SDS PODCAST EPISODE 147 WITH VITALY DOLGOV...that wedding ceremony and the two-day wedding event. Thank for coming. It was great. Kirill Eremenko: Awesome. How's married life? Are

Show Notes: http://www.superdatascience.com/147 1

SDS PODCAST

EPISODE 147

WITH

VITALY DOLGOV

http://www.superdatascience.com/147


Kirill Eremenko: This is episode 147 with independent turnaround

consultant Vitaly Dolgov.

Kirill Eremenko: Welcome to the Super Data Science Podcast. My name

is Kirill Eremenko, data science coach and lifestyle

entrepreneur. Each week we bring you inspiring people

and ideas to help you build your successful career in

data science. Thanks for being here today and now lets

make the complex simple.

Kirill Eremenko: Hey guys, and welcome back to the Super Data

Science Podcast. Today, I've got a dear friend of mine,

a mentor of mine, Vitaly Dolgov who is an independent

turnaround consultant. In fact, one of the best

independent turnaround consultants in the world.

He's worked with, as far as I understand or remember,

eight out of the ten top mining companies in the world.

He's traveled to dozens or even hundreds of countries

providing his services and he is in very, very high

demand worldwide. Today he is sharing some of his

best tips and tricks and hacks on time management.

This is an episode where we specifically dove into this

topic because as far as I know, Vitaly is one of the best

people that I'm acquainted with who does time

management very, very well and that is partially due to

his consulting background, because of his experience

in that world where you have to manage every single

minute of your time properly in order to mix in all the

work that you have to do, all the projects and include

things like your relationships, your personal life, your

hobbies, and things like that.

Kirill Eremenko: Why is this podcast going to be beneficial to you, to a

data scientist or an aspiring data scientist? This is an



important question I wanted to outline here because

managing your time regardless of what industry you're

in is extremely important. That allows you to get the

maximum out of your life. Not only in work, not only to

get all the projects done on time and deliver

outstanding results so that you can get recognized and

get those promotions that you're after but also in

expanding your own consulting work or maybe your

own business or your own project so how to manage

your time outside of work. How to negotiate to have

more time outside of work. But also, time management

is an important skill in managing your time for

personal things, for relationships with your loved ones,

with your friends and family and significant other, for

doing hobbies, for feeling fulfilled in life, engaged, or

adding meaning to your life.

Kirill Eremenko: Those are all the topics that we're going to cover in the

podcast and you'll hear about tricks or psychological

frameworks like the Myers Briggs test, the PERMA

framework. We'll talk about the big rocks concept and

many more techniques that Vitaly uses in his life in

order to have a fulfilled life, not just to complete his

work and deliver the projects on time but actually feel

happy and fulfilled in all areas of his life. That is

something that as his mentee, I have learned and

aspired to learn from him and today I wanted to share

that with you so that's what we're going to cover.

Without further adolescents, I bring to you Vitaly

Dolgov, an independent turnaround consultant.

Kirill Eremenko: Welcome ladies and gentleman to the Super Data

Science Podcast. Today, I've got one of my best friends



and mentor, Vitaly Dolgov on the show. Vitaly,

welcome. How are you doing?

Vitaly Dolgov: I'm good. How are you? It's good to be back.

Kirill Eremenko: I'm good as well. For a change, this time we're

recording the podcast in a studio.

Vitaly Dolgov: Indeed, it's different.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, in Brisbane. Surprisingly, we just found out that

a major world known celebrity was here a few days ago

recording. How crazy is that?

Vitaly Dolgov: Indeed. Unfortunately, we are not able to state his

name or our head's will be chopped off.

Kirill Eremenko: Our audio is laughing. Yeah, good times. You were on

the show like ages ago and he we don't a short 20-

minute episode asking if they like it to say they like it

and a lot of people liked it and wanted to hear you

back and so here you are.

Vitaly Dolgov: Thanks heaps. I'll interrupt you for a sec, I was really

surprised by a big comeback and a lot of people

searched me up, looked me up on LinkedIn and my

network increased dramatically just because of the

guys that follow this podcast. I'm really appreciative of

the attention and the interest.

Kirill Eremenko: Did you get a lot of questions after it?

Vitaly Dolgov: I had a few people asking to following my career and if

I could be their mentor. That was probably the most

common question. I would say probably that I'm

figuring out the process how to do it at scale properly.

If there is a proper email that I could start sharing



some of my experience or not. I haven't launched

anything yet but thinking hard about it.

Kirill Eremenko: Awesome. This was over a year ago, right?

Vitaly Dolgov: Yeah, indeed.

Kirill Eremenko: In that past year, some major events have happened in

your life. What would you say is the most significant?

Watch out, Amy might be listening to this.

Vitaly Dolgov: I know which one you're hinting to, I got married.

Kirill Eremenko: Congrats.

Vitaly Dolgov: Thanks heaps. Got married ...

Kirill Eremenko: Twice.

Vitaly Dolgov: To the same person. I got married, you were part of

that wedding ceremony and the two-day wedding

event. Thank for coming. It was great.

Kirill Eremenko: Awesome. How's married life? Are you excited?

Vitaly Dolgov: It hasn't changed much. It was a great event. We were

happy to host a lot of friends and family and to share

what we thought is the special moment. Having you on

that day was more special to us than putting a

signature down. I think it's a good that not a lot of

things changed. The feelings, emotions haven't change,

neither diminished nor amplified tremendously but

like having a really great time and support from you

guys was important to us.

Kirill Eremenko: I just wanted to clarify for the listeners that twice is

because you had two ceremonies in two different



countries, that's the reason. You were so excited about

getting married, you had to do it twice.

Vitaly Dolgov: True, indeed.

Kirill Eremenko: Awesome, what else?

Vitaly Dolgov: Good question.

Kirill Eremenko: Any big projects you're working on?

Vitaly Dolgov: Last year was a really important year for me to

establish myself as an independent consultant to

make sure I can sustain high cash flow, I can market

and sell my skill to other consulting companies so they

can resell it later with a high margin. It was important

to me to make sure I can do it consistently and to get

confidence in the incoming work. That has happened. I

think the business has been running for about 18

months so I'm confident that it's doing all right. The

demand for it is only increasing. I have competing

offers so I have to decline more and more work than

obviously that I can accept. That was one mountain

that I have achieved.

Vitaly Dolgov: Another one was trying to think bigger and think how I

can move forward and go away from just selling my

time and start creating some value to people around

me at a bigger scale. I have started documenting some

of my knowledge, some of experience. I've been in

consulting for about 10 years now and I wanted to

start documenting and hopefully eternalizing some of

the knowledge, not only my own knowledge but also

try to get that knowledge from topnotch consultants

that I've worked with. They all raise their hand and

said, yes, we're keen. Let's put some knowledge base



together of the things that could be useful to future

consultants. These are the two probably bigger

milestones in my professional life and probably

making more confident movements towards improving

my personal life. I've been prioritizing career for about

10 years and I wanted to focus more on health, on

fulfillment, on joy, and to really develop that side of

things to the bigger extent possible. Thus, a lot of

hobbies flourished. A lot of time dedicated and

attention to it went to the next level.

Kirill Eremenko: Awesome. I think that's the main thing I want to

discuss today. For those listening, Vitaly is the best

person I know in the world, I want to stress, the best

in time management. Where did that come from? Why

are you so good at time management?

Vitaly Dolgov: Thanks, that's really flattering. Frankly speaking, I've

learned from a lot of other people who I think are

better than me at that. Interesting enough, yesterday I

interviewed one of my mentors from the consulting

world, Michael Spence. He's the managing partner of

Partners in Performance Southeast Asia, that's a

management consulting firm working in that region. I

asked him a question that was around time

management and prioritization. His first response was

a long laugh and saying, "I've learned that over 19

years and I still keep learning it." The summary of his

tricks and tips I realized was something that he passed

on to me almost no day one we met and that was

about three years ago. His wealth of knowledge and

experience and knowledge and experience of other

people was probably my source where I picked it up



from. Summing it up, it's learning from other people

that I believe are deemed successful. I don't believe I

have reached there yet but obviously, I'm keen to

share.

Kirill Eremenko: Also, I'm just going on a bit of a tangent. You

interviewed Michael Spence and you're interviewing

others. You're starting your own podcast, is that

correct?

Vitaly Dolgov: That's the idea. I haven't launched it yet. I want to

create a sudden backlog or forward look, whatever you

call it, of some recordings that I can start putting more

consistently every fortnight, every three weeks online.

I've a few of the recordings lined up and looked in. I've

got two done and they are in the processing stage but

yes, that's the intent.

Kirill Eremenko: What's it gonna be about?

Vitaly Dolgov: It's gonna be about consulting and sharing the

experience of topnotch consultants with other aspiring

consultants or already established consultants and

learning from years and years of experience of

topnotch people and short cutting that learning curve

into sometimes a matter of hour or several hours.

Kirill Eremenko: Okay, awesome. Do you have a name yet?

Vitaly Dolgov: No, I haven't. Open for any suggestions.

Kirill Eremenko: Okay, cool. Yeah, guys. Leave your comments if you

have a suggestion. Awesome. I can't wait to listen to

that. I think you have some influential people in your

network who I would personally leave to hear speaking

on this topic of consulting. This is a data science



podcast so any kind of data science work I do or I've

done in the past, I always treat it as consulting. Even

if it's internal, I still treat it as the people that come to

me from within the company, they're internally asking

me for consulting work and that way it makes me

much more professional and deliver things on time

and talk to them appropriately and prioritize my

projects accordingly. I think that would be beneficial

definitely for me but also probably for anybody else

listening to this podcast.

Kirill Eremenko: Okay, now back to time management. I want to

explain to our listeners why I think you're really good

at it, like the best and I stress the best.

Vitaly Dolgov: I'm blushing.

Kirill Eremenko: I'm sorry, yeah, too much. The reason for this is Vitaly

has a system where he just gets so many things done,

probably at least five times more things in a day than I

get done. He wakes up 6:00 a.m., he does some work.

At this point in time, he has to do this. Then he goes

for a bicycle ride for 55 kilometers was it yesterday or

the day before?

Vitaly Dolgov: I had a physical.

Kirill Eremenko: Then he comes back, he does work. Everything is

scheduled. Sometimes I feel that your calendar is your

best friend. You just live by your calendar. Tell us a bit

more about that. What does an average in the life of

Vitaly Dolgov look like?

Vitaly Dolgov: Ooh, average day. First of all, thanks a lot. I think I

deserve a small portion of the compliments that you've

made so hence, blushing because I don't think it's well



deserved or earned but I'm happy to share what I've

done so far.

Vitaly Dolgov: The average day probably would be different between

two days. When I'm on an engagement or a project and

doing the consulting work with a client or when I'm at

home and therefore working on personal projects,

spending time with the family, or enjoying my hobbies.

The most common one currently is still working with a

client. Usually, the day starts two to three hours

earlier than a normal client's day. I make it a point so

if the client usually starts their day at 6:00 a.m. and

usually at different remote sites or constructions sites,

their working day starts pretty early. I try to beat that

and start my day two to three hours earlier. Why do I

do that? Just to increase the level of energy and

awareness and get stuff done and get that confidence

even already progressing things forward before to be

on the front foot as they say. That's one of the main

tricks and techniques.

Vitaly Dolgov: Funny thing, I found a lot of brains work and

particular mine, it is at best capacity early in the

morning and it is free like got some fresh sleep and

rest and therefore is a little bit not stretched yet not

woken up, but probably at the best purity stage in the

day. What I try to do usually in the morning is to get a

good shock, provide exercise. I do exercise every

morning as a routine since I was 12 years old and I

don't think I dropped by a day like stretching and

everything. It pumps blood through your veins and

therefore activates different parts of your brain.

Sometimes it's getting to a drink that contains



caffeine, whether it's coffee, and I tried to reduce

reliance on it, as you know from the last podcast, quite

a bit. So, green tea is a good alternative. Get

something going, try to do something early in the

morning before anyone else woke up. That's an

amazing first feeling in the morning when you do

something before anyone else has woken up. That's

the thing that I tend to aim.

Vitaly Dolgov: In my mind, sending an email half an hour before the

day starts with something accomplished or suggestion

for the day, for the team. It's much more powerful than

staying back until 2:00 a.m. and showing that you

cannot keep up with your work and therefore had to

stay late. To me, waking up early seems like a routine

that a lot of mentors or celebrities that I follow find it

useful. That would be one of the things in common

between different days that I'm on a project, a client

project and just following a few rules that I have in my

mind for prioritization. How do you choose tasks?

What do you decide to do versus what do you decide

not to do? There are a couple of them.

Kirill Eremenko: Let's go through them.

Vitaly Dolgov: Yeah, sure. These are what I would call tactical things

and we can probably later think about the bigger

picture stuff. Tactical things, a lot of people like to do

time management but I believe it's really, really energy

management that you need to focus about. I lot of

think about, hmm, how can I combine certain

activities to give myself a couple of extra hours, taking

the red eye flight, for example. I will try to sleep

somehow in the vertical position if you're not flying



business class, and therefore I'm saving on this extra

12 hours of flying if you're traveling from Australia

somewhere towards Asia or Europe. To me, this is not

something I found very useful because my energy level

on the following day would be half or probably just a

third of the energy than if I were to have a proper

sleep.

Vitaly Dolgov: What do I do? I fly during the day and I make the point

and I make it a billable day of course, for companies I

work for because during that day on the plane, it's a

quiet time for me with good humming, almost like a

white noise in the background. I get a lot of stuff done.

Plus, I get to bed. I prefer for my flights to end before

9:00 p.m. I get to bed, get a proper sleep so I can get

up at 4:00, 5:00 in the morning and get my day fresh.

The value that you get from the several days

combined, in my experience, outweighs all the cost

savings, and I'm trying to do the air quote marks right

now, that you get by combining some activities like

flying and sleeping. To me, energy management is

sometimes more important than trying to find how to

save time.

Vitaly Dolgov: Another couple of examples how to manage your

energy is which task to start your day from? Some

people tend to think about what is important versus

what is urgent and try to break it into quadrant. Okay,

I need to focus what is urgent and important than

what is important but not urgent and get worked into

stressing themselves into doing either what is urgent

or important. I found that few people focus on what

they would like to do, what they are keen to do right



now, what they are in the mood of doing. That's the

lens I apply first before thinking what is urgent and

important. I read it in one of the books and before this

interview I tried to find that book, I couldn't, and I had

to reach out to the guy who recommended it to me in

2011, Robert Lebrun, one of the mentors of mine.

Once he comes back, I will shoot it back to you and

you can include it in the show notes.

Vitaly Dolgov: That's managing what you're keen on doing and

thinking from these lenses and then thinking what is

urgent and important? It gives you a good perspective.

If are keen to do something that is a little bit less

urgent and important and you just get it done, it will

be awesome and will boost your energy level and sense

of accomplishment for the next task that could be in

two hours or three hours after that. That's another

example of managing energy, not necessarily for

something your backlog or your time, per se.

Kirill Eremenko: That's really cool. I really like those examples. I totally

agree with the flying one. I also love working on

airplanes. Now they have wifi on some flights but I

don't even use that. I try to make sure nobody can

touch me. I can write like a whole article or something.

Really, it's my favorite time of my life, being on a 12-

hour flight where nobody can touch me, where I can

focus on whatever I want.

Vitaly Dolgov: I'm gonna make an assumption, you're an introvert by

nature.

Kirill Eremenko: Yes, yes. Would you consider yourself an introvert?



Vitaly Dolgov: Not a pronounced one but on a scale from 100 being

an introvert and minus 100 being an extrovert, I'm

probably about 10.

Kirill Eremenko: Okay, so very subtle. Have you done the Myers-Briggs

test?

Vitaly Dolgov: Yes, I have.

Kirill Eremenko: What did you come out as?

Vitaly Dolgov: As an introvert and that's where the scoring comes

from.

Kirill Eremenko: Do you remember the letters? I, N, or?

Vitaly Dolgov: Yeah, it's INTJ.

Kirill Eremenko: Me too, me too. Exactly, wow. I never met anyone else

INTJ. That's crazy. Okay, cool. Energy management,

oh wait. For people who don't know, Myers-Briggs is a

test that you can just do online for free somewhere

and it'll tell you are you introverted or extroverted, do

you use intuition, do you use logic more?

Vitaly Dolgov: It's a psychological, good psychological profiling tool. It

defines yourself, bucket yourself somewhere, and

funny enough, I'll drop on your thought, it's really

good when you assess the team dynamic to know who

you work with because you know what clicks for them.

Kirill Eremenko: That's really cool. Exactly, and you can approach

different people differently. You seem to really like

these psychological frameworks. I remember back in,

when was it? I think 2014, you told me about this

framework. I was having some dramas in my life and



you told me about this framework, PERMA. Do you

remember that conversation?

Vitaly Dolgov: Yes, I do.

Kirill Eremenko: Conversations with Vitaly are amazing. Especially at

the start of our mentoring relationship, he was always

on the move, always doing stuff according to his

calendar. I would be like, "I need some time of yours."

He's like, "Okay, you can meet me here." We would sit

on a park bench for 30 minutes and then he's like,

"I've got to go to the shop now." I'd be walking with

him asking him questions along the way.

Vitaly Dolgov: Crazy times. I think the roles [inaudible 00:24:06]

right now. I think you are the busier man right.

Kirill Eremenko: No, no. I pretend to be busy. Compared to you, I'm just

imitating.

Vitaly Dolgov: I'm learning a lot from you these days so I think it goes

both ways and the success you've reached in the field

that you do is worth imitating and worth

understanding to learn from.

Kirill Eremenko: Thank you, I appreciate it. Let's talk a little bit about

that other framework, PERMA, the framework of

happiness. Again, we're going on tangents here but I

think it's an important topic to cover because it really

impacted my life. I'll explain it the way I remember it

and then you can give us a more detailed dive into it.

PERMA is a framework that people or that

psychologists derived in order to understand what are

the components that constitutes happiness for people.

If I'm not mistaken, the way they derived it is by



looking at people who were the unhappiest and seeing

what they actually missed in their lives.

Kirill Eremenko: They came up with these five components, which

abbreviate to PERMA. P stands for positive emotion, E

stands for engagement, R stands for relationship, M

stands for meaning, A stands for accomplishments.

Positive emotions are times when you're laughing,

smiling, and you're just feeling very positive.

Vitaly Dolgov: It's instant gratitude type thing. Something that you

got immediately. Here, I got a lot of positive stuff.

Kirill Eremenko: That's a great addition. Engagement is when you're

completely immersed into an activity. You got me into

scuba diving and that's a great example of

engagement. When you're scuba diving, you're 30

meters under water, you have to control your air,

control your buoyancy, check your pressure gauge,

check your air levels, be calm, look around, navigate.

There's so many things you have to focus on. When

you're in that, especially when you get caught up in a

situation you haven't been in before, you get into a

current or you're getting into a cave or something, the

last thing you're thinking about is work or your

relationship problems or whatever. You are completely

focused and nothing can get you out of that focus.

Kirill Eremenko: Another good example is running. If you're running a

marathon, this is the example you gave me at the very

start, if you're running a marathon, in the lat 100

meters, you are extremely focused on what you're

doing. Nothing else can get you out of that focus. That

focus also brings you happiness. After doing

something that ... You can even be focused at work.



You can be extremely focused on your work but it's

that focus, that state of flow that brings you that state

happiness. Is that about right?

Vitaly Dolgov: I typically use the well being instead of happiness but

it's exactly right. It helps you feel ... It makes you feel

differently, being in the zone, being in the state of flow.

When you get out of it, you're like, wow, that was

amazing. Now you have all of the noise of it coming in

again, you phone buzzes, and someone calls from.

Kirill Eremenko: You kind of feel alive, right?

Vitaly Dolgov: But you felt you've lived in that five minutes or

whatever time it was, one hour, two hours.

Kirill Eremenko: It's so true. The next one is R, which stands for

relationship and that is the time you spend with

people you love, your significant other, your family,

your friends and so on. It's a feeling you get after you

spend time with them or from spending time with

them.

Vitaly Dolgov: Yeah, and probably you could relate to this, Kirill,

yourself by you dedicated this Easter break that just

passed to spending time with your old friends and

your family down in Melbourne. Am I right?

Kirill Eremenko: That's correct.

Vitaly Dolgov: Why did you in the first place decide to book out this

time?

Kirill Eremenko: Every Easter we go down to Melbourne for three days

or four days with my two brothers and we have two

close family friends, three close family friends because

one of them is married now. All six of us spend time



together and we just play board games for three days

in a row. It's really cool because we get that

engagement component in the PERMA system that

we're engaged into the board game. A few days ago we

played this one, the day before yesterday, actually, we

played this one with submarines and it's real time and

you're sitting at this table three on one side, three on

the other and you're trying to find each other. It's like

Battleships but real time, like crazy cool. At the same

time, you feel loved, you feel love around you. Walking

into the airport yesterday, I felt like, wow. I was

immersed in love, I feel loved.

Vitaly Dolgov: And connected.

Kirill Eremenko: Connected, yeah. Very important.

Vitaly Dolgov: That's a good example.

Kirill Eremenko: That's the R. M, meaning. What is meaning?

Vitaly Dolgov: Meaning in the definition of this framework, and later I

will quote where I took the framework from, meaning

stands for things that you're trying to achieve in this

life. How you are planning to make this world better.

Just being in the day-to-day tactics and efficiencies

but not thinking about what you're trying to achieve,

what is the value add from you being on this earth is

not as fulfilling and is not much benefit to you as

striving toward something. We have a very good

mutual friend, Cat, who tries to make this world a

better place by increasing people's awareness around

use of plastic in this world. That is to me one very

clear distinct example of clear meaning. Less plastic so



our generations beyond us can enjoy this planet longer

and we can live together.

Vitaly Dolgov: In the world that you're immersed in, I will try to do it

for the first time, to think about the meaning of the

work you do is to inspire people in the data science

community and to provide them with a wealth of

knowledge to fast track their careers, to improve their

well being, so you have a bigger purpose, a bigger

meaning from the type of you do and how to check if

you are doing the right thing. To me, what's the KPI?

It's the number of people and the quality of feedback

that they give back to you. By receiving thank you

from people and saying thanks, you've changed my life

or thanks, you've made this world a better place to me

there's a real KPI that will say the meaning is

somewhere high up.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, and you don't have to do it at a mass scale. Even

if you go outside and ... Whenever you do something

for somebody else and expect nothing in return, that's

my definition of contribution. If you go outside and you

have a subway sandwich and you a see a homeless

person and you decide to give it to them instead of

eating it yourself, even though you'll feel hungry, you'll

feel so much better that you actually genuinely helped

somebody with no expectations. Meaning, very

important as well.

Kirill Eremenko: The final one, accomplishment or achievement,

whichever. That's about, finally we get to my favorite

one probably of the past, of my whole past life is the

goals that you've checked off, what have you actually

created, the challenges that you've overcome. All those



things that are super, that a lot of people see as the

main priority in life. It is a component of, as you say,

well being but it's not the main one. It's not the only

one, there's five of them.

Kirill Eremenko: The trick is to spend time to diversify your time among

them. If you put all your time into just one of them,

let's say achievement. There's people who just work

and work and work and they're always away from their

family. Their going up their career ladder and they

make millions, they buy Ferraris, they live in

penthouses and so on. But if you take all of that away

from them, you take away their job or whatever, they

jump out the window, they commit suicide because

they don't have any other parts of that PERMA

framework. People who are truly happy they have

diversified their time across the PERMA. How do you

go about diversifying your time? Slowly going back to

time management, how do you go about diversifying

your time across these five components? Do you do it

consciously or do you just look back and see how it

happened?

Vitaly Dolgov: Yes, I do it consciously but I would probably refine

your word. I'm not so much diversifying, but I'm

actually finding what is my lowest score against any of

these five criteria and just focus on improving that

because one or two hours per week spent on my lowest

score will yield much more benefit and that will

increase my being in my life than spending this one or

two hours on the highest score. If I'm really on the ball

with my career, if I'm getting promoted, I just had a

promotion announcement or whatever, a pay raise or I



don't know, a big paycheck in the bank account. I

wouldn't be considering okay, I need to quickly

improve it. What is the next step? I want to double it

or triple it. I will just kind of be like okay, cool.

Vitaly Dolgov: I feel great about this pillar of my well being. Where

am I lacking? Am I lacking somewhere else? I'll look,

hmm. When was the last time I reached out to my

friends, family. When was the last time I spent time

with my family like on a road trip or something? Then I

would quickly find the lowest, the lagging score behind

and I will make a commitment, I will book something

in my calendar and I will communicate to people, hey

let's do something. That's the way of diversifying but I

would say a prioritized way. Just to pick your lowest

score and just work on it. Do it consciously, review,

am I covering all the bases and is everything

happening as planned and therefore developing

consistently, I would say.

Kirill Eremenko: That's very cool. One thing that I've learned from you

among the many but that recently I learned from you.

When we were talking about PERMA about a year ago

and I asked you, how do you keep up with all the

personal stuff, the family, the relationship component?

The family or the friends and so on. Vitaly gave me a

great tip and hopefully, this is will be useful for

everyone else. You should treat time you want to

spend on relationships with friends, family, significant

other, you should treat that time just as you would

treat time you want to spend on a project or on work.

Meaning, you block it out on your calendar.



Kirill Eremenko: I took this advice and at the start of this year,

whenever somebody would suggest we want to go there

or whatever, I'd be like, why not and then I would just

block that out. I've blocked out a trip here or I've

blocked out a scuba diving trip in June, I've blocked

out this and this and this or a catch up with somebody

in November. It's already blocked out in my calendar

months in advance, like six, eight, twelve months in

advance. Even before I get close to that month, I know

it's blocked out and I know I can't move it. I know all

other commitments have to go around it.

Kirill Eremenko: If you don't do that, what I find is that work

commitments somehow in our brains they take priority

and we tend to shuffle around the personal stuff, the

relationships and therefore we miss out on a lot of

those interactions and yet they're at least as important

for our well being. That was a great tip. Thank you for

that. Is there anything else, tips like that, that you can

share?

Vitaly Dolgov: I'll probably expand on this tip and try to generalize it.

It's the piece of advice that I got from Michael that I

mentioned earlier today. He calls it a big rocks

principle. He's a managing partner in a big consulting

firm. His time is decided down to almost the quarter of

an hour. He knows what to do and thinks about every

meeting he attends quite carefully. Therefore, he's got

a lot of competing priorities for a limited resource of

time. That's the piece of advice he gave me after the 19

years of his finding for that ultimate recipe. He said,

"It's the big rocks principle. Put the big, important

stuff first." You know the mason jar type analogy.



Kirill Eremenko: No.

Vitaly Dolgov: Okay, then I'll try to expand on it. People say imagine

your time, your 24 hours times 365 or 366 at the

fourth year, as your mason jar. That's the space, that's

the time you can fill in with activities, tasks, spend it

somehow. If you put the big rocks first in the jar, you

probably can fit I don't know, five, six relatively big

rocks and after that you can put some pebbles around

it and after that you can add some time and after that

you can pour water over it and the jar will be full. If

you try to do it in reverse order, that will never fit in

the same way. If you try to put in pebbles or sand or

water and then try to fit the big rocks, the big rocks

will miss out. They will be out of the picture.

Vitaly Dolgov: The big rocks is the analogy for important and

significant tasks in your life, that commitment that

you decide that you want to achieve something. Unless

you put it in your calendar, unless you block out the

time for them, unless you want to spend time against

those priorities and make that commitment, it will be

pushed out by something else. By a small meeting,

that one hour meeting you planned. Super urgent,

super important, but probably it shouldn't be taken in

exactly that month. It could have been done earlier or

can be postponed to later.

Vitaly Dolgov: That's the principle and how to apply it in your real

life, think of your calendar. You make any point in

time. I usually pick up the end the year, like the new

year celebration or the season. I'll look forward to the

next 12 months and think, what are the things that I

want to achieve in the next year? What are the big



ticket items? There definitely should be a trip with my

family somewhere like a road trip or something. Last

year it was our wedding celebration and a road trip

around south Australia and Victoria. Next year we

plan to go to France with my mom, my wife, and

hopefully my dad will be able to make it. I put this

time in my calendar and right now it's scheduled for

the first part of July and it's two weeks blocked out.

Kirill Eremenko: Next year.

Vitaly Dolgov: No, this year.

Kirill Eremenko: This year, okay.

Vitaly Dolgov: Then I have what is the thing I would do with my wife's

parents and we have Eric, who is the brother of my

wife. He's got a wedding celebration as well, he's

getting married. We have blocked out two to three

weeks in December, end of this year. Cool, I have two

big rocks. I have four weeks, already one month

crossed out of the calendar straight away but I'm

committed to that. I might move them by a day or two

but I will not shrink by 50% or I will not cancel. That's

a commitment I made to myself and to developing

positive relationships.

Vitaly Dolgov: What other big rocks? I have decided to invest more

time into building something long term, like a bit of a

business and sharing the knowledge with a broader

audience. Not just immediately capitalizing on

consulting engagements that I'm getting because

they're not disappearing so I had to make a conscious

decision. I will stop earning money, I will say no to the

work in May and in June to be able to think, step



back, and think what I want to do for the business.

These two months are largely blocked out for

developing the podcast you mentioned earlier,

developing the mentorship emails and starting drafting

them up right now. These are the commitments you

put and then you find, hey, now you've got six to seven

maybe nine, ten months of things that you can fill with

your duties like to do your work, to do this kind of

stuff. Do the paid work as you need to pay the bills

and whatnot and do this kind of stuff.

Vitaly Dolgov: You can do it on a small level as well, think about the

next week's schedule. For the listeners on this

podcast, I would encourage think about your next

week whether you count it from Sunday or Monday

and look for the next seven days. What do you have

there? If you have nothing except for oh, I need to go to

work between 7:00 and 5:00, I would encourage you to

think, what are the big things you want to put in

there? Do you want to put a meeting with the friends

that you haven't seen for a while and they're your

dearest friends for Thursday night, Friday night.

Guess what? If you don't do that, some urgent work

that landed on you may be super important and

urgent that will potentially take that time.

Vitaly Dolgov: By the end of the week, you will feel accomplished.

You will feel you achieved something but you probably

will not be able to say the same thing on have I done

something in my relationship space and that's the

trick. Think of these different pillars or dimensions

and try to make a commitment. If it's not on the

calendar, it's not committed. You have to believe your



calendar and follow it to get committed. That's the

routine and a good practice that helps me and some of

the people I know to keep their world in orbit.

Kirill Eremenko: It's good you touched on that because I was gonna ask

you, for yourself, where you're an independent

consultant, you manage your own time 24/7, it's all

up to you how you put it in, having a calendar is

essential. But what about people, for instance a

majority of our listeners on the podcast are employed

as data scientists or analysts. They knew that between

the hours of 8:00 and 5:00 they need to be at work

and they have a calendar at work, a work calendar

that is for those hours that they need to be doing. Do

you still recommend having an overarching calendar

for your life I general? Something more personal where

you have the work time blocked out plus the evenings,

as you say. What are the benefits of that?

Vitaly Dolgov: Good question. As an overarching thing, I think that's

what drove me to go to independent work. Higher risk

but a better control of your time. That's the conscious

decision I made. However, I have a lot of friends who

actually do have a full time job and are committed to

stability over control of the time and still manage to do

adjustments. One friend that has been at the wedding

as well, Nick, he works in the IT industry as a lead for

the programming team. They program PLCs and the

controls of the trucks, of the Caterpillar, like large

trucks here in Brisbane.

Vitaly Dolgov: The way he manages his time, he just talked to his

boss. He said, "Hey, I'm most productive if I hit a lot of

things in my life on the nail. I love surfing. Therefore, I



want to finish my work at 3:00 p.m. How can I make

that to catch the 4:30 good tides?" The boss said,

"Well, everyone finishes work at 5:00 or 6:00. You

want to cut it by two or three hours?" He said, "Yeah.

What can I do?" He said, "Well, if you come out on

Saturday and work for these extra few hours and

therefore, your afternoons are free. Just make up the

time elsewhere. Or if you come earlier to work when no

one is there where you can tend to accomplish more,

that's another way to do it."

Vitaly Dolgov: He was a programmer, just a programmer at that time

without having the responsibilities of managing the

team. Because he did it so well, he got a promotion

and the boss, his immediate manager, went away from

managing his time but just giving him tasks for him to

accomplish and his team. Right now, he is no longer

committed to be within the boundaries of 9:00 to 5:00

or 5:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. But just, hey, there is a

volume of work we need to do as a team, let's make it

within this one month or something and I don't care

when it's done. You guys tell me what is the most

efficient way.

Vitaly Dolgov: Having that thinking in mind and starting that

discussion would help. More flexible time

arrangements, if you want to use your annual leave,

like most people I know have about 20 days of annual

leave per year, dedicating that time to something

important, planning it is a good way. Try to put some

hours in advance. If your manager is not flexible, try to

work some on Saturdays to earn days in lieu to get like

a block of one week for example and it's just seven



weeks working an extra day to do it further. There is a

degree of flexibility you can take but obviously, the

ultimate degree is to become your own boss and then

manage time. It's scarier but indeed possible as you've

proven and I'm still proving myself.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, you definitely made the jump. Was it last year?

Vitaly Dolgov: It was 2016 so about one-and-a-half to two years ago.

Kirill Eremenko: One-and-a-half to two years ago, yeah. It's an

important step. Those are some great examples. I'll

add to those by saying that for me it was very

important even in this step of transitioning to running

Super Data Science, managing my time after work it

was very crucial that I don't waste any moments. Get

back, have a quick snack for dinner and then every 15

minutes I knew what I had to do because I only had

six hours until midnight before I had to go to bed.

Then the weekend, it's again, the same thing. Just

manage, manage it. Fit in some personal time or

relationship time with friends and family. Yeah, I

guess that's important.

Kirill Eremenko: That's us about the PERMA system, time management.

We talked about energy management. We talked about

the big rocks. Anything else? Any other tricks that you

use for time management?

Vitaly Dolgov: Yes, and I think you've touched on it just a minute ago

briefly, about having a routine. In my mind, and also

capitalizing on the knowledge of other giants, having a

routine helps you eliminate a lot decision making in

your life, unnecessary decision making. What do you

do in the morning? How do you manage your time in



the morning? If you every time decide, what am I

gonna have for breakfast? That to me I found is very

exhausting and very inefficient. How I know that my

kettle is brewing or the water is boiling and I want to

brew my tea or coffee on an occasional day while I'm

doing my morning exercise. I have things that

procedurized as a routine.

Vitaly Dolgov: This is gonna be wake up, shower, a cold shower to get

a wake up, start doing an exercise while kettle and the

tea is brewing, finish that within 10-15 minutes and

the blood is pumping. You get a first drink, done. If I'm

staying at home, then within 25 minutes I know from

the moment I wake up, I will be full capacity with a

drink steaming on my desk, opening my laptop and

crunching the first priority or opening up my notepad

for that matter. If it's going to work, I have an extra

step to do is to get dressed. It's like quickly ironing the

shirt. For some reason, I love doing it, I'm not

outsourcing it and it takes me three minutes. It's

concentration, I'm thinking about my priorities for the

say during that time.

Kirill Eremenko: Engagement, huh?

Vitaly Dolgov: Yeah, yeah. I'm not letting my wife do that although

she tried to take over that task a couple of times. I'm

like, nope. Then I just go off to work and I know

exactly how many minutes it's going to take. Changing

that would blow that time to an hour, maybe more.

Thinking would I want to fry some eggs or to make

toast. I don't want to do that. Routine and knowing

exactly what you're exactly going to do after you come

back from work, as you mentioned. Having a quick



snack and 15 minutes do something, helps

dramatically.

Vitaly Dolgov: Try to make as many routines and procedures as

possible. How do you go to the airport? What time you

go, how you pack things. What is a simple checklist of

packing things up? I have it on my Evernote account

like, checklist bag. I don't want to think about it.

Having done everything, the checklist goes like, am I

dressed from head to toes? Do I have everything for

work, all the gadgets and the appliances? I have a

couple of routines that do some checks. Having those

routines helps manage your time dramatically and

respecting them, revising them, and sticking to them.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, that's very cool. It reminds me of Mark

Zuckerberg gray tee shirts routine. He only wears gray

tee shirts ever, the same tee shirt. He never has to

decide what to wear. That saves mental power, which

he can use on other things. I'm glad you touched on

routines or explained it because you guys should know

that Vitaly's life, wherever possible, is organized into a

list of check boxes. It's like, check, check, check and

it's done, everything is prepared. Exactly for that

reason to make sure that everything is efficient. You

were the person who first introduced me to the

concept of operating procedures. I call then SOPs,

standard operating procedures. That's a very

important part of business that you have procedures

or SOPs set up in order so that anybody can pick it up

and anybody can just go through that list and like a

routine, get the job done. I think it's really cool that



you can do that in life as well in order to optimize

things.

Vitaly Dolgov: Before people think there are a couple of robots sitting

here who procedurized their whole life, I would try to

dispel that myth. I think you need to procedurize or

standardize things that are not really important.

Routines that are almost mundane, I want to say,

things that I just want to get them done in the best

effective time. I'm not fancy about going to the airport

and how I call on an Uber and how I go through the

check-in. I don't want to reinvent that thing every time

because I don't enjoy that. Going on a break and on a

travel trip, that's a totally different story.

Vitaly Dolgov: One of my best trips I've ever made was with one of my

really, really good friends by taking a toothbrush,

some spare underwear and a couple of hundred US

dollars and just going to Cambodia with zero plans

and zero accommodation bookings. That was just

exploring and discovering this world and renting bikes

and traveling around. There were zero procedures of

planning because that was the purpose to enjoy it. I

don't think you should procedurize your relationship

for that matter, you intimate life. That's the innovation

there and discovery is part of the journey. But things

you want to procedurize, you don't want to spend time

on like picking up your shirts or what's for breakfast, I

would to standardize those and free up space for

something more important.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, good clarification. We're definitely not two robots

sitting here. I guess for me procedurizing helps not

forget elements. For instance, my packing list for travel



is procedurized because I know that I need earplugs, I

know that I need a sleeping mask, I need my passport,

and this and this and this. There's so many little

things, it's just easier to check off the boxes and make

sure everything is there rather than trying to

remember it on the go every time.

Vitaly Dolgov: Indeed.

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. I had another one I wanted to add and let me

know your comment on this one. For me, I know you

said in the morning, you prefer to do the thing that

you're most excited to do, that's urgent, that's

important.

Vitaly Dolgov: At first glance, I put, but it's not the only lens, but

yeah.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, okay. For me, I found this trick really handy for

time management. When I'm in the evening and I'm

working on a task and it's getting late, I can power

through and finish the task and then in the morning

start something new or what I prefer actually to do is

to almost finish the task and leave like a little bit

unfinished, maybe 30 minutes of work unfinished.

That allows me to finish it with a fresh mind and sleep

on it and maybe come up with new ideas. But also in

the morning it already gives me that thing that I'm

already excited about doing because I know I'm almost

done.

Kirill Eremenko: It's almost there and so when I wake up, I don't have

that choice paralysis. Should I do this, do I do that, do

I do a third thing? I just get into that thing I was doing

yesterday, I finish it off, and as a result even though I



only put in 30 minutes of work, it looks like I finished

a six-hour task and I'm super pumped, super excited,

I've got energy, and I jump into the next thing with a

lot more power. I actually didn't read it anywhere. I

just accidentally did that a couple of times and

thought, wow, these days are way more productive

when I do that so I'm gonna keep doing that. When I've

done that consciously, it still works and it really helps.

What do you think of that?

Vitaly Dolgov: That is a really good example. I'm not sure if you

thought of that, one of the people I've heard from he

said that it's really good to leave a really enjoyable and

complex task overnight, to do it overnight to really

work on it and leave it unfinished because your brain

can process it at night and put things in the right kind

of boxes, compartments. The neurons will fire up in

some weird way during sleep and in the morning you

will have an improved and sometimes a better

solution. That's maybe the quality of the output that

you're producing is high as well for one of these

reasons because you're leaving that thing that you're

enjoying, doing it overnight, finishing it off potentially

with 110-120% of what original spec what you thought

you would do and you feel accomplished, you feel like

you've achieved really awesome outcome out of that so

maybe it's serving you double purpose. I agree with

your taking off thing in the morning and getting that

boost for the next task. It worked for me too.

Kirill Eremenko: Another thing I wanted to ask you. I know I had a list

of at least four topics I wanted to dive in but this is so

interesting. I'm learning as we go from this podcast, so



I want to keep digging into time management. Is that

okay?

Vitaly Dolgov: Absolutely.

Kirill Eremenko: One other thing I was thinking about is, when you

switch between tasks, a lot of people have, and me

including have experienced that it takes time to switch

between one task to another. Yet, your calendar, if

somebody were to look at it is all these different tasks.

From what I understand about your day, you don't

often spend six hours on one task. You quite switch

between tasks like an hour or 30 minutes interim. Is

that about right?

Vitaly Dolgov: The short answer is, it depends. For creative

productive work, I think generally starting from one to

about four hours is something that works best for me,

like having those chunks of time dedicated to

something, and as little as one hour but probably not

more than four because brain for me starts spinning

and getting less effective and efficient around that

task. On a lot of jobs when I have to the leader for the

team and lead a project team or an engagement, I have

no choice but to solve the most important or urgent

tasks and to address big ticket items that require

decision making. Decision making is usually relatively

fast but you need to gather the data, use different

frameworks to think about the decision and come up

with the best decision. For that, I find the smaller

chunks of time, smaller intervals, sufficient to do that.

It could be just 30 minutes to do that. It really

depends.



Vitaly Dolgov: I find I'm forced, paraphrasing this, with working a

larger team and leading the team to do a lot of smaller

decision making tasks. Sometimes I crave for this

longer time content development and thinking.

Therefore, I block one, sometimes two days a week to

do that. Usually, it's Friday or Saturday when I want

to get my creativity out and it's a good test for the

team as well to lead without the leader and see how

they're emerging like rising stars are trying to lead, my

two IC, like second in charge, how he or she is trying

to lead the time. I consciously do that so it really

depends.

Kirill Eremenko: Okay. On those days when you have to switch between

tasks quite frequently, how do you deal with that

transitional time between tasks?

Vitaly Dolgov: Efficiency, right ?

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, how do you minimize it?

Vitaly Dolgov: Good question. I think it really depends on the content

of the work you do. I really distinguish the content of

the work you do into two types. Content creation or

creative type of work as we discussed. It's when you

want to produce something from scratch. When there

is zero ground exists and you want to shape

uncertainty into precise firm matter and produce and

output that will be of high quality. For that, I find you

have a relative long building up to that and really hard

to wind down as well. Switching cost, using that term,

would be huge to jump between the tasks. I would not

recommend to do a lot of things in a day with that.

Concentrate on one to two big things a day max, do

them early in the day so your brain is fresh and



whatnot and just do them without switching. Switch

off your devices but try not to switch yourself between

the tasks.

Vitaly Dolgov: When you have a lot of smaller tasks and you have to

be in the decision making mode, that's the second type

of content, I think the switching cost is more

affordable because it's almost like you don't have time

to get used to it. I'll give you an example. It could an

emergency on one of the construction engagements. I

had one of the team members saying something too

aggressive to a client and aggressive in a way of

pushing for results but I know he stepped beyond the

limit in unleashing someone's potential. He almost

overpowered the decision maker with his strong

management and leadership and that came to me

through another person, through the client saying

there was an inappropriate conversation that

happened and we are afraid of the consequences. The

client person could leave the company feeling

disempowered and whatnot.

Vitaly Dolgov: In that moment, to me it was okay, cool. That's an

emergency that is probably higher than anything else I

was holding on the engagement because there are no

safety threads. I just paused everything I had. Okay,

what is the plan? First, get the facts. Go to the ground,

talk to both people who were in the room and the third

parties who observed, get everything on paper. Then

two, try to understand what are the mistakes that

have been done? Play them by someone I trust, some

third party. If my understand is correct, good. Then

decide on what is the course of actions you want to



take. Look at your standard rules of engagement, what

the procedures tell you to do, what your values tell you

what to do, and come up with the best plan. Again,

played by a third person, your two IC or someone like

that, and implement it rapidly.

Vitaly Dolgov: If it's been a mistake, acknowledge that you as a

leader because you are in charge of anything that is

happening within your team, done a mistake, this is

how you're gonna remediate that mistake. That plan

would take ... It immediately switches in your brain. It

removes a lot of work into the background that you

worked on and it will take you between an hour and

two hours to resolve. After that, after being in that

zone of resolving that problem, you would just breathe

out and, okay, I've done everything I could. What are

the lessons learned? Put some actions, move on. What

is the next task? You're either coming back to the old

one, to the task that you'd been working or something

like that. I find that being in that decision making

mode, what are the priorities we are working on?

Managing some fires, which tend to keep, when they're

below like 20% this is good in my world. I find it can

work because it has clear beginning and end and there

are certain steps in the procedure you follow if

something happens.

Kirill Eremenko: That's a great example and it actually leads into the

next thing I wanted to ask you about this whole

emergency situation might affect your mood, might

affect your stress levels, might affect your focus and

concentration. The question is, how do you separate

different parts of your day from each other. For



instance, in a day, you might have some personal time

with your wife or with family and that might relax you

or that might put you in a certain. Then you might

have some work and then you might have a hobby and

then you have some work again. So, jumping between

these things, is there any technique that you have that

allows you to close the door on what you were doing

just now, open a new door and walk into that room

mentally and work on it completely not affected by

what was happening just before or what's about to

happen after this task?

Vitaly Dolgov: That's a great question. I think it touches on

something very important that we only briefly

mentioned today. I think it comes down to really the

decision making, the commitment to do something

whether it's work, whether it's spending time with your

family, wife, girlfriend, significant other and following

your commitment. It's simply said then it's done. To

make the right decisions, you have to have the right

framework in mind. What is more important right

now? Spending time with your wife who is quizzically

looking at you or reading that email that says, urgent

we have an emergency at work. How do you make that

decision? I think that comes back to the values, to the

personal values that you as an individual set for

yourself to live your life by.

Vitaly Dolgov: If you decide that on your personal values, family is

number one and you're having a strong argument, as a

hypothetical situation that never happens in the real

world with your significant other, and you know that

your relationship could be at risk at that moment in



time. At the same time, your colleague calls and says,

"I have an emergency." Our engagement is at risk or

the sales or our team or something. At that moment in

time, you have to back to yourself, to your personal

values and say what is more important to me in my

life? What did I tell myself is important when I was at

the state of the peace of mind? That's family. Okay,

you're picking up the phone and encouraging work as

a leader, "Hey you're my two IC, I trust you're gonna

resolve it. I cannot be next to you at the moment, I

have another thing to attend to. You're in charge."

Hang up your phone and deal with your family

situation.

Vitaly Dolgov: That's a decision making you have to do based on the

set of rules, values you developed for yourself earlier.

That would be my answer, is to have a clear

understanding what do you value at different stages in

life. Manage and revise those values and put

something higher, lower, have a clearly defined set of

values and use them in the moments of uncertainty

when you don't know what to do. Is walk out through

the next door and switch your mind. You just have to

look at what you need to work on, realize that's what I

promised to myself, stick to it, and then do it. Then

walk through that door and forget about the previous

task you were on because that's the commitment you

made to yourself, that is what is important to you. Any

techniques? Remove the distractions.

Vitaly Dolgov: If you decide that managing the business emergency is

a priority over managing your personal life, and I'm a

little bit laughing because currently the set of values



that I most recently revised, family is higher on the list

than managing the business and that's not what I

would do at this stage, but imagine that you've decided

that you want to attend to your business emergency.

Vitaly Dolgov: Switch off your phone, leave it behind, and tell your

significant other, "I'm sorry, I really have an emergency

at work that requires me attending it. We can discuss

that later. Let's calm down." Manage your downside of

leaving her behind by saying something nice. Switch

off your phone and move on and make a commitment

to yourself, I'm not switching it back on for personal

reasons so I'm not answering the messages or block

the user from calling you and just attend to the

business and be fully immersed to resolve it. Remove

the distractors. First, make a decision to concentrate

and remove the distractors, prioritize everything else.

Get it done, come back to the previous task to revise.

That would be my suggestion.

Kirill Eremenko: That's good. I think you actually gave more there than

I was expecting. You even mentioned that system of

values, which I still have to work on. I still have to

outline for myself but yeah, that's important to get

those things right. Then once you're committed focus

on that one thing because you've got to trust yourself

that you made the right decision or even if you made a

mistake, you still have to commit to it because there's

nothing worse than being half in your work, half in

your person life or half in this project, half in that

project like not focusing on either and then you don't

any of the things done.



Vitaly Dolgov: You'll take longer or most likely deliver sub [inaudible

01:11:30] result if you try to focus on both versus if

you tackle them one by one as your personal values

dictate in order of priority.

Kirill Eremenko: We're coming to the end of this amazing session. I had

one other question for you, which I think will be

beneficial for our listeners because I found it very

inspiring. The importance of hobbies. I know that you

do the least three very interesting hobbies. You do

scuba diving a couple of times a year, you do cycling

every week several times, and you also do dancing. For

those who don't know, if you don't mind me

mentioning, is that okay?

Vitaly Dolgov: I don't at all.

Kirill Eremenko: Vitaly is a competitive tango dancer.

Vitaly Dolgov: Amateur.

Kirill Eremenko: Amateur competitive tango dancer. You've consistently

been doing tango lessons like once or several times a

week for the past couple of years.

Vitaly Dolgov: Yeah, that's right.

Kirill Eremenko: What is the benefit of having hobbies like that? Why

should people choose to dedicate time to those?

Vitaly Dolgov: Good question. I bet a lot of listeners were thinking,

what are the things that actually put me in the zone?

Like when we talked PERMA framework, what are the

things that keep me engaged? I've been thinking about

this probably for the majority of my life so making that

extrapolation that is the question in people's mind.

The answer to that that I found that helped me and



hopefully will help others is to try different things. You

never know what will engage you and will make your

vision of the life expand and make your life be more

fulfilled, more energetic, more like happier.

Vitaly Dolgov: Dancing was that thing that I just encountered on the

way back from work from one of the clients. I was

really tired, really in my gloomy mood just passing by

the dancing studio is Brisbane. Through the full glass

windows, I noticed people dancing and I was like, God

damn it, I've never danced in my life. I'm really shy of

either singing or dancing or drawing or playing an

instrument. I want to try. Am I daring to try it? I

thought, I probably am in the mood right now to

commit to something and I went in and signed up for

the lessons and did it. The effect it has on the overall

life was very substantial, I would say. I never expected

in hindsight that it would yield so much positive

emotions to me.

Vitaly Dolgov: I think engaging in something that is new that is

outside of your typical work or home routines is

important to expand your vision. Dancing is a lot

about coordination of your movement, of the grace, of

the flow of the movement from the outside but also, it's

a dialog between the follower and the leader. As a

leader, I act as one during dancing, you have to

whisper certain moves and certain lead to start the

new step. If you are shouting and if you're pulling the

hands of your partner to try to direct her to go there or

there to make a sudden move, that will not work. That

will not be enjoyable for her or for him as a follower. If

you do it gently with grace and just say enough with



some of your body movements so the follower can

follow and execute a beautiful dancing step whether

it's tango or waltz, that's where you get that

fulfillment. It's a beautiful thing. That's nothing like I

experience in the consulting world. You don't do any

direction to the team through your body gestures, well,

with rare exceptions. It's not like that at all.

Vitaly Dolgov: Expanding that leading through body movement in

tango has blew my mind and knowing when to whisper

and when to shout when people don't hear you, and

making myself comfortable with one of these things

was quite important. Hobbies in life, they keep you in

the zone. You mentioned a couple, I know that you are

a very keen bike rider and therefore being in the zone

on a track or just riding around the city is important

to you, it just switches you off. Hobbies allow you to

experiment and expand your vision on certain things

and routines like leading gives you a different

perspective. It expands your relationship. You find

hobby buddies and therefore, the amount of positive

relationship in your life, one more pillar from that

PERMA framework, helps in your life. These are at

least a couple of reasons I could mention why hobbies

are and could be important.

Kirill Eremenko: Amazing. Thank you, thank you so much. It was a

really cool description of the whole dancing. I got

mesmerized listening to you talking about the

whispering of body language. It was very interesting

and I completely agree. Hobbies give you something

out of your normal day-to-day that gives you a

different perspective in life. On that note, thank you so



much for coming on the show. Where can our listeners

follow you or contact you if they would like to get in

touch. You've got a few projects coming up, the

podcast, a platform, and so on. Where can they find

out more?

Vitaly Dolgov: At the moment, I would recommend just connecting on

LinkedIn. That is where I would try to keep my

professional thoughts to that at the moment. I haven't

been posting much but I intend to. That will probably

the platform where I will share the news about the

other media, how to follow the work that I'm planning

to do. It will be a podcast and it will be mentorship

emails that I'm planning people to allow people to sign

up and to see if my thoughts are helpful and provide

some feedback to me. If people will find it helpful, I'll

probably continue doing that. In a short answer,

probably through you, and through your podcast your

listeners will find out more or through LinkedIn.

Kirill Eremenko: Awesome. Guys, make sure to follow Vitaly on

LinkedIn, we'll include the link in the show notes. This

is really cool. I really like your idea of the podcast,

amazing idea. But also, the mentorship emails. A lot of

time people come up to me or on the virtual world,

LinkedIn and other platforms saying, can you be my

mentor or where can I find a mentor and so on. This is

like mentorship at scale. I can vouch for Vitaly's

mentorship, it got me to where I am. Receiving his

emails is like being in my shoes like I'm actually

sharing my mentor with the world right now, free of

charge, absolutely free of charge. Yeah, so I'm very



excited about that. I'll definitely sign up and be

checking those out as well.

Vitaly Dolgov: Thanks.

Kirill Eremenko: Any final thoughts? Any recommendations, any

suggestions to finish up today?

Vitaly Dolgov: Good question. I think we'll use the idea from the

interview I had yesterday with Michael. One thing that

bubbled up is find the people that you're excited to be

around and learn from because this going through

things together whether it's hobbies, whether it's

surrounding yourself with positive relationships, or

whether it's surrounding yourself with mentors goes a

long way in life and helps you go through a lot of

obstacles and a really cool way to learn things.

Kirill Eremenko: Amazing. As they say, you are the average of the five

people you hang out with most, something like that.

Vitaly Dolgov: Yeah.

Kirill Eremenko: Make sure you surround yourself with worthy people.

Vitaly Dolgov: I agree.

Kirill Eremenko: Thank you very much for coming on the show.

Vitaly Dolgov: My pleasure.

Kirill Eremenko: Amazing again.

Vitaly Dolgov: Thanks for inviting. All the best, guys.

Kirill Eremenko: There you have it. That was Vitaly Dolgov, my friend

and mentor and one of the top independent

turnaround consultants in the world that I know of

and that was us talking about time management. I'd



love to know your thoughts. What were your biggest

takeaways from here? For me personally, some of the

things that we talked about, I already knew and it was

good to refresh on them. For instance, Vitaly had told

me previously about the concept of the big rocks and it

was good to refresh and kind of see how it impacts my

life and how I can use it better.

Kirill Eremenko: Probably, the newest thing that I learned from this

podcast and the most inspiring thing that I'll take

away today is energy management. I often think of

time management as the management of time but as

Vitaly put it, you don't need to just focus on managing

your time, you need to manage your energy so that

you can actually get things done. It's not about just

having the time to do things, it's also about calculating

when exactly you will have the right amount of energy

to get into things and get things down properly and

efficiently so that you don't waste a lot of time. That

example where he was talking about how he spends

time on the plane to work, that was a great and telling

example and he had a couple of other of those along

the way in the podcast.

Kirill Eremenko: That's our session. Make sure to follow Vitaly on

LinkedIn. We'll include the URL in the show notes. You

can also find the transcript for this episode and any

other materials that he mentioned. The show notes are

at www.superdatascience.com/147. Make sure to

connect with Vitaly and see what other projects are

coming up. His podcast sounds very exciting.

Hopefully, that will be live soon and I can't wait for his

mentorship emails because that will definitely keep me



up to date with what he's learning and I think that's a

very efficient way of getting that knowledge and

absorbing that knowledge. Once again, the show notes

are at www.superdatascience.com/147. On that note, I

hope you enjoyed this episode and I look forward to

seeing you back here next time. Until then, happy

analyzing.


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SDS PODCAST EPISODE 147 WITH VITALY DOLGOV...that wedding ceremony and the two-day wedding event. Thank for coming. It was great. Kirill Eremenko: Awesome. How's married life? Are