Mastering the Chaos Cycle: Finding Your Place in the Crypto Ecosystem | Peter DePaulo

[Music] out there looks like some people working hey Phyllis what's up guys hey welcome so I'm going to be talking about mastering chaos cycles and I'm applying it to crypto uh but hold up most of these talks suck so I want to set some Stakes if you pay pay attention and you follow along you're going to get 30 minutes back per day in 20 minutes for whatever you want so this this is what mastering chaos is it's actually mastering your own time right as long as it's not evil right so you can do it for whatever you want but not evil uh let's get started uh first who it this my name is Peter doollo uh the one thing we're going to be talking about three secrets about it and then also right now we're launching a new book uh that's that's what we're doing at eth Denver uh let's let's dive in that's the book chaos cycle management uh and it's it's essentially a way for you to build a life inside of a very fast-paced industry without compromising on your values that's what we're doing in this book so yeah let's talk about my impressive background uh I started a company in college ended up doing stuff at Stanford uh got very technical worked in oncology data worked on nft contract standards and this is my first non-technical talk so most of the time I'm talking about things like you know port forwarding or like stuff that I now think is kind of boring so I went through the archetypical founder Arc the founder story hit a brick wall going about 110 miles an hour metaphorically burn out horribly and now I help people fix that so if you want to judge me based on my background all these Brands I worked on all this stuff where you know all the stuff help build near uh did stuff for AWS worked with the wuen clan did Partnerships with Intel nft Hip Hops Ro fizer Google closure ETL stuff Harvard Stanford you get the idea who cares uh this is actually me uh I like to overshare this is my dog Bosco and this is me doing upward dog uh surprise picture as I was doing yoga in the park that my wife took of me uh so I like that embarrassing picture um so let's talk about what I'm working on now I call it time Alchemy the magic and science of mastering time and uh I love this meme because it's like who's really stealing my time ah shoot it's me I'm I'm sort of the problem and the solution allinone and and that's really what we're talking about right now right so this is also me now right clearly a perfectly enlightened being with no problems no just kidding uh but I do want to talk about mastering the chaos right so we're going to talk about what a chaos cycle is specific to crypto how they work with bare markets and bull markets and then how to fix it for yourself so most of this is personal information that you can apply in your life today like in this 20-minute presentation right so let's talk about it a chaos cycle is a boom and a bus cycle right and in crypto you guys know like some people say cryp one year in the real world is seven years in crypto right we we're seven times faster than in any other industry um and I care mostly about this which is that they affect you personally and I don't know why it's played out this way in our culture I mean in our ecosystems culture as she mentioned I've been in crypto for almost 10 years and it's really really disappointing to see that again and again these people come into the ecosystem they'll ask everybody for advice they're really excited I give them advice maybe I invest in their company and then I watch them Skyrocket and they succeed and they're crushing it and then well I think a lot of you know what happens next right so you have this boom cycle that's where we're starting hard work we're going to win we're going to build the future decentralize everything we're going to put cats on the blockchain we're going to put Rats on the blockchain we're going to put houses on the blockchain right whatever we build and it's great and it's fun it's satisfying and then we overwork and then burnout anxiety depression and those are like the things we sweep behind the you know the curtains under the rug and then bust and then what happens people in these situations they go to Panama they go to Mexico and they they they hide for a month I did this right my last company we were valued at I think $120 million pre-product and uh my co-founding team like the tension was so high uh we were overworked my CTO quit I had no idea what I was going to do so I off to Mexico sorry for cussing um I was forced to rest I couldn't work I recovered but then what happened I saw another boom cycle coming I was like well okay I could get back on this donkey or maybe I could get off right and this is what it looks like it's not your fault this isn't you doing this this is not something that you are even responsible for but there are things that you are responsible for that's the secrets and that's what I'm going to be talking about so in crypto you got a bull market and then money starts entering these ecosystems right chain attraction it's really cool it's getting a lot of money right now data availability it's getting a lot of money right now right then what happens over deployment of capital and then what happens overpricing AKA a bubble right that's that's what that's what a bubble actually is is is a gap between the real measurable value of a thing and the price of the thing like theoretically okay then you have a bare Market this Market correction no money and you get this survival mode founder I've been that too the survival mode founder is probably my favorite because they're the ones who build the bull market right and there's a way to do this without having this you know cycle of Devastation and here's AI I asked I asked AI to make this they didn't get all of the uh they didn't get all of the pieces correct but it looks cool so I put it in the slide deck so okay how can you fix it there are three Secrets first how to get more done in less time without feeling like Pooh right so it's like oh wait I thought we were talking about macro Trends and crypto we are it starts with you working on your life your schedule yeah she gets it secret two how to gain control without being a jerk this is the other founder pattern which is like oh man all of all of my investors are are telling me what to do so I'm just going to be a jerk back all of my employees have expectations of me so I'm going to be a jerk to them right all of my friends are telling me I don't know what I'm doing so I'm going to be a jerk right assertiveness comes out as aggression and this is for hackers this is for people new to the ecosystem right and then how to apply all of this to get the that 30 minutes back per day right and at the end of the day all you have is time and how you spend your time is how you spend your attention right and where you point your attention is what grows in the world so let's dive in we think we need to do more work to get more done like that sounds so intuitive but it's not actually true right so it's all about energy and priority management so 40% of people in the United States stes do not get enough sleep a lack of sleep causes Focus to decline which causes retention to decline so if you're learning something you're going to learn it at like a way way lower rate if you're trying to accomplish tasks and you have lower Focus it's going to be hard to context switch so the average context switch penalty meaning the time to get back on task is 23 minutes if you get distracted and guess what the average number of distractions per minute is in the United States or sorry uh the the average rate of distractions it's once every three minutes so like putting this math together you have 60% of people or sorry 40% of all people in the workforce are not sleeping enough they're under focused they're getting distracted every 3 minutes and every distraction costs 23 minutes on average how does that even like I I I I looked at this math this is from uh most mostly from Bane This research and I was like how is this even possible is anyone getting anything done so it feels like we need to work more right we're constantly battling to stay focused our energy is diffused and we have bad sleep but what we what I've learned is focus on your priorities and values like really it's that this is like the Keystone thing right here write them down what you actually really really care about right and the subtitle of this is uh finding your place in the crypto ecosystem well in order to find your place you need to find yourself your values your priorities right and so this is the first exercise is write down your three to five priorities and by the way I tell Founders in my portfolio I tell startups I have advised I tell software Engineers that I have mentored to do this and the rate is like maybe one in four actually does and I can tell you from firsthand experience over the last 10 years I mean and I was I've been in tech for even longer than that that the people that do this have a tendency at least correlatively to succeed at what they're trying to do because they know what they're trying to accomplish so that's secret number one right here's the core strategy for a given priority set a very easy goal I want to read the original Bitcoin white paper strictly defined success I'm going to read three pages of the white paper by next week be flexible in the execution I'm going to read three pages of the Bitcoin white paper by next week but I don't care when I do it you can read the three pages today you've accomplished the goal these goals this iterator this course strategy Builds on itself focusing on your priorities and momentum ends up leading to a mountain of work done in less time per day so make it easy strictly define success and flex be flexible in the execution I have a couple other tools too so secret number two we think things outside of Us control our times and our lives right this is that graph the boom and bus cycle do they this is called the internal locus of control versus the external locus of control so this is from psychology and usually the psychology of neurosis people with an external locus of control believe that the world is happening to them sometimes it's called a victim mentality it sounds a little judgmental so you know maybe you are a victim okay but you can change your mind how do you do it this is how this is from B's brother by the way for you Twitter addicts list rank iterate so if you don't know what's within your control start writing it down write down a list of things within your control oh my gosh my portfolio is down 80% what do you have control over you could go outside you could write an email you could post a Twitter post right just start listing them then you rank them well what's okay going outside will calm me down writing that Twitter post and sending it to all my friends will get like more attention maybe I can pump the token and then you do each of the things after they are ranked are you seeing a theme values right and number three we think we don't have enough time for all of the things that we want to do so I want to give you a very concrete tool if you want to follow along you can scan this we call it 96 blocks this is taking a 24-hour day with four columns and breaking it into 15 minutes your entire day can be broken into 15 minutes okay and you can get these links from me afterwards if you don't want to do it now it's a it's a spreadsheet template surpris it's not some crazy rollup layer link I'm used to linking things that people are going to go you know sign uh the way this works is all of your activities form a legend those little boxes show each 15-minute block right so this person this is someone I actually worked with right uh a demigod but I'm not going to say who because of confidentiality right this is their life like they actually don't work as much as they they tell other people they really value spending time with their newborn child so that's the purple time and then they they notice that like you know uh they weren't spending very much time eating it's just like these 15 minute and half an hour blocks and so what did we do we just we just looked at this that's like most of the work right you write the categories this is the the paper tool so you can you can use this as well you can do it on a piece of paper just draw it out same exercise categories of time blocks of time writing the letter in each of those 15minute blocks and what you wake up is a great place to start this is in the book by the way so you write out the categories you create a list of every hour you break each hour of the day into 15 minutes and you fill in the cells with the corresponding key to the category and then what do you do you go oh no oh sorry it's supposed to be secret too oh no this is how I'm actually spending my time that's what everyone of my clients says to me now oh no every one of my uh Founders in my portfolio every one of the people that I've coached everyone that I've worked with oh no is the next thing after they do this exercise oh no what have I done what have I done so this is how you weave all of these things together right you figure out your priorities you you you write them down you rank them and then you iterate through them right any kind of gaps you have in your priorities when you look at your life as 96 blocks of time you can negotiate with right and by the way that's how you can look at your internal locus of control your time is entirely in your hands and if you don't believe me like try this out for yourself in fact don't believe me give it a shot see what happens if you just start looking at this write your priorities write how you spend your time see if there's a gap that's it you can use this course strategy to make sure you attain the goal and the core strategy is make it easy strictly define success stay flexible in execution and make it sassy that's for E Denver so if you take this pattern on a weak iterator for your life it will I promise completely change your perception of this chaos cycle that I was talking about all of a sudden you're going to find that you have much more time for things that you love to do all of a you're going to realize that that other thing that your boss put on your plate or your investor put on your plate or your co-founder put on your plate actually it's not that important for your team so you can tell them no and you'll have evidence for why right so when I say finding your place in crypto and I'm talking about chaos cycle management I'm actually just saying hey here's a way to find your place in the world right starting with you starting with who you are starting with what you want starting and figuring out how is it is it actually what I want being gentle with yourself and not being like yo bro I'm working those 996s I'm working 100 hours a week that's the culture that we're in and you have control to change it and yeah make it sassy what in whatever way you want to okay here's the free ebook um I will leave this up that is essentially my talk I'll I'll leave this up for now uh if you're really curious about this uh it's free only for eth Denver and we're going to leave it this link up for two weeks um you can come and and hit me up over there uh I can tell you how to use it um yeah I'll I'll leave this Q code up for 30 seconds when we wrote this book uh it was informed by two years of research on personality psychology uh that me and my co-founder from MIT put together um we took 35 million records of Big Five personality data and we started running c means clustering on them I know I said it was a non-technical talk but just for the nerds in the audience and we found some really interesting correlative behavioral predictive patterns what does that mean based on personality we were able to predict what people's inclinations towards certain behaviors were and so we took all of that and made these ridiculously simple to use tools and we put it in this little like 30 page workbook and this is the program that we offer to people but that's it uh you can follow me on all sorts of media at behavior and uh all of the links that are in this talk are at yourname.com . yoga so one cool thing about being technical is I wrote a little uh Wild Card domain port forwarding proxy server so you can put your name in it'll log to a server and then you can get the Links at my link tree uh that's it uh you get two minutes back early so thank you for your time uh and then yeah if you have questions uh we can take them off stage thank you very much thank