Nodira - 101 Ways to Stay Sane

interesting thing is the red dots under “nodira” were just ipad’s spellcheck underlines which the baker got quite literally ahahah 🕊️

altho late, lemme leave this here how my colleagues did my day with happy birthday surprise💘 101 dreams, 1 nodira - like, MAN😭

How we spend our days is how we spend our life, borrowing Angela Duckworth’s phrase. a few days ago i was reading a post on eliminating everything that doesn’t propel you forward - be that cooking or cleaning or anything “small” - and leaving it to people who will “stay small.” immediate reaction - annoyance. infantile posturing dressed up as intellect won’t make you any better. we’ve all heard Peterson’s saying that to bring order to your life you must first start with your bedroom - make your bed. the line is thin tho. but what certainly is true about the small things in your life is that if they make up most of your day, they’ll make up most of your life too. and here you can clearly see why so many young women hit the plateau once they are past 20 - it’s not that they suddenly stop growing intellectually (despite being better off than their male counterparts at school). it’s basically the weight of all the small responsibilities that come with becoming a woman that eats up their time, energy, and life overall. my dad had a favorite statistics. girls develop faster than boys till the age of 18-20 (true). afterwards, not only do boys catch up (true) but also suddenly start outgrowing girls physically (true) and intellectually (em?). no sorry it’s not biology anymore. how many moments did you have when you spent your time on smth completely useless - say, playing or scrolling for hours - and felt the pang of guilt cuz you knew you could’ve spent it on something more purposeful and what would serve the future you? now imagine a girl doing exactly that - all the little serving stuff at home - from one day to another. the difference is, she’s expected to do all these. it’s not about home chores being evil - it’s a simple acknowledgment of how much such work can eat up your time without adding any purpose. it’s endless. they’re called thankless jobs for a reason. and while it’s a heavily layered topic of history, culture, and centuries of social conditioning, there’s a lesson to be drawn. the deliberateness of your day shapes the trajectory of your life. quite literally. how much time a day do you dedicate to deliberate effort - zeroing in on a certain skill or project? how much time a day is dictated by your emotions - frustration, boredom, bitterness? all emotions are welcome, but not all behaviors. how many times did your work suffer because you felt miserable for one reason or another? the point is. how deliberate are your days. how deliberate is your life. because, well, dream life doesn’t emerge out of nowhere does it? @summernotes

i can’t sleep cuz i literally lay on my bed fantasizing about having an imaginary friend - a logistics kingpin who can get you literally anything from anywhere for unreasonably low price. “tell me to get you sand from the middle of sahara, i’ll get it to you within a few days,” i’ve heard him saying in my head. so basically a gray market superhero. then i went to thinking up of ways how he can turn this “tell me what to do” low key Godfather vibes solo service to a full blown international sourcing business. a touch of creativity in connecting the dots in his large network - and boom. i was honestly quite worried about legalizing and scaling up his business. what am i thinking about even😭 help

3:33

one. beware of whom you look up to. they shape not only your perspective but the trajectory of your goals. two. don’t go to bed at 3 am if you have to wake up at 5 am.

what to do if your damned perfectionist side appears too early in the work process so you spend 1 hour obsessing over fonts and sizes instead of just dropping the info? good news tho, i managed to shrink the time from 1 hour per slide to 30 mins ahahah

welcome back to working late nights✨ i missed this feeling also, i honestly don’t get people who say they stopped a certain project or a business because they “didn’t have time” while being just a student with a part-time job. like, there are people who run several businesses no? surely, they delegate, but it’s also about your mental capacity and how far you can stretch it. anyway have a good evening

summer is the closest synonym to heavenly even the quietest days are rich in their warmth

this was beautiful https://youtu.be/EgUE0mA0Fis?si=eP7DB89lH01cc0C5

one thing that got more clear to me lately is that you have to have a high frustration tolerance, borrowing Leila Hormozi’s phrase. you have to learn how to feel frustrated, uncomfortable and even anxious and still continue working. otherwise, you’ll keep on quitting the moment things get tough - and so, not getting anywhere, essentially. usually the problem is rarely that your idea sucks. nah, people just can’t commit to something for long because the initial overexcitement precedes the later hurdles of uncomfortable reality filled with uncertainty and doubt. that’s the filtering part. so, no matter what you do, commit. that’s literally the only way you get ahead of others. many people start businesses. most of them fail. even more of them never try again. which is not to say that you work on a failing case - “kill your darlings” still applies. but that’s not the point for now. you see, even when we started this consulting project - not that big of a scale for now right, but already requiring hours of work - already several of the team members found it exhausting to stay for long. and it’s not even about the workload. yes, you have to stay up at nights analyzing the financial data, come to meetings that last at least 3 hours, join online meetings late evenings. also, individual expected work coupled with team collaboration. but that’s not the problem on its own. what made the difference is - lots of uncertainty. there’s no clear path and detailed tasks you have to complete because each case you work on is unique. you don’t even know in what direction your presentation will go on until half the way through. this uncertainty eats into people’s minds. didn’t expect that even some of the boys i held to high standards would quit midway. in short, learn how to stay comfortable in your frustration and uncertainty. move the feelings aside and keep on moving. that’s probably one thing i’m learning most right now. @summernotes

realized i can’t smile normally if i don't show my teeth - looks creepy so might as well say that i have the mona lisa smile lol

yesterday walking home, was listening to a podcast by Emma Grede, and guest the one Mark Cuban of a kind. and to her question “how did ur relationship with money shape ur early years?” he answers with “i was that kid who would walk around and look at big beautiful houses, listening to motivational podcasts..” and Emma is “NO WAY. u DID?” “yeah!” “omg walking looking at big beautiful houses was such a thing for me.” and i’m like “NO WAY. IT IS SUCH A THING FOR ME” he carries on with “i would look at those houses, enjoy the view and think, what do these people do? what do they do and know and have that i don’t?” and i laughed out so hard ahahah. walking in the wealthy neighborhood behind ours for 1.5-2 hours after work became almost like a ritual for me. the other day we were going down the main road with brother at night, and you can only imagine my brother’s confusion with my fascination: there were absolutely no people walking in that area as the houses there are owned mostly by people who only drive and not walk. there’s something beautiful about those tall white walls with carefully carved out niches and endless trees in well-taken care of gardens. it’s weirdly soothing. it’s quietly appealing. and there’s something to be said about belittling people’s success. there’s a particularly well-known businessman in Uzbekistan that my dad dislikes a lot, calling him corrupted. while that may be true, i nonetheless greatly admire his bravery for going and making hundreds of businesses work. it’s not the hunger for money anymore, it’s a person building things far greater than themselves. if self-actualization isn’t about breaking boundaries, then what are we even talking about here? such people definitely have got a certain amount of determination, audacity and work ethic - what i honestly wouldn’t mind honing either. you simply can’t reach the higher levels if you only demonize those who stand there. or even simply laugh at or belittle others’ achievements, however big or small. “meh, they aren’t that great even. i could do better if i tried to.” yeah, if tried. that’s the difference. or yesterday. came across this video where they were framing the “productivity culture” as overly toxic - by focusing on hard work that much you only end up with a pretty ugly burnout and an empty pocket. like, yeah? if you do that blindly. but that’s exactly where you miss the point? there’s a way to be obsessed with your work with a direction forward in mind. sure, even a week ago i was lying on my bed, staring at my wall and simply crying from exhaustion. because i couldn’t find people that could relate to me and the internal shifts at that moment. because i was having problems with my team and the consulting project. because of, everything. the list can be endless if you want it to be so. but now we’re back to work again, maybe even with a clearer mind. and that’s funny cuz in the podcast Mark continues with “i always knew i wanted to make more money. but i was also careful with regard to my time. i grew up in a family where they taught us to value time. and i would see how my dad would work super hard but never get more than 40k a year. cuz if you do that blindly, you’re stuck” oh, it’s 2:23 right now. 23rd is also my birthday😌

the worst heartbreak is when you pat a kitty on a street and then it starts to follow you but you can’t take it home😭

buying the ChatGPT subscription has been the best investment so far

it also used to be a channel for selling korean products when i had an online store i wonder where my marketing skills sunk into

saw sm1 remembering their memes channel checked on my old channel that i had in 2018s. used to have 11k subscribers. it was fun.

continuing on the documentation of the process over two weeks passed by. there's been quite a bit of progress even though not as fast as one would imagine - along with the first case, the capstones are being laid on the go. for future reference on how to approach things. mind you, i've never been in the consulting world before and honestly have little clue about how to do anything ahah - but that's alright as long as we learn and learn with full attention. sometimes i wonder whether anyone would at any moment point out that i know so little. considering that i'm the youngest in team (which we built with the professor) and still have to manage the executive part. well, you still can be competent i believe - through coming prepared to meetings, through doing research on your own before asking questions, through studying the materials. and through intuition. plus a bit of positivity contagious enough to make others believe too. funny thing is, yesterday i spent 5 hours to learn how to prepare P&L (Income Statement) and Balance Sheet from Trial Balance (the word accrual used to scare me) and also calculate the different types of ratios (another list of words that used to scare me: EBIT, amortization, liquidity. yes, don't judge me) so as to at the end solve the problem examples sent by my seniors. and it worked, despite how dumb you feel at first. we weren't taught these in freshman year although i was more or less familiar with terms anyway. regarding the team, we have close up to ten currently. i'm not quite close with most of them - never had to work together before - but that seems to have little impact on anything yet. probably i'm just lucky that they're competent enough on their own which makes it easier for us all to work together. still it was not all smooth either. you see, some people require very specific individual approach (which is true in most cases but in this, extreme), otherwise working with them turns into a direct entrance to hell. some people are perfectly fine being told to do a specific task - they see it as contribution, not a chain of command. others, meanwhile, are better to be assigned a role with full autonomy over their work to give them the sense of importance and responsibility. sure, it was not a revelation to me - my dad always used to tell me to give people "roles" and areas of responsibility over giving tasks. but most people can easily receive both when needed. but not all. anyway, it took me a solid 1 week to learn to work with 1 person in the team. was it worth it? definitely. professors are in close contact, overseeing the process and guiding. so far so good.

also, look at this cute little creature they visit me every night and wake up next to my window every morning you can’t imagine how soothing it is i love how i send a ton of stuff all at once and disappear for weeks💘

i was going to write a full deep-into-thought post right here right now but yeah, too tired. i need to start writing down thoughts before i run out of energy. anyways. first. you’re not wasting your time. you’re wasting your potential. if you think about it, why would you worry about wasted time if it weren’t for wasted potential? you could keep on spending 4 hours on shorts, 3 hours on hanging out and 3 more on god only knows what AND still not even blink about it. but that’s precisely because you know there’s a chance for growth and exploration that you feel the need to make the most use of your time. so whenever you know there’s work to do and you consciously avoid it - think of what version of yourself you’re missing on and prohibiting yourself from becoming. not of time. it never worked for me to think “gosh i have so little time.” but the fact that i wouldn’t be my best self unless i do these things ahead of me? give me the pen. you may also think of the fact that continually choosing short-lived wants (like, watching reels to stop boredom) can easily extrapolate to your life in general. people who quench their desires whenever those arise - “i want to play computer games, i’ll do the work right after this,” i’ll scroll a little bit only, and promise, will dive full work mode afterwards” - and do so at the stake of what truly matters, are basically building their life in these terms. they’ll be stuck in this way until life hits hard. but the realization that you’ve just wasted your life may come a bit too late. two. it’s always easier to get disliked than to get liked. so humility is crucial - extremely. especially when the stakes are high and you are an ambitious but not so much experienced person in the room of already successful people. you may be the smartest person in the field. you may be confident enough not to think of the consequences of your actions. but that’s silly at best and stupid at worst. let’s say you’re working on a certain project - a business, startup, nonprofit, you name it - and you’re the leader there with several other people working with and for you. the last thing you want to do is to make yourself the focus of the project. that the success of the project is the evidence of your greatness, of your intelligence or wit. no, please. ease. first of all, remove the focus from yourself, otherwise you’re following the shortest path to downfall. second, the more you attach the success of the work to yourself, the more personal failures become too. let the project be the evidence of greatness of your team, of your work and dedication, of your strategy and culture, of your vision and principles. not of you. then people will want to work with you. then people will open doors to you. i’ve seen numerous extremely intelligent people who assume that they can climb up the ladder on their own while letting everyone else see how amazing they are. good luck on that. you won’t get far. intelligent, but not smart enough to read the room, to navigate through it and adapt accordingly. no one cancelled the social skills and emotional intelligence yet. so if you want to ease your journey towards your better future, you may as well start by thinking about yourself less and more about actual work. believe me, it helps. okay, i’ve said enough good night😌