Such a “facehugger” jumped out of an egg nearby and attached itself to the windshield of my RAV4, just like that to implant its embryo, but the little car held its ground.

It all started when I went outside with my keys and realized that the car was not in the yard. Damn! I had used it to get to the metro, and Nadia brought me back from the concert in Washington in her Tesla. Well, okay, I’ll call an Uber.

The Uber took me to the metro parking lot, where the local parking attendants had found my car overnight and slapped a yellow card on it. Removing this thing takes five minutes; you just need to pay the fine by scanning the QR code. Luckily, the fine was divine, just 75 dollars accumulated. If I had remembered later, it would have been more.

Navigating Comcast Deals: My Experience with Overpaying for Internet | November 23 2025, 16:02

Yesterday, we stopped by Comcast/XFinity to get Lisa set up in her new apartment. At the end, I asked, “guys, can you check something because it feels like I’ve been paying too much for internet for two years now. $131 a month for gigabit service.” The dude quickly pulled up my profile, said, “let’s reduce it by $25.” I said, “let’s do it.” Done, goodbye.

Service.

Cultural Expectations of Driving for Work: USA vs Russia | November 22 2025, 16:21

Here’s what I’ve noticed. In the USA, there’s an expectation that an employee drives themselves if their job involves traveling. Companies often issue a company car or provide compensation for using a personal vehicle. This is commonly considered a regular part of job responsibilities, and having a driver’s license is often implicitly assumed. For example, Nadia, a volleyball coach, occasionally drives a small bus for us.

As I recall, the tradition in Russia is different: in organizations, especially in government, large corporations, or among managerial staff, it is more logical to expect a designated driver.

Am I mistaken?

Privacy Pitfalls of Outlook Notifications During Screen Sharing on macOS | October 06 2025, 14:05

Microsoft has one very nasty thing with Outlook for MacOS, which for some reason nobody tries to fix. If you have a meeting in 30 minutes, Outlook reminds you with a popup showing the upcoming meetings, where it “highlights” these meetings. Well, in my case, there’s no secret here, I could even share my screen during that time. But it would be nice if such notifications didn’t appear while screen sharing, especially while recording, because screen sharing goes through Teams, which is part of the same package as Outlook.

But what’s worse is something else. If you try to CLOSE this notification window while screen sharing on MacOS (especially if the recording is on), it causes the whole Outlook with all the emails there to pop up. And there might be things there that the viewers shouldn’t see. That is, by _closing_ the window, you suddenly reveal the titles of email messages. Which is completely unexpected (well, until you step on these rakes, then it’s not unexpected anymore).

AI Microphone Chaos: Blending Office Sounds into Unexpected Poetry | October 01 2025, 15:44

Bought myself an AI microphone that listens to everything around and provides summaries. Decided to test it once. With it, you can’t even watch reels with the mic turned off on your computer, because it tries to merge and summarize everything it hears 😉

“..The team methodically moved through complex comparisons, but unexpected phrases like ‘Watch the video back if you didn’t notice’ and ‘Don’t be a sucker’ created a quiet, almost poetic dissonance—as if the universe whispered ‘Let it be’ amid spreadsheets and sprint tickets….”

Seattle’s Monorail: A Vintage Transport Still in Motion | July 22 2025, 16:28

Seattle’s two-station monorail (a world record!), reportedly self-sustaining and extremely popular among tourists despite being arguably the city’s most pointless form of transportation, features the same Alweg trains that have been in operation since its inauguration 63 years ago for the World Fair.

Interestingly, even the one-station monorail has a driver. I recently saw a job posting for a Monorail Driver, paying $20/hour (with a minimum wage of $18.67). Roughly the same hourly rate can be earned by stocking shelves in any supermarket in the USA.

However, the only major accident on the Seattle monorail in 2005 was due to a driver’s error. According to authorities, the driver of a train heading into the city failed to yield to another train at a spot where the tracks are too close together for simultaneous passage.

The problem was that the tracks were installed without the gap necessary for the free passage of trains. Imagine that! At one spot, just so:) This was deliberately designed to allow loading ramps to extend beyond the carriages. For 40 years, careful attention ensured that trains never traveled simultaneously on this section. But then one day, a driver decided to leave early — and the rest is history. As always, Murphy’s Law applies.

Nearby in 1988, the construction of the Westlake Center mall uncovered an issue just days before its scheduled opening. Engineers found the west track was two inches (50 mm) closer to the platform and building than it should have been, making it impossible to use. The issue came to light when a retractable loading ramp at the terminal scratched the blue train during a trial run; the misalignment was caused by a pin in a hinge that did not fold properly. The ramp was repaired in November, but other technical issues and prolonged safety inspections delayed the new terminal’s opening by four months. To avoid redesign, trains were simply not allowed to run simultaneously. As of 2025, bi-directional movement is still NOT anticipated above the narrow gauge section at the southern (Westlake) station:-)

By the way, exactly a month ago, the monorail at VDNKh in Moscow, opened 21 years ago, was permanently closed. There, too, nobody understood its purpose, and moreover, it was brutally unprofitable.

In the photo, Nadia enjoys Seattle