Let me introduce myself. My name is Semyon Kolosov. I will briefly tell my story so that it will become clear who I am and why I wrote this book. I live in Moscow and work at red_mad_robot. I started my career in the company as a manager, then worked as an operating director in a design laboratory and now I work at Verno by red_mad_robot in the same position. We are engaged in solving business problems through consulting and training. I have a wife, a child, an apartment, an iPhone and photos from traveling on social media. It wasn’t always like that. I was born and grew up in the small town of Novogrodovka. It is located in the east of Ukraine and has a population of 14 thousand people. My dad is a retired miner, and my mom works in the Department of Social Protection of the population. In 2006, I graduated from high school and went to Donetsk to study as a computer systems engineer at Donetsk National Technical University. In 2011, I graduated and started working. I worked as a system administrator in an auto repair shop, then provided the Internet to apartments. In 2012, I got a job as a filling machine operator at a plant for the production of infusion solutions. My future wife and I rented an apartment on the outskirts of Donetsk. She worked for an insurance company, and I had night shifts at the factory. Then a more or less stable and adult life began.
This went on for 1.5 years. Even before that, my life began to resemble Groundhog Day, and I was thinking about drastic changes. I wanted to move somewhere to completely change the situation to a more promising one. I even started to develop a relocation plan. And I mean a serious structural plan, not just a set of abstract steps. To do this, I started studying planning, which led me to the topics of time management, goal setting, thinking, risk management and etc. But there will be no beautiful story of how I ran from war to the great success. Although the aggravation of the situation made its own adjustments, and I had to step into uncertainty faster than I expected. Therefore, I know firsthand what it means to get out of the comfort zone. In 2014, I moved to Moscow. Without citizenship, connections, work experience and skills, I found the job I had always dreamed of. I learned everything myself and now I’m doing what I love in one of the most modern cities in the world. In red_mad_robot, I went from manager to COO. I launched new services, built business processes and was a mentor for managers. Today I participate in the creation of programs for pumping soft skills and building digital practices. Every day I communicate with talented and hardworking people who want to change the world. For 8 years I have been studying management, psychology, the brain and different types of thinking for my own development and training of others.
Over the years, I have built my own life management system, developed by experience and proven in practice. I treat life like a manager always and everywhere. Whether it’s going to a hike or developing a digital service. I have my own system of processes, tools and approaches. I analyzed what influenced my development and what hindered it. I have gathered the most valuable things together and I want to share them with you. This is not a silver bullet, not an authentic idea or rules for a successful life but rather a set of well-known tools grouped into a sequence of processes that provide me with clarity, flexibility, productivity and development. That is, my subjective view and experience on the organization of life. When I communicate with people, and they find out about it, they are divided into two types: some twist their finger at the temple, others ask to teach them to do the same. I am always happy to help people and share my knowledge. In the book, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
It all started with the fact that I often began to hear from colleagues and friends: «Semyon, when are you going to write a book?» Where did such questions come from? Firstly, I read quite a lot: I can read several books a month. At work, I am mostly surrounded by people who also read a lot. red_mad_robot has a strong corporate culture that is focused on growth. The company is full of activities for the exchange and generation of knowledge. We often discussed books there. We argued a lot and exchanged opinions. Sometimes my point of view did not coincide with the author of the book, but was welcomed by colleagues during the discussion. Almost always such a discussion ended with a joke that it was time for me to write my own version of the book. Secondly, people often point out that I tell interesting stories. Probably, this allows me to do a broad outlook and life experience. I am only 33 at the time of writing the book, but various events and decisions allowed me to collect a good amount of experience that tested me for strength and pumped my soft skills. Thirdly, I have accumulated a lot of information about the organization of life from incoming sources that I have ever read, watched and listened to as well as the results of my research on this topic, which were transformed into notes, presentations and speeches. I shared them with people, they kept them for themselves and later gave a good feedback.