I've seen you be once again quite stoic about your emotions. You ever get angry? You ever get lonely? You ever get sad? The roller coaster of human emotion. And what do you do with that when you make difficult decisions?
I'm a human being like everybody else. I do get to experience emotions and some of them are not very pleasant. But I believe that it's the responsibility of every one of us to cope with these emotions and to learn to work through them. Self-discipline is particularly important because without it, how can you overcome this seemingly endless loop of negativity or despair that ultimately leads to depression for some people? I normally never have depression. And I don't remember having depression in the last 20 years at least. Maybe when I was a teenager. But one of the reasons for that is I start doing things. I identify the problem. I can see a solution and I start executing the strategy.
If you are stuck in this loop of being worried about something, nothing's ever going to change. And people often make this mistake thinking, 'Oh, I should just have some rest and then regain energy.' This is not how it works. You gain energy by doing something. So, you start doing something, then it happens. You feel motivated. You feel inspired. And then ultimately you do something else, a little bit more, a little bit more. And in a few years, who knows, you may end up achieving great things. Yeah, that's the thing that people really confuse. If you're stuck in a depressive cycle, even when you really, really, really, really don't want to do anything, just do something. Try to make progress because the good feeling comes on the end of that. The whole point is to do first and then feel, not feel and then do.
Exactly. And going to the gym is a good example.
There are many days when you don't want to start working out, but you have to overcome this initial reluctance and then you get to a point that you enjoy it and you think, 'Oh my god, it was such a good idea to come to the gym today.' But it's similar to pretty much every activity. You get to write some code. Write a small piece of code first and then you get inspired. Then you'll come up with more ideas. You need to write a novel, just write a paragraph.
This is pretty obvious and it's not a secret. But because we are bombarded with all kinds of information that is not really important for us in terms of becoming successful, we often forget the important things and this is one of them.
We've been working out every single day. You have been working out for many years pretty intensively. So, I think a lot of people would love to know what's your perfect daily workout regimen. Let's say on a weekly basis.
I do 300 push-ups and 300 squats every morning. And in addition to that, I go to the gym normally five, six times a week, spending between one or two hours every day.
So, push-ups and squats are still a big part of your routine.
Yes, this is how I start my day. I'm not sure they do a lot in terms of changing your body, but they're definitely a good way to practice self-discipline because you don't want to do push-ups in the morning most of the days. Squats are particularly boring. They're not that hard. They're just boring. But you overcome it and then it's much easier to start doing other things related to your work. For example, when I can, I also take a nice bath because it's another exercise of self-discipline. I think the main muscle you can exercise is this muscle, the muscle of self-discipline, you know, not your biceps or your pecs or anything else, because if you get to train that one, everything else just comes by itself.
Yeah. Everything else becomes easy. We should mention I went with you to Banya and I think it's fair to say you're nuts in terms of how much you can handle. And I didn't even see the worst of it. Can you just speak to your crazy escapes in the Banya? What value you get from it? So both the heat and the cold.
I don't know if it's crazy. I think it's quite natural and normal by this time. Yeah, but maybe I just got used to it. So, banya is this extreme kind of sauna practiced by Eastern Europeans. But it is done in a way that maximizes heat and they also use all kinds of herbs and branches and it's a much more holistic and natural experience. Then a necessary part of it is you get the cold plunge and then you go back. And again, this is one of the things that maybe in the moment is not always that pleasant, particularly if you go to extreme temperatures, you don't feel great. I don't always feel great, but this feeling is passing. It's only a few minutes. Same with the ice bath. You have to suffer a bit and then you get to feel great for hours and days after.
What's more, it gives you these long-term health benefits. In a way, you can look at it as alcohol in reverse. Alcohol will give you this short fleeting pleasure for an hour, for a couple of hours, but then you will be paying for it with long-term negative consequences. I'd rather do banya and ice bath.
We swam the length of a large lake in France a couple times. Can you talk through why you value these multi-hour swims?
I love swimming for hours. The longest I swam was five and a half hours in Finland. It was quite cold. I got lost in the process. Barely could find my way back. But the reason I do it, yes, you feel great after, you're shaking a little bit. You feel great after you cross a huge lake and I cross many lakes. Geneva Lake, Zurich Lake, and every time you feel this achievement, which makes you happy, makes you feel strong, and then you're more ready to take on other challenges. And of course, when you know you're going to start a journey that will last a few hours, you're reluctant to do it. But you swim for 10 minutes and then for 20 minutes and then for 30 minutes and it teaches you this incredible patience that I think is necessary if you want to achieve anything in life. And it's pretty meditative.
Yes. And you don't have to go too fast. You can be slow and enjoy the moment until you get lost and it's five and a half hours.
Did you panic, like if you're going to be able to find the shore or find your way out?
Not really. I'm a reasonably stress resilient person. I didn't panic at that moment. And there were worse swims I had that were shorter but involved accidents and you know about some of them. So that wasn't the worst by far. But an important thing about swimming and physical activity in general is that it makes your mind clear and your thinking process is becoming more efficient. Because at the end of the day, the efficiency of our brain is limited by how much sugar and oxygen our heart can push through blood to our brain. So how can you make this go faster? How do you make your lungs more efficient? How do you make your heart more efficient in doing that? The physical activity is the only way I know of.
So, it's not just staying healthy or trying to look good. It's also being productive. It's also being stress resilient. All of these qualities are necessary if you want to run a large company, if you want to start a company. I'm surprised when I started doing this more than 10 years ago that more CEOs didn't engage in sports. The situation changed in the last several years, which is great because back in the day, if you take 20 years ago, there was this stereotype that if you're strong, you must be not very smart and vice versa, which is a complete fallacy. Very often these two things go together.
So for you working out it's not just about staying healthy. It's actually valuable for the work that you do as a tech leader, as an engineer, as a technologist.
Oh yes. When I can't train, I can instantly feel that stress is creeping on me. So even in situations where I'm constrained, I can't go to the gym, I would just keep doing push-ups. I just keep doing squats.
