If you're anything like me, the first thing you did today was related to crypto in some fashion. The vast majority of most mornings, I wake up to see notifications about price changes or an incoming transaction from one of my online selling pages. If it's not that, it's usually a friend or client messaging about where to invest next or what's a good project to look into, but either way it's almost always crypto related.
For me, that's ideal, because a lot of my day to day work involves cryptos and the related technology, but sometimes it can be a little much. I counted, and during a particularly volatile day, I received over 100 notifications about cryptos alone. It was a stressful day anyway, I had to field loads of emails from concerned clients, phone calls from people worrying about the safety of their money, and then I had my own money to worry about! Now, usually that's fine, I can get equally passionate and driven enough about it that it doesn't usually affect me, but I noticed at the end of that day that I was in a low mood.
With friends, I've seen some of them go from being incredibly joyful about anything crypto to hating talking about any aspect of it. It's like chocolates when you're a kid; at first you can't get enough of it, the taste, the texture, the smell, and with each bite it seems to just get better and better. You can't wait to have another taste, and then all of a sudden... you get sick. You can't think of having another piece, just the notion of it makes you feel worse! The same can happen with crypto, and to a more devastating extent, because it has such far reaching implications.
One friend in particular, saw the first bull runs as his opportunity to make his fortune. For all intents and purposes, he did, he made it BIG. But then he didn't protect himself, he didn't build the fire escape I've mentioned in a previous post, and it resulted in a loss so large he tried to take his life. Fortunately, he survived, and he has since begun a happier life and even gives talks about coping with huge loss, so it was an amazingly fortuitous ending to a story that has been so much more tragic for others. But what does this have to do with what I'm talking about? Well, he had an unhealthy crypto life. He spent all day every day reading nothing but crypto articles, talking about nothing but crypto, listening to the same podcasts over and over, and it made him sick. This lead to clouded judgement, confirmation biases, and a depression that got infinitely worsened by the market crash. He says all the time, "if I had had a better work life balance, this wouldn't have happened. I was obsessed and I made mistakes because of it".
Time and time again, I hear from people who've suffered great losses and had similar experiences, that being overwhelmed and swamped with information led to bad decision making and failure. Seeing the same thing over and over leads to us not being able to separate things in our minds, much like how walking in snow for a long period of time can lead to snow blindness. It makes us see things that aren't there, confirms biases that aren't real, and that leads to the bad decisions that cause significant losses.
So what can we do? Schedule breaks, and divide your day up into sections so that you know at X point in the day, you will do something different and break up the monotony. Call friends, talk about something unrelated to crypto or get their opinion on your investment, but listen to what they say and consider the words carefully enough so you're not just talking at them, but listening to them. Make a snack, and take some artsy photos of it, just for fun but something that stimulates you visually so it's not just charts and numbers you're looking at all day. Go for a walk/run, and get some fresh air, see things in 3D and clear your mind. Basically, give yourself a chance to purge every now and then, that way you won't get stagnant and end up going down a path that leads to loss.
