Stanislav Katkov

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Stanislav Katkov. I hail from Estonia, but nowadays I’m a homeless traveler. After sitting for 6 years in offices I understood that it’s not a productive environment for me. Sitting in offices is not my thing now. I prefer having freedom to work from any place with the internet — coffee shops, hotels, co-working, friends’ house, etc.

You might say that I’m a pretty active fellow — I manage to do a lot of stuff. By day I’m a technical lead at saberespoder.com. We help Spanish speaking immigrants to adjust in a new reality — the US.

I’m also a co-founder of Ganesh Studio/Retreat. We help creative projects and startups have a productive gateway on a beach of Thailand. I also get a blast working on this project by meeting a lot of interesting people.
My life-long friend and me have recently bootstrapped a company named skylup. We try to build software as a service, currently our service is private and aimed at a niche customer.

What is your day like?

I wouldn’t call my schedule a productive one, it will not suite anyone besides me. Because I don’t have a schedule. Everything in my schedule is random, but I try not to forget about my basic rules (they change too).
Sometimes I go on a working frenzy. I work for a month without leaving my apartment/hotel much. I hardly do any exercises and don’t eat healthily. My productivity rises significantly, but with some damage to my health. I need at least a week to recover from this.
Sometimes I start traveling like crazy. Every week I change my living location and/or city. I just walk around new location with my back pack. Make a lot of photos, have fun, after have a 2-hour break at coffee shops to work.

Everything always changes, depending on what I feel like or need to do. I will try to describe my less crazy ‘almost-like-normal-day-at-office’. Generally, I think it’s hard to do focused work for more than 30 hours a week. So, I try to put at least 4 solid working hours per day without any weekends.

11.30 I’m definitely not a morning guy. I try to wake up before 12, usually it’s 11.00 or 11.30.

12.00 Twice a week I run for 30 minutes, so I just put on my shorts and go running. In the end I do sit-ups and pushups.

12.30 shower, teeth brushing, face cleaning. I’m taking all vitamins for a day.

13.00 On regular days I have simplistic food, usually it’s the same. Helps me not to gain weight. Usually it’s eggs, onion, fruit and my traditional ceremony of mate or any other tea I can get my hands on.

14.00 I space-out for some time. I prefer walking around, silently, alone. That’s my way of meditation.

14.30 I turn on my mobile phone/iPad and start reading all the messages there. Sometimes this activity gets replaced by having a call with my business partner for Ganesh Studio. He’s a morning guy and it’s a perfect time to catch up with him.

15.00 I start working on my computer related tasks. With music turned loud (if it’s a public location, then I use my headphones). I try to focus on work 100%, so I use Forest app to track 25 minutes of work and 5 minutes of free-for-all time.

17.00 Time for lunch. Again, most of the time it’s the same. Mostly chicken, if I’m in Thailand then it’s ghai-phad-met-mamon (chicken with cashew nuts).

17.30 Go back to laptop, loud music and forest app

20.00 I’m free to do whatever I want. Since I don’t drink alcohol, at the same time I’m on standby for a late call with product owner, CEO or my life-long friend. I try to limit incoming calls to only one. If I have a call, then I’m turning off my mobile phone and just enjoy the rest of my day (usually with a girlfriend).

What instruments or software help you in your life and work?

My weapon of choice is MacBook Pro 13’ inch. I use iPad Mini 4 as my second screen with a Mountie clip to attach it to my laptop. I use roost stand (first version), it helps a lot with my neck pain. I’m a 2-meter guy so using laptop without a stand is a huge problem for me. Having a stand requires carrying apple keyboard and apple mouse with me.

I’m a big fan of headphones. I used to carry 3 different types of headphones with me — but it’s a totally unreasonable thing to do. So I gave away all my headphones and have one bose earphones left… and X-mini speakers. Usually, I use them in conjunction with Sony SBH20 bluetooth device not to be hardwired to my computer and have a movement of freedom.
I don’t have a luxury of carrying real books with me — takes too much space in my backpack. So another device I use a lot is Kobo reader. Pocket softwarehelps me to have less distractions on laptop and later on catch up with all the articles and news on Kobo reader.

Also I always have devices that are used less often.

• Universal travel adapter — most of my gadgets are bought around the world. So, this sometimes becomes really needed.
• tp-link TL-WN822N Wireless adapter — Generally improves my wifi connectivity abilities 10x, but software is a bit laggy. I’m looking for a better solution, but nowadays it is useful if a router is laggy (and starts dropping MAC address from your laptop wifi card), to get the internet from a restaurant nearby and some other situations.
• 500gb hard-drive — I’m probably the laziest photographer ever: 500 gb is enough for me.
• ID-card reader — mostly to access banking and government services of my beloved country — Estonia.
• Sony rx-100 v4 — most minimalistic amount of coolness. My first camera and really my first and last love.

I don’t drink alcohol, well, very rarely I do. It’s hard to see benefits of that immediately, but if you stay ‘clean’ for a year you’ll notice a brain boost. To keep myself productive I experiment with different substances — my drug of choice is tea, I drink linzhi mushroom if I have a chance to get them, I buy Omega 3 most of the time. Also sometimes I can improve myself with Nootropil, Modafinil, Ritalin.

My experience shows, that energy drinks and coffee affect me in a negative way. My sleep schedule gets messed up and the amount of sugar consumption rises dramatically. My drink of choice is mate, I have to carry calabash and bombilla for this.

Software I use a lot:

• getpocket.com
• RubyMine
• iTerm
• Google Calendar
• Google Docs
• Forest app
• KeepassX, Keepass2Android
• Evernote
• Currency FX app
• Goole maps
• Podcast Repulic app
• Dash
• Portico
• thesilversearcher
• git
• slack
• postman
• tig
• hangouts
• safari
• world clock widget
• dropbox
• VOX
• Duet Display
• brew