I managed to climb out of bed a bit early this morning and get in a short workout while I listened to a bit of this Knowledge Project episode with Randall Stutman on the essence of leadership. There’s a really powerful moment in there that that talks about the one thing that everyone wants: a fan. He tells the story of Tiger Woods’ famous shot on the 16th hole in the final round of the 2005 Masters, and says that the crowd was yelling so loud and that the earth was shaking, and that the reason that the ball finally fell over the lip of the cup after sitting there for 2.2 seconds was that the three thousand people that were there watching wanted it to go in.
Everybody wants a fan.
It stuck with me the rest of the day, and I tried to keep it in mind when I was dealing with my kids and my coworkers.
I spent most of the day re-reading the Messari Crypto Theses for 2021, taking notes so I could share some thoughts on Twitter and possibly in a longer form here. I actually canceled my LinkedIn membership today and signed up for Messari’s Pro service, I know their analysis is the best in the industry, but this report really sealed the deal for me. I think I’ve been spamming everyone with it, I think it should be widely read.
I’m taking notes in RemNote, my poor man’s version of RoamResearch. I’ve got a feeling like I’m missing out on something without Roam, but I’m going to stick RemNote for now. I need to save all the cash I can right now — it’s Christmas, and those credit card bills are going to be due next month. Just kidding! I purchased everything using points I saved up over the past year, and haven’t paid out of pocket for anything
I also touched base with Dr. Mantis from the PRIA project, he’s working on a new one, and I got him to share the smart contract code for it. Haven’t looked at it much yet, but we’ll see if I can decipher it. More to come on that.
I continue to do some small “explorations” on Kraken with leveraged trades, feeling out how things work. My first couple BTC orders have been slightly off, playing with my entry before crashing straight through to my stop loss. I may need to recalibrate things. I have ETH and XRP (I’m so ashamed) positions that are still in play, so I’m going to see how things go so I can ge a sense of the fees while I’m dealing with a small position size. I’m tempted to go in on BTC for a third time, but I’ve already struck out twice this week and can’t enter any more positions until I close or protect the two that I have open now. Those are the rules.
The one thing I didn’t do today was work on Ether Auction. I think I’m probably experiencing a sense of overwhelm with the project — the dip — as Seth Godin calls it. So I just need to take some time and plow through and make a little bit of progress on it. I was actually reading over the Yearn.Finance repositories to see how they have their website setup, and I took away some patterns from there that I may be able to put to use without having to pull another framework into the project. I just need it to work well enough. The perfect is the enemy of the good, as they say.
And one more note that has me pleased. Elder has finally seemed to embrace playing the piano. I she’s been practicing Santa Claus Is Coming To Town for a week or two now, and was bragging to her teacher that she can play it, and is going to perform it for her class over Zoom next Thursday. I’m so proud, and glad that she is sticking with it.
I myself am sloooowly making my way through Claire De Lune, and after a bit of stagnation over the past week, have been working my way through two of the hardest measures in the piece. I’ve been practicing it daily for less than three months right now, and have been drilling these long, flowing runs over and over. Just doing it day after day after day, until it becomes subconscious. Automatic. I know I can do it, cause I did it with guitar after so many years.
I suppose programming is the same. I keep at it, and I should get to the point where these languages and frameworks become invisible to me, and I can focus more on the program flow and the bigger architectural pieces.
Maybe then it won’t seem so overwhelming. I just got to keep grinding.