Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

My city and state are now in the aftermath of the Snowpocalypse.

Boil water orders are slowly being lifted across the state, pipes are being fixed or upgrade, and insurance companies are hating their lives right now.

Basically, things are slowly returning to "normal," or whatever passes for normal these days.

Now is not the time for complacency though. A lot of lessons were learned in the past two weeks, so now it is time to think about what mistakes we made, how we can learn from those mistakes, and what actions we can take to avoid making those mistakes in the future.

In the software world, we call this a retrospective.

In the special forces world, they call this a mission debriefing.

So in this week's issue, I am going to do a bit of a disaster readiness retrospective and discuss what preparations I should have made, and how I am analyzing and improving myself because of what happened.

Here is a great checklist of things you should have on hand at all times.

Let's get into it.

You can find all past issues (including this one) here.

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🧠 Wisdom/🥑 Health Thought of The Week: Disaster Readiness Retro

The skill and consistency of the US Special Forces are legendary. They are legendary for accomplishing their missions and creating imminently qualified human beings.

They are able to accomplish this, in part, due to their "five critical questions" they ask their teams after every mission.

These five questions are:

1. What was our main objective? What were we trying to accomplish?
2. Where did we hit or miss our objective?
3. What was the root cause of our result? Good or bad.
4. As a team, what should we stop, start, or continue doing?
5. What are the primary lessons learned?

My personal retro of the snowpocalypse event:

1) What was the main objective

The main objective was to have a household that could handle most disaster events and be livable for at least a week without power or water.

2) Where did I hit or miss the objective?

Hits:

• Solar Panels and Tesla Powerwall allowed for power 24/7
• Had over 1 week of food for all people in the house
• Had around 1 week of water for all people in the house (multiple cases of water included)
• Had portable battery packs for charging devices
• gas stove and gas heating reduce power consumption, prolonging battery life
• Had rock salt to keep the driveway from freezing and to weigh down the trunk of my vehicle so I could more easily drive in snow

Misses:

• No backup power source in case tesla powerwall ran out of juice
• A lack of knowledge for how to connect to the powerwalls local area network when the internet went out (monitoring how much power is left is critical)
• Not enough prescription meds for a prolonged outage
• No quality boots or footwear
• No fire extinguisher
• No proper first aid kit
• No portable radio in case cell service died
• No plan or supplies to seal the house (to keep it warm in case power did go out)
• A lack of plumbing knowledge or tools to fix leaks should they occur
• No long stick matches to light stove with incase of power going out
• Little to no knowledge on how to attach chains to tires for driving in snow

3) What was the root cause of this result?

Honestly, I was over-confident in the solar panels, tesla powerwall, and food/water supplies. These components made me not realize how many critical areas I was lacking in.

I didn't understand how Texas produced or provided power to the state, nor how easily the utility provider could turn off power to my grid to conserve power for the state.

To put it plainly, I was completely ignorant of what survival or preparedness really means, and in some cases I still am. I just don't have the knowledge or experience I feel I need to handle a much worse situation in the future.

4) As a team what should we stop, start, or continue doing?

Start:

• acquiring cases of water over time to store in case of a loss of water
• learning how to hook up a generator
• getting better at cooking random stuff!

Stop:

• focusing too heavily on learning skills that are only useful when the world is running smoothly. It has created an imbalance in knowledge/skills
• Getting complacent about my preparedness

Continue:

• Creating a home that can survive on its own. My household did better than most.
• Learning and educating myself and others
• Strengthening and improving my body

5) What were my key lessons learned?

• I don't know what I don't know
• I only prepared for what I did know
• My knowledge and skills are severely lacking
• My home is better prepared to survive on its own than most homes
• It's time to start closing the gaps in my abilities

Now it's your turn, my dear friend, to do something similar to this. Even if you are reading from a world away, there are some lessons here you can take into your life to help improve the way you look at the world.

💲 Wealth Thought of The Week: Quick comment on the state of Crypto

Hey friends,

Remember when Bitcoin was at $10,000 a coin and Ethereum was at $100 a coin? It wasn't that long ago.

So when Bitcoin drops from $55,000 to $45,000, that is not a big deal. When Ethereum drops from $2,000 to $1,400 that is an even smaller deal.

And finally, when these two assets drop in-alignment with the entire financial market, well that is a massive indicator that traditional big money has a lot of crypto that they are selling in conjunction with stocks. It tells me the uninformed are selling when they shouldn't be.

Anyway, this issue is already pretty long, but if you have specific questions about cryptocurrency, please feel free to email me, message me on Instagram, or scream at me from whatever rooftop is nearest.

I promise I will respond to two of those.

Quote of the week:

In theory, I was ready for a power outage. In reality, I was only partially ready for an extended power outage.

There are a lot of skills I am lacking, and over the next few months, I plan on learning these skills first hand by actually doing them.

Practice, repetition, self-analysis, and self-improvement is a never-ending process.

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.

BlockFi - Earn interest on your crypto. 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.

I've earned thousands of dollars (in crypto) using blockfi the last few years.