movie «Back to the Future». He was constantly provoked «to dare», and he got involved in various challenges to prove that he could do anything. I’ve done something similar. When I was sitting at home in Donetsk and thought that I had to get up for work tomorrow at 5 in the morning, I asked myself 3 questions: «Do I deserve this?», «Why am I doing what I’m doing, and what will it give me in the future?» and «What do I really want?». I understood that I had brains, abilities, family and friends. Does it have to be that I work at a factory and live in an apartment with my grandmother’s repair? Stupid people tell me what to do, fine me and teach me about life. I don’t sleep much; I don’t see my wife and friends. I considered the situation as a threat to the security of my meaningful life, and there were no questions that something should be changed. I was afraid of losing a meaningful and controlled life. Therefore, in this way I motivated myself to break into changes in order to prove to myself that I could.
Motivation is a different thing. In 2011, I graduated from university and realized that no one needed me and my diploma. Everyone needs work experience and real skills to do something. For a long time, I resisted admitting to myself that 5 years of training were useless for my professional activity. What does it mean that I studied for 5 years, and now I have to study again to how a cool job? Then I tried to start from something based on fashion, demand and money. I tried to learn programming and understand marketing, but everything went by. Nothing worked. At some point I gave up and just started doing what I like. My weekends did not coincide with my wife, and more often I spent them alone. Then I was engaged in music, so I was interested in sound engineering, creating electronic drums, video editing and photography. At night at work, I read articles about different programs, and on weekends I made drums and different effects for videos and photos. I slept for 4 hours, got up and studied again. There were no problems with motivation and procrastination. I was just enjoying myself and didn’t think it wouldn’t bring me money. I just did what I like, as successful coaches’ advice. I always laughed at these words, but, funnily enough, it turned out that way. Gradually, because of the music, I became interested in cover design, delved into the study of Photoshop, then web design, then layout of landing pages, and so on. As a result, I realized that I like creating websites. My focus has shifted to web development and design. After some time, I already knew about the basic engines and could make a landing page. The desire to move to Moscow appeared due to the availability of vacancies in web design. After 2 years, I got the desired position. I was the head of the website development department, then switched to mobile applications at red_mad_robot, became the head of the project office of the design direction, participated in the relaunch of the direction as an operating director, organized a dream team, and then moved to the educational direction of Verno by red_mad_robot. If they had told me in Donetsk in 2013 where I would live and what I would do, I would have twirled my finger at my temple. Initially, I wasn’t going to do all this and didn’t even know it was possible. I just started doing what I like, and that brought me to the current state of affairs. I was just doing something and developing in it. This does not mean that if you love football, you can get up from your workplace, send your boss to hell and go to the football academy. It’s also «do what you like». Everything needs to be done correctly and without sudden movements. We need a safe environment, not an exit from the comfort zone to starve and sleep on the street. The processes in this book will help you to act rationally and save the time I spent then.
Vector
Your desires create not only motivation, which is the fuel of movement towards the goal, but also determine the vector of your goals. By vector I mean what many call the mission of life, destiny or vocation. Here is the same story as with motivations. Everyone is looking for their purpose in different ways, going through a bunch of articles and videos on how to find it. And still no one can find it. If you have a lot of fundamental tasks, you are in debt or there is no energy, then everything is simple if we are talking about the vector. You need to get rid of the stimulating conditions in order to get back on your feet and stabilize the situation. Then you can activate motivation, choose an ambitious vector, start the path to a dream and to great deeds. Consider that solving fundamental problems is like a slip before a sharp start. A journey of a thousand steps begins with a single step. Our task is to prepare the legs so that they can do it. The system life can be applied both to the slip and to further movement. Why do I call it a vector and not the meaning of life, a global goal, mission or vocation? I believe that there is no vocation. We were not born to be happy and successful. We are people whose goal is to get maximum pleasure and avoid pain. Stimuli help to avoid pain, and having fun has become a new difficult task for a person. To get it, you first need to understand what is delivering it to you. We no longer get pleasure from the fact that we don’t have to hide in a cave from predators, get food and do a bunch of other dangerous things of primitive man. These pleasures have lost their value. As in the law of diminishing marginal utility.
«As a certain maximum of saturation of the need for this good is reached, its usefulness for the buyer begins to decrease. This is because each additional unit of subsequent purchases of this good brings the consumer relatively less satisfaction than the previous ones»
For example, for a person without a car, the marginal utility of the first car purchase is higher than the second, the second is higher than the third. The tenth car may stop pleasing at all, and you will want a helicopter. Now you need to get new pleasures. Even more status, love, admiration, and so on. It’s difficult to get them, we can’t stop wanting them, and the modern world promises that a quick result is possible. Even they offer to learn English in 2 hours. Therefore, we are looking for our destiny to realize our super talent and potential. This is really very important. Especially when a person does not know, does not notice and does not look for his potential. Because he doesn’t want to, can’t, or doesn’t know how…
«The biggest misfortune in life is a mismatch with one’s own potential»
But there is no ministry of talents in heaven, where a person sits and distributes abilities. There is no such thing as putting human embryos in front of them and saying: you will be a driver, you will be a musician, you are a born manager, you are a designer, you are a CEO, and you will transfer turtles across the road in Australia. Only you won’t know about it right away. You will search for your vocation for years, buy courses and marathons. All healthy people are biologically equal, but they develop differently, in different conditions, with different resources and their own solutions. People’s values are formed over a long period of time. If you do something, then you like it. If you like something, then you do it and improve. Not for profit, but for pleasure. Time passes, and you become a pro. Other people look at you and think, this is a genius, this is a pro, I would like that. Often in such situations they talk about the 10,000 rule. It says that in any field you can become an expert in 10,000 hours of practice. Violinist students participated in this study. Those of them who spent 10,000 hours on practice, became world stars. This is how they prove that you are not born genius, but become one. But in this context, the study is not entirely appropriate. I have no doubt that a person will become a pro in any business if he spends 5 years practicing it. Only a person should have the desire to spend so much time doing it. Then there will be natural motivation and enthusiasm. Someone will say that he knows how to do something well, but he doesn’t like doing it. Someone doesn’t know what they like. This is totally fine, only few people know that.
«And today, not everyone can see tomorrow. Rather, not only everyone can see, not everyone can do it»
We need to experiment and rely on values. For example, I’m good at getting on well with people. I could be great selling bricks or vegetables on the market. But I don’t
