Nodira - 101 Ways to Stay Sane

there is a paradox in emerging market theory called the "infrastructure trap." an underdeveloped market looks like a blue ocean because incumbents haven't colonized it yet. but those incumbents aren't there precisely because of the lack of solid infrastructure. so the first movers don't just have to build a business, they have to build the infrastructure the business runs on. just yesterday Wolt announced that its leaving Uzbekistan market. when Wolt launched in Uzbekistan in October 2024, its own expansion head noted that the Uzbek market was far less saturated than Europe, but that also means lower order volumes, lower average basket sizes, and thinner margins while building scale. DoorDash hasn't announced country-by-country specific reasons for its exit from 4 locations: Qatar, Singapore, Japan, and Uzbekistan. so this could be just a reflection of DoorDash's decision to focus on investing in most sustainable clearest pathways. but that also reminds me of Divan's case. Divan.ru entered Uzbek market in 2023, having opened Divan.uz. the demand was there as revenue grew 5x from 2023 to 2024, and customers actually liked the product. but apparently the company hasn't predicted the degree of operational difficulties: customs and logistics delays from not being in the EAEU (weeks or months of waiting vs. the near-instant delivery model that made Divan successful in Russia/Belarus/Kazakhstan), no reliable last-mile delivery setup ("if we find a van, we'll ship it; if not, we won't"), and cultural friction in managing local staff. a beautiful website and heavy ad spend masked the fact that the backend simply didn't work. what makes Uzbekistan particularly tricky is that it looks more ready than it is. it has a large, young, urban population in Tashkent, decent smartphone penetration, and genuine consumer appetite for modern products. but the connective tissue lags behind the demand side. companies see the demand signal and move, then get surprised by the supply-side constraints. Uzbekistan is a promising market, but it seems that marketing or a slick app isn't enough to unlock it. rather, t's grinding operational infrastructure-building that takes longer and costs more than growth-stage companies typically want to invest. @summernotes

“Temperament is more important than IQ. You need reasonable intelligence, but you absolutely have to have the right temperament. Otherwise, something will snap you.” - Warren Buffet over the past few weeks i’ve spent time talking with some quite amazing young people studying both here and abroad. interviews for the report. i was glad to be able to pick some of their brains and also find shared ground. one of the guys i’ve spoke with said smth along the lines “surely you need hard skills. but patience matters more than skills. if you have enough patience, you’ll be able to learn whatever is necessary sooner or later. you just have to be able to get yourself to sit down and get it done.” i would’ve written more but my fingers are so sore from scrubbing away stickers from my laptop with my ID card and wet wipes. stickers aren’t worth a whole evening torture😭

“Temperament is more important than IQ. You need reasonable intelligence, but you absolutely have to have the right temperament. Otherwise, something will snap you.” - Warren Buffet over the past few weeks i’ve spent time interviewing some quite amazing young people studying both here and abroad. i was glad to be able to pick some of their brains and also find shared ground. one of the guys i’ve spoke when said smth along the lines “surely you need hard skills. but patience matters more than skills. if you have enough patience, you’ll be able to learn whatever is necessary sooner or later. you just have to be able to get yourself to sit down and get it done.” i would’ve written more but my fingers are so sore from scrubbing away stickers from my laptop with my ID card and wet wipes. stickers aren’t worth a whole evening torture😭

a week before Ramadan- and yeah, the white is the yang from the previous ying😄 for the first time in a few months i feel light and calm instead of waking each morning with gnawing anxiety. and so this month will not only be about fasting from food and bad habits, but also about freeing mind from unnecessary distractions and people im better off without.

being mean is not strength. not at this age, at least. we’ve lived enough to know better. surely, we all carry scars and we have rebuilt ourselves in ways no one saw. so when someone still hides in jealousy, gossip, or petty games, that’s anything but power. that’s a small person trying to feel important. and yes, secure women don’t compete with other. they connect, support, and they have a heart big enough to understand that there’s space for everyone to win without having to tear down anyone.

being mean is not strength. not at this age, at least. we’ve lived enough to know better. surely, we all carry scars and we have rebuilt ourselves in ways no one saw. so when someone still hides in jealousy, gossip, or petty games, that’s anything but power. that’s a small person trying to feel important. and yes, secure women don’t compete with other. they connect, support, and understand that there’s space for everyone to win without having to tear down anyone.

the collection process going nice🥹 but we currently need even more responses coming from following cities: - Namangan - Andijan - Fergana - Bukhara if you’re a student currently residing in those cities, and if you also want to join our team of volunteers, please register here: https://forms.gle/CKuLji1FQYaR3va97 dedicated ones might later be added to the core research team

see that one white rose? a total stranger on the street gave it ahahah😭 i was just coming home from my usual walk when a young man of 26-28yo approached me asking whether i’m seeing anyone. i got freaked out ofc cuz it was near my house and my immediate thought was “does he know my address? is he stalking me no?” (cuz i had quite a bad experience with stalkers) when i kept walking without paying attention to him, he just took out this rose under his jacket and asked to just take it. can throw it away later, if you want. you’re beautiful, he said. i was like wtf… he went away. looked for cameras. there were none. it’s not even valentine’s day anymore. anyway! earlier that day i made a chicken soup and left some for my brother too. he doesn’t live with me, so when i came home he already had left but there was also a bar of chocolate in the fridge from him. double nice thing for today😌

📨 Получено сообщение! ⁨Do u feel u could have done more?⁩ — sure yes don’t know what ur referring to specifically but yes also i feel like i could be doing more, right now. that i’m not putting in enough so in the future ill die in misery without having realized my potential. im joking. anyway either because of my messed up mentality that needs to cling to a certain meaningful path to stay stable (otherwise will keep bombarding me with “not doing enough”) or because i know i could’ve put in more effort, allocated more time and sat down and done it properly but didn’t. either way, thinking much wont help ig. at least, not when thinking is emotionally charged too night!

📨 Получено сообщение! Who are tge people you admire? Do you have any idols that you follow, try to learn from? — yes, certainly. and no, not idols. not a fan of anyone. but i do have a few people around me (excluding media personalities, authors, great people of the past) that i admire quite a deal so i try hard not to disappoint them even if they might mot be putting that pressure or certain expectations directly. Munger had that phrase: "A second idea that I got very early was that there is no love that’s so right as admiration-based love, and that love should include the instructive dead. Somehow, I got that idea and I lived with it all my life and it’s been very very useful to me." 📨 Получено сообщение! ⁨where do you work ? study ? and live ?⁩ — tashkent assist the vice-rector for research at my uni. have a few projects within the uni. yeah, apparently i dont have any intro post here. not like i need one. 📨 Получено сообщение! Your favorite life hack? — well dunno if u can call it a life hack but i really believe that action cures anxiety. at least, that works for me for sure. delaying ur responsibilities only adds emotional weight to ur work, and adds unnecessary time pressure. start with smth, anything, super small, doesnt matter. sometimes when i feel like i cant move or do anything i have to literally tell myself "okay, no go and grab a glass of water. good job. will make u feel better. great, now back to work." might be childish but better than beating up urself. also, try to regulate ur own inner state before u enter rooms. people really do read ur emotions, and the vibes that u carry speak before what u say or do.

📨 Получено сообщение! ⁨is there smn with whom you have little to no filter when talking⁩ — yeah, 1-2 close friends. but interestingly tho i think i might across slightly differently to each of them. previous relationship too, was super comfortable. but yeah we dont talk at all now ahahah 📨 Получено сообщение! do u workout? how often? any diet you follow? i remember you mentioned once that you had difficult relationship with food in the past. can you tell more? — oh yeah, it was love-and-hate relationship that we had with food ahah. i grew up as skinny, never really thought about food and dieting till i hit my teenage years. 14-16yo i gained weight (some events + overall biology ig) i think i was quite close to having an eating disorder, maybe i even had. cuz i remember i'd throw up whatever i stuffed myself with late at night. sensing the line between real hunger vs just anxiety was difficult. dieting didnt help, obviously. what i did tho and what helped the most was going back to how i operated as a child. that is, food stops playing such a huge role in ur life (which it certainly did at that time) and instead becomes just means of sustaining urself + making urself happy sometimes. if i get full, i stop. if im hungry, i eat. no rules. just trying to listen to ur body closer. now i work out like 3 times a week ig? at home tho, gym doesnt fit into my schedule right now. to compensate that, try to walk often, 11-15k steps a day.

📨 Получено сообщение! ⁨Do you have sympathy-feelings towards someone?👻⁩ — yeah for myself, lately 📨 Получено сообщение! ⁨hey u have time to have a chill call about your project anytime soon?⁩ — here? all the people who need to be involved are already working with me. but yeah, soon i will be reaching out to people to conduct interviews with apart from surveys. need to come up with a list of interviewees. lemme know if u know suitable ones. 📨 Получено сообщение! What do you usually do to keep working even when you get tired easily? I feel like I'm low on energy lately even if don't have any specific reason. — hey, i feel you. very context-specific but might be either u spending time with people who take up more of your energy than they should, or you overlooking some basic needs (sleep, eat, social life). low quality sleep, poor diet, prolonged isolation - usually fixing these helps a lot unless there is a deeper issue going on (conflict, with urself or others)

"📨 Получено сообщение! ⁨what’s the point of giving advice if they won’t do any of it anyway? what’s the point of helping if they won’t appreciate it anyway? what’s the point of caring about them if they think you’re selfish anyway? what’s the point of grieving if it won’t fix anything anyway?⁩" — dense message but lemme address the first one, about advice and trying to help. save ur energy if it feels like ur talking to the void. when asking for help, some people seek clarity and solution, others just want to vent out. i had a friend with whom all our meet-ups would be about her problems ranging from family to relationships. and yeah, i'd always end up feeling exhausted at the end as if i took all the burden on my own shoulders, sucking up all those emotions. and the thing is, she never followed any of the suggestions i tried to come up with. not even once. so then i thought she was using these meetings as a chance to let it out. so, stopped trying to help her actively cuz didnt see any of that effort coming from her either. so yeah look at what the person wants and whether its worth giving it all

i couldnt quite extract anything from myself lately to write anything here, even tho was mostly consumed by my thoughts these days. besides, work takes up time. a friend of mine is doing this, so why not ⁨https://t.me/questianonbot?start=1269655786⁩ questions pls some will respond here, some in the bot💖

i think i found the best summary definition of an attractive man: "- comfortable in his own skin - knows where he’s going - and has fun while going there" if he isn’t at least two of these things, you might wanna reconsider. all three is a big rarity ig anyway i found the exact same one of my outfits on pinterest😭 yes, i have both types of those belt chains

the person running a department, a division, or any group of people to that end, should be the one with the highest standards.

“he was worried because to be alive was to worry. Life was scary; it was unknowable. Even Malcolm’s money wouldn’t immunize him completely. Life would happen to him, and he would have to try to answer it, just like the rest of them. They all—Malcolm with his houses, Willem with his girlfriends, JB with his paints, he with his razors—sought comfort, something that was theirs alone, something to hold off the terrifying largeness, the impossibility, of the world, of the relentlessness of its minutes, its hours, its days.”

he was worried because to be alive was to worry. Life was scary; it was unknowable. Even Malcolm’s money wouldn’t immunize him completely. Life would happen to him, and he would have to try to answer it, just like the rest of them. They all—Malcolm with his houses, Willem with his girlfriends, JB with his paints, he with his razors—sought comfort, something that was theirs alone, something to hold off the terrifying largeness, the impossibility, of the world, of the relentlessness of its minutes, its hours, its days.

a random 3am (4 already) thought: if you can feel bad without a reason even when everything’s going well, try feeling good without a reason even when not everything’s going well. “your emotions only last 90 seconds Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor said the chemical rush of an emotion leaves your system in 90 secs. if you’re still angry after that it's cause you're choosing to stay in the loop by rethinking the same thoughts.” - Steven Bartlett

2/2 or leverage leverage is the force multiplier of the world, the principle that allows the small to move the large and the few to influence the many. It’s the idea that a little force, strategically applied, can yield outsize outputs. think of a crowbar prying two boards apart or a pulley system hoisting a heavy load. in both cases, force is multiplied. but again, u can apply this outside of physics too. consider the author who took the ideas in their head, put them in a book, and sold millions of copies, or the Wall Street investor who made a single decision that resulted in billions. if we make it more personal, leverage is about identifying the key habits, skills, and relationships that will impact your life and work most. focusing your energy on the critical few rather than the trivial many. just getting a better quality sleep can be a good example. eight hours of real rest doesn’t just give you eight hours of energy the next day. it sharpens judgment, improves emotional regulation, increases patience, and lowers the threshold at which everything else falls apart. decisions that feel hard on four hours of sleep can feel obvious on eight. and discipline becomes easier too cuz ur not fighting the system but rather optimizing under it. surely, leverage can easily work the other way around too where accelerated progress can magnify mistakes. a small error, applied at scale or at the wrong point in the system, can do disproportionate damage. the list goes on. natural selection from biology. critical mass. exponential growth (rich get richer, success feeds success) or the law of diminishing returns. but models combine. single causes rarely explain outcomes. it's the combination. Coca-Cola's dominance: operant conditioning (sugar + caffeine = chemical reward) + social proof (everyone drinks it) + brand association (billions linking Coke with happiness) + economies of scale (cheaper per unit at massive scale) + habit formation (daily consumption becomes automatic) or 2008 financial crisis: incentive bias (brokers paid for volume, not quality) + social proof ("everyone's buying houses") + complexity (derivatives nobody understood) + leverage (small moves amplified into huge losses) + feedback loops (falling prices leads t forced selling which leads to lower prices) multiple models, same direction equals to lollapalooza effect. u can think of the checklist like a pilot's pre-flight check: the pilot doesn't check the fuel gauge to see if physics is real today. they do so cuz humans forget things. we get tunnel vision. we focus on the most salient factor and ignore others. running through checklist forces you to ask: "im excited about this startup idea (psychology: optimism bias), but what does the math say about market size?" "this relationship feels right (psychology: infatuation), but what do incentives suggest about long-term alignment?" surely u dont need to know it all to lead a normal life. but knowing more than 2-3 of these universal laws (most people stop here) can save from quite a bunch of silly mistakes and overall be able to see through things better. learning how to think > learning what to think. @summernotes