Founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov’s latest viral claim is that he doesn’t experience depression because he refuses a habit most of us practice daily. And the habit, according to him, is waiting to feel like doing something. Pavel, who was the Russian social network VK, has built a reputation as Silicon Valley’s ascetic outlier. He says no to alcohol, to caffeine and to sugar. He has extreme physical discipline.
Recently, in a podcast Pavel said he “normally never” feels depressed because he doesn’t allow himself to ruminate. When a problem appears, he acts immediately. His underlying philosophy is simple and psychologically interesting: energy is not a prerequisite for action but a byproduct of it.
In his telling, most people fall into the opposite loop. They wait to feel motivated, rested, inspired, mentally ready. Meanwhile, the mind fills the gap with worry, self-doubt and passive consumption. The result is stagnation, which then reinforces low mood. Pavel’s strategy is to interrupt the loop before it hardens.
In psychology, it’s called behavioural activation which is a core technique in cognitive behavioural therapy. Depression thrives on withdrawal and inactivity and structured action can help restart the reward circuitry of the brain. That part is science.
But what Pavel Durov is really describing is a prevention philosophy for high-functioning minds prone to overthinking, not a universal cure.
His entire life is engineered around control. He has a highly regulated diet, intense physical training, strict routines and minimal social noise. Pavel has almost total autonomy over his time and environment. That level of structural discipline is doing a lot of the psychological heavy lifting. Most people don’t live inside a system designed like his.
A very interesting takeaway isn’t that he never experiences depression. It’s that he treats mood as something that follows behaviour, not the other way around. The brain’s reward system responds to completion, novelty and forward motion. In other words, the mind believes what your behaviour tells it.
If there’s a mental health lesson buried under the billionaire mythology, it’s this: mood is not always a signal to pause. Sometimes it’s a signal to move gently, imperfectly, immediately.
Depression is not a habit, but inertia often is.
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