The psychology hacks I applied to learn Crypto, AI & Blockchain
Updated: Aug 13, 2021
I am a Creative, first. A creative who comes alive resolving growth with small business owners.
Give me a box of coloured markers, a whiteboard and a business problem to solve and I literally squeal with excitement.
My Personality Profile?
In the DISC personality profile approach, I’m 65% D, 35% I, with a mask shift of less than 2%. So I'm pretty much, WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get)
In Human Design, I’m a Generator
Meyers Briggs has me plotted as an ENTJ
My dominant colour is Red, closely followed by Blue if you use Personality Colours.
Basically, I’m physically made for the Creative side of the world, and not necessarily someone who wants to start coding, doing law, auditing anything or learning a-la-kindergarten level about Crypto, AI, Blockchain.
It just felt so daunting.
If you can relate, chances are this post is for both of us.
I wanted to upgrade my understanding of Crypto, AI and Blockchain (Web 3.0) because it’s not that different from 20 years ago, when we were all getting our heads around Social, Mobile and Cloud - Web 2.0.
Web 3.0 is here. It’s happening - and getting your head around it is more of an act of self respect these days. Fears be dammed.
To shift the angst and overwhelm, I applied 5 techniques, and committed to completing 4 tasks.
To prevent me from getting lost in black/white, good/bad, right/wrong tangents, I wrestled myself to interrupt two of my own patterns, and then focused my attention in on one key distinction.
Managing the Angst and Overwhelm was about
reminding myself of these 5 things:
1. Where there is doubt and uncertainty, there is fear. I. had all the doubt, all the uncertainty.
2. ‘Adapt, then grow’ - this is a mindset that I chose to sketch out in my notepad - I know, I know this quip - but had I taken the time to embody it for this climb? No! Then after a 10 minute sketch and brainstorm to see it in all its glory, I reminded myself that growth is uncomfortable, contains friction - and quite frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
3. Comfort Zone analogies - [enter your fave version here]
4. Continuous evolution is how this universe works - resistance is futile. So what is my problem? I dunno either. But I have definitely shifted, from feet dragging, to proactive student. Yay Me!
5. Linear Thinking and Exponential thinking. My brain loves linear thinking - my brain thinks exponential thinking sucks. Thus, I got to invite my wee brain to unlearn, and soften - and relearn… again as it recognises the limitations of Linear Thinking, and the benefits of Exponential Thinking
And then I committed to doing these 4 tasks:
1. Industry Landscape - this space is a category - so getting lost in applications within this category didn’t feel helpful when first setting out. Thus I took a few days to organise a Glossary (for 6 year olds) you can find that over here. This helped me see the bigger picture - all the moving parts - at least at this gps point on my proverbial mountain climb. And it helped. A lot.
2. Then I subscribed to some very cool writers on this subject matter over at Medium and committed to doing 90-Minutes of reading and research, daily. I’m kind of in love with Medium these days.
3. Then I made use of my river walks by popping in some earphones to take in a podcast each day on the subject matter. I had a 4 false starts before I finally found a podcast that I wanted.
4. I went a step further recently, by blogging about it - to increase my ability to retain the information I was consuming by sharing it in a coherent, structured way. This also means I'm interviewing people x2 to x3 a week on the subject matter. So kind of fun.
What I am not doing:
Is outsourcing my homework to my Web 3.0 mates, hoping they can give me the bottom line on topics and those short cuts. At least not yet - I have no foundation with which to receive and hold said short cuts.
Avoiding the rabbit holes of black/white, right/wrong, good/bad polarities saw me put a pin in two of my go-to human patterns:
1.Pattern 1 - Entertaining the human need to polarise this topic into buckets I judge to be right or wrong, good or bad. Basically polarised black and white thinking.
2. Pattern 2 - Being scared. I’m afraid of CAB - of the always on, always listening, no freedom, no privacy dystopia. And my fears are baseless - I actually don’t have enough information to validate or dismiss said fear.
Humans hate fear, which is generated by an uncertainty that we can’t control. You know it, I know it! So, this human is off to sort out her uncertainty by educating herself. Simple.
And what I don’t need, are my beliefs and opinions getting in the way of me understanding what the hell is going on.
Third? Recognising the distinction between Category and application.
What I mean about categories vs applications is this:
Photography is a category.
Kodak was an application that showed up in this category. Remember 35mm film?
Smart phones is an application of photography.
Photography classes is an application of Photography.
I first wanted to understand ‘Photography’ the category and get my head around the entire industry landscape made up of all the different applications, before I made any time to wax lyrical about an application, like Kodak, missing the innovation boat, highway, plane and train. Applications of this category are the (important) details, minutia that will come after I have a solid foundation of the Category.
This article is for informational purposes only, it should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.
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About Shannon Eastman
