Nodira - 101 Ways to Stay Sane

i live by simple rules. i see a cat. i take a cat. fed it in the office when i came across it in the corridor. anyway. there’s one cool concept i got while listening to a podcast that more or less captures how i prefer to approach most things. almost every personality trait can be broken down into skill sets so much so that you might actually think of everything in terms of skills. you don’t just say “hey, be more charismatic.” the problem with such directive is that it’s a bundled term. it carries too much ambiguity and a certain degree of mysticism around it. that’s not helpful. and that’s not how you train people (be that yourself or people in your team). instead, try looking into the 12 or 15 skills underneath it. that means, when you get into a room, straighten up your shoulders. when you get into a room, take time to greet people in there/introduce yourself to them. look into their eyes. speak louder. when someone talks, nod your head. the list goes on. that way, you can add a lot of new “dimensions” to your existing ones. framed as skills, it becomes learnable, stackable and iterable. it makes traits less distant and de-mystifies vague labels such as charisma, leadership or confidence. or anything else, to that end works in reverse too. if people say what a prick you are or how arrogant you are, think “what are some behaviors that i should change/remove so i become less of a prick?” so it all comes down to behavior. there are just bundle terms that we haven’t yet chunked down into series of behaviors that create the description people call us later. so, you now don’t get to say “oh, i just don’t have X personality”, but rather “i haven’t yet learned these 12 skills.” and you don’t envy people more charismatic than you. you just observe what exactly they do that makes them charismatic and take notes. everyone happy. @summernotes

academic economics needs to get better at very small-scale microeconomics, not some grand inspiring or fancy theories. so - checklists - rough algorithms - forward and backward reasoning - elimination and a little bit of thought training. dunno whether these econ/finance insights are entertaining, but i'm having much fun with these. @summernotes

learning how to think is as valuable as learning what to think. one of my favorites is (again) Munger's forward and backward reasoning and cut-to-the quick algorithms. i will show some examples through two business problems. "We hire business school graduates and they’re no better at these problems than you were. Maybe that’s the reason we hire so few of them," said Munger. why? many graduates with formal education are trained in abstract models, jargon and equilibrium thinking. what's left missing often is casual reasoning, elimination and real-world constraint analysis. that might remind you of the fact that many best people in Investment Banking don't come from finance, economics or business majors (hello to politics, chinese history or sports majors lol). think of Jamie Dimon, for example. the Wall Street legend in finance and banking - with econ and philosophy major. was rejected from his dream uni (Brown), instead went to Tufts. was rejected from BCG and many other big consulting companies at ur age. ended up being the president of Citigroup and eventually the CEO fo JPMorgan. love such plot twists. now, back to the problems. first, easy one, the runaway furniture store case. a Berkshire Hathaway furniture store opens in a new (and strange) American city and immediately becomes the largest furniture store in the world, beating all other big competitors. from the day it opened, the 3200 spaces in the parking lot were full. how? let's strip it down one-by-one: 1. is this a low-priced store or a high-priced store? low. no new store explodes like that on luxury pricing. 2. it must be enormous. furniture is bulky. 3. and what does a big store do? It provides a big selection. so what could this possibly be except a low-priced store with a big selection? Category A success. and here question comes: why wasn’t it done earlier if it were such a success formula? it costs a fortune to open a store this big. so, nobody’s done it before. the end. takeaway: high barriers to entry delay obvious ideas. second problem, slightly more difficult. Les Schwab Tires. there is a successful company, the Les Schwab tire store chain. it outpaces all other big competitors in the US with their own manufacturing (meaning with cost advantage). it also outpaces price killers like Costco and Sears, and decades of competition through which these companies established their dominance. plus, the founder had no formal education whatsoever. the question is again: how? again, let's run the checklist: 1. is there some way that this guy rode a wave? yes. at that time, Japanese tire manufacturers entered and disrupted the US market aggressively, creating a perfect opportunity for Schwab to take advantage of. Japanese manufacturers needed strong retail distribution in the US and Schwab provided exactly that without having to produce anything of their own. 2. and yes, he must have done a ton of things just right. he stacked advantages like bills: - exceptional incentive systems (what Mankiw calls the superpower of incentives) - strong hiring and culture - obsessive execution - he was pretty good at advertising (ofc he was. he was an artist). 3. so, was it one magic trick? nope. Category C success. "extreme competence across many dimensions, sustained for decades." extreme success usually are caused by the combination of a few simple factors: A) extreme maximization or minimization of one or two variables. example: Costco, Berkshire’s furniture stores. 😎 adding success factors so that a bigger combination drives success, often in a non-linear fashion. think of Atomic Habits and how many small extra inputs makes a massive overall difference. exponential growth formula from math should be your favorite one. C) an extreme of good performance over many factors. example: Toyota or Les Schwab. D) riding a massive wave. example: Oracle.

nice beginning of the year aye✨ overall, 2026 feels like getting out of a hangover from 2025.

22:22 is also pretty, 00:00 you shall mark on your own i guess it’s more or less obvious that i avoid anything close to sentimental or what makes me emotional. that includes pretty new year wishes, nostalgic photos and videos, and saying goodbye. just, too overwhelming (i may go as far as scheduling time for crying). easier to poke around with a bit of humor instead. still 2025 was special. hope it was so for everyone. but make sure that 2026 will be even better. make it bolder, brighter and livelier. enjoy working hard. enjoying having fun too. make it yours. will respond to everyone next year!

"if you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason." to quote Ben Franklin behavioral finance, much of interest to and fledged out by Charlie Munger, is an economic theory that ascribes the irrational behavior of individuals making financial choices to psychological factors or biases. Charlie Munger, fyi, was Warren Buffett's business partner, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, and overall just a great mind of 20th century. one of the concepts that appears in Munger's "The Psychology of Human Misjudgment" is the incentive or reward/punishment surresponse. now, you surely must've covered incentives in your economics classes, and how it drives human behavior and whole markets (and how capitalism came to live), but there is still so much fun about it. the quote above also appears in the Poor Richard’s Almanack and Poor Charlie's Almanack as a commentary (recommend to read both books, gems). Munger talks about a certain counsel that lost his job at a major investment bank for failing to persuade his client. this particular counsel chose to press on the moral duty of the client (rightly so) forgetting to also mention that if the client doesn't behave as his consel recommended, he'd be personally destroyed - career, reputation, everything. client ignored the advice, lost his career alongside with the counsel. the takeaway here is, if you want to play the morality game, you must translate the morality into consequences. people are rarely ever righteous on their own, but they do operate under incentive structure. religions do a pretty good job here - both hell and heaven are terrifyingly strong drivers as the consequence is infinite (eternity). in reverse, you'd also want a person to get a benefit from what you are offering - the idea in your mind could be amazing per se, but what does it give to the other person? and perhaps that's why cash register machines were of such a service to humanity and economics. the story goes simply: Patterson, the great evangelist of the cash register, knew quite well that bad behaviors are intensely habit-forming, with his employees constantly stealing money from the store till the cash machine came by. and that's also why people cheat and why they break rules even when they know it's wrong. people don’t violate rules because they don’t know better. it's just that the expected cost is lower than the benefit, especially if you are a person of higher position and with certain advantages that allow you to avoid the punishment. one might think of the Westinghouse's early 1990s real estate loan crisis. Westinghouse Electric Corporation had a lending subsidiary, unrelated to its core business, that wanted to increase profits by expanding lending to outsiders. their accounting model estimated future loan losses based on past experience while the past loans were conservative (low losses) and new loans were high-risk. no one cared tho. the accounting team still decided to project them as safe cuz that would mean immediate money (and guaranteed failure later on). external audits also allowed this crazy accounting cuz the clients paid huge money and nobody wanted to kill the golden goose. “Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.” in the end? billions of dollars lost. and everyone blaming everyone else. not a fraud, just a group misjudgement (or none at all) at a large scale. so accounting isn't neutral. it is a whole behavior-shaping infrastructure. ---- and to end with a more relatable add-on. this all does remind me of Leila's words that the biggest changes in her life came not from motivation, desire or discipline - it was fear packed into a structure. the fear that she’s trading her dream life for the current comfort. or the fear of never getting her desired body figure because a piece of cake seems appealing today. so the question was are you willing to trade that for this? if yes, then no problem. there is absolutely nothing wrong with choosing comfort. you just have got to be honest with yourself about what you really want.

staying at grandma’s (mom side) means preparing the beds at 8pm without even noticing its 8pm cuz everyone is in pajamas😭😭 ——— btw the video just so nicely captures the dynamic between grandma and grandpa and their loving-annoyingly relationship. have been together since freshman year. i just wish i’ll have that type of connection in the future lol

i’m in love with this. any company can stick a “mission statement” on its website these days, embellish it up. but the best make others believe - believe in where they’ve come from and where they are going to. believe that they’re being part of a story.

this week’s outfit check, yay😃 anyway wanted to share one of my favorites of Carl Jung: “The world is full of people suffering from the effects of their own unlived life. They become bitter, critical, or rigid, not because the world is cruel to them, but because they have betrayed their own inner possibilities. The artist who never makes art becomes cynical about those who do. The lover who never risks loving mocks romance. The thinker who never commits to a philosophy sneers at belief itself. And yet, all of them suffer, because deep down they know: the life they mock is the life they were meant to live.” so yeah to the fullest, with everything.

one dream come true: buying mom a tour ticket for her birthday✨ cuz yeah, she’s never been abroad before. and we promised with my brother to each other that we’d be the first ones to send her abroad. yay. why else make money huh😭

continuing on this first, this is how i look after 20 mins walk home. two, if at times you feel like a tangled-up bag of a mess, then most probably you’ve hit the occasional dysregulation wall. and self-regulation, quite fortunately, is a trainable muscle. say, someone says or does smth disrespectful and frustrating. now, what you certainly don’t wanna do in this situation is reacting immediately. you see, you can either be reactive or responsive in daily life. the first means letting external events hijack your emotions and outsourcing responsibility to the sender; the second is having enough internal control to choose your response rather than being driven by the momentum. so, don’t do anything just yet. give yourself some time - a few hours, 24 hours or no response altogether. don’t text, call, or start arguing immediately trying to prove how wrong they are. first, analyze it yourself (were they really disrespectful or is it more about your own unresolved insecurities that so quietly seep into your perception? does this case really require a response? what’s your stake in here? etc), or even before that - let yourself feel whatever you feel. really. don’t suppress it. let your body have the taste of it otherwise you are going to drag that emotion around for longer than you’d wish to. don’t suppress but don’t act on emotions either, obviously. and only afterwards, when you’ve had some gap in between to freshen up your mind with time and space, can you respond to the offender. physical activity is your number one friend. both for the body and the mind. you can’t imagine how many hours i can walk when i feel like i am not thinking straight. 10-30 mins workout is an amazing option too. you feel lighter, mind clearer and overall more under control. run, weightlift, ropeskip or simply walk. a great cure for a restless mind. and one of my favorites that helps me personally a lot is going more quiet. listen to music less (or don’t at all), and if you do, go for smth calmer and without lyrics. don’t consume too much online. swap your social media time for reading - again calmer, more focused and frankly more satisfying too. and yes, you might be in touch with fewer people but don’t forego social interaction altogether. just be more selective, if needed. @summernotes

ig some people weren’t wrong when they said that i still have a childlike face😭

mom is literally the only person who’ll put your photo on her profile the moment you send her anything that she finds cute

if anyone wondering what to get for me as a new year present, a locket will be highly appreciated😌 but okay recently was listening to hormozi's podcast. i think i already wrote somewhere here once that i really like how leila defines emotional maturity. in essense, it's how fast you recover from a setback rather than how deeply you feel that. for a bigger picture, you can go even more structural with that and break down mental toughness (for the lack of a better word) into four components: tolerance, fortitude, resilience, and adaptability. that should give you smth more tangible to work with. first, tolerance, refers to an individual's ability to endure hardship before their behavior changes. high tolerance means enduring significant challenges without reacting, while low tolerance means you lose your composure pretty quickly. again, it's not about feeling or not but instead whether this particular challenge affects your behavior. fortitude, meanwhile, measures the degree of behavior change after reaching one's tolerance threshold; it reflects how excessively one might react when faced with hardship. the contrast in response can range from a slight bad mood to getting into fight with everyone around or getting drunk and doing smth stupid. next. resilience refers to how quickly one can return to a new baseline after experiencing a setback. the measure here is the time it takes to bounce back - whether it's five minutes of shouting or five years of being mentally crushed. if you imagine fortitude as how low a line in a graph can go, then resilience is about how soon that line gets back to its original point. this one is perhaps the easiest to improve if you don't know where to start: you might literally break down crying in the evening but if you are fine in the morning getting back doing what you ought to do - you're still good to go. finally, adaptability. what's your new baseline after recovering from the challenge? after the low point, where does the line go? is it lower than the original state (low adaptability)? does it return to the same point (moderate, no change)? or does it actually grow higher because you extracted smth valuable from the experience - used it to your advantage to grow as a person instead of letting it crush you? that's high adaptability. so, this all points to the fact that getting emotionally stronger is not one abstract trait but literally a skill that you can break down and develop over time. the past few weeks were slightly more difficult than usual for me, and there are days when i literally don't know how to react or soothe myself, even tho i know i should stay strong to be actually the one supporting my friend. but no one gets away without being thrown some shit here and there in life, right? the point is. you'll probably feel terrible a lot of the times. you can't control that. but whether you let that change your life trajectory is up to you. night.

I’m sure many of you have heard about the tragedy at Brown University. One of the two students who was killed was an Uzbek freshman, MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. I’m forwarding a fundraiser to support his family with expenses. Any support or sharing is greatly appreciated 🙏 https://gofund.me/360c53a86

📨 Получено сообщение! ⁨Why didn't you apply abroad after graduation, or, if you did, then why didn't you go?⁩ — ahah, i did apply. got waitlisted by some ivy leagues. accepted with full scholarship to 2 universities. all in the US. one, Dad. we have quite a complicated relationship with him. from one side, he’s very supportive of all of my initiatives (as long as he says there’s good ROI, at least). from another, he is very stubborn with certain “rules” like being home before it gets dark and going abroad only after bachelors because he believes young minds are very perceptible and subject to influence by liberal western thinking. i love him a great deal, but he’s difficult. two, i was quite naive myself too. i think the only achievement that i had under my belt while applying was my first book Behind the Geniuses. the essays? forced, stretched out a bit too far, too much emphasis on what happened. but whatever. i do think you should push till the end when the goal matters a lot - doors get closed, but you can also still try to go and open them. but i also stopped thinking in black and white. success is never linear. focus on writing your story rather than chasing what sounds pretty.

📨 Получено сообщение! ⁨whats your opinion about humanities, I mean major.⁩ — ig you can pursue that if you’re planning to stay in academia world. become a professor, for example, if we’re talking from career perspective. but if, say, you’re planning to become a writer - most of these people are self taught. you don’t study how to write. you simply write. 📨 Получено сообщение! things you value in people ? — if it’s from work perspective, then i was just talking about it with my colleagues today: there are people who crash or collapse under pressure, and then there are those who can still operate pretty well or even excel under pressure. i’d rather work with the latter. if we talk about values overall. then being authentic. those who have fully embraced who they are and are not ashamed of that but rather use it to their advantage. interacting with such individuals is easier and overall i think they’ll go far in life. this is different from getting complacent and refusing to work on yourself. sure, you can always produce a better version of yourself. rather, i’m talking about those special color mixes that make you unapologetically you. this can range from your identity (being Uzbek) to your physical features (hair structure, face shape etc) to your personality ofc

📨 Получено сообщение! ⁨I — and most probably other subscribers too — want to hear that story, so could you tell it if it's not personal or anything else. I don't wanna be rude, if you don't want to, that's fine sis.⁩ — can you clarify what story you mean specifically? overall? 📨 Получено сообщение! ⁨also, have u heard about a Bechdel test? i loved it. it's so frustrating when people, especially girls, expect all a woman can offer is her love, beauty and a child, maybe.⁩ — just looked up - and thanks, looks quite useful ahah. have run through my memory of all the books i’ve read so far. glad that most of them pass this test easily✨

📨 Получено сообщение! ⁨so it means probably u r will not continue ur studies at CAU from next year?(⁩ — most probably yeah. you never know tho, this place has given me some good experiences too. being close to people in higher positions and seeing how they operate. some common traits between them, both good and bad. talking of experiences. literally today: - found out that Forbes Uzbekistan licensing was approved (i’ll ask my colleagues to keep it secret from others at uni for now:)) why i’m happy is that i was actually the one making the draft proposal and pitching presentations for the Forbes team. after two months of negotiations, we get the agreement. - also got two people hired for my project. like, officially. yes, previously too i used to lead teams of people - be that for 101 Teenagers of Uzbekistan or even that Media Park consultaning project. but those were on volunteering or internship basis. now tho, providing job positions as a project lead💖 btw i’m in mountains right now - connection here is horrible. so, will be responding with pauses