Workplaces: "Do not sit in your comfort zone" - an interview with Pavel Makarov

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The life hacker chatted with a white collar who defies office routine by ripping the waves on a surfboard and skydiving in his business suit.

Pavel, how did you come up with the idea to combine office style and extreme?

I myself have been a clerk for a long time, working for a large corporation that sells aircraft. Everything related to corporate life is familiar and close to me.

It's cool when you have an interesting job, you realize yourself and at the same time do not forget about the real world, in which there is a place for travel, sports and adventure.

It's not cool when you sit in trousers at an unloved job. Then you go home the same route, flop down on a shabby soft sofa, open a bottle of beer and stick into a TV set. And so day after day, month after month.

I want people to remember that the world is filled not only with pictures on TV and on the monitor, and change their lives, letting in real emotions and adventures.

What do you need to arrange such crazy activities?

It is difficult for one to conduct such a project. Sometimes it takes a whole team to bring something to life. For example, we recently returned from Crimea, where we implemented a crazy thing - sky surfing. They pulled a rope between two rocks at a height of 300 meters and rode on it on a homemade surfboard, and then jumped down with a parachute.

In this case, dozens of people were involved: photographers, videographers, a quadcopter operator, parachutists, base jumpers, rope jumpers, climbers.

You probably have the same equipment as the filmmakers?

For photo and video shooting we use:

• Sony Alpha 77 and GoPro Hero cameras;
• iPhone 5 phone;
• drone DJI Phantom 4.

Well, all sorts of bells and whistles to them.

This is enough to capture any action scene and take photos. I process the material in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom; I use VSCO and Snapseed on my phone. I edit the clips in Final Cut Pro.

How many countries have you traveled?

Seventy. I dream to visit all countries of the world. But there are so many interesting locations in the world that it seems to me that life is not enough to explore everything.

Tell us about the brightest journey to date?

One of the most extreme and emotional was the car trip from Moscow to Gambia. The 13,000-kilometer route ran through 15 countries.

We got into many troubles, but still conquered the highest point in West Africa - Mount Toubkal, went snowboarding in the Sahara Desert and even spent the night on the shore of a malaria swamp in Mauritania.

How do you plan your travels? What services and programs do you use?

Any of my travels is a detailed study. For example, they prepared for a trip to the Gambia for six months: they worked out routes, made visas, monitored border points, read reports of Russian and foreign travelers, studied the cultural and national characteristics of residents of different states, booked accommodation, looked for sports and extreme activities, monitored the political situation. This is all very important.

Travel planning - 50% of its success.

Here are my rules.

• I do not book hotels in advance. Just that same evening, I look through Booking.com or Airbnb, where there are vacancies. If not, I am not broken off by spending the night in a tent or a car.
• I make all the visas in advance in Moscow, but sometimes it is easier to get them in neighboring states. For example, we wanted to go to Gambia via Mali, but the Russian embassy in Mali refused us because of a series of terrorist attacks in this country. For fun, we stopped at the Malian embassy in Mauritania, and there they were ready to get us a visa to Mali in five minutes.
• I use Google Maps, Apple Maps or 2GIS to navigate the terrain. These services can be used offline. By the way, a useful life hack: if you are traveling in an unfamiliar area by car, plot a route in Google from a hotel with Wi-Fi, and then use the navigator without a mobile connection. This is how I traveled a third of Latin America - more than 13,000 kilometers.

Do you have any life hacks on how to travel a lot and not go broke?

You can save on almost everything: accommodation, flights, meals, travel.

At 18, when I had no money, I hitchhiked around Europe. I had about 100 euros with me, most of which I spent on souvenirs. Lived in a tent, hitchhiked, bought pasta for 20 cents and cooked it on the burner.

In the era of gadgets, the phone helps a lot to save money. With its help, you can find someone to stay with for couchsurfing, buy a cheap ticket for a low-cost airline, find fellow travelers in BlaBlaCar, and so on.

How do you feel about downshifting and have people ever quit their jobs because of your project?

If the goal of abandoning civilization is to play the fool and smoke weed in Goa, then it is negative.

If a person quits an unloved job in order to get out of the comfort zone, to change himself and his life, then this is great. During a trip to Gambia, two members of our team were so blown away by the drive of the trip that they called their bosses in Moscow and said that they were quitting.

I advise all readers of Lifehacker not to sit in the comfort zone.

Life begins where your comfort zone ends.

Neil Walsh

If you feel that you are stuck in a routine, change something urgently!