Everything I know and think about is the result of the work of a whole bunch of great people, living and dead.
Those who influenced my life more than others are on this list.
What's interesting is that many of them are "people" in the best sense of the word - they have both good and bad. The existence of each of them also helped me accept the existence of my dark side.
Tema
This is the first "blogger" I started reading back in 2008, when I moved to Moscow and learned what loneliness is. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the first thing I started "reading" at all.
https://www.tema.ru/travel/ - one of the bricks that made me leave abroad
https://www.artlebedev.ru/kovodstvo/sections/ - what taught me to create my own opinion
Clayton M. Christensen
Author of the book "The Innovator's Dilemma". The book is excellent, taught me to understand why "profitable" business is not necessarily progressive.
I got into this author when I learned 2 facts about him:
firstly, he worked in the church (and I realized that you can believe in God even if you have brains)
secondly, he had a stroke and after it learned to speak practically from scratch
Since then I've abandoned the idea that with age I have the right not to understand something.
Carlota Perez
Economist who wrote the book Technological Revolutions and Techno-Economic Paradigms.
I still haven't found a better book for understanding economic cycles - it helped me calm down with the thought that I didn't become a bitcoin millionaire for free, while everyone else did.
Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Richard Thaler
3 people (wouldn't be surprised if there are more) who taught me to love behavioral economics.
The book Thinking Fast and Slow became for me a second Bible, if not the first - now in all my stupid actions I look for where my brain played a cruel joke on me.
Green Day
Their album American Idiot is the only album that stuck in my soul for many years. It made me realize that on the other side of the planet from a Russian panel house guy, there's exactly the same dude, only what we call "panelka" in our soul, for an American is "suburbia"
Lindsay C. Gibson
The book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents helped me understand a bit of my motivation in unpleasant life situations
Zuzana Licko, Yuri Gordon
One of my only childhood toys was a magnetic board with letters.
Since then I can look at good typography with the same eyes I look at a good ass.
Zuzana Licko is a person who stood at the creation of a whole bunch of digital fonts. A Slovak whose photo I advise googling to understand what kind of women I like.
Well, Gordon is a living legend of Russian typography, which gives me no less pleasure than Latin.
Ilya Rudomilov
Only because this guy wrote https://www.podebrady.ru/ in the bearded 2010s, I ended up in Czech Republic. Simply because in life I'm motivated by only one thing: seeing what people I can relate to achieve. 90% of my leaving abroad is the result of some random dude taking photos and writing texts at night.
David J. Malan & Co
At one of the most difficult moments of my life I needed to urgently change something, and through great luck I stumbled upon the online course CS50 https://cs50.harvard.edu/
This is an introduction to computer science. This course helped me gain enough confidence that six months after hitting rock bottom, I started working in IT. Well, the level of teachers, Malan in particular, is something unattainable.
Barbara Oakley
I was lucky with finding online courses once more - Barbara Oakley created a free course "Learning How to Learn" (https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn).
Before this I didn't understand at all what it means to learn. After this simple course I started thinking before any learning. Learning itself now takes much less time than preparing for it - or more precisely, understanding how to learn this particular new thing - everything needs to be learned differently.
Jamie Oliver
Thanks to this person I accepted my nature - I stopped being ashamed that I'm a man who likes to cook.
Ogoltsov M.O., Peshkov V.V.
In childhood I seriously practiced fencing and chess. All the coaches really annoyed me, forced me to do what I didn't want to do.
In any case, I'm grateful for knowing that defense is no less important than attack.
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Daren Acemoglu, James Robinson
Thanks to the books Why Nations Fail and Good Economics for Bad Times I completely accepted the fact that there are no stupid nations, there are wrong systems. This relieved me of the complex of Russian redneck.
Alexey Markov
Everyone who can write in Russian profanity are normal guys. I love this author not for the book "Hulinomics", but for his way of thinking and common sense, of which there is very little in his age and field. Sometimes it seems to me that if I were offered to choose whose life to swap with - I wouldn't mind swapping with him.
John Eldredge
His book Fathered by God for the first time pushed me to think about why I even need God. Before that time for me the word "God", like for a Czech the word "communism" - I won't even go there, because it's a priori bad. As always, everything turned out to be not so simple
Jimmy Cauty, Bill Drummond
The book KLF Manual is the best answer to the question "how to achieve success". It's not about success at all and it's so outdated that if you understand the main idea - you're very lucky.
Burkin I.A., Smolin A.V., Chesnokova O.S.
Teachers and educators play an important role in any child's life. In my life, rather, there were more bad teachers than good ones.
These three are the first that came to mind when thinking "who really helped me?". The main thing that unites them - with them I was not afraid of anything.
One told me I would become president, another - that I have a talent for languages, and the third - was surprised out loud that I thought something somewhere might not work out for me.
I'm sure there were more good teachers, I just remember these very well
Norman Cousins
His book Anatomy of Illness helped me come to terms a bit with the idea that we will all get sick and we will all sometimes feel pain, but that's what life is
Lindsay Doe
The YouTube channel Sexplanations offered a concept of looking at sexuality, and this is the only concept that suited me - it sounds like Stay Curious. This is the only concept that allows me to think that sex is something good.
Lefie
The first girlfriend whose view of minimalism I could share. I can't sit in bare white walls, and most importantly, I don't accept minimalism in the head. I'm glad I'm not the only one.
Jordan B. Peterson
Thanks to the book 12 Rules for Life I thought about the concept of "what non-obvious thing needs to be done to make life better". Since then I always look for a conditional "clean your room" if "I want to get rich".
Later it turned out that one of the topics that is no less close to me is the role of men in today's society. I still haven't come to conclusions, but Jordan is one of those who gives at least some arguments - the rest absolutely don't give a damn.
I gained special respect for him when I learned more about his family: daughter with autoimmune disease, wife with cancer, and how he went through all this hell and didn't lose his mind.
Victor Papanek
The book Design for the Real World made me think about whether I'm doing anything for the "real world". I was especially struck by the story of the inventor of the radio that can be made from a tin can - the invention gave a bunch of Africans the opportunity to be aware of the news.
Later I was also inspired by the story of the Indian inventor who learned to produce pads cheaply, which gave millions of Indian women the opportunity to improve menstrual hygiene and extend life. It was especially pleasant to learn how many people turned away from him in the process.
Since then I've sworn off solving "global problems" like deforestation - I solve real world problems to make real people's lives better. Most likely because of this book I will hardly ever become financially rich.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Philipp Lahm
Two footballers who described their careers in autobiographies. Two completely different approaches that led to one goal. Two personalities that fight in me - egoist and system engineer.
Bill Gates & Co
Thanks to these guys I have a job that pays for all the rest of my life.
Family and Friends
If you've touched me for more than a couple hours total, the chance that you have a place on this list is extremely high