Circle Three 67 / False Alarms
Hope you all had a great week. This week marked the 1-year anniversary of the launch of FirstWatch’s fund. It offered a chance to reflect on the highs and lows of the year.
One of the highs: I was filled with gratitude when writing a list of people that have helped us this year, and I was filled with resolve for how to tackle the next year.
Contents:
brain bites: Psychology & Health
Chaos Surfing
The Shawshank Model
brain bites: Business & Investing
The Crypto Story
brain bites: Technology
What a Token Can Be
Lyric: False Alarms by Lawrence
brain bites: psychology & health
Chaos Surfing. Anne-Laure Le Cunff provides clarity here on thriving in chaotic times, aka “surfing the edge of chaos.” Chaotic times allow us to redefine, reinvent, and respond. Spending much of the last year feeling on the edge of chaos, I found the list useful and have really engaged over the last two weeks to help with this overall sensation.
Make a pact. — show up and focus on output not outcome
Create an anchor ritual. — ground yourself in simple, enjoyable, practical routines
Practice metacognition. — think about thinking instead of blindly repeating
Don’t do it alone. — new connections and new nodes can reshape an organization
The Shawshank Model. From Venkatesh Rao here. I agree with his perspective: he is an advocate for weekly meetings as a way to operate in “maintenance mode” in order to be able to absorb any personal interruptions. He refers to this simply as the “Shawshank model”: a little hammer over 10 years does what a jackhammer for a day cannot.
brain bites: business & investing
The Crypto Story. Where it came from, what it all means, and why it still matters, wrapped up in 40,000 words from Bloomberg’s Matt Levine here. I haven’t finished, but everyone should attempt to read parts. If crypto isn’t going away, we’d better attempt to understand it. Even the crypto-literate can learn something from Sections III and IV.
brain bites: technology
What a Token Can Be. Thread here.
TuongVy Le, Head of Regulatory and Policy at Bain Capital Crypto, described how far tokens have come since the 2017 ICO boom.
“Stubbornly clinging to the Howey test just b/c some people buy tokens for speculative purposes both ignores how far crypto has come and threatens the future of this incredible new technology.”
And here are a handful of the uses she mentions and where that future is headed:
Means of reward for providing a service (ie: ETH validators get paid in ETH)
Representative of value based on market forces, not a centralized team’s efforts
Community membership
Unique representation of real world goods.
Lyric: False Alarms by Lawrence
I saw the band Lawrence at Brooklyn Steel in NY on Friday. To me, a hallmark of great bands is that the audience are bigger fans after a live performance. The fact that people were singing on the way out the doors says all you need to know. I’d highly recommend giving them a listen.
Siblings Clyde and Gracie Lawrence created the band and their musical resumes are deep: Clyde wrote the theme song for Miss Congeniality (2000) at age 6 while his dad wrote the film. Here’s a live performance of False Alarms.
It's been a while since I went and wrote a song like this
Take a good four chords, let 'em loop as is
And if it's still got soul, then I've realized
It still feels good when you simplify'Cause I've been waitin' for a while for a shot like this
But another near hit is another near miss
And I can smell the smoke, but it's no cigar
I feel so close, yet I feel so far
And I'm getting sick and tired of these false alarms, uh
Stay Curious,
Dan