Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

Today is a special day.

Today marks the first day of a two-week break in between jobs.

Yesterday was my last day at my old job, and on May 24th I will start my first day at my new job.

I've never taken a break between jobs before, but I can tell you now, one hour into waking up, that it was 100% the right decision.

The wiser I get the more I realize how absolutely stupid the concept of "too busy" is. I hate being busy.

The concept of "busy" is a lie, and is something that American culture, in particular, holds in much too high esteem.

Today I write about that, so you better not be too busy to read 😏.

Let's get into it.

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🧠 Wisdom Focus Tip(s) of The Week: Avoid Busy

This morning was one of the first mornings in a long time that I woke up early just for myself. I have nowhere to be and no manager to answer to.

It's a novel feeling and I like it a lot. Last night when I was reading before bed, I had a strange thought...

"What do I want to do tomorrow? I have no plans, no work, no obligations. I...guess I will just focus on the shit I want to do."

Today I intend to go for a walk, listen to a fun audiobook, and think about life. I will cook a meal I’ve never made before, and realize, once again, just how easy cooking can be when you get out of your own head. 

I might even sit back at this desk and write more in the fiction novel I have been slowly working on for years.

This feeling of freedom and unlimited potential shouldn't happen just because I am switching jobs, and so I kept thinking about this last night and was once again reminded just how insidious a culture of "busy" can be.

Why Busy Is Bad

"More effort is wasted doing things that don’t matter than is wasted doing things inefficiently. Elimination is the highest form of optimization." - James Clear

I've spent entire days at "work" doing no actual work while being pulled in multiple different directions. Pulled into meetings that didn't matter, responding to slack messages from distracted coworkers, and playing an extra game of ping pong just so my coworker doesn't have to think about the 1:1 they have with their manager in a few hours.

Entire days can go by without accomplishing anything because of consistent distractions.

What is worse for me than the distractions, is the weird anxiety I get when I don't have a "full" calendar at work or at home. I start to ask myself questions like "should I be filling this time with something?" and in the past it has really stressed me out.

Also, have you noticed that the busier you make yourself, the more rushed you feel? A calendar so full that you are always a little late?

Not okay. There is no worse feeling than the feeling of being “too busy.” I personally hate it. 

The most productive days I've ever had were days of singular focus. I mean hell, I won my first ever online poker tournament the day after my birthday because all I focused on an entire day was "play smart tournament poker."

Once I wrote 10,000 words towards an earlier iteration of my fiction novel in a morning because that was my only focus that day.

I wish I had a lot more examples to share, but to be honest I haven't been that great about keeping myself from being busy. It's such an easy trap to fall into.

How To Be Less Busy

This won't be a prescriptive list or anything, but I wanted to list out a few things I do to try to reduce the noise in my life so I can focus on what is most important.

1) Define what the most important things are in your life you want to focus on.

For me, they are:

• Fiance, Family, Friends
• Healthy habits
• Writing
• Poker
• Sharing with I've learned

2) Learn to say "no" to shit you don't care about

Hey, friend. Guess what? That thing someone told you that you have to do? Chances are they are full of shit.

Too many of us say yes to things because we don't want to have a short, awkward, conversation about boundaries.

No, friend, I do not want to go to your new favorite microbrewery. I don't drink remember? 🤷‍♂️

3) Speaking of boundaries. Block large chunks of your day for "focus stuff"

A blocked-off calendar is not necessarily a bad thing. It only becomes a bad thing when you have a ton of different things jam-packed together.

This advice might be impossible for you for your day job, but try it on the weekends if you can't do it during the week. Two hours minimum. Block off the time and then let people know you aren't available during that time.

4) Turn off the notifications on your phone, or just put the damn thing on Do Not Disturb.

Your phone notifications are stealing hours of your day. Every day. Hell, my freaking AirPods will forcibly read me an incoming text message when I am out on my walk if I don't have my phone on Do Not Disturb. Seriously.

Do Not Disturb is your best friend. It protects you from so much.

So many of these tips are productivity 101, so you've likely read them before, but are you actually doing these things, though? ARE YOU?

🥑 Health Thoughts of The Week: Priorities, priorities, priorities

We're staying in the same theme in this section.

Health, fitness, nutrition, etc are all disciplines that no one is good at if they are too busy.

How many times have I been "too busy" to cook or to work out? Thousands of times. I wasn't too busy. Cooking and exercise weren't priorities.

When you prioritize something, you always have time for it. You sacrifice other areas of life for that priority.

Are you able to turn your health into that exciting new passion of yours that you become obsessed with?

What if exercise became just like texting that new love interest? How fit would you become?

Make your health and wellbeing a priority.

Do not become too busy for it.

🤑 Crypto Tip of The Week: Do not invest in the "next big coin"

There is no next big coin anymore.

Sure, you can buy Dogecoin and get lucky, but that is called gambling.

Gambling is not a wealth generation tool, it is about having fun.

I play poker to have fun, and poker is far less risky than gambling with something like dogecoin

So if you want to try to have a little fun with these trash coins, then by all means, do what makes you happy. But guard yourself, and don't become lost in the hype.

You will have friends and family that will come to you with "insider information" on "the next big coin." If they come to you with this kind of stuff it is almost 100% a scam. They may not know it is a scam, but it's a scam.

Over 95% of all Cryptocurrencies ever created were scams.

Not kidding.

If you have bought ETH because of this newsletter, then don't buy the hype coins. Ethereum will either consume them or make them irrelevant.

Even Bitcoin will eventually be consumed or made irrelevant by Ethereum.

In this analogy Bitcoin is Myspace.

Ethereum is Facebook. Without the creepy CEO and horrible ethics.

You can quote me on this in ten years.

Quote/Meme of the week:

Have a great week!

This concludes our issue this week, I hope it gave you some perspective or injected a little motivation into your life!

If it helped, let me know! I read every newsletter response I receive, and I absolutely love hearing from all of you. This newsletter is for you, so I need your help to make it as great as possible.

If you'd like to show me some love for writing all this free stuff, you can always buy me a coffee.

More Resources

I will be adding to this section over time as we find resources that will help you all.

• Check out the Wise Owl Store
• All Wise Healthy Wealthy Articles on Medium
• Start your own Sendfox Newsletter
• Free products to help you level up

Crypto Resources

The Bankless Podcast: This is a link to the bankless podcast on Spotify. Start from the very beginning and learn why I am so positive about the power of Crypto and Ethereum in particular. You can find the podcast easily on the internet, but I am linking to episode 1 on Spotify for your convenience.

Buy your first ETH or BTC:

• On Coinbase - this is the easiest starting place for the newest beginners
• On Gemini - Another great option founded by the Winklevoss brothers. They are based out of New York.
• On Kraken - Kraken has a bit of a harder user interface, but they already have ETH staking enabled with the push of a single button.

Earn interest on your crypto

• BlockFi - Currently, you can earn 6% interest on BTC, 5.25% interest on ETH, and a whopping 8.6% on stable coins like USDC. Use the referral code b09f24fd to support the newsletter.

Other tools:

• Argent Wallet - This is the best mobile wallet for Ethereum, Defi, and all things on the Ethereum network, including staking. They even have plans to implement Layer 2 to remove network fees.
• Ethhub - this is a weekly newsletter that lists out all the interesting news, articles, and tweets that have happened in Crypto that week. It's free and awesome.
• Ethdashboard - A simple dashboard to look at various metrics in the ethereum space. I mainly use this as a quick tool to check ETH gas fees.
• Cointracker - this is one of the better tools for tracking all of your various crypto across all of the various wallets, exchanges, etc. You can also use them to do your crypto taxes each year.
• Metamask - this is a crypto wallet that you can access from your browser and allows you to easily interact with blockchain apps online.