MC10 | Bankless Consulting
As 2022 quickly comes to an end, it is time for reflection.
Many things happened this year. Some exciting stuff, some really exciting stuff and a few sad moments.
Looking at what's coming next in my life (hint: the best!), I spent a few minutes thinking through eleven personality traits I would like to develop in the decade ahead.
This is going to be a short personal post.
No crypto, no business, nothing more than me reflecting upon areas of my character that I want to strengthen, regardless of how good I feel about them now.
I came up with eleven areas of my persona I want to further analyze and develop over the next 10 years.
It was an interesting exercise. It took me a few minutes and I probably learned something. I recommend you do it for yourself too.
These are my eleven.
Curiosity: I have always been a curious kid. In a way, I'm lucky that curiosity comes natural to me. When something piques my interest, I feel compelled to learn more about it.
I’m not afraid to ask questions, sometimes too many, and go into experiments that make no sense, just to satisfy my curiosity.
As we enter the new year, I want to keep the fire on: stay curious, never dampen the will to learn, go deep into weird interests, read and reflect on subjects and people that get my attention in a way I just can’t ignore.
Patience: I'm quite bad at this. Instinctively, I’m impatient: I have low tolerance for mistakes, either my own or others’. I do not easily accept the fact that things might take time to get done and I want everything ready here and now.
Admittedly, with time I got better at patience, especially since I became a parent. The experience of raising a child teaches patience like nothing else in this world.
I value patience because it helps.
In his “Captivi”, Roman playwright Plautus writes: Patience is the best remedy for every sorrow. And in the next 10 years I want to find strategies and tactics to improve at it.
Commitment: I am decent at committing to projects and people, but what happens at times is that I commit to too many projects and too many people. Over-committing means that I do a sub-optimal job (sometimes, bad!) at handling the tasks I own or devoting energy to the people I care about. My time and energy are finite, after all.
This is a hard lesson for me to learn: I want to improve my ability to commit to the right things and the right people, avoiding distractions that do not help me to progress.
Presence: another difficult one for me. Even this f***in’ post talks about stuff that should happen within the next 10 years. I do not enjoy thinking about the present much. Because I know I benefit from establishing a connection with the present, sometimes I force myself to gratitude. This helps, but it’s not really a habit of mine.
I am constantly projected into the future: my mind doesn’t stop thinking of new ideas, improvements, the next projects. When I accomplish a goal, I am quick at ticking it off and coming up with the next one. This is both a blessing, and a curse. It keeps me alive, but it also gives me a sense of anxiety for what's yet to be accomplished, which is inevitably a lot.
Focus: in my university days, I could study any complex subject without getting distracted for hours straight. My attention span was high, I could focus easily at will.
Now, many years later, my ability to focus for a long uninterrupted time is not as good as it was, and I blame the internet for that! My life is full of things that compete for my attention, especially (but not just) in the digital world. This makes it hard for me to keep concentration elevated for a sustained period. Meditating and reading books (ie, forced meditation) has helped me deal with this challenge. I'm still not as good as I used to be, but I'm improving.
Self-sovereignty: it doesn’t just work for your money, but your persona too. Self-sovereignty indicates the ability to choose the direction of your life, and being the exclusive authority over your body and mind. We get pulled into all sort of things: follow this or that trend, submit to this or that government, subscribe to this or that service, listen to this or that leader. It's time to elevate ourselves so we can be helpful to others. It sounds counterintuitive, but you cannot be helpful to society at large if, first, you are not helpful to the guy next to you. And you cannot be helpful to the guy next to you if you cannot help yourself. Self-sovereignty means regaining control, so that you are able to do bigger and better things for you and others.
Competence: whatever your field(s) of choice, you can never reach a level where there's nothing more to learn. It's important to keep curiosity alive (see point #1) and become a master at learning new things. Perfecting your craft is essential. Learning about learning is the single most valuable skill we could teach ourselves. Kids today will have to nail it, because who will not be able to keep the pace of progress will be left behind. And brutally so.
Nobody cares about how hard it is, how much you’ll have to study, how long you’ll have to practice, and how many times you’ll have to fail: staying competent (not being competent) will be non-negotiable.
Spirit: if you don't care about you, nothing else matters. Body, mind and spirit all work together to make the humans we are. While the cooperation between body and mind seems quite straightforward, the spirit part took me a while to understand. I am not naturally a spiritual person, not particularly religious either: in fact, I always thought all that stuff was a pile of bullsh*t. However, with time I came to appreciate the benefits that come with introspection, big picture reflection and coming to realization that we are not just flesh. Choose your own flavor: it can be a god, God, the Holy Spirit or an animal, but try to find a super-human meaning. I know I want to improve here.
Independence: I often joke with my family that, to survive, I only need some food, the sun, the sea, and an internet connection. That's a joke, but less one that it sounds.
I have many interests: very few of them require much stuff. I moved around too many times in my life to value objects. I value experiences, I like doing, learning, dealing with people and, above all, I like creating. I am not always good at it, but who cares: I just love the process.
Staying light “outside” helps me with staying light “inside”, and gives me a level of mental safety that many people undervalue. If all you need is within you, who the f*** can touch you?
Calm: I said before I'm not naturally patient. Well, it turns out I'm also not naturally calm. I jump the gun often, I fire up quickly, I swear a lot. While I'm probably never going to fix the swearing part, I want to improve on my ability to keep calm through turbulent times. A bit of it is genetic, but surely a lot of it is deliberate practice. I recognize I have improved a lot in the last decade, so I am particularly excited to see what I can achieve in the next one. A calm mind is powerful: it allows for clear thinking, more accurate decision-making and more precise actions. Calm instills confidence, in you and the ones around you.
Risk: talk about a real challenge. How to balance taking risks with being calmer? Taking a risk to achieve wild objectives requires some balls the courage to face uncertainty. No matter if you are starting a business in crypto, riding a superbike on a race track, scuba diving with sharks, the outcome counts less than the process, because through our risk-seeking endeavors we become more resilient, confident and skilled.
I was born in a culture that does not celebrate risk. Predictability and comfort was valued more than randomness and creativity, so I had to work a bit on myself to change that mindset. I’m energized to go harder on this path of personal growth in the next decade.
For the next ten years, I want to develop techniques to improve across these eleven dimensions.
Likely, I won't be able to focus on each trait every day, but keeping tab of these 11 themes will help me steer my inner self in the right direction.
Now that my personal north star is set, I recognize that my priorities may change in the future. It’s possible. Perhaps get ready for a yearly post about this.
Now, a question. What about you? Have you ever thought of the things you want to develop for yourself in the next decade?