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a similar way, by handing over what has been done during the day. These days,
I've created for myself a weekly schedule that injects discipline into my work
and optimizes my sleeping patterns to fit around this 24/7 life.
In the mornings, I conduct my own personal operational things, like taking
care of personal matters an hour after checking that everything is all right on
the US side. Once this is done, this leaves me uninterrupted work time until
8 PM in the evening. Usually, I use different task lists, roadmaps, and to-do
items to plan my week. I make sure to revisit that plan during each day. Before
lunch, I work on things that do not require interruptions. After lunch, my
work involves interactions either with customers, with partners, or with team
members. Around 6 PM in Estonia, or 8 AM in Sunnyvale, we will have a daily
stand-up where everyone shares what they did and what they're planning to
do next. Every Tuesday we have a more extended version where everybody
shares their week's plans so that we stay in sync.
So before lunch, there is uninterrupted work, then from lunch until dinner
there is work that involves communication with others. After dinner, I usually
do some work on more creative items, like looking into new technologies,
looking into the data sets, thinking about how we can be more productive, or
what direction should we evolve toward. I use this time to look at new proto-
types as well. What I look at during this time really depends on what we are
currently working on. At Skype, it was very different with my data research
team. But when you build a company yourself, you have to help and work on
everything as it grows.
Gutierrez:
How do you view success and measure success?
Karpištšenko:
Success to me is when what you do is adopted by some-
one else. If you create a software service, or if you create a data model or a
method for analyzing data, success happens only when someone starts work-
ing with it and improving it further. That's the real success. And the second
part of success for me is somehow finding a flow in myself where I don't
get distracted by what-ifs and instead I am able to focus on some new idea
I had or something I need to finish. The ability to actually deliver something
tangible—that's the main index of success for me.
Nurturing something to grow and seeing that thing grow is also a big part of
long-term success. I love watching things I've built grow and continue to live.
I've built two companies and ive teams. These groups have delivered things
like software services, software products, and professional services that are
still in active use today. It's a great feeling to see that what you built contin-
ues to be used 5 years after and then 10 years after. That means that you
actually did something meaningful in that moment. And when you are in that
moment, you never know. There are so many uncertainties. Getting through
life, through those uncertainties—in a way, when you look back and see things
still connect and exist, that's the biggest measure of success.
