In reality we are still super-super early, but already not super-super-super early.

Some would say this is sweetspot for action in terms of risk/reward ratio, right?

I've only started listening to Alex Hormozi (who did quite annoyingly over-saturate internet with his presence over last couple of years) recently and I think he definitely has quite smart and useful ideas about marketing, sales and productivity, regardless of whether he does exaggerate his net worth (I personally try to exclude all thoughts of somebody's wealth from equation, because there are so many wealthy idiots and poor geniuses).

As for separate topic of multi-millionaires not retiring I personally completely understand it as a person who had kind of a mini-retirement and did no work for money for 6 years while being quite young (early thirties).

In myself and other people I knew who were living similar lives I've seen scary cognitive decline which in my opinion can be much more pronounced with age.

So in my opinion commerce for a lot of people is a very important tool for mental and even physical (because they are connected) fitness.

Most — if not all — of my biggest mistakes and regrets over the last 20+ years come down to not doing stuff earlier.

Not getting first sats 5-7 years earlier (obvious).

Not taking psychedelics to improve my biochemistry and mood 10 years earlier.

Not moving from Windows to Mac OS 5 years earlier.

Not getting rid of toxic and/or idiotic acquaintances 10 years earlier.

Not reading powerful classics by Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Lao Tzu, James Allen 10-15 years earlier.

Looking at all these things I was postponing for 5, 10, 15 years I'm a little puzzled.

It seems brain's autopilot is to postpone everything vitally important.

But as Niccolo Machiavelli's quote used in «Revolver» by Guy Ritchie says:

«There is no avoiding war, it can only be postponed to the advantage of your enemy»

Both video games and chemical stimulants like amphetamine and cocaine are actually artificial surrogates for work and natural dopamine it produces — which is why work should zap (why not use this word) you like mix of amphetamine and gaming, not make you chronically tired.

Work and commerce are like a video game, but with real money and for that reason more interesting.

By remind yourself of this view (which I personally had adopted from the start of my working life in 2005) you get tired much less and gain energy from work much more often.

P.P.S.: Self-help author Randy Gage said that in ideal world «As a man thinketh» should be selling for $10 000 - $15 000.

I agree and add that the same is true for «Tao Te Ching».

Yep. If you talk to people, even ones who work in IT and finance and should be qualified (and should already understand Bitcoin and be selling you on it), about Bitcoin, a lot of them start to avoid you like plague! A lot of normies are only now getting into stocks, which have existed for more than a century, and I won’t be surprised if they get into Bitcoin only after it has existed for a century.

P.S.: Also both of these books are very short.

They can be read in a couple of hours.

Actually the audio version of «As a man thinketh» I like the most is the one I found on The Resilient Mind Podcast's feed and it's 55 minutes long — https://theresilientmind.podbean.com/e/as-a-man-thinketh-by-james-allen/

However the catch is that reading «Tao Te Ching» in one sitting is not the best for retention, it's better to make a lot of pauses to absorb the verses while reading it for the first time).

I think the best things I get out of using at this point relatively buggy, slow, user-hostile ecosystem like Nostr are:

1) Feeling of freedom. Not walking on eggshells and being afraid of shadow-bans or deplatforming.

2) Feeling I am on fertile ground which is already producing a lot of growth, not just platform owned by one team and dependent on right and wrong decisions of aforementioned team (like Facebook, X and other old school corporate social platforms).

When I use Nostr, I feel like I'm following the wisdom of «skating to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been».

The two books I recommend and gift to people the most right now are «As a man thinketh» by James Allen and «Tao Te Ching» by Lao Tzu.

Both I read shamefully late.

Both have the rare effect similar to injecting your brain with nootropic drug (like NZT from movie «Limitless»).

Both stood the test of time (first is 100+ years old, second — 2000+ years old)

Both should be re-read multiple times.

I have first read about importance of social circle in forming one's personality and reality in self-help books as a teenager — and even without reading understood it just by looking around.

Yet I have excluded the last two toxic, radioactive people from my own social circle only 9 months ago — less than a year!

Why so late?

As I understand now, it seems that I used to have major problem with co-dependence (and probably still do to an extent) and also was used to and, honestly, addicted to frustration and arguing.

But accumulation of positive factors (better sleep, eating, intellectual diet, management of resources in all forms) caused me to at last break it off with my last two radioactive acquaintances.

As title of one of the manuscripts I'm working on right now says «Everything influences everything».

Probably multiple causes which are hard to weight for sure at this point. Vaccine shots would be an obvious cause, because they are done at birth (as loony and tinfoil hat as it sounds in today's climate, I wouldn't be surprised if in 50-100 years data about their harm will be collected), a lot of artificial elements in environment (from artificial sweets over-consumed by children to lighting and technology) are likely a contributing factor, just like they are likely a contributing factor to a lot of mental health problems in adults. And also modern environment allows for more people to be diagnosed and treated differently instead of just living with their mental problems without knowing and speaking about them, which was more prevalent in the past.

This is a good question and in my case the books that helped me the most WITH cultivating self-control and its important companion, emotional self-regulation, were not necessarily focused on the subject exclusively. I would say «Tao Te Ching» by Laozi and «As A Man Thinketh» by James Allen were the most important texts in this regard (both very short and re-readable). But also both of these skills are products of multiple elements like sleep, nutrition, meditation and others, so books on these subjects, for example «Mindfulness» by Mark Williams and Danny Penman, are useful in developing them.

Yes, it doesn’t change, but the process of generating it in the first place is random (as I understand WoS combines 2 words and a number), unlike Alby where you can claim unused one, like when registering an email address.

Alby (https://getalby.com) lets you choose a permanent lightning address (similar to e-mail address) — which Wallet of Satoshi generates for you randomly. Such wallet generated in Alby can be then imported into Blue Wallet and Zeus (as of now). It works and it’s a good promise of things to come on Lightning protocol.

Probably Wallet of Satoshi (https://www.walletofsatoshi.com) is overall best and most well-liked by everybody. Also Alby browser plugin (https://getalby.com/) might be ok for Chrome and Firefox users.

Same here. Installed and launched Bisq, was scared by confusing interface and never returned to it since.

Agree on Europe's direction, though some individual countries might go in the opposite direction and adopt super laissez-faire policies around Bitcoin and crypto.

I think I will probably learn to use more hardcore platforms like RoboSats (which is P2P and works over Tor) this year just out of curiosity and as a preparation for the times I might need it.

Beating procrastination is tricky - even for a person very conscious of it, who read and even wrote a lot on the subject, like me.

As I mentioned before I was procrastinating starting to use and understand Bitcoin for 12 years - and might have been procrastinating it still if Putin didn't invade Ukraine and bury Russia in western sanctions (and the reasons my brain generated for procrastination were absurd - like for a couple of years I stopped process of buying first sats at the step of choosing the address type - which is a good argument to have only one address type in a mass market wallet, by the way).

How long I was procrastinating learning to play poker is harder to tell, but at least the last couple of years I did it.

A year ago in January I downloaded and watched some courses on Poker and borrowed a poker playing set from a friend - but haven't played ONE game for a year after that!

Right now I'm happy to say I have beat this process of procrastination by finding the lightning poker site https://lightning-poker.com/

It is kind of dead and unpopulated for a lot of hours of the day right now, but it has a cool minimalist interface and has tables with very small buy ins (200 and 400 sats) which is very convenient for a beginner (I think it is better for fun and learning process to play this game for real money from the beginning, and sats are perfect currency for this right now).

I think it will get more popular and maybe even this post will help this.

By the way, if you know and can recommend either other similar poker sites or clients, or just some resources on poker you think are valuable, write them in replies to this post.

Update: Alby browser plugin (https://getalby.com/) lets you choose the lightning address for your wallet. The wallet generated by Alby can be imported into BlueWallet on the phone.

The largest Russian aggregator of these sites is https://www.bestchange.com It includes not only local Russian sites, but also international ones, but a lot of those are restricted by laws of their jurisdictions. I have heard that good international options for buying with no KYC are HodlHodl, Bisq and RoboSats, but haven't tested them myself yet. A lot of info on these services can be found on the YouTube channel BTC Sessions.