By 2012, Alexey Mas was a well-known figure in the Ukrainian internet. He was born in 1974 and entered the radio physics faculty of Kyiv State University in 1991 without exams, on the strength of his physics olympiad results. In the 1990s he worked at NIIASS, then at Ukrainsky Kapital bank, and from September 1997 to March 2000 he handled Visa processing on HP-UX at the National Bank of Ukraine.
In January 1999, Mas, together with Ruslan Dmitrakovich, launched the Ukrainian Banner Network: written in Perl, built in three weeks of work and about $100 in expenses. On 7 March 2000 he became director of Ukrainsky Portal (UAPortal). In autumn 2001 Mas sat on the expert jury of the Sun Awards 2001, and in December 2004 he commented on the role of the internet in the Orange Revolution, when Infostore was a site for people’s news.
In August 2008 Mail.ua went into closed beta, with Mas as its architect, and the project was then backed by Internet Invest Group with more than $1 million in investment. In April 2009, to mark the tenth anniversary of the Ukrainian Banner Network, the first Ukrainian Forum of Internet Figures, the future iForum, was held and drew 1,280 participants.
The essay as a system
The text reads not as a collection of tips but as a structure with sections: why time is needed, axioms, concepts, techniques and cautions. There is one axiom: time is a measure more universal than money. Concepts are derived from it. One should engage only in work one loves. The necessary things, according to Mas, are interesting, non-urgent and forward-looking, and these are precisely the ones easiest to put off. Watches and a daily planner can be abandoned, but only after one has mastered them.
There are five techniques: automate routine, do one thing at a time, keep the desk empty, do it right the first time, and delegate with oversight. All are formulated briefly and without lengthy caveats, as rules that can be tested in one’s own day. The essay closes with cautions, and structurally they appear as a separate block rather than an appendix to the techniques.
The arithmetic of time
The essay also contains calculations. First it advises keeping a third of one’s time free, then half. A job done badly, by the author’s estimate, subsequently takes 10–20 times more time than would have been needed to do it right the first time.
The most vivid example concerns things. A car, according to the essay, “takes” about 5 hryvnias a day while “saving” 20–40 hryvnias. A mobile phone respectively “takes” one hryvnia and “saves” four. A PDA, a pocket computer, in this logic “takes” 4 hryvnias and “saves” one. It is the PDA that betrays the text’s age: by 2012 it had already given way to smartphones.
The essay opens with a phrase that the headline of the reprint then repeats:
“Time is all we are given in this life,” Mas begins.
A text older than its reprint
Lifehacker published the essay on 9 April 2012, taking it from Mas’s personal website. This is a reprint, not the first publication. The date 2012 refers to the moment of reprinting, not to writing: the text existed no later than 2006, when an ITUA reader was already linking to it.
Lifehacker itself notes the material’s age in its lead. The editors called Mas one of the most successful Ukrainian entrepreneurs in the internet industry and singled out his essay as a standalone text on time management, not as part of an interview or column.
In 2012 Mas was occupied with another matter as well. In July and August of that year Mail.ua passed to Mail.ru Group. Mail.Ru Group vice-president Anna Artamonova confirmed the purchase. According to unofficial estimates, the deal went through for about $500,000, and the service then had around 300,000 users.
1
