Maryna Zemskova:

— Hello everyone. My name is Maryna Zemskova. I am the Senior Marketing Manager at kmbs. This is the Radio kmbs podcast, where we talk about management challenges. To develop businesses and organizations, we often start in school with personal development strategies. Today, we will discuss precisely this topic. We will be talking with Yevhen Pentsak, who is the author of many of our programs, and also the head of economic and financial topics. This includes the «Master Business Analytics And Finance» program, «Business Analytics», and «Economic Thinking». Thank you very much, Yevhen, for agreeing to join us. I am glad to welcome you.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Hello everyone. Thank you, Maryna.

Maryna Zemskova:

— The topic we're going to discuss is life strategy. It seems to me that almost every participant who enrolls in the economic thinking program, or later, while studying certain financial or economic aspects, also realizes that to maximize a company's success and achieve certain efficiency, one first needs to understand how we influence our strategies. The first thing I want to start with is, what does it mean to manage your life? Or what metaphors do you perhaps have? What is life to you? Before we delve into development or efficiency, let's perhaps talk about the concept itself.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— It's hard to define what life is. Life is a game. Life is the ability to make decisions from which you gain the most satisfaction in a strategic context. Humans are the only animals, as psychologists say, who can think ahead. This ability to think ahead with different horizons precisely answers the question of what your strategy is. Thus, in all economic and financial literature, all decision-makers, all people who make decisions, are classified. There's myopic decision-making, where one looks only at a short horizon ahead, today or tomorrow. There's strategic thinking, where we look at ourselves from a bird's-eye view.
As you asked, I recalled that when I was young, we will probably talk today about different elements of life strategy menus, how we gradually move from one element to another, but what was decisive was that your planning horizon was very short. To make it to the end of the week, to the end of the month, and in a yearly perspective, you thought less and less. When it happened in life that I studied all economic and financial disciplines in Switzerland, and literally within a month of studying finance, I saw that life could be approached differently, to look at it from the side. Where are you going? Why are you going there? What resources do you have? What aptitudes do you possess?

That is, everything we study in economic disciplines, we talk more about how to manage a company, how to manage a state, how to manage yourself, as a firm that has certain resources. And to get the most satisfaction from managing yourself. We call this here in our context the utilitarian paradigm. So, all economic, investment, financial tasks, any management decision, easily fit into this paradigm. We say what our goal is, what limitations we have, what resources, what alternative options, how to choose the best among those alternative options.

This is essentially the core of what economic thinking does: helping people become better versions of themselves, but moreover, to get the most satisfaction from the time allotted to us on this earth. This ultimate satisfaction has many characteristics in how it manifests itself.
And we go through different stages, using our main resource, which we call time, differently. And we allocate this time to different focuses of attention, to different intensities of our efforts, and those efforts that give us the greatest effectiveness in life. But I think we will cover each of these questions today, touch upon them, but metaphorically, I'm thinking now, what is life?
It's as if you were thrown into the water at birth, and you start floundering in that water. You make some movements, and those movements allow you to stay afloat at first. When you've learned to stay afloat, you start swimming somewhere.
When you understand where you're swimming and why, then maybe at some point, you lie on your back and don't paddle at all, and you get pleasure from it. Then you lie on your back and see that you can move your hands not only in the water, but that there are other creatures, birds, flying somewhere in the sky, and they also get pleasure. And so, the space of alternatives in life constantly expands, and you realize that pleasure can be obtained from everything; you just need to understand the environment you are in.
Well, if I completely step outside the box, in what environment do my thoughts live? I think that from thoughts, you can get a lot of pleasure, and sometimes much more pleasure than from something we can physically touch.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Thank you, Yevhen. Here, I suppose, I want to dwell on the question that in order to understand which direction to move in, which thoughts, what exactly brings satisfaction, one needs to make a choice. For this, it is necessary to understand what we like, what suits us, who we are, first and foremost, so to speak, to know oneself. You mentioned Switzerland, and I know that you also mention this experience in the program, that it changed you. Perhaps it would be interesting to hear from you about things like, as you said, how you would approach raising children differently. So, here it's about, perhaps, the child's curiosity, which shows that they want to try more in life, and, in fact, then perhaps focus on that. Could you tell us how you, perhaps, worked with your own desires and interests, and how you subsequently raised your children? Perhaps a lyrical digression, if you can share.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— You know, if a life trajectory has formed, then some magic is attributed to it, that a person thought about it at that moment. And these were all thought-out decisions; for me, everything was much simpler. When you realized that you could accelerate your bolide quite strongly, there's a lot of resource in your brain, and nowhere to apply it.
Everything starts to jiggle, and you think, what to do? And at that moment, such recognition came to me, or financial aid from Soros. He, as if, bought you time.
And during that time, you stopped and started thinking, what are you doing? Where are you going? If you keep going like this, you'll hit the next barrier, and there will be no way forward.
I highly recommend to everyone to take such small breaks and understand, where is your trajectory going? By what means is it going? And what are your strengths?
And to what extent are you using them? And to what extent do you still have unrealized potential? That is, you can change your trajectory if you see that there are still huge opportunities.
Because it requires quite a lot of courage to give up what you have, that relative calm, and go into the unknown. You can go into the unknown when you have some significant advantage. But do we, at a young age, know how to compare ourselves with others?
Do we know what is important and what is not important? And what will be useful to you on that journey? And when you go into a new environment, and you burn your bridges behind you, you understand that you have no other option but to win. And then all efforts are concentrated. That is, your entire body works towards achieving the best result.
This doesn't mean that everyone around you is worse. But someone might not have understood this moment, perhaps this environment was comfortable for them, they didn't need to strain themselves. By making a breakthrough, you begin to have a significant point of differentiation in the environment you work in.
And if I continue the thought, 'How did I use this, for example, for raising children or for their education?' In economics, there is a theory of libertarian paternalism that permeates all Swiss society, that every person has aptitudes, but when discharged from the maternity ward, they don't write down a set of aptitudes for you. This is only in fiction films, like in 'Divergent'.
Depending on what aptitudes you have, you will do this and that. And we need to uncover these aptitudes. And the entire Swiss educational system is built on this.
They try each time to reveal, to give appropriate signals to parents on how they should work with their children to use this best unique potential, for example, of the Swiss community. So that they, as a society, develop as much as possible. I really liked this idea.
Even as a father or a wife, you know, her aptitudes don't necessarily have to be genetically passed on to the children; they might have something else. And you shouldn't dominate in any way. That is, your task is to help reveal this, with the help of some small actions, what is unique in your children or in those loved ones for whom you are responsible. This, libertarian — to give the broadest possible experience on which to understand. And paternalism, you, as a parent, still take care not to set too broad boundaries, because then you might not be able to gather everything back together.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Thank you, Yevhen. Then, continuing this logic, since we started with a child, perhaps next, for people who are learning, or rather students who are just starting out, to understand where to move. Perhaps let's start talking about life strategies, or what you would advise them, where to begin, for example, or let's start, perhaps, with the first strategy that naturally emerges in such young people.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— There's a book by Clayton Christensen, 'How Will You Measure Your Life?' There's a lot of literature on behavioral economics, or the so-called sideways version of behavioral economics, Freakonomics, and they all talk about how we can use good patterns of other people's life behavior and apply them to ourselves. As I've already said, economic literature is entirely devoted to how to build economic relationships in which economic agents could get as much satisfaction as possible.
That's how economic and financial systems are built. But systems can be built, yet we alone are responsible for our lives. And that's why it's important for us to have good techniques, not to avoid difficulties, but to overcome them.
I don't want to give examples of my colleagues, or acquaintances, or anyone I've crossed paths with in life, but abstractly, we all face difficulties in life. And some know how to overcome them, while others overcome them once, twice, and then give up. And then that trajectory of human life can no longer be lifted.
So, after the naive-naive strategy of human life, which is that you must pass on genes to your offspring, and the more you pass on, and the higher quality you pass them on, the more you fulfill your life's mission. But understand, this is a natural mechanism present in all living organisms. All living organisms live and receive satisfaction in the present moment. We are the only beings who think about the future.
And if we think about the future, then we must understand that stopping often means letting yourself be caught, showing weakness. Right? You fell, and you're too lazy to climb back up.
But when you look from a strategic point of view, you must get up and go on. This is the strategy of survivability. In the first hierarchy, it comes after the strategy of passing genes to the next generations. Whatever happens, you must find the strength to get up and keep going.
But we probably understand that this is not the best strategy. Our brain helps implement this strategy. It is only responsible for us avoiding any very risky situations, bypassing them, as a continuous predictor of what we are doing.
So that we don't slip, don't get hit by a car, don't fall off a cliff. But it says that we shouldn't get such a physical, biological threat to our lives. But the brain is not responsible for us getting maximum satisfaction in life.
The brain consumes a lot of energy from the human body. And that human body needs to be fed, and the brain alone takes 25%. Therefore, the brain, as a rule, inclines us to the line: lie down, sleep, everything will pass, you'll have time to do it, look, your cat is sleeping, so you sleep too. Probably, this is a normal life strategy and don't take anything to heart, everything is calm, everything will be fine.
Well, the question here is also, what do you want to achieve in that life? And do you have the potential to increase this satisfaction from life due to your mind starting to control your brain?
It doesn't happen on autopilot. And for that, you need to read a lot. And literature that provokes you to think.
Well, if I recall myself, the decision to fly to Switzerland and learn to be a switcher from what you never did, that was a bit of a shock. I just wrote the application, thinking no one would take me anyway. And then it happened, go ahead and go.
I say: “Why did you take me?” He says: “Don't worry, we can always kick you out.” Well, that's it, you have room to work.
You have a brain, you have a blank slate, as we say, you know nothing in that field, and you are ready for flight, that's it. You have 24 hours. And again, the metaphor, like being thrown into the water and flailing.
That's it, I'll flail.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Here I want to ask a question. We're already following your example, but you also had to take that risk. And then the question arises, how is people's attitude towards risk related to changing environments, to generally going into a new endeavor, how to approach it, what approaches might there be?

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Good question. I had somewhere to return to. It wasn't a one-way street. I was already 30 years old, and I thought, if not now, when? If I don't radically change my trajectory now, I'll reach a plateau, and a more or less calm, boring life awaits me in terms of challenges for my brain.
This is, if you have some gray matter and it's not being used, and you don't see what to use it for in your current environment, then the question arises that you need to change your environment. At that time, such a situation existed in our country. I didn't see anything developing, or science developing.
Corruption everywhere, incomprehensibility upon incomprehensibility. This was not the country I wanted to see. I got the opportunity to change myself.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Then he returned, interestingly. And started implementing these changes.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— And I, as I wrote applications everywhere and wanted to return, never regretted it.

Maryna Zemskova:

— I mean, you influenced the country's development in such a way that you were able to apply the knowledge you gained in Switzerland, multiply it, and understand who would find it valuable here. This is also a way of understanding your strengths.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Well, perhaps we are all from childhood. I played chess first, then studied mathematics. I saw how my students grew, what results they achieved.
And you say: “Why can't you yourself break through somewhere upwards?” Well, and so there was such a decision. It was conscious.
And what was the goal? You want to gain new knowledge and return to Ukraine and build your own school of analytics. All my colleagues said, you can't write in your resume anywhere, if you go to them, that you will leave them.
And why would they teach you? I say, I don't want to. I want to write exactly what I think, and I will do it.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Thank you, Yevhen. Just one question, a bit off-topic, I just remembered, for context, so everyone understands, if I recall correctly, you were a math teacher?

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Yes.

Maryna Zemskova:

— And, as far as I remember, you were the first to bring the 'Kangaroo' competition to Ukraine. It's a school, a mathematical competition for schoolchildren. And just then, do I understand correctly that you also relied on this logic, that it is necessary to develop in children these complex tasks, difficulties that they will be able to overcome, even through such logical things that will help them move forward?

Yevhen Pentsak:

— You could say so. I wanted to bring something new to education in Ukraine. It seemed to me that the standard math programs we had didn't do that.
Our education doesn't teach how to practically apply acquired knowledge. At that time, I started attending various international meetings, and, to be honest, international colleagues chuckled a bit at how we were developing our education. They said, 'Do you want to compete with robots?
Or with some machine intelligence?' Now we call it artificial intelligence. Back then, AI was still a bit far off, but all the tasks I brought to the competition were very complex.
Life is much simpler, and your tasks are impractical. Let's move towards something that will benefit a person in later life. If we study mathematics, it should be useful and applicable, so that children see some value in it.
When the knowledge provided by school is separate from life, then the attitude towards learning is appropriate. And that's what motivated me a bit, and people from 40 countries at that time brought their sets of tasks, and our goal was to select the best ones, those that provide the best conversion of problem formulation into some practical application, so that the child's brain is alive, so that it develops, so that it thinks how to apply this or that concept in solving problems, so that it relates to practice.
Well, but what I didn't like at that moment was that these tasks had so-called multiple choice. There were several options from which we chose, or children chose the optimal one. But in life, there's no such thing.
We create our own options and choose the best from them.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Thank you. Perhaps let's talk about building options further.
So, after the strategy of survivability, what might be the next idea that helps not just overcome these difficulties? What becomes more complex, perhaps, in the next strategy?

Yevhen Pentsak:

— In the next strategy, it's about efficiency and speed.
You start, not to personalize it to yourself, but you say that you can do this, and you can do it even more efficiently. You start gaining speed, and you're seemingly more resilient.
You're already less vulnerable to shocks.
You already have two alternative ways to engage yourself, how to use your time. And you already have, the better you do some work, the more orders you have. At that time, whether it was tutoring, or I was installing suspended ceilings, you diversify your activities, you have different sources of income, and only you regulate how to spend your time to, let's say, earn more.
You earned more, for your family there are more opportunities to improve well-being somehow.

Maryna Zemskova:

— So, this is the bicycle strategy, as I understand it?

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Yes, the bicycle strategy.

Maryna Zemskova:

— This is precisely the speed that accelerates. There is, so to speak, a certain tool, like a bicycle, a metaphor, a way of thinking that helps to vary in this flow.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Yes, how much do you earn per hour? And you start thinking, here you had one conditional unit per hour, and you accelerated the bicycle to 15 per hour. But life goes on, and you realize that you won't be able to pedal at maximum speed for too long. You need to recover.
Then, in economics, human life strategy is modeled, because many academic articles have been written on this topic recently, such as burnout effects. When you are too overstressed, your brain can shut down, and then you need to rest for a long period. Therefore, you need to manage your time wisely.
One part of your time you dedicate to working for money, and the money you earn creates more opportunities for better leisure. Better leisure, faster recovery, you're in a good mood, and you start riding your bicycle again. But everything depends on the environment in which you are pedaling that bicycle.
In the environment I was in, I saw that I could no longer pedal the bicycle at 15 per hour. And then you say, you still have a brain that you can compare yourself with, and a mind that controls this brain, perhaps with other people in other areas, and you will use it more effectively. Well, and there is such a theory of diminishing marginal utility.
I worked in mathematics, and there, not working for one day sets you back a week, not working for a week sets you back for some other period. And you understand that to be on the cutting edge, you just need to work continuously, and then, where is this pleasure, where is leisure? At that moment, I didn't know any economic theories, but I began to evaluate myself realistically.
Comparing myself with other people, with other aptitudes.
Those people who had better aptitudes put in less effort to get a result. And you start thinking, what switch to make, in what direction? Well, and I thought to myself, why not pursue economics and finance.
And so I just submitted an application; a few days later, I was accepted, and a journey into another life began, into other worldviews, other ways of thinking. And, by the way, economics reveals these opportunities for modeling human life very well.
And it has a large number of tools, technologies, methods, to make one's life more effective.
Because, in fact, what is economics? To develop such economic institutions, such relationships, so that all citizens receive more satisfaction. The question of how to model their satisfaction, that was precisely the primary essence of economic thinking, which we talk about here in classes.
But today we are talking about life strategy, so I would not want to talk about any such functional things, what functions, what models are used, what scientist made what contribution, how to make decisions in conditions of uncertainty, and the uncertainty at that moment was quite serious.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Thank you, Yevhen. I'll also add to the part about how, as I understand it, some strategies rely on Clayton Christensen's book 'How Will You Measure Your Life.' And I remember that when he discussed these strategies, he said that measuring life only through money is a false narrative; he also measures it through connections and the number of, let's say, as I recall, how people feel with you, whether they gain value from it. And this development of long-term relationships is a kind of social capital in a certain sense, and, in principle, Serhii Nozdrachev also often refers back to this book and says that he built it with his children as well, meaning how much quality time he spent with them and so on. And it turns out that a life strategy relies on various aspects, and this is, in fact, the answer to this satisfaction or happiness, meaning it consists of such different things. But money is a tool that allows you to free yourself somewhere and create this space and time to move to the next. Therefore, perhaps the strategies we are talking about today also include how to further use your strengths and then translate that into creating value for the people around you, and knowing how to maximize that satisfaction. That's if I understood you and Clayton Christensen correctly.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Yes. The aptitudes we have are potentially our points of differentiation. That is, we look for aptitudes in ourselves that are not the same as those of the people around us, and how to develop a corresponding attribute that makes you stand out among others.
And then you become needed by everyone. You know, in management, we often show clips from the movie 'Moneyball.'
We need a star team, not a team of stars. Conversely, we need a star team, not a team of stars. You can't do everything.
That's what happened to me. You went to study economics, finance. We had 13 people from 13 different countries, and all were very high-level economists.
And you never listened to anything, but you were unique in something that others weren't. So I didn't try to learn everything to get an average score of 4 or 5, on a 6-point scale. At that moment, I didn't understand how their entire educational system worked.
But then they started saying that I got a 6+ in some subject. And that was my point of differentiation. Already, leaving Switzerland, I just submitted an application for admission to a doctoral program.
I didn't even make it back to Ukraine. They said, 'We've accepted you.' I thought, why did they accept me?
I wasn't the best. Because you had a clearly expressed point of differentiation.

Maryna Zemskova:

— This is a question of how it's even evaluated. That is, this differentiation is important precisely because it helps to advance, so to speak, this strong side further in life.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Yes, because you will be needed by everyone as a team member. There will be other team members with different points of differentiation, and you will be like a super team.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Thank you, Yevhen. And here, I wanted to ask about this bicycle strategy. If we engage such speed, try different things, but without understanding where our strength lies, this can create a certain chaos where there's too much of everything, and the goal is lost. And so, in fact, perhaps, doesn't this lead to a person not reaching that uniqueness, but through, well, accumulating these various experiences, still needing to stop somewhere. And do I understand correctly that the next life strategy we are going to talk about is precisely this kind of calm that many people reach because they are already tired either of this speed, not finding an answer, or because they found one thing and simply continue to do only that for their whole life.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Well, yes. There's also a whole financial concept, option theory, opportunity theory. You reflect on your core competency, what opportunities you create in your life for branching out, what else you can do. And this again is the desire to get stuck on a plateau.
You already know how to do something, and you're fine, so why should I think about anything else? This is also a small trap for the brain. And when you know more theoretical, economic, financial models, where these models are used to increase a company's capitalization, you ask, who are you really?
You are also a firm that you manage, and you want to capitalize it. And this firm has a greater value, which has greater flexibility. And what is your flexibility?
And then the first major layoffs began for investment analysts who could be replaced by software, and financial analysts, and this was already a danger. And such meetings with prominent people, with Nobel laureates—the Swiss don't hesitate to invite such famous people, which I really liked. And for meetings with such people, you had to prepare; you had to read all their articles to ask questions, to draw some conclusion for yourself.
And all successful people, as a rule, had some golden triangle. That is, not one thing they were engaged in, but a reinforcing triangle where one attribute strengthens another. That is, if you are engaged in research, then you must have consulting.
If you have consulting, then you must publish works. And if you publish works, you have practical application for your investments somewhere. And so you go in circles, you have both business and consulting, and teaching, and research, and this chain constantly reinforces each other.
Because if you are only in research and don't consult real business, you don't know what problems are there. This, by the way, is the way of thinking I brought from Switzerland; I used it until then. One could have stopped doing anything a long time ago, like teaching, but you constantly, even this morning, communicate with analysts from other countries; they tell you about the problems they face, and whether you want to join the team.
Well, I always want to, as long as your brain works, and you use it, and you can understand that you can do what others cannot. And we came to such a question that we started, I saw that I could get more pleasure from brain work than from some consumption. I don't remember where I read this, but there was such a recommendation: if you want to buy something, like a nice car, or a yacht, or something else.
And the exercise was like this: imagine you already have it. So I played this exercise, well, I have it. And what will I do the next day?
That's the question: to buy something expensive, you have to give up a part of the most valuable thing you have, time, exchange it for the money you will spend on the purchase, and from which you will not get great satisfaction the next day.
And communication with people, particularly at Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, we have different groups, and communication with each brain of a person who studies here is a huge pleasure. We, as lecturers, must value this.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Thank you. Thank you, Yevhen. Continuing, perhaps this was the strategy of flexibility, or how would you summarize it, this triangle you are currently using?

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Well, this reinforcing triangle, probably, isn't it. There is such a strategy that corresponds to the statement that life is a set of realized and unrealized opportunities. This leans more towards flexibility, and in finance, there's a term that flexibility creates value. Imagine yourself in a business environment, or even not in a business environment, your own life.
Some direction becomes a dead end. It is no longer in demand. Your path has ended, and only at that moment do you start thinking about what to do next.
But when you have 2-3 alternative possibilities, if this market doesn't work, you jump to another. For me, this is very easy. If there is some emergency situation, or you don't have consulting, or something with your business, you engage in research and develop new material that you will use.
So, in my life, there has never been a moment when I didn't know what to do. But it's equally important not to have too many opportunities and do nothing. Because then practice makes perfect.
For this opportunity to be at a high level for you, you need to dedicate time to it. If you don't nourish it with your time and attention, then that opportunity gradually evaporates on its own.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Here's a question, perhaps a bit off-topic, but interesting. I know that you always read the news in the morning, or advise reading a book in the morning to 'start' your brain. Perhaps you have such rituals or things that help you, even, let's say, from a biological point of view, to help your brain work better, or you already know what works for you. That is, how is your day structured, what do you know about yourself that helps you be effective?

Yevhen Pentsak:

— I used to wake up at five in the morning, then six in the morning, already six, for another month, that's my most productive time. Sometimes, there were periods, you know, there's a saying, 'When you can't run faster, you can stand smarter.' I was an investment director at P&S Capital, and I had to make important decisions involving millions, and you had to be in the best, so to speak, intellectual sports form to gather all the comprehensive information from the markets and say, today we do this, or that, or the other.
So, this could involve a concentrated intellectual effort for 15 minutes. And I developed a habit of 'pumping up,' 'running' my brain in the morning. There's no single recipe for everyone here.
Sometimes it was puzzles for me; I even made puzzles myself, solved them, there's a huge number of them; we even held classes here on how to solve business cases with the help of puzzles. That is, each puzzle teaches, but it wasn't important for me to solve the puzzle. You work on it, your brain accelerates at that time, and you realize, okay, I've reached that state, that's it, put the puzzle aside, come on, solve the problem.
It's like training the brain to 'pump up' your neural network. Well, and over time, I saw that reading quality, good fiction literature 'pumps up' the brain very well. You don't need to read a lot.
Read a little, and you say, okay, I'm already in that state where I can write articles, do something, some research. Well, to be honest, why do you do it? When the brain works at such a high frequency, or I don't know how psychologists define it, what metrics they use to measure it, you get pleasure from the work itself. You don't need anything else.
It's endorphins, serotonin, everything's flowing, and you're like, oh, your brain is still working. I get pleasure from it. So I try to keep it clean.

Maryna Zemskova:

— I know that you often like to post tasks or puzzles on social media, and a lot of people always join in the comments, offering options. And I think that precisely follows your principle, to stay connected with you even after studying.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Thank you. Well, I think these are good morning exercises. And whether I do them or not.
I also write how many seconds it takes to 'warm up' the brain to do them.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Thank you. Let's move on to the next ones then.
We still have three strategies left, and the next strategy we will look at is called the strategy of robustness. Can you explain why it's called that, and what its meaning is?

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Well, it's from Clayton Christensen, I believe, and you mentioned him, and I did too. He wasn't such a famous academic researcher, but when I read him, I got goosebumps. What advanced financiers came up with, he wrote in simple language. That is, Clayton Christensen knew how to sense business.
And so he writes about the strategy of robustness from the perspective of human life strategy, how they are connected to the riskiness of the environment you work in. Well, robustness says, if the environment is risky, then move away from the risky to a calmer one. And then market risks will be less inherent to you, and you won't receive as many blows from life as you would if you were at the epicenter of this global risk, if you were trading the riskiest things possible, like an options trader.
Like Nassim Taleb. And you, there, grow something somewhere for yourself; many people use such strategies. Somewhere in the Alps, they built a house for themselves, live there, grow some grapes, do something there, or carrots, parsley, potatoes.
And what happens in the global markets doesn't concern you at all. But then life becomes uninteresting.

Maryna Zemskova:

— But isn't that the pleasure of simple things? That is, this strategy probably contradicts what we talked about at the beginning regarding difficulties, when we stop overcoming them and turn it into a more routine life, when it becomes more predictable.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— No, well, life in nature, you get pleasure from it, but that probably comes from personal characteristics. You want that drive.
When you overcome a difficulty, we just talked about thoughts, you say, 'Look, I can do this.' But when you give it up, believe me, at some point you'll miss it. And we use this metaphor in class.
Life is like dancing with a gorilla. You dance not as long as you like, but until the gorilla lets you go. If you've already escaped the gorilla, you can't enter that same life again.
Reaching this calm, peaceful state is possible.
But then re-entering that turbulent river is very difficult.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Understood, thank you. Perhaps these strategies differ in that they suit different stages of life or different periods, and therefore can be applied.
Or do you see it more as one strategy for life and only that?

Yevhen Pentsak:

— It's not what I see. I'm not a strategy teacher here.
It just happened in my life that I went through all the strategies myself. The extreme strategy, which Nassim Taleb invented, is antifragility. But it turned out in my life that it appeared after the bicycle strategy.
And you told yourself, the worse, the better. Why the worse, the better? Because you can withstand some additional loads and you have resistance to big shocks that will happen in your life later.
That is, I learned to perceive every shock as a good thing. It gives you an inoculation against a very big shock.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Can we then talk a bit more about this strategy?
That is, about the strategy of antifragility. What is its difference, perhaps, from simple resilience, if we can call it that?

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Well, look, fragility is like me taking a glass, throwing it on the floor now, and it shatters.
But you have a glass made of such material that you throw it, and it becomes stronger and stronger. Here's an example, I don't know if listeners will find this interesting. When my child was small, our apartment was small, all the neighbors came to watch TV, the child was born, and I had to write my dissertation.
So I have this image in my head: my daughter on one knee, a stool here, some TV turned up loud, and you're holding the child and writing your dissertation. Then people in Switzerland were simply surprised that it didn't matter to me what noise there was in the auditorium, or in the library, or anywhere. I could work in any environment; it all immediately, as if on autopilot, allowed me to concentrate only on what I needed.
But that skill came through difficulties; I really had to overcome them, experience them, when so many everyday difficulties pile up, and you just need to do science.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Understood. And, perhaps, the last, this fifth strategy – flexibility.
We seem to have discussed it, but how does this flexibility differ from antifragility?

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Flexibility is variability. Flexibility creates value.
We don't know what awaits us in the future, but when we have a strategy, we say, whatever the future may be, you know your place in this future and what you will do in this future, and what you won't. Another important thing in life strategy is not to be distracted by secondary matters. They may be more economically efficient, but if they don't strengthen your point of differentiation, then you need to abandon them.
This is something I used for myself in life. In life, in Switzerland, there were many opportunities; you were invited to various companies, various projects, but you say – I will do this, and I won't do that, because working on this project, I also improve my brain, and working on this, I only earn money. Well, and here's another important question – how long will you spend time improving your instrument?
Isn't it time to use it all already? You use it, you have more opportunities, more income, but these are already personal, probably, human preferences and life circumstances.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Thank you. And here, continuing the topic, when do we reach that point where we earn money, or when do we use it to improve our skills and competencies? I know that in the program, you talk about a certain limit when people stop getting satisfaction from money. What is this theory? And how should it be approached? What useful insights can be gained from it in conjunction with these life strategies?

Yevhen Pentsak:

— This is a theory that has no prospects, which was statistically validated, a large number of people were surveyed. It definitely suits me. Its first tests appeared in the mid-18th century. It consists of the following.
When your annual income is low, all your happiness is in money. When your average annual income reaches, by their standards, 50-60 thousand dollars, money only affects happiness by 50%. When your annual income is quite high, it no longer has any effect, if it has reached such a threshold, then money no longer affects your feeling of happiness.
And you should think today, knowing that you might have such an income, about developing new sources of your satisfaction. What will you get pleasure from. Because I also tell this in lectures.
Once, I was invited by the State Department, visited different states, different business schools, I spent a week in Florida, and we had dinner every day with American billionaires there. I asked them, 'What do you need those 20-30 billion for?' They say, 'It was just a sporting interest.'
The human brain cannot distinguish a billion from two. It can only distinguish, 'I have a billion, Bill Gates has 60, and I need to catch up.' This alone triggers a sporting interest.
But the money itself, you won't get satisfaction from it. They say, when we realized that we couldn't catch up with Bill Gates, then the understanding began, 'What should I turn the money into?' But the question is whether they effectively used their time to earn 20-30 billion; perhaps they could have done something else in life.
I'm not saying I can earn billions, but I never ask myself that question either.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Thank you. Let's summarize. We've already discussed 5 plus 1, I would say, strategies, that additional triangle. We talked about the strategy of survivability, from which, perhaps, everything begins for many, how it naturally appears. The bicycle strategy, when we accelerate to a certain speed, robustness, when, perhaps, during certain periods, one wants to enter a state of calm, a plateau might occur. Someone, by the way, might recognize themselves on this plateau and want to change this strategy. And so, in fact, the next ones, which are perhaps more relevant for the modern world in this context, are the strategies of flexibility and antifragility. And, in fact, that triangle you also mentioned is like an additional bonus-plus strategy that will also help combine certain things there.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Well, but it's very important, consolidating, in all of this, where, for example, it started for me, because I certainly didn't think about any life strategy before I was 30. It was more about the bicycle, and then you wanted to switch from the bicycle to some bolide, because you hit a limit of 15 here, and it drove me that you moved your, well, yourself, your body to another jurisdiction, and that 15 turned into 100, and it starts growing again, and you start working with people at the level of Nobel laureates, and you see that they earn a thousand, there, in 15 minutes, and you want to replicate that. Then you think, that's not the main thing.
The main thing is, well, it's Seneca's saying, 'When you don't know where you're sailing, any wind will be a fair wind.' The question is where you're sailing, what you want to achieve at all, how the satisfaction of your loved ones affects your satisfaction, and how to make your satisfaction function forget about money, and develop many new attributes from which you can get pleasure in life.

Maryna Zemskova:

Thank you. Thank you, Yevhen. Perhaps the last question, which might be similar to, as it were, an answer to what you said, or perhaps also more of a summarizer. What is the most valuable advice, perhaps, you gave your children, and, well, perhaps it will also serve someone, as advice that will also help in building these strategies.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Well, everything I say, I tried to apply to children. We started with Kangaroo; I say that Kangaroo is not what I have to teach my children. School is such a socialization.
I have to sharpen their thinking tools, and that's why I invented such a game called SimCurs. There are no multiple choices; all questions have open answers. Everything that humanity has gathered throughout its history, various thinking muscles, yes, they need to be trained.
And I always told my children, if you see that you are inefficiently using your time or are dissatisfied with something, stop and change your trajectory. That is, you should go through life with great pleasure, because emotional satisfaction is an accelerator of everything we do. So go where you get pleasure from.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Thank you. Perhaps the last question for today. You often talked here about games, for example, Kangaroo, the SimCurs game. I know that in the program, you also played a lot of chess with participants in Pentago, and that was also a part of yours. Why is play important? Can we talk about it briefly?

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Play is important, but there are games like chess, and there are the games we play. In a few days, there will be a CFO club here, and they also asked to have such a game night with them. Different games.
Because the rules change very quickly. We can say one word wrong, and those will already be different rules of the game. But we need to adapt to those rules with a new strategy.
This strategy can radically differ from the rules that were before. We now live in a world that is dynamically changing. Coalitions are reformatting, the geopolitical situation, well, everything is changing.
And we cannot, as it were, fly on autopilot and continue to play chess, and understand that all rational economic agents are here near us. Therefore, some of those games, like game Y, game X, which we play, we try to play several games in one evening. And each game with its simple rules, as a rule, rules are formulated in one sentence, it forces us to adapt quickly, to rebuild.
Therefore, I think game thinking is one of the main ones that needs to be developed in our lives. That is, seeing the world as a game. All communication, all interactions as a game.
And getting pleasure from the game, and playing the game effectively.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Thank you, Yevhen, thank you very much for this conversation. I advise our listeners to think about the strategies that are interesting to them, that they apply, and perhaps write in the comments, share, so that we can also understand for ourselves later. Perhaps there will be some new ideas for new episodes.

Yevhen Pentsak:

— Yes, thank you. Wishing everyone good life strategies. And I will be happy to add your life strategies to this composition that we discussed today.

Maryna Zemskova:

— Thank you, Yevhen.

Life Strategies: Do We Realize Our Own Strategy?

Yevhen Pentsak