Two Minute Crypto – On Expertise

Please click the link below to listen to the 24th episode of my weekly crypto podcast ‘Two Minute Crypto.’ These are intended to be short, single-topic ramblings on some aspect of the cryptosphere. Comments and critiques welcome.

Alternative link:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/two-minute-crypto-on-expertise/id1441492450?i=1000428766231&mt=2

Transcript

Two Minute Crypto – On Expertise

Welcome to Two Minute Crypto. Today I’d like to focus on the concept of expertise or mastery and how it relates to crypto. As a starting point let’s accept that mastery of a given discipline involves an extended commitment of time, determination, focus and repetition commonly packaged as 10 thousand hours of full engagement with that discipline.

Now let’s assume that if you are listening to this podcast that you are a ‘crypto enthusiast’ you are an interested and engaged party. Let’s do some down and dirty math. Again, let’s assume you study crypto (study being applied in the broadest possible terms) 2 hours every day with a 5-hour session on the weekend. Accounting for a day off – that’s 15 hours a week, 60 a month, 720 a year. So, a wide-ranging engagement with the cryptoverse amounts to a not insubstantial 700 plus hours a year. Assuming you got into crypto at the start of 2017, you now have over 1400 hours of crypto learning under your belt.

Impressive in one sense, but a long long way from mastery. And that’s fine as long as you internalise and acknowledge that almost all of us are crypto neophytes. Now importantly, we come to focus – mastery is rarely possible discipline-wide – you typically don’t master the entire field of physics for example but rather some strand of it with an overarching understanding of the context of the strand within the whole. The same limitations apply to crypto.

If you seek some degree of crypto mastery and intend to commit time and effort long term to the crypto space then at some point a plan of learning is essential. For myself- I spent the first two years of my crypto journey attempting to soak up ‘everything- -tech, ethos, individual projects, the whole space. But over the last year or so I’ve begun to narrow my focus and seek expertise in two primary strands of crypto – market components and long-term investing. Of course, I strive to stay abreast of new tech developments and the like, but the lions share of my focus is lasered in on the market and all that implies.

So, if you see crypto as ‘your thing’ perhaps consider reflecting on a plan of learning and set yourself a slightly more specific goal than being the ‘crypto guy’.

Thanks for listening.