Succeeding on this economy
This is all theoretical, if I had the key to succeeding on this economy I wouldn't be writing on Hive, I would be getting interviews by Forbes and CoinTelegraph asking me for the key to success.
On the other hand, I like to think that I do have some basic understanding on how to succeed and even though I am not there yet, I am slowly grinding my way towards financial freedom and economical independence. This is just a broad baseline of how I understand several factors that will be the difference between succeeding on this economy and failing, at least according to my own definitions.
Bad times are opportunity times
The last few years have been a whirlwind of change, with the pandemic forcing many to rethink how they work and live. As a result, more and more people are turning to new skills and alternative forms of employment to stay competitive in the job market. For those looking to expand their skill sets quickly, one strategy is to focus on learning in-demand skills. Data analysis, digital marketing, web development, and design are just a few of the highly sought-after skills that can be learned through online courses and workshops.
While building new skills quickly is important, it's equally crucial to build a high-quality portfolio over time. Instead of rushing to complete numerous projects, take the time to select the best work and refine it to a high standard. This approach can be particularly important for creative professionals, as the quality of the portfolio can make all the difference when it comes to securing work opportunities.
In a world where money is scarce and governments are printing money, investing in new skills and a strong portfolio can make a huge difference in your earning potential. By taking the time to develop valuable skills and high-quality portfolio work, you can position yourself to take advantage of new opportunities and succeed in a rapidly changing economic environment. Keeping up with industry trends and developments is also key, as it enables you to adapt to changing market conditions and stay competitive in the long-term.
The Ghost of recession
As the economy faces the possibility of a recession, it's important for individuals and businesses to prepare and adopt strategies to stay afloat and thrive. One approach is to focus on reducing debt. When the economy slows down during a recession, generating income can be challenging, making it harder to pay off debts. Therefore, it's important to prioritize debt repayment and reduce as much debt as possible before the recession hits.
However, not all debts are created equal. Good debts, such as those that help generate income or increase net worth, should be assessed differently. For instance, loans taken to start a business, invest in real estate or finance education can be considered good debt. During a recession, it's essential to differentiate between good and bad debts and pay off the bad debts first.
Another strategy is to take advantage of the low-interest rates that the government may offer during a recession. This can be an opportunity for individuals and businesses to refinance their high-interest debt at a lower interest rate, reducing the overall debt burden. However, it's important to be cautious and take on only manageable debts that will not lead to further financial difficulties.
Furthermore, building up an emergency fund is crucial to prepare for unexpected expenses or loss of income. While it's recommended to have three to six months of living expenses saved in an emergency fund, it may be wise to save even more during a recession.
Overall, being proactive and adopting strategies such as reducing debt, taking advantage of low-interest rates, and building up an emergency fund can help individuals and businesses navigate through tough economic times and emerge stronger on the other side.
An unfair system
"Banks only lend money to those who don't need it."
While there's a grain of truth to it, it's not completely accurate. Banks are in the game to make money, and they want to lend to folks who are likely to pay back their loans. This means they generally look for borrowers with good credit scores and steady incomes, as they're less likely to default on their loans. In return, the banks can offer these borrowers better terms and conditions.
On the flip side, if a borrower has a shoddy credit history or unstable income, they're considered higher risk. In these cases, the bank may still be willing to lend money, but the borrower will have to accept less favorable terms, like a higher interest rate or stricter repayment terms.
But let me tell you, banks aren't just looking to lend money to folks who don't need it. They exist to lend money, and they're willing to lend to a wide range of borrowers. Even those with less-than-stellar credit or shaky finances might be able to secure a loan, but they'll have to deal with higher interest rates and stricter repayment terms.
Now, let's talk about good debt. This is when you borrow money to invest in something that will increase in value over time, like a business or real estate. Good debt can be a savvy investment move, as long as you can handle the repayments and have a solid plan for paying back the loan.
When the economy is in a slump, the government may lower interest rates in an attempt to encourage borrowing and spending. This can make it more affordable for borrowers to take out loans, but if too much money is borrowed and spent, it can lead to inflation. That's why borrowers should always be mindful of the interest rates and repayment terms of any loan they take out, regardless of the economic climate. It's crucial to consider whether the loan is truly necessary and whether it can be repaid comfortably over time.
A valuable strategy
In these uncertain times, having multiple sources of income can be a powerful defense against an unstable economy. This approach is often called "diversifying your income streams."
When you rely on a single source of income, like a full-time job, you are more susceptible to economic changes that could result in job loss or reduced earnings. However, if you have several income streams, you are less reliant on any single one and can weather any potential loss.
In addition to improving your financial resilience, diversifying your income streams can assist you in making more informed financial decisions. When you have several revenue streams, you can prioritize which ones are more critical and which ones can be cut back in the event of an economic downturn.
Working several jobs or taking on freelance projects is one method to diversify your income streams. By diversifying your earnings through multiple part-time jobs or freelance assignments, you can distribute your income across different sources. This can also provide additional benefits, such as developing new skills, building your professional network, and exploring new career paths.
Apart from working multiple jobs, there are other ways to diversify your income streams. For example, investing in the stock market, starting a side business, or earning passive income from rental properties or investments can all provide additional income streams. These additional income sources can also serve as a source of financial stability in uncertain times.
Overall, diversifying your income streams is a sound financial approach for transitioning from a defensive to an offensive stance in a struggling economy. By having multiple revenue sources, you can better shield yourself from potential revenue loss and make more informed financial decisions.
Investing is for everyone
Investing is a viable option for building wealth, but it requires adequate resources. As mentioned, a high income or starting a business are common ways to acquire the funds needed to invest. However, self-employment, such as being a doctor or a lawyer, may pose a challenge.
Self-employment offers the potential for high income, but it requires hard work, discipline, and organization. Building a successful practice or law firm takes time and effort, and it may not be the best option for everyone.
For those with a stable income, investing a portion of that money can be a good strategy to fund their entrepreneurial goals while having a safety net. However, managing investments and working on a personal project can be challenging.
To overcome this, prioritizing and optimizing the available time can help. This could involve delegating tasks, outsourcing responsibilities, or increasing productivity. Additionally, having a clear plan and a realistic timeline can help to stay on track and make progress towards both investment goals and personal projects.
It's important to note that investing always carries risk, and it's crucial to understand the potential downsides before committing funds. One strategy is to diversify investments across different asset classes and industries to spread risk and minimize exposure to any single investment. It's also essential to conduct thorough research and seek the advice of a financial professional before making any investment decisions.
Finding the right balance
To maintain a growth mentality, one must always seek self-improvement and development. This requires a mindset that embraces learning, taking risks, and seeing challenges as chances to grow. The importance of this mindset lies in its ability to help us face life's ups and downs, especially when setbacks or challenges arise. With a growth mindset, we are more likely to push through and find ways to overcome obstacles.
However, it's also crucial to realize that growth doesn't always equate to expansion. There are times when we need to focus on consolidating our achievements and contracting our efforts. This may involve reflecting on our priorities or honing our existing skills and knowledge, rather than constantly seeking out new opportunities.
Balancing contraction and expansion is essential for sustainable growth. It's crucial to recognize when we need to slow down and consolidate, and when we need to push ourselves to take on new challenges and opportunities. Being mindful of this balance can prevent burnout and pave the way for long-term success.
What about cash flow?
Maintaining a balance between investing all your money and having a steady cash flow is a complex decision with its own set of advantages and disadvantages.
On one hand, investing all your money can generate higher potential returns as your money is working actively for you. However, this approach comes with risks, such as not having enough cash on hand to cover unexpected expenses or market downturns. Moreover, when all of your money is invested, you may miss out on new investment opportunities.
On the other hand, having some cash flow can provide a safety net in case of emergencies or unforeseen expenses. It also gives you the flexibility to take advantage of new investment opportunities as they arise. But having too much cash on hand means your money is not working hard enough for you, and you might miss out on potential investment gains.
Maintaining a balance between cash flow and investment is key to avoid being "cash poor." Keeping enough cash on hand to cover your expenses for a few months is wise in case of emergencies, but too much cash can mean missed investment opportunities.
To avoid spending more than you earn, having a solid budget and financial plan is vital. This involves tracking expenses, setting financial goals, and following a budget that allows you to save money and invest for the future. By maintaining a healthy balance between cash flow and investment and having a sound financial plan, you can work towards your long-term financial goals while being prepared for unforeseen events or emergencies.
Success conveys risk
Taking risks while young can be beneficial because young people have more time to recover from potential failures and losses. They have more opportunities to learn from their mistakes and rebuild their wealth. Additionally, young people often have fewer responsibilities and financial obligations, making them more willing to take risks. However, it's important to weigh potential rewards against potential risks and have a solid plan in place before taking any major risks.
Maintaining both wealth and health is crucial for long-term happiness and success. Proper financial planning and risk management are essential to protect your wealth. Similarly, taking care of your physical and mental health is vital for long-term success and happiness.
Working with integrity is important for building trust and respect in personal and professional relationships. Honesty, transparency, and ethical behavior are essential for better opportunities and relationships.
Consistency is key to achieving long-term success. Consistent effort and dedication will pay off in any area of life, including career, personal life, and finances.
Failure is a natural part of the process when striving for success. Embrace failure as a learning opportunity and surround yourself with people who can provide different perspectives and ideas. Additionally, be open to changing your mindset as you grow and learn.
Finally, teamwork skills are essential for success. No one person can achieve success alone, and collaboration and teamwork are often necessary for achieving bigger and better things.
Now, in case you missed the point of this post, read the comment section.
If you got to this post thanks to an alert of any kind, I'd like it if you comment on this post and let me know.
If on the other hand, you read all of this and you liked it, let me know please!
I repeat, read the comment section of this post before upvoting it.
But do vote it, it took me 6 hours to make this.
And please comment. Do comment.
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Absolutely agree with all the points you’ve discussed especially the bad time can be opportunity and this really proves itself in crypto market when it was down for several months.
Indeed very wise discussion as post, looking forward to see more from you!
This was an experiment, I've been playing around with chatGPT for a while now, mainly getting prompts for Twitter and exploring how this tool can be leveraged to start a business, to empower an existing business, and honestly I've been testing how good it is for brainstorming ideas and concepts to improve the Leo Finance ecosystem.
So, for those wondering...
This is an AI written post.
But I want to explain you what happened above, which is also why I am asking for feedback and comments from you.
First of all, my normal posting process is simple:
Ever since the AI controversy on Hive, and the arguments against and supporting the use of AI, as well as its limitations and limits one should follow when creating content, I actually wanted to try this out.
For the 10% of my posts, the finance related posts, my writing flow is as follows:
1- At night, I read a ton about any given topic that catches my attention.
2- I outline the post flow, I get the main ideas and concepts I want my content to revolve around.
3- I save the content on a draft on leofinance, I sleep on it.
4- The morning after, I re-read my ideas and concepts, then have breakfast.
5- I get to actually writing the post, using my concepts and flow as skeleton and my writing style to put the muscles, flesh, and even personality to the body I just created.
6- I re-read, confirming that I'm saying anything stupid or misinterpreting an idea, and hit publish.
For this post, I wanted to take another approach.
The reason for this is because I want to test how good of a post can I create using AI starting from my own ideas, and instead of being anomad the one who puts muscles and flesh to the skeleton, let chatGPT be the one who does it.
But I didn't want this to just be a simple chatGPT experiment where I just tell the bot to expand on my ideas.
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Now, my writing style when I do freewrite posts is completely different from the style I use for finance-related posts. You can easily spot the difference in language, terms but the flow is the exact same, as well as the humor and the witty lines. If you've ever read any of my thoughts from a... posts then you'll know what I'm talking about.
So, the first thing I had to do in order to make this post pass as something written by myself, was to train the bot on the style I use to write when I'm freewriting.
I have a very particular writing style, of course a current-tech bot will not be able to emulate my writing style, but maybe it can make the content pass as mine, so I told chatGPT to read 30 of my previous, most recent posts.
I won't lie, I liked a lot what chatGPT has to say about me:
I love it, I have no idea how the bot knows there's wanderlust in me because I didn't give it any travel related post for it to read and study my style, but I guess my style of writing - or writing style, however you want to call it - says a lot about an author, no matter if we want people to know or not.
Anyway, I called this style the "anomad style", and told GPT we would use this writing style to expand and rewrite on my concepts.
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You see, chatGPT and almost every bot out there can learn from previous interactions with you, and you can actually teach a bot how to become a better you, all you need is to master the prompts and know exactly how and what to teach the dummy - or are we the dummies?
Anyway, after a few attempts of the bot rewriting short texts taken from wikipedia and then taking the output it gave me, and then correcting part of the style, telling it "I wouldn't write this, I'd do it this way" and also telling it "I would use a joke here, or an analogy there" I think I managed the bot to perfect my style - as much as a witty-less AI dummy can emulate a writing style from a real person.
Then, I got to it.
I took the ideas and concepts and expanded on them - because from what I've learned from bot interaction, the more context you give it, the better the outcome. So I took the ideas, expanded a little bit on them, and then I told the bot to expand on the little paragraphs I wrote, and to do it using the "anomad style", which was perfected on our previous interactions, and then I copy/pasted into my post editor the paragraphs the bot vomited.
For context, these are my ideas and concepts, the ones that on normal circumstances I would expand around:
I wrote a paragraph for each of these concepts, then told the robot to rewrite and expand on them using the "anomad style".
The top level post is what I got.
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I spent around 6 hours making this post between thinking about the topic, training the bot, writing the ideas and concepts, expanding on them, and now writing these comments.
It's not profitable.
I would make a number of times what this post will give me in terms of HBD/HIVE in the same amount of time, but I am doing this for fun and as an experiment - and also as a learning experience and to chip in more intel on the battle against AI on Hive.
This very same post would've taken me around 1.5 hours to write from the top of my head using my normal process and flow, and I would be more satisfied with the outcome compared to the soul less content above.
And yet, I expect a lot of people will not notice that it is AI written and will comment as if I wrote the whole thing. The bot can fool normal readers, especially thanks to the training session I had with it before asking it to expand and rewrite using the "anomad style".
I think the AI scanners on Hive will catch this, in fact I expect them to, otherwise we are in for a much harder battle against AI content creation on Hive.
A person from the 3rd world might find this process worthy, because in the end if they get $1 out of 6-8 hours of work, then they will make day's ends meet.
It is a difficult topic, and I am not convinced that either side holds 100% of the truth regarding AI usage for content creation, I think there are valid arguments for both sides.
In the meantime, don't worry, I won't repeat this process so you can trust my future content will be 100% my own.
But I do hope that you chip in and comment on this post, I would appreciate your take and feedback on my process and perhaps the ups and downs on this process.
In the meantime, I'd highly recommend you to feed GPT your post links so it tells you your writing style, or what it thinks of you, you might end up with a smile on your face - or a sad smirk, who knows.
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And yes, you guessed correctly, this comment thread is the real post, so if you liked this idea of a post and you found the Intel and insights I portray here in the comment section, give the post a vote or reblog it!
Who knows where AI content generation will take us, but we are sure as hell in for a ride.
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Witty approach to let the bot analyse your writing style based on previous works to better emulate you. Interesting experiment indeed, and yes, I agree with you: we are in for a hell of a ride.
I'd love to see your P&L analysis after the 7 day window. Maybe you can write a quick article about the outcome.
Don't you mean...
Your comments are probably as long as the post! I am on the fence about AI, I use it to generate code, but it tends to guess and makes things up. Then the code doesn't work. Images.. I could use, to enhance my writing, I can't draw for shit.
Oh, I meant that some people vote the posts because of the author before reading the piece, and some may not like the inside or disagree with the content, that's why I told people to read it before they vote haha.
Yeah definitely, AI fills the blank spaces with random stuff all the time, that's why we have to be as specific as possible. I think AI will become a tool for content creation, not the content creator itself, but those who leverage the options will definitely achieve better results.
Speaking about images, I am no longer using random images online that I think portray or aid my content, but I rather just generate it, it aligns better, and it takes way less time.
The code part I haven't tried much yet, but that's because I'm mediocre at coding so I don't know really what to ask, but one day :D
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For my content I find this tough. AI people are usually good lookers, where I am after spotty geeks and the generators are shit at making those.
Interesting take on the use of AI in creating content. It is something I would need to continue to chew on for some time and think about more. Appreciate the time and thought you put into it.
Nice one!
I thought that the post was "odd" for you, but I also thought you had just spent some time and busted out something different.
I was at least halfway through or more before I really started becoming more suspicious.
Nice experiment and overall not a bad post. It definitely contained useful information and was in general true.
I don't think it would really do a good job long term being "you", but who knows. If you fed it ALL of your past material and worked a lot with bot on refining it, there would likely be a lot of improvement.
With lots of work, it would also train you and the time to accomplish articles would likely go down and increase its' profitability :-)
Glad you're not going to be doing that though :-) I think I am mostly anti-bot for Hive in principle, but in reality just don't care. After all, if I can't really tell or it's hard to tell, then I can't get too excited to be pissed ;-)
As long as I enjoy or get useful information, I am good.
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I believe, like you, that bad times are excellent opportunities to prosper and I also share the vision that leveraging ourselves through banks to make good investments is a good way to proceed at any time, but especially in these times.
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As I read I smelled ChatGPT rather quickly. I suspected when I got to the "Read The Comments" that was I what I would find. I do think that with really good editing we could create some really great evergreen content on Leo to rank in Google.
I haven't tried chatgpt because I was waiting for Google's Bard to go into Beta because I knew I would have an early invite. I didn't want to be influenced by ChatGPT as I beta-tested Bard. I have mixed feelings about Bard so far.
As for the content, it made me think because I'm wavering on trading 35 HBD for Hive. That's a big investment risk for me lol.
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AI written articles can be valuable if the AI is handled by a professional. This is a fantastic tool, but as a tool it doesn't worth too much without proper use.
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Exactly, it's a tool, not a replacement for content creators. In my opinion those who leverage AI to tweak and improve will find it useful, but those who try to use it for skills they don't have will have a bad time, both on hive but also in the real world.
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