My 5 biggest lessons this year... 💯

GM Friends 👋

We’re now less than 24 hours from the New Year.

And over the past year I’ve taken over 40,000 words of notes.

Countless pages of learnings from books, content and life that I’m taking into 2024.

Out of every note I’ve taken, these were the 5 most valuable lessons of the past year (and easiest to integrate).

Let’s jump right in 👇️ 

🤝 Lesson #1 - Solomon paradox

(Giving better advice to yourself and TAKING IT)

Have you ever seen that one friend make a career decision that you know is wrong, or in a bad relationship, but they themselves can’t see it.

In other people, we can see in 5 minutes what might take them 5 years to realise.

But when it comes to ourselves, we often make the same mistakes they do.

This is called the Solomon Paradox:

The way to solve this:

You need to do an exercise in which you visualise giving your current self advice, based on being an outsider (an example could be, being your 80 year old self giving advice).

How I do it:

Every Monday I set up a notion document, and in realtime, I write down a question that I would want to ask my 80 year old self about my current circumstances and what my next move should be,

I then answer the question, and keep repeating until the hour is over or until I run out of questions.

I’ve only been doing this a couple weeks and I’m already finding that I already know the answers to the questions that I have, I’m being more honest with myself, and making better decisions.

🪄 Lesson #2 - Show don’t tell

This is an easy one. I’ve now stopped trying to explain what I do, or what a concept is, and I just show people.

Old me: Tell people we’re making a 3D printed sneaker

Now: Show people this:

Old me: Tell people about how we made an NFT collection that would take a single laptop 10 years to generate, and that we had to have an army of supercomputers to load and render all 10,000 NFTs.

Now: Show people this:

Taking time to listen to an explanation takes too much effort from the audience. Show them a magic trick, don’t tell them about it.

📎 Lesson #3: The Paperclip Method

(How to get repetitive boring tasks done, if you’re a chronic procrastinator)

This was one of my favourite learnings from Atomic Habits.

How it works is incredibly simple.

Let’s say you need to reach out to 10 companies to potentially sponsor your newsletter.

You find this work to be kind of monotonous, and you don’t exactly know how to do it, so you procrastinate.

The cure is this:

Take 10 paperclips (or any small objects), and put them in a glass.

Have a second cup that is empty.

As you send each outreach email, take one paperclip and move it from the full jar to the other jar.

Like this:

Zero outreach:
🫙📎📎📎📎📎📎📎📎📎📎
🫙 

Three people reached out to:
🫙📎📎📎📎📎📎📎
🫙📎📎📎

Seven people reached out to:
🫙📎📎📎
🫙📎📎📎📎📎📎📎

Done ✅ 
🫙 
🫙📎📎📎📎📎📎📎📎📎📎

Using this method gives you a visual sense of progress that makes the ‘boring’ work feel motivating and rewarding.

📝 Lesson #4 - Put your to-do list in your calendar

One of the most demotivating things ever is having a massive to-do list each day that you never get through.

The issue is that a to-do list can have an infinite number of items added to it, and it isn’t super clear how long each item will take.

For example:

1. Get back to supplier

2. Plan upcoming marketing campaign

3. Reach out to 5 influencers

If you look at the list above, it’s not clear how long each item will take.

Getting back to a supplier could be 10 minutes, but if it requires some negotiation & planning it could take an hour.

Planning a marketing campaign might seem like one item, so if you only have 3 things to do today, how could you not get it done right?

But it is actually a task that could take 3x four-hour sessions to complete.

The way to overcome this is to spend a week putting every item of your to-do list into your calendar, and add 50% to how much time you think it will take.

Suddenly you’ll realise that “oh sh*t, I can’t fit everything in…”

And you’re right. You can’t do everything.

This will force you to eliminate the work you can’t do and only focus on what matters.

🥊 Lesson #5 - Don’t force your niche

I see a lot of creators (particularly those who are just starting out) constantly obsessing over the question “What is my niche?”

I was the exact same, and this often results in you forcing a niche that no one wants.

Earlier in the year, I saw a gap in the market to be the AI guy of Web3.

I was writing threads every week about AI, and pushing this content as hard as I could.

But the reality was, there just wasn’t a market for this content.

Then I stopped forcing it and went back to posting content that came to me naturally out of my interests.

When a few people asked me for a job at Bricktopians I thought:

“Hmm, people seem to want to know how to get a job, I’ll write a thread on what we look for when we hire.”

It was a hit.

Then people asked me: “That’s great Alex, but where are the jobs?”

“Great question” I thought.

So I started writing about the jobs that were available.

Next thing I know, I’m getting heaps of positive feedback, people are reaching out saying how helpful the content is, and I started growing faster.

My niche found me.

BUT. As great as this story was, it took me until I was at 34,000 followers before I found it.

If you’re early in your journey, the way to let your niche find you is be active.

The more content you create, the more ‘shots on goal’ you have for your niche to find you.

Don’t rush, don’t force it.

You’ve got this.

❤️ Thank you

Before we wrap, I want to say a massive thank you to every one of you who read this each week.

This newsletter is my favourite part of every week and it’s all because of YOU.

You keep me motivated and give me the opportunity to work on myself, work on my content and get better every single week.

I want you to have a Happy New Year and if you EVER need anything at all,

Always feel free to send me a DM on Twitter.

— Alex 🧱 

Hey, if you’re new here, this is a quick intro to who I am and what I’ve done in Web3 so far.

I’ve been in Web3 for 9 years, ETH since $45, worked with some incredible companies (inc. the NBA) and am building on my NFT project Bricktopians every single day.

If you want to join my world, and be a part of a project that grows with me.

Grab a Bricktopian NFT and let me build for you 💯