This month I decided to work on something old and something new.
I made more improvements to my prototype life gamification project.
While chatting with a close friend about the project he suggested having a section that reminds me why a particular quest is important and worth doing. This would act as motivation to continue doing that quest. It would also act as a filter to stop me adding lots of random quests to simply be busy. In future, if I want to add a quest I need to write a summary of how it fits into my life goals. If I cannot provide a good reason for why it is important and worth doing, then it's probably not that important or worth doing.
So here is the quest log for my journaling quest. If I need a reminder for the context of a quest I can press a button to open up this more detailed quest log. This quest log provides information on why the quest is important as well as a button to start the quest. As with the previous game screen the description text and button update dynamically. In this case I already completed my journaling exercise today so the button is greyed out and does nothing. The description text is similarly greyed out.
Another cool feature on this screen is the progress bar. It also updates dynamically so the bar fills up as I do more daily journaling exercises in a row. The total number of days also updates as well. The idea was inspired by my experiences with Duolingo where I have a streak of over a year. Memes about scary Duolingo aside, the app has been incredibly helpful in encouraging me to maintain my learning streak. Upon reflection I think the streak tracking and progress bars have been a part of that encouragement. That is why I tested these features out in my prototype.
In terms of something new, part of me has always wondered how I would do with trading in equities. My undergraduate training did include quite a bit on analysis of various asset classes including equities, and I am analytical by nature. So I thought now would be a good time to start and see what I could do. At the moment I am still looking for work, but this project might become a form of complementary income over time.
During one of the career related events in my masters program I found I was more naturally inclined in slightly more structured environments. Looking back this sounds about right; I performed fairly well during my actuarial consulting years at KPMG and most recently throughout my IBM Data Science Professional Certificate course. In these instances there was some sort of structure I could follow.
Now I am essentially all by myself with endless possibilities ahead. It is a beautiful idea, yet I do find it a little terrifying. I admit I am not particularly great when there is no structure at all, and that is the purpose of the daily journaling, the prototype app and these monthly blog posts. They are ways that I am adapting to an environment with no structure. This analytics project into equities is another opportunity for me to exercise my skills in these sort of unstructured environments.
So this month I registered an account with eToro. I dabbled a bit with some investments while I was feeling my way around the platform and starting research on technical analysis. In particular I invested a little in Tesla and Bitcoin.
My portfolio was doing alright overall … until Elon Musk sent out a tweet. For some reason Elon Musk's tweets are still funny even when it costs me money now.
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