How do you avoid burning out in the first weeks after a long holiday?

There's a widespread misconception: if we've rested over the January holidays (Russia's ten-day New Year break), we should immediately load up on as many tasks as possible. Show everyone what a star you are and how charged up for success. Sound familiar? It does to me: in those first weeks, everyone was usually surprised, and mildly infuriated, by the volume of messages and tasks coming from my side, while I, for my part, could "overheat" as early as the start of February.

With experience I came to understand that even a very good car needs its engine warmed up before it reaches its optimal operating mode (and you and I are hardly Ferraris — even our push-button start doesn't work every time).

What seems optimal:

On day one, the best move is to give yourself one or two tasks to work through calmly, and as few calls as possible.

The goal of the first few days is to look at current statuses, assemble the sprints for next week, set goals for the month, spread the annual ones out sensibly, and not blow the entire reserve the break gave you.

In terms of real effectiveness, this approach works far better over the long run than burning out in the very first month and then wondering: "Hang on, how did that happen? I only just had a break, and I'm already tired."

So, please remember: the start of the year is not a sprint but a system setup, and the mistakes made in it are the ones you'll be paying for later.

An unpleasant thing about Mondays: from the very moment you wake up, they drag you into this insane triathlon that runs until Friday.

It happens so subtly, with such arbitrage-grade precision: one pleasant message here, two unobtrusive calendar entries, one more message, this time more insistent, an "oh, since you're already up" message, the lovely "I'm sure you remember about…" and "so, shall we get on a call?".

And then you realize the phone is no longer the most convenient way to keep this up, and, pushing the warm blanket back a little and taking the sleep mask off for good, you open the laptop screen, bright and efficient at burning into eyes that sleep has left unprepared for it: "Good morning, Yaroslav!"

Monday doesn't care whether you had planned to start the day at a measured pace by planning this week's chess game, or whether you've been ready for anything for a couple of hours already. Monday simply is. Whether you are in Monday is a matter of one loud alarm clock.

It always starts as a good deed: for a friend, or just for someone you like. You hear something that touches your area of expertise, and you know you could help by sharing a little of the experience you have.

But that same experience shows it always leads you into a trap.

You are where you are thanks to a huge number of sleepless working nights, thanks to lost nerve cells and a slight irony in your voice. All of which means your schedule is most likely packed to the brim with tasks that match your qualifications, and anything outside that risks ending up in the bucket of things that are neither needed nor urgent. Which means it may never happen at all.

The guilt over favors left undone (even though deep down you so badly want to help and, more than that, you can help) hits quite hard. And out of a trivial little pro bono task, you end up facing a stone that hangs over you, one you will apparently have to close through gritted teeth (and that, as we already know, produces something mediocre, because it is done without heart, just to get it closed).

Such a silly thing, these good intentions to help. And nobody is to blame; it is simply a fact, shaped by where you are, who you are, and what you now do.

My solution: if I sense I might drop the ball on something like this, I sincerely recommend people who are more likely to help with the problem at hand, people I can vouch for, but I do not take the task on myself (first and foremost, so as not to let anyone down).

P.S. The mushroom in the photo is a New Year tree ornament from my grandparents' tree. It is older than me, probably about my mother's age. In the years this ornament has been hung on a branch every winter, I managed to be born, grow up, and become the person who wrote this text. Time is a curious thing.

Especially useful for anyone just starting their career — here you go, everything below has been field-tested by me over 11+ years in the industry.

One more important remark before we start: you can teach hard skills to a monkey. Growing soft skills in a person is far harder.

So then, what I got promoted for and what I look for myself:

- Being someone you can delegate to without worrying about the result. You take a task and simply close it: no missed deadlines, no emotions, no unnecessary questions, and maybe even with an extra-mile result.

- "Rising above the situation." Not blindly executing the process but seeing where it can be optimized, and finding your next tasks there. A good senior doesn't need tasks invented for them; they see perfectly well what needs to be done.

- No pointless agonizing out loud. Crises happen, that's normal. But why waste time freaking out over what's going on when, at the end of the day, you'll be doing exactly what you have to anyway?

- Experience and a trained eye, ready-made frameworks in your head and bruises already collected (some skills only come after you've been through some crap). In the end, this is about saving the company time and money.

- Bringing options instead of open questions. Even if some of them turn out wrong, it's far easier to correct you when you show your reasoning than to explain the creation of this laggy world from scratch.

- Thinking about the receiving end: formatting documents properly (astonishingly, people still don't get how much a tidy document matters); delivering the point instead of pouring out filler (imagine every letter costs money); pinging people at a comfortable pace, mindful of their workload; timings that allow for the time a review actually needs.

- Sane communication. You can be a brilliant specialist, but if you're a so-so human being, there will be no growth. Unless, of course, you're the only specialist in your field, in which case feel free to blow off every point above.

- Working out priorities on your own: when something needs bumping up, and when something doesn't need doing at all and isn't worth the resource.

- Tidiness, in appearance and in speech alike. Does this need explaining?

- Constructive, direct feedback. Don't like something? Say so. Didn't say so? Your own fault. And the banal one: don't go over anyone's head until you've tried every other way of getting through.

- Showing loyalty. Probably the hardest point to explain, because either it registers on a gut level or we're about to get into abstract matters. In short, you're "part of the crew, part of the ship": you chose this company and these people, so be reliable, but don't be afraid to lean on your colleagues either; engage, and be a harmonious part of the system rather than the link that sticks out.

- Owning your mistakes. Responsibility has to be accepted: not hunting for someone to "sort of" blame, but admitting your own slips, adjusting your approach and not repeating the same mistakes.

I feel I could write a lot more, but I'll stop here, otherwise you'll all get far too successful, and how am I supposed to sleep at night after that? The above is the base; the rest of the puzzle you assemble yourselves 🤙🏼

In the photo: 2017, me the night before the earliest morning Sapsan (the Petersburg–Moscow high-speed train), putting together a tender for AB InBev. Buzzing on the thrill and dreaming of finally wrapping it up and going home.

It does seem to be a genuinely high-level skill: admitting where you were wrong, adjusting, and getting back on the right track. It takes a certain flexibility, and the ability to see a few steps ahead. In my book, it is one of the most important senior-level traits.

Many managers, unfortunately, choose a different path: they let pride win, and in doing so distance themselves from effective outcomes. Standing on principle in the moment is a story about "unexpected" consequences over the long run, and about the unhealthy conclusions your reports draw from it (which then snowball into a hit on the business).

This week I ran into three very talented professionals and one person very close to me, all at breaking point. Each has their own reasons, but one thing unites them: they are carrying a load, emotional or physical, that sits just a notch above what is normal for them.

The way I see it, this is always about growth. About toughening up and staying flexible, about emotional intelligence taking shape, if you like. One person needs to learn to delegate. Another should have accepted long ago that in life you take responsibility and find your own way out. Another needs to take off the glasses and stop seeing moms, dads and unicorns in the people around them. But in the moment there is simply no getting any of this through to them. Because they feel like hell right now.

How do you help them?

I don't have an answer. Every time, there is a heap of thoughts about it going on inside me. It seems important to offer support, but far more important to let them walk through it themselves and get a little burned. The ideal scenario is a kind of controlled crash test, where you can stop the car at any moment and pull out the dummies.

And I'm learning from this too. Learning not to be the rescuer (which, believe me, often comes hard to me), but I don't want to turn callous either.

With one of our partners (I don't like the word "client") we've started a tradition. Every two weeks we get together and riff on where the projects should go next.

And you know what, it's a ridiculously sound and effective thing to do.

The dry version of what we get out of it:

1. We get scheduled time "to think". Under heavy load that's exactly what's missing. And the concentrated attention of decision-makers delivers tangible value.

2. We learn everything that's going on inside the project and can prepare development plans in advance, fitting naturally into its overall fabric. No cold, pointless upsells, only what's useful and needed right now.

3. The first two points give a serious boost to the motivation of both the team and the client. It cures tunnel vision and fatigue; you fall in love with the project like the first time.

4. What forms is a proper partnership rather than that formal client-contractor thing.

5. Also, if you forgot to eat all day, this is your chance to fix that oversight.

All in all, pure delight, honestly.

Not long ago we sat through a training on sales strategies, and, as with most fundamental things, the hidden ideas built into some fairly simple mechanics came to me out of nowhere — this morning.

We were going over argumentation techniques: numbers, compromises, contribution, power, intimidation, the direct “why?”, the effect of examples, expertise and small steps (I just smiled, realizing I'd remembered every one of them). The curious part is that most of these techniques work quite well outside the usual business context too — in negotiations with yourself. Not all of them, and that's telling: the ones that break are tied to an asymmetry between the parties (power, intimidation) — when both parties are you, the mechanism stops working. The ones that carry over work directly on how a person makes decisions in the first place.

What I'm getting at is that most techniques come from an empirical understanding of a person — their patterns, and what actually works on them. Which means most of them are multipurpose and unfold in other situations and contexts — sometimes to your own surprise.

Life got a lot easier once I understood and accepted that it's us who pass the verdict on everything that happens around us. And it's that very verdict we end up suffering from.

Acted "badly" — so now you're supposed to feel accordingly. Acted well — a great excuse for pride, and for reminiscing later about how wonderful it was (another whole spectrum of emotions we bring on ourselves).

Put simply: no verdict, no suffering. There's no bad or good. There's just an event, and it happened.

P.S. Bought a signet ring at Poison Drop, the jewelry shop. Like it.

A lot of what I do is complete nonsense.

Sometimes I can see it in the moment; almost always I see it after the fact. But without some of those actions I'd lose a great deal of my sense of self and of knowing myself, and there are other, less obvious benefits in it too.

Let me spell it out: I see a rake on the floor, I assume that if I step on it I'll get whacked in the head, I step on it, and I confirm that yes, it really hurts.

However, out of ten stories that look obvious to me, two will turn out to be statistical outliers with an anomalous result. The rake will genuinely sail right past, and in its place there'll be a prepaid card for $5,000.

Being wrong doesn't hurt me (that's always about the path). What scares me is missing the chance to get a result other than the usual one.

Head propped against the taxi window, I watch the cold, hectic morning city and turn over a fairly simple thought: “any decision is a refusal of other dividends.” The part that matters is the link: decision = refusal.

And then there’s the Russian verb poreshat — same root as reshenie, “decision” — which means to kill. In effect, the moment we make a decision, we “kill” the other ways things could have gone.

I close my eyes and picture the corpses of all the decisions that never got made.

“M” and “E” aren’t just for “manager” and “economist”. There’s also “excavator operator” and, in Russian, “house painter”.

That’s roughly the feedback I got at school whenever I didn’t pass an algebra test on the first try.

And it wasn’t just the hard sciences. In literature I caught it for not memorizing all thirty Tyutchev poems and slipping up somewhere; in physics I couldn’t properly derive a new formula from the ones we already had, for which I was promised a job at a cash register. And it seems that the harsh teachers, and my own mother, an algebra and geometry teacher herself, and copying homework out clean at three in the morning, in tears (because two smudges meant a fiasco and you had to rewrite it again and again until there were none) — all of it lit something inside me. A feeling along the lines of “well, we’ll see”, “let me get to some real problems first, and then we’ll talk”. Spite, spilling over into an unhealthy stubbornness that in the end got me somewhere.

And it wasn’t just me; I think it’s the norm for my generation. But here’s what matters: if it worked for someone, that’s far from a guarantee it will work for everyone.

People, in a large enough sample, and especially as children, are easily led. You can instill almost any construct in them: they’ll take it as a given, and their future will, to some extent, be predetermined. (Breaking down attitudes laid down early is harder, and to do that you first need to realize they’re there and that they’re in the way.)

And that’s the whole catch. The same line about the excavator operator or the sewage worker (yes, we were offered a range of interesting careers to choose from) gives one kid a kick and simply breaks another: they nod and mentally close the question of their future, because an adult said so, and adults know. The “well, we’ll see” reaction isn’t universal; it’s temperament (read: an outright lottery). And the teacher or parent tossing that line across the classroom has no idea who it will land on: the one who’ll get angry, or the one who’ll believe it.

That’s why I’m wary of the genre “they rode me hard as a kid, and look, I turned out fine”. We only ever hear from the ones it worked for. The ones the same system quietly convinced they couldn’t cut it don’t get invited on stage. They really did end up behind a cash register, and they believe that was an honest assessment of their ceiling, not a construct that happened to stick to them. Survivorship bias in all its glory: in hindsight, success always looks like a pattern, when it was closer to a coin toss.

It’s a strange feeling: I’m grateful to that spite for where it took me, and at the same time I can’t prescribe it to anyone as a solution. The odds are too high that instead of stubbornness, a person walks away with nothing but a quiet certainty that they’re worth nothing in this life.

Remember how, in our grandparents' flats, there used to be a wired radio that almost never got switched off?

As a rule it was a very small radio with a basic little speaker, hanging somewhere above the fridge. The same spot, I'm sure, where Grandpa hid his Belomor cigarettes so the kids (like me) couldn't get at them. I suspect the sweets were kept somewhere up there too (I never did manage to establish that at the time).

What else was nearby? A worn-through oilcloth on the table, a copy of Panorama TV, the listings magazine, with the crosswords already solved, a magnifying glass, a three-litre jar of what decades later would be called kombucha, wooden windows with the gaps taped over with newspaper so the winter wouldn't blow in.

And every hour, Radio Mayak announced the time in St. Petersburg and in some other cities I knew nothing about, except that it was midnight there. And there were the songs: Magomaev, Anna German, Eduard Khil. And by the way, the voices of those legends of the Soviet stage still carry me back to exactly those days, as if someone flipped a switch.

The days when Grandma made Grandpa's sandwiches for work in the morning, two with cheese and two with sausage, and poured chokeberry kompot, our homemade fruit drink, into a bottle for me so I'd always have something to drink at school between lessons.

Back to that kitchen where the whole family somehow squeezed in and made salads for the holidays. Well, "the whole family" is putting it generously: I was sent off to the other rooms to play so I wouldn't get in the way, but something from the cooking always came my way regardless (remember: the caviar has to be tasted by the youngest first, and only then spread on the bread).

And you know, back then it felt absolutely certain that it would always be like this: I'd keep collecting sweets from the guests (later I had to share them with my sister, but at the time I was the sole beneficiary), Grandma and Grandpa would always be young, and the whole family would always be somewhere close by (just knock on the next room).

But life, of course, is arranged differently.

P.S. Prompted entirely by an evening spent listening to Magomaev, and by way of a small tribute to warm childhood memories.

This year I'll be listening to international management students defend their theses at the Graduate School of Management in St. Petersburg and handing out grades. Back on the state examination board again — I'm glad about that; I really enjoyed it the last time.

There's also a chance to speak at the school to the international marketing students. At first I brushed the idea off (a little scary, no point pretending otherwise); now I'm thinking it might be an interesting start to the teaching I've been mulling over for so long. A course on marketing communications — I keep wondering what I could say there that would actually be useful. Something applied, not boring.

Oh, all right, I'll tell you about something else I watch now and then.

In short: there's a brilliant London project called Letters Live. In a nutshell, well-known actors and cultural figures take turns walking on stage and reading letters that someone once wrote to someone else. That's it. Nothing more to it. But when you watch, say, Benedict Cumberbatch at work, and on the stage of the Albert Hall at that... oh. It's utterly gripping.

And then there's the perfect English. I can't help myself. I could listen to it forever.

I'm learning a short poem.

For the first time since school, probably. And not because I need a B in literature, but because I liked it.

Here's the thing: where I used to just memorize them by rote, now I reason my way to the next lines. Working out where the plot goes, basically. Sometimes in my own words, sometimes with a bit of industry jargon, sometimes switching to another language. What comes out is a slightly altered poem, meaning intact. I really like this as an exercise for the brain.

My first ride past the 100 km mark (it came out to 120-plus in the end), and my first ride on clipless pedals — complete with the silly tip-overs at traffic lights, because someone hadn't learned to unclip fast enough.

Over the course of the trip we managed to get caught in a thunderstorm with hail three times, get soaked to the skin, and be thoroughly humbled by how often the road went uphill.

But it was worth it, of course.

Right now we're somewhere outside Kaluga, south-west of Moscow; tomorrow there's another 70 km ahead, and after that, a paddling trip down a river.

If you love riding a road bike, you'd better love changing its inner tubes too.

There's actually something motorcycle-like about it: ideally it needs a once-over before every ride, and you can pour money into it indefinitely (slightly lighter parts, a slightly fancier bike computer, cycling apparel from Veter, and before you know it it's time for a 5–10k€ bike).

But I like it. In the morning it helps you wake up and start the day with some focus already in place (you sort through all your tasks in your head while riding); in the evening, even after a short ride, you fall asleep much faster.

Did 50+ km in a single ride today. I'll try not to go below that from here on, because the ride around the Moscow region is just two weeks away and I need to get properly into shape so it doesn't flatten me.

Ticked a small item off the "must try before I keel over" list and spent the holidays riding snowmobiles around Karelia.

How it works:

First, the gear. With the frost pushing -25°C, they hand you a very warm snowsuit, felt boots, a helmet and gloves. All of it is designed for rides in even lower temperatures, so it's quite comfortable — we didn't freeze.

Then there's a short briefing on how to handle a snowmobile. Nothing especially complicated there, and if you hold a regular car licence, you won't have any trouble.

And that's it — after that they take you out on the route, where you ride strictly behind the instructor and admire the scenery.

Thoughts on snowmobiles:

• the handling isn't as pleasant as on a motorcycle, and if you've ridden enduro, you'll have to rewire your head a little.

Let me explain my indignation: to get through a tight corner, cranking the handlebars into the turn doesn't help much. Picture how furious I got when I couldn't make a corner on the first try.

• comfortable over long distances: there are heated grips, a seat for a passenger, a luggage compartment and an all-round comfortable riding position.

• it goes anywhere: the track is the ultimate piece of kit and will shove the snowmobile up any hill (unless the slope is pushing 90 degrees). The main thing is to keep an eye out for rocks under the snow; other than that, you can ride through anything.

• not as dynamic as a motorcycle, but I suspect that's because it was our first time and the snowmobiles weren't quite tuned to my riding style (they come in very different flavours out there too).

Something like a conclusion:

Definitely worth trying. The main thing: choose proven instructors with good machines and scenic locations, and check the weather forecast.

We got lucky on every count, so I can safely recommend the Terra Nordica rental at the Tochka na Karte hotel in Vidlitsa.

We're home! Gone for only three days, and I missed it as if I'd been away for weeks.

In those three days we:

• drove 1,340 km (a proper road trip across the Caucasus). Got lucky with the rental: decent car hire is finally showing up in the Caucasus — new, nice cars, the kind you'd get from city car-sharing back home.

• went up to 4,500 metres above sea level (this time I caught a touch of altitude sickness). Yes, I hadn't acclimatised enough, and past 4,500 m I started feeling not quite right.

• felt a 24°C swing in temperature (T-shirt one minute, sweater and jacket the next). And how good it feels, after St. Petersburg, to step off the plane in Mineralnye Vody into +22°C.

• slept maybe 12 hours in total, tops (we badly wanted to see — and show — everything). How I'll wake up fresh for work tomorrow is a mystery.

It was packed. I think I could now show people the Caucasus professionally: in comfort and on a tight schedule.

Now six more hours of sleep, give or take, and then work, hard.