The great online game, writing books and crypto
Edition #048
Hey friends, happy Sunday!
This week I've been getting back to work after a mini-hiatus. The break gave me a chance to step out of the day-to-day routine and evaluate where I want to go next.
One thing that stood out to me over the last few weeks is how much inertia impacts our daily lives. Everything we do is the result of a decision a past version of ourselves has made.
If we don't intentionally step outside our daily lives it can be difficult to make any real change. It's much easier to follow our current trajectory than it is to change direction - even if that change is for the better.
In the modern economy, the game you choose to play will likely determine how you spend the next 10+ years. It determines the people you interact with, your lifestyle, your earning potential, and how much leverage you can build.
As Nat Eliason puts it "I think the goal of any career search is to find a sufficiently lucrative infinite game you could keep playing indefinitely."
But as a society, we pay so little attention to choosing the right games to play. It's not taught in school, there are no books or concrete answers.
Finding the right game to play isn't something you can do in an afternoon, or even a weekend. It takes time, you need to learn, explore, test things and quit things until you stumble upon what feels right.
The period of uncertainty while your figuring things out is natural, it's not a sign you need to rush a decision. Instead take your time, after all the game you decide to play determines a lot.
If you haven't taken some time away from the noise of Twitter, the news, and your inbox recently I'd highly recommend taking some time to reflect.
Here are this weeks finds:
I.
🎮 On the great online game
(Article)
🌄 Following on the theme of games this essay from Packy McCormick perfectly encapulates what it means to play the great online game.
In the post he talks about the serendipity you expose yourself to by participating in the game, how "Sharing ideas on Twitter might get you invited to a Discord, your participation in that Discord might get you invited to work on a new project, and that new project might make you rich."
I've experienced firsthand this serendipity at play from making a video and a website then sending a tweet which lead to working on projects I couldn't even imagine just weeks before.
The best part is that the great online game is still early, new tech like cryptocurrencies, smart contracts and the blockchain are paving the way for the next iteration of the great online game.
II.
📚 On how James Clear is writing his next book
(Article)
📌 James Clear is working on his next book, and in this interview he pulls back the curtain sharing how he is approaching the daunting task of writing a book.
My favoruite nuggets of wisdom from this interview are his thoughts around positioning and compression.
James talks about how Atomic habits "Could have been a whole book about deliberate practice, in which I talked about habits. Instead, it was a book about habits where I talked about deliberate practice." This subtle difference in framing has a huge impact on the amount of people the book reaches.
As he says "I don’t need to convince you that habits play an important role in life—just by virtue of growing up in society you know that having good habits is favorable, and having bad habits is unfavorable."
My favourite piece from the interview focused on packaging and positioning your work with a simple tagline.
"The second thing you need for packaging and positioning an idea is to compress the high-quality work you’re doing into a good, simple tagline or subtitle. You want something that word of mouth can latch onto and help drive."
Positioning and compression is easy to overlook when creating content or building a business but communicating effectively is 95% of the job.
III.
💊 On taking the crypto pill
(Article)
💻In this article Drew Coffman shares his experience going from knowing nothing about crypto to taking a job in the industry in under 6 months.
If you're looking for a starting point into web 3.0 this is a fantastic place to dive-in but perhaps the most interesting takeaways from this article are Drew's thoughts around community and education companies in the crypto/DeFi space.
He talks about how web 3.0 has the ability to align incentives for every side in the community/education space through tokens:
"I’ve always been wary of gated courses, cohorts, and communities that tell you that by paying a certain amount of money you'll gain access to knowledge and people in a way that you otherwise couldn’t. These, in my experience, almost always disappoint.
They look enticing from the outside, but once you're in you realize that it's just a structured version of what you could have learned on your own — and of course, there's no refunds. In web3, if you join a token-gated community like FWB and realize that it isn't for you, you can just sell the coins back and walk away. This means that a community can't rely on shady tactics and an enticing outer wall to get you to join. It actually has to be good!"
This shift creates incredible potential, something that's already happening in communities like Bored Ape Yacht Club and Shiny Object Social Club but to me the real potential is when communities and businesses focused around other topics (not just crypto) start to adopt this technology, creating a win-win for everyone involved.
One interesting idea
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
End note
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Have a great week!
- Stephen