Keeping Motivated

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Keep your eyes on the prize

As difficult as it is to keep at it in crypto, you need to keep pushing forward. It's hard to stare at books all day and do analysis and numbercrunching, especially without a clear reason to continue being motivated. After all, your gains in crypto aren't gains until you cash them out, and until that happens, nothing is assured. This is particularly scary because at any point the market could turn on you and you could lose it all. It doesn't take a sensationalist mainstream headline or a bank president to tell me that Bitcoin is dangerous!

I spend a number of hours on crypto every day. It's become something more of a habit or a lifestyle. As soon as I wake up, I'm in front of the computer and checking everything. The price of Bitcoin, of Ethereum, of course Steem and SBD, as well as the other alts that I'm in or interested in (ZCash, BitcoinCash, EOS). From that point, I begin to place my orders and start evaluating and re-evaluating my positions until I'm satisfied for the next little while, and then repeat the process again. The problem with this is that for all this work, you are never really getting paid for it until you cash it all out.

One of my favorite ways to reward myself is by looking at things I want to one day get with my earnings from cryptocurrency. I'm a bit reluctant to actually spend right now because crypto markets are down but I also don't want to reduce the size of my trading account.

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Find the reasons you do it and drill them into your brain

Lately I've been looking at things I always wanted, and sort of could afford, but could not justify actually getting. This usually consisted of luxury items, or general other nice things that I wanted and did not need. The one thing that really takes my fancy are nice cars. These range from the reasonable to the dream spec. I find myself taking frequent breaks to look at cool things and talk about them with other like-minded friends. We each have our own tastes and preferences but we both have a shared appreciation for fine things and respect one another's likes.

If you aren't actively reaping the benefits of your work, for whatever reason that may be, make sure you find yourself something with which to vent your built up pressure, or it could lead to burn out. The worst thing that could happen is that you have a bad day and then impulsively decide to close your account, sell everything to fiat and throw the hard-earned work away. I found my way of looking at things I wanted, and very occasionally getting something decently nice, like a nice pair of shoes I wanted for a while, or perhaps something to help add some value to my workspace (just yesterday I bought a frame for a picture that I want to put up on the wall in my work area). They don't cost much, but most importantly, they stave off that work-reward frustration that, if left unchecked, can jeopardize everything you've been working so hard for.