Monthly recap: best book, films, most useful video, skill of the month, a tested hypothesis, a habit and the main insight. October 2025.
1) Best book
Gary Vaynerchuk — “Day Trading Attention”. A great read for anyone who wants to grow in social media or build a personal brand.
2) Films and series
Nastya and I watched the 1998 film “The Negotiator”. Really keeps the tension.
For series I enjoyed “Bank Under Siege” (Bunker for Millionaires) on Netflix.
3) Most useful video
A new podcast with Morgan Housel on Diary of the CEO. A very strong conversation for anyone into financial literacy and investing.
4) Skill I worked on
Working with AI. This month I especially heavily used ChatGPT to solve all sorts of questions. I can see it’s gradually becoming as important a source of information for me as YouTube and books. On some questions — even more important.
I think the world we’ll be living in a few years will surprise us. Right now, instead of hiring new people to the team, I just solve these tasks with AI for $20 a month.
5) Hypothesis I tested
This month I did a big offline talk, and I loved it. The energy of the room, Q&A, being able to interact with people after the speech — not just look into a camera.
It’s very energy-intensive, but still worth it. I’ve decided to take a strategic direction toward offline.
Right now I speak at events I’m invited to for a fee. Now I want to organise my own events. If you know people in this field, please share their contacts.
6) Habit I worked on
Locking in a paper-based habit tracker. Every morning starts with me checking off all the habits I managed to give time to yesterday.
I’m working on 12 different habits right now. Some are already well-established, others are still forming.
7) Main insight of the month
“Whatever ends up in the centre of your attention grows in size” — I once heard this quote from Telegram founder Pavel Durov.
This month I went to an event about finance and stumbled on a few videos about money (mentioned in point 3) — and as a result I spent the month on investing. I worked through several things I still don’t fully understand about the US stock market and studied our local government bonds. By the way, AI is invaluable for this kind of research.
The takeaway is simple: the information bubble we end up in shapes our line of thought and action.