Time Perception
Time Perception
3.15 | “I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit.' Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.” - Muhammad Ali
News and Numbers
Markets this Week:
S&P 500 is down 2%.
NASDAQ 100 is down 2%.
Bitcoin-USD is down 10%.
Ethereum-USD is down 9%.
Headlines from this Week:
Netflix unveils plans for video game streaming service. It’s launching a test with two games in Canada and the UK.
Traditional TV viewership hits new record low in July, according to Nielsen. Usage for broadcast was 20%, cable 29.6%, streaming 38.7%, and other 11.6%.
Finance
By Vlad Estoup, B.Comm. (Finance); working in Ethereum cybersecurity
The Canine Connection to Prosperity: How Responsible Choices Impact Wealth
In the realm of personal finance, the paths to success are as diverse as the individuals who pursue them. Surprisingly, studies have shown that certain lifestyle choices, such as owning a dog and marrying young while having children early, can contribute to greater financial prosperity. While these connections might seem unconventional, they stem from the profound sense of responsibility that these choices often entail. In this article, we'll delve into the fascinating correlation between these life decisions and increased earnings.
The Dogged Pursuit of Responsibility
Owning a dog is more than just companionship; it's a commitment that requires time, effort, and financial responsibility. Dog owners are tasked with providing food, shelter, healthcare, and proper training for their furry friends. This responsibility often translates into a set of skills that are transferable to the world of personal finance.
Discipline and Routine: Dogs thrive on routine, and responsible dog owners quickly learn the importance of maintaining consistent schedules for feeding, exercise, and grooming. This discipline often extends to their financial lives, where adhering to budgets, regularly saving, and investing become ingrained habits.
Emergency Planning: Responsible dog ownership demands preparing for unexpected medical expenses or emergencies. This mindset of anticipating and financially planning for unforeseen circumstances carries over to personal finance, where having an emergency fund can help weather economic downturns or unexpected life events.
Long-term Commitment: Dogs live for a decade or more, necessitating a long-term commitment. This commitment fosters a patient and long-term perspective that can translate to strategic financial decisions, such as investing for retirement or saving for large purchases.
The Young Marriage and Parenthood Advantage
Getting married young and having children early can also be linked to increased financial success, largely due to the heightened sense of responsibility and motivation these choices bring.
Early Planning: Starting a family at a young age often necessitates careful financial planning. Couples are prompted to create budgets, save for future expenses like education and homeownership, and establish clear financial goals.
Enhanced Time Management: Juggling marriage and parenthood at a young age demands superior time management skills. These skills naturally extend to career management, increasing productivity and the potential for career advancement.
Motivation to Succeed: The responsibility of providing for a family can serve as a powerful motivator to excel professionally. Young parents often find themselves pushing harder to secure promotions, pursue additional education, and seek higher-paying job opportunities.
The Ripple Effect on Earnings
The underlying theme linking responsible dog ownership and early marriage and parenthood is a heightened sense of duty, which often drives individuals to be more conscientious in their financial lives. This increased responsibility is a catalyst for growth in various aspects:
Career Advancement: The discipline, time management, and motivation derived from these responsibilities can lead to career progression and increased earning potential.
Financial Literacy: The necessity of budgeting, saving, and planning for the future cultivates financial literacy, enabling better money management and wealth-building.
Investment Mindset: The long-term perspective developed through these life choices can lead to smarter investment decisions, potentially resulting in greater returns over time.
While the connection between responsible dog ownership and early marriage/parenthood and increased wealth might seem indirect, it's rooted in the foundational values of discipline, foresight, and dedication that these choices demand. These qualities spill over into various facets of life, including personal finance, and contribute to a greater likelihood of financial success. It's important to note that while these correlations exist, individual circumstances vary widely, and there is no one-size-fits-all formula for achieving financial prosperity. However, the lessons derived from these choices can serve as valuable insights into fostering a responsible and prosperous financial future.
This is not financial advice and you should always do your own research before investing in any securities or cryptocurrencies.
Sci-Tech
By Keyann, Software Engineer in Web3
Use Cases for NFTs
At the advent of social networks and streaming sites, no one really knew how to leverage sites like Youtube or Facebook. More than that, not many knew how they were going to be leveraged. Even those at the frontier of it, although they had an idea of how it would be used in broad sense, probably never imagined how that would actually look; they didn’t know short cut videos with click-baity titles would form the basis for attention grabbing content. I see the same uncharted territory with NFTs today.
When I first got on Youtube, the prevailing viral content was parody style music videos and America’s funniest home videos style clips. Fast forward to today, content creators amass large followings through niche-targeted pages with flashy titles and thumbnails. People like Soulja boy and Mr Beast pioneered that. Now, streaming sites are the go-to for many artists, brands, and influencers alike.
NFTs are in a similar phase. The main difference now is that people are rushing to get in because they can see that it has the potential to become a saturated industry.
So how do you leverage NFTs or decentralized digital assets to their fullest?
Discount Voucher:
This use case is fairly straight forward. Discount vouchers, or coupons, provide a flat or percentage rate of your purchase. But rather than a physical or centralized voucher, an NFT discount voucher would be a decentralized digital asset. This gives the user more control, making it easier to store or resell.
Loyalty Membership:
Loyalty memberships and programs encapsulate a broader usage than the former points. Loyalty memberships can provide discounts as well as exclusive benefits, like access to specific products, content, or other experiences.
Loyalty Points:
Loyalty points are slightly different than memberships in that, rather than being required to be directly acquired by the user, through sale or other means, they are issued upon some other action, and can be combined to form the basis for other benefits.
Proof of Sale:
Many products today come with receipts or QR codes that verify the authenticity of a product, but currently come with many limitation when compared to decentralized assets. NFTs that act as proof of sale of a product open a much wider range of possibilities. Companies like Lowes and Louis Vuitton have already demonstrated how to improve upon this.
Collectibles:
Although many are quick to judge NFT collectibles, many brands have thrived off collectibles. Whether you’re a sports franchise like the NBA, a food brand like M&Ms with Candy mascots, or someone like Pokemon, you’re brand thrives off collectibles like trading cards, merchandise, posters, and other form of collectibles. If your brand has a strong following for its image, you can issue or sell NFTs as collectibles, that provide a much wider range of improvements to your customers than traditional collectibles. NFTs are much easier to preserve, showcase, grade, authenticate, and resell than traditional collectibles like trading cards.
All the aforementioned use cases have the potential to leverage the improvements provided by NFTs. Decentralized digital assets permit the ability to authenticate, verify, store, resell, and showcase, whether in virtual game worlds or other platforms like e-commerce and social media. The supply of an asset can be designed for scarcity to drive up the rarity and value that asset, or can be made limitless in order to unlock other possibilities.
Paradigm Shift
By Roman Kuittinen-Dhaoui, BBA, CPHR Candidate; working in Human Resources
Time Perception
The perception of time often changes as people get older. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as "time perception." There are several reasons for these changes:
Novelty and Routine: When you're young, many experiences are new and novel, which tends to make time feel like it's passing more slowly because your brain is processing a lot of new information. As you grow older and settle into routines, life can start to feel more predictable, causing time to seem to pass more quickly.
Proportional Perspective: As you age, each unit of time (like a year) becomes a smaller proportion of your overall life. For example, a year is half of your life when you're 2 years old but only 1/30th of your life when you're 30. This can make years seem to go by more quickly as you accumulate more of them.
Memory: The way you remember events can influence your perception of time. When you look back on a period of time, it might feel like it passed quickly if you don't have many memorable events or distinct experiences to anchor your memories. On the other hand, if you've had many significant events, milestones, and experiences, that period might feel longer in retrospect.
Busy versus Idle Time: When you're busy and engaged in various activities, time often seems to fly by because you're preoccupied. Conversely, during periods of idleness or boredom, time might feel like it's dragging because you're more aware of its passage.
Cognitive Changes: There is evidence to suggest that cognitive changes as you age, such as changes in attention and processing speed, can influence how you perceive the passage of time.
Psychological Factors: Psychological factors such as anticipation, stress, and excitement can also affect your perception of time. Time tends to feel slower when you're eagerly anticipating something, and it can feel faster when you're stressed or busy.
It's important to note that while these factors contribute to the general trend of time perception changing with age, individual experiences can vary widely. Some older individuals might feel like time is flying by, while others might feel like it's moving slowly. The perception of time is a complex interplay of psychological, cognitive, and emotional factors.
(Head)Space
One for all and all for one
By Keyann
It’s been said that “how you do one thing, is how you do everything’. I’ve always considered this to be true for a person but what if the same is true for cultures and societies as a whole?
Having just returned from a two-week vacation in Europe, specifically France and Italy, I hate to embody the cliche of the traveler returning from Europe only to start criticizing western culture, but I do want to encapsulate the lessons of my travels in this headspace.
The most striking difference for visitors is Europe's pace of life. Especially in the southern coastal regions, life seems to ebb and flow in a manner that prioritizes the "art of living" above all else. This isn't indicative of a lack of ambition, but rather a conscious choice to value life's ephemeral moments. Whether it's bathing in the sparkling sea of the French Riviera, savouring the robust flavours in the food produced by Italy's refined agriculture, sipping a café after a leisurely dinner, or gallivanting through the cobblestone streets in search of melodious serenades, there’s a tangible sense of carpe diem provided in Europe, offering a vivid palette of experiences that celebrate the essence of living life to the fullest.
Now, here's where it gets interesting. One might argue that this commitment to truly living every moment correlates with Europe's more modest GDP growth when compared to the frenzied hustle of North America and Asia. In these fast-paced economies, life often feels like a race, with little time spared for leisure or genuine relaxation.
In contrast, Europeans seem to have mastered the balance between work and pleasure, resulting in an environment where there's simply less urgency to be always "on the grind." Longer vacations, unhurried cafe visits, long family lunches - such moments aren't luxuries but essential components of European life. When life is about truly living, perhaps GDP isn't the only, or even the best, measure of success.
Simultaneously, GDP reflects the essential long-term vision and trajectory of a country and society. There’s security in a strong economy. Additionally, if I never hustled, I wouldn’t have been able to afford the vacation I took. But if I only hustled and saved, I also wouldn’t have been living life to its fullest, a short-coming that could dampen not just my mood but also my personality, as I grew for the better during my travels, perhaps not financially but culturally, a gain which I hope pays dividends down the road in my journey of financial success.
In wrapping up, if the adage "how you do one thing is how you do everything" holds water, then Europe paints a vivid portrait of a continent that emphasizes living life deeply, richly, and authentically. But not everything can be perfect. The best of a culture is also a symptom of its worst, and vice-versa. As I settle back into my routine, the memories of my journey beckon, reminding me of the importance of cherishing each moment. After all, success isn't just about relentless growth, but about understanding and relishing the journey itself.
Company of the Week
Origin
Origin Protocol is a groundbreaking Web3 company that aims to reshape the future of decentralized marketplaces and peer-to-peer transactions. Founded by a team of experienced entrepreneurs and blockchain experts, Origin Protocol leverages blockchain technology and smart contracts to create an open and transparent ecosystem for buying, selling, and exchanging goods and services.
Written by: Vlad Estoup, Keyann Al-Kheder, and Roman Kuittinen-Dhaoui