# Living Between Time Zones

> What 67 countries and four home bases teach you about deep work, jet lag, and building products nobody asked you to build.
>
> 2026-07-18 — y7.hk

## The math of nowhere

When people ask where I'm from, the honest answer is a timezone spreadsheet. Childhood in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, university in Russia, work stints in Switzerland, New York, and the US — and now Southeast Asia, where the wifi is fast and the coffee is strong.

## What the road actually teaches

**Async is a lifestyle before it's a tool.** When your team spans four time zones, you stop writing meetings and start writing documents. The teams that survive distance are the ones that write things down.

**Jet lag is a product problem.** Light exposure, meal timing, a hard rule about caffeine after 14:00 local — treat your body like a system with an SLA.

**Every country is a user interview.** Payment flows in Thailand, super-apps in China, crypto rails in Singapore — living somewhere for a month teaches you more than any market report.

## The part nobody romanticizes

Loneliness compounds. The antidote isn't more travel; it's returning to the same places, the same coffee shops, the same people. Sixty-seven countries, but my map has maybe ten gravity wells.

Build from anywhere — but belong somewhere.