Optional Recommendations
All recommendations about your personal life, health, finances, work, business, targeted at a wide audience, are by default optional. All sorts of books, public speeches of convincing dudes (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram), moralizing in the style of "if you do this, you will be happy" and other courses of bullcrap - none of this can be taken seriously in its entirety. To read-listen - okay; to take a closer look at something you liked - okay; to start strictly following all recommendations - not okay.
The reason is simple: recommendations targeted at a wide audience cannot be applied to everyone to the same extent, no matter how logical they may sound. Conversely, from the received stream of information, everyone has the right to take only what suits him personally, or not to take anything at all.
For example, someone in a smart book writes that smoking is harmful, you need to quit urgently, and then you will thrive. Sounds logical? Seems so. But how to quit - is not written, so unfortunate smokers, who have taken this recommendation to heart, will throw out their last cigarettes and IQOS, will suffer for a week, get nervous, make idiotic decisions because of this, and in the end will smoke again, but only with an intensified sense of guilt.
Or you can hear a recommendation to exclude sugar from your diet. Everyone will understand this in their own way: someone will switch to chicken with buckwheat (or may even go off the rails), and someone will simply stop putting sugar in tea. Someone will then tell euphorically how much easier and happier life has become, and someone will become the saddest person in the world because candies were the only joy in life.
Or something convincing about finances. Save a hundred rubles every day, invest in investments, gain financial independence, blah-blah-blah. Does anyone take into account that your savings will be eaten by inflation, the money market will collapse one day, and your financial independence will turn into hell if you are not stress-resistant enough? No.
But individual recommendations are a different matter. You went to a doctor with a specific problem, the doctor examined you, told you what exactly you need to do in the current situation. You went to execute, came back a couple of weeks later, told about some new problems that arose in the process, the doctor thought and issued updated recommendations.
The same goes for consultants. You gave a specialist money, showed the situation, answered a ton of questions, received some set of instructions, met again in a week, told where it was fixed and where it broke, received a new batch of instructions, went to do. And so until enlightenment.
Long, expensive, boring, but at least with some guarantee that changes will stay in life for a long time and make it a bit better.
The Dilemma of Attitude Towards Couriers
Deliveri Club, Yandex.Food, Yandex.Lavka, Samokat couriers and other foot-bike workers find it objectively difficult to work in winter (at least in Moscow). There are many orders, and it's freezing outside. You watch as they navigate through ice, mud or snowdrifts on their bikes, sliding their wheels, and your heart bleeds at the realization that they are doing this all day for a pittance.
And you don't understand whether to pity them, praise them, envy them, or remain indifferent. I have a problem with the latter, so I need to decide.
On one hand, it's a pity because you automatically compare it with your own social position. You want to liberate them from the slavery of the square backpack. But if you free them all, no one will bring me home a KFC chicken or groceries from the store, I'll have to go myself.
That is, on the other hand, couriers are great because they help me save time and spend it on my work or other cool things. Therefore, it's worth pitying them just as much as an employer pities an employee for their work: not at all.
On the third hand, they are constantly moving and burning calories, while I have to go to a special place and pay money for similar activities. Couriers do this in (relatively) fresh air and get paid, while I sit in a chair all day and don't see the light of day. So, you could even envy them.
It's a tough situation. I still feel sorry for them, can't help it.
I wrote a program that made me healthier
Periodically, due to tonsillitis, I need to visit an ENT about twice a year: for check-ups, treatment, and other minor things.
The problem is that there is only one ENT in the local clinic, and their schedule is always fully booked two weeks in advance.
That is, if you want to book an appointment through EMIAS (Unified Medical Information and Analytical System of Moscow), it's not possible. You need to constantly recheck the schedule and "catch the gaps".
A couple of weeks ago, I managed to catch such a gap, came to the appointment, they prescribed a course of procedures for me, which meant another 4-5 visits, and the next appointment was only in 10 days.
What to do, I booked it.
But the next morning, I accidentally found out that a "gap" was available that day, and I immediately booked it. As a result, I managed to visit the ENT two days in a row by appointment, which is usually impossible.
Читать далее