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By Mike Ravdonikas, VP of Communications at @telegram. Productivity, books, thoughts (and some poetry on strictly regulated occasions)
A gift to the girls of the world: every guy stuck to his screen all day, trying not to miss the new batch of Valentine’s gifts 🤓
/channel/durov/401
Happy birthday, my dear friend! Please keep giving the world the communication tools it deserves.
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- What do you put in the description of an unpopular telegram channel?
- “All views are my own”.
A channel’s gotta get its custom colors on, after all.
Not to mention ‘par avion’ style replies. 📮
You are (mostly) not here to read poetry. And neither am I here to post it.
This channel has been around for almost 7 years, but today it occurred to me for the first time that I could make a new one where you would be to read poetry.
And so I made one. And now comes the Maxwell’s Demon moment: will the slow-moving molecules please step to the left – and the rest join /channel/verse.
😈
7. Respect your audience. When you're 100% sure it's flawless – show it to a few people you trust. Then fix what they find, check two more times – and ship.
7 things I learned from Pavel Durov
5. Simplify. Simplicity is the most valuable substance in the universe. Zoom out to find it.
7 things I learned from Pavel Durov
3. You are enough. The Renaissance isn't over: you can still do everything by yourself.
7 things I learned from Pavel Durov
1. Make a plan. "It would be cool if..." can make a lot of difference if you ask yourself: "Which steps do I take to make it happen?"
7 things I learned from Pavel Durov
The best advice I ever got from my wife:
Imagine that right up to this very moment everything went exactly how you planned it.
Nothing destroys willpower more than the feeling that you already did something wrong: stayed up too late, left a task unfinished, ate one ice cream too much – why not eat another one? But no:
You are where you are as a result of a perfect plan that worked.
Say this to yourself whenever you need to get back on track – it will be surprisingly easy to do.
To lighten your footsteps every day: in matters of earthly comforts compare yourself to those behind you, in matters of the spirit – to those ahead.
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My wife on me putting together a press comment in the middle of the night:
“The New York Times? That pitiful newspaper, read by what, two people?.. out of ten?.. OK”
By the way, channel stats are now available for channels with 500 subscribers or more.
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Baby Steps Algorithm
Some advice on how to accomplish things by doing real baby steps (which can be studied by observing an actual baby as opposed to reading self-help books):
1. Choose a goal and GRAB it like it was made for you
2. DROP whatever you’ve been holding or doing — others will take care of it
3. STORM towards your goal with complete disregard for your surroundings
4. If you can no longer run or walk, CRAWL to it
5. If you can no longer crawl, STRETCH in its general direction
6. If nothing works, HOWL like a demon — maybe someone will help
7. If you still can't get it, go to SLEEP
8. REPEAT
Received from my spirit animal who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Pavel Durov, also known as Paul Du Rove, just turned 40. I already told you the secrets I know about Pavel and what I learned from him over the 20 years he’s been my best friend. So today, I’m going to tell you a story about how Pavel saved my life.
First, you'll need some context. All Telegram developers meet every Tuesday and Friday to share their progress on the new features that Pavel has planned for the app. For most of his business hours, Pavel works with our designers who produce mockups of interfaces based on sketches from his famous (internally) black notebook.
Now me, I’m not as lucky as the developers and designers. Though I attend the twice-weekly meetings, I usually get to work closely with Pavel when it’s time for Telegram’s next monthly update. As THE product manager of Telegram, he pays a lot of attention to how our new features are presented in the blog posts and changelogs. For the rest of my responsibilities as the head of communications at Telegram, I don’t get (or need) input from Pavel that often.
(The story? Hang on, we're almost there!)
In recent years, Telegram has grown – and now I have a team to handle our social media accounts and requests from journalists, another to draft blog posts and manuals, and so on. (All are very small! Don’t go imagining ‘Divisions’ with dozens of people; that’s not the way we do things at Telegram.) But before that, working on my projects was often a lonely business. And one beautiful post-covid summer, it almost killed me (yes, you're ready for the story now).
Funnily enough, I can’t even remember exactly what I was working on. One of those big things that you have to break down into small tasks unless you want them to crush your spirit. I didn’t, and it crushed mine: day after day I would lock myself in a room and emerge after 12 hours of mindless browsing (news, videos of cute bears, red pandas, and cats) – without having written a single line. Procrastination happens to all, but my days turned to weeks, failure piling up on failure. As I reached the one-month mark, I was living in total darkness, beginning to consider – well, various ways out.
That was when I told Pavel about my troubles. As a boss, he’s always been understanding when obstacles prevented us from reaching some objective. In the developer meetings, he would nod and say: “this is unfortunate, let’s hope that next week we’ll see an improvement there”. But my case was different, I had no excuse except “I just can’t” – and more than a month had passed since I was able to do anything at all. Personally, I would have considered firing someone in my postition. But that wasn’t what Pavel did.
He smiled and said: “You know, why not start it slow. Let’s meet for just three hours a day, and you’ll do your thing, and I’ll be doing mine. And then we’ll see how it goes”. We started the next day, and my project was finished before the end of the week. I never got so much done in so little time! We sat across from each other at his table. He would sometimes ask me what I thought of this or that phrase in the interfaces he was planning. We’d joke about things and laugh – as more and more tasks disappeared in the rear-view mirror. The darkness had lifted, and I was whole again.
We still sometimes do those “3-hour sessions” together, especially when something important is going on at Telegram. I’m honored to have spent so many hours working beside Pavel at his desk. After all, everything you find useful in your messaging app today – and I mean ANY app, not just Telegram – is there thanks to Pavel.
"It is alive." You likely had no idea, but I had an operation two weeks ago, which went well, and I'm getting back to work now.
My doctor wants to see me again in 6 months; in my neck, two titanium disks now replace those that were damaged (one causing excruciating pain in the arm, the other silently threatening paralysis at an unspecified point in a dark branch of a future, now averted). Some 12-18 months later, three of the now fused vertebrae in my cervical spine will have grown together into one mega-vertebrum — and, unfortunately, I didn't get any useful augmentations like sub-dermal armor, night vision, or needle-casting capabilities in the style of Altered Carbon.
I am, however, again fully capable of lying down flat — and working on being able to sleep (which will probably take a while longer, but I'm off most of the meds and past the worst of the withdrawal effects). Both of those skills feel very good to practice after four months.
If you're wondering why I'm going into so much detail, it's to make you consider improving your work environment:
• Never use laptops without a stand
• Keep your phone and any other screens at eye level, like you're filming the sunset
• Use a chair and table/desk, never work from a couch or armchair
• Set a short timer that will remind you to improve your posture and position
• Set a longer timer that will remind you to get up and walk around a bit
• And screw drinking water — dehydrated people never suffer like I have.
In case you need some more convincing, here's the same story laid out in @verse (which will tell you a bit more of the "fun" that is suddenly stopping heavy painkillers):
/channel/verse/86
TLDR-GPT (187 characters):
Fix Tourist Spots
Problem: Crowds ruin the vibe. Solution: Rent era-appropriate but practical clothes at destination. Perks from local shops for participants. Result: Authentic feel, social media buzz.
Meanwhile, in a universe where I wasn't replaced by a machine:
How to Make Tourist Attractions Work (404 words)
The problem with tourist attractions is that the tourists they attract end up detracting so much from their appeal. When visiting the Colosseum, the Acropolis, or that 18th-century cafe in Turin where they mix one hell of a bicerin, your main mission becomes to find a selfie angle without all those people with their phones, shorts, bright t-shirts, and silly hats. The amount of imagination required to immerse yourself in the history of the place becomes similar to what you'd need to imagine you're there from the couch in your living room.
Maybe the ultimate solution lies with VR experiences where we'll all end up staying on the couch in our living rooms, but a recent experiment by Japan Airlines got me thinking of a real-world alternative. JAL offered travelers to save on luggage by renting clothes at the destination: you pay a modest fee, get on a plane, and your choice of casual or formal garments is waiting for you at the hotel. What if we take this one step further?
Imagine checking into a hotel in the old town of Singapore and finding a set of historically inspired but comfortably modern clothes, complete with a disguise pouch for your phone and a cover that makes your backpack look like a proper period wicker basket — at least on pictures. (Incidentally, the Gion district of Kyoto is famous for its kimono rental shops. And you quickly realize your photos look much blander when you don't catch some of the renters in your frame).
To incentivize people to play along, the tourist office could partner with local stores to secure discounts and perks for the costumed customers.
This incidentally solves another problem. The Roman forums, the streets of Pompeii, the cathedral in Milan — none of these places were meant to be eerily empty like in those pictures you finally get when the orange fleece jacket dude herds the maroon pajama lady back into the bus. All these places were meant to be crowded — just by a different crowd.
A city — or village — that would launch this kind of tourist augmentation program might quickly rise to prominence on social media thanks to the unusual pictures of its tourist crowds. Those crowds might even become a tourist attraction in their own right (as in Kyoto). I'd love to capture them with my disguised phone pouch.
I made a habit of publishing small collections of poems on my birthdays, but this year's harvest is both diverse and plentiful – and we're well past July 23. While I'm figuring out which of the 60 or so scraps of verse should stay and which will go, here are a few ghosts of Christmas past from the 2021-2022 season.
(P.S. For no apparent reason, I spent most of the past year thinking I'm 37 already – so this second year of 37 will be a strange one to live in. Deja vu.)
https://telegra.ph/Five-Cities-07-31
6. Be your own tester. You don't need the opinion of others to know what's wrong: you can feel it. So find it and fix it.
7 things I learned from Pavel Durov
4. No partnerships. Never partner with outsiders to do your job: they'll want those partnerships for a different reason.
7 things I learned from Pavel Durov
2. Aim for perfection. "Good enough" means you haven't even started.
7 things I learned from Pavel Durov
7 things I learned from Pavel Durov
And how they can help you bring a dog across a road
Pavel Durov just turned 37. We've been working together for almost two decades now – here's what I learned from watching him.
Disclaimer: I never saw Pavel bring a dog across a road, but he demonstrated the value of these 7 principles on countless other occasions.
[1] • [2] • [3] • [4] • [5] • [6] • [7]
Text by Mike Ravdonikas
Illustrations by Kattikko
Previous birthday
I decided that I won't bother you with poetry in this channel except on my birthdays.
But today I'm 36, so there you go:
https://telegra.ph/36-07-22-2
#verse
Today is an important day: 36 years ago, on October 10, 1984, Pavel Durov was born, setting off the chain of events that culminates in me posting this message – and you reading it.
Thought I’d use this opportunity to shed some light on some of the lesser known facts about @durov.
Happy birthday, Jefe. 💪
I'm 35 today; so if you haven't got a present for me, read some of my poetry.
https://telegra.ph/metamorphoses-1N-07-16 #verse