The organization is a future adversary. You build the technology knowing you won’t be staying at the company forever, and you signpost the things that protect users / your-future-self. This includes open sourcing everything, moving specs to standards bodies when they stabilize, and building the network around low switching costs.

I can’t predict the future. We may screw it up. I’m trying to protect the community from us if we do.

I taught comedy improv for many years. One tip I would give new performers is to adopt an alter ego for the stage (a fun fake name and/or personality) and to choose a totem (an object) that they wear to do just that such as shoes, a shirt, watch, etc.

This helped so many different people such as accountants, pre-k teachers, stay-at-home moms, and even university professors get out of their shells, prevent their stage fright, and to be more energetic on-stage when their normal persona is calm, cool, and collected.

I do believe we also have an alter ego in three different situations such as work, home, and play. Another common thing I would teach is that you can alter your characters in scenes easily by adopting one of those personas of the character you're portraying.

I believe many people adopt an alter ego without knowing it today. These are YouTubers, Streamers, Conference Speakers, and really anything where there's a concept of a "stage".

The book "The Alter Ego Effect" by Todd Herman goes into this further, but my favorite material on this is "Impro" by Keith Johnstone.

This is a great article that explains markets (not just the stock market really) in an easy to understand way.

The one thing I believe people should know about the stock market is: There are people with more capital, time, and knowledge than you who will consistently beat you. Picking individual investments is mostly a sucker's game.

Buying tech stocks and/or crypto in the last couple of years has been a consistent exception to this, but I worry that many of the people who made good money from those investments will now believe that they have some superior understanding that lets them consistently beat the market. But sooner or later they will find themselves in a similar situation as those who thought investing in Japanese Tech companies was a surefire way to beat the market 20-25 years ago.

So my advice to anyone who already got rich from their investments in the last couple of years: Congratulations! Now take that money, invest it in the most boring thing possible, and enjoy life.

To everyone who is trying to get rich quick now: Do your thing I guess, but be aware that you're gambling.