Hey everyone! I am going to take a break this week from Splinterlands Economics, because I just got back from vacation and I am not feeling up to writing something super in-depth on an economic subject this week (don't worry, I'll be right back to it next week!). So instead, I am going to take a look into a slightly broader topic which I think is just as important as some of the most important economic concepts that I have gone over before - management of your time and investment in Splinterlands. I am not a financial professional and this is not intended to be specific financial advice, but I am hoping that sharing a little bit of the process that I personally go through when it comes to goals and investment - specifically in Splinterlands, but also in general - will be useful to some of you.
While playing a game or going about our everyday activities it is easy to just "do random stuff" - just pick the first option you see, ask various other people what to do, or "eeny meenie miney moe". And while nothing is wrong with doing this, you may find yourself much better off in the long run by setting a goal for yourself and acting accordingly. Today, I will be going over my process of determining my goals and attempting to accomplish them. Everyone is different and you may find that other methods work better for you, but the steps I am outlining today are what works well for me.
What are your goals?
It is difficult to accomplish your goal if you don't have one! So when you are just starting off, it is extremely important to set a goal. That goal doesn't have to be a huge one, in fact if it is a large one then it may be helpful to break it down into multiple small ones. Maybe you want to increase your assets and achieve a certain net worth, or you want to obtain a Splinterlands deck maxed out for a particular league. Goals don't need to be tied to a certain number - you could set a goal of playing and having the most fun, having more free time, or retiring early, for example - but it helps a lot to have some sort of metric in order for you to be able to tell whether or not you are making progress. If your goal is a large or long term one then it may be more manageable to partition it into smaller bite-sized pieces - where do you want to be in a week, a month, or a year?
I also do my best to remember to be flexible - don't forget that it is possible (and highly likely) that you will want to adjust your goals over time. Whether it is to set your sights on an even larger goal or to adjust your previous objective to a slightly more realistic one, setting goals is often a learning process as we figure out what is achievable, and could very well require many additional iterations of setting new goals further on down the line.
What resources do you have at your disposal?
Once we know which direction we want to be headed in, it is useful to evaluate what tools we have to work with and what we are starting off with. The most obvious resource, and oftentimes a very large part of our total is capital (currency, NFTs, or other assets), but any skills or special circumstances you may have are also helpful. One of the more underrated resources that you may not think about at first is time. Are you patient and have a long time window? That is also a resource, and when it comes to investing I would argue that having a long time frame is perhaps the most valuable resource you can have at your disposal.
As an example, let's look at my situation with a goal of building up a large Splinterlands collection. One of the lines I remember most from Archer is a response to a character getting told "no" when asking for something - "Can't? or won't?". In my case I won't spend a large amount of outside money on Splinterlands, though doing so would certainly be one way to achieve my goal. Instead, I need to look to other resources in order to grow my in-game assets. In my case, I have an economics background and enjoy writing, so I use those personal resources to write blogs about various economic topics in order to raise funds to spend on cards and other Splinterlands-related items. This brings in a small amount of weekly income from Hive, which over time will help me to grow my collection.
Figuring out what resources you have available requires a little bit of knowing yourself, which is always a good thing. If you can learn which types of activities you are good at and/or enjoy then that is a huge step that will make our final planning step much, much easier. And our final step is...
What is the best way to achieve your goals?
After determining where I want to end up and what I have to get myself started, it is time to chart a course and determine the most efficient way to utilize those resources to achieve those goals. To give a few examples in Splinterlands, having a keen grasp of strategy can help you to make the most of a card collection or a rental budget. If you love researching and looking at markets, then trading and speculating on various cards or cryptos may be your niche. You may also leverage outside skills to help you reach your goals, as I briefly mentioned in my blogging example.
While everyone is free to do whatever they want (especially in the crypto world!), if you want to achieve something significant, then having a goal and a plan to get there will greatly increase your chances of success. Finally, setting goals isn't only limited to Splinterlands. Anything from your financial health or job to your relationships may benefit from taking a long look at the situation and figuring out your goals, resources, and plans - give it a try, the results may surprise you!
Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:
Splinterlands Economics: Appreciation - An overview of the concept of asset appreciation, and how we can use it to our advantage in Splinterlands.
Things that go Bloop in the Night - Using Flying Squid in Battle! - Last week's battle challenge, featuring Flying Squid!
Splinterlands Economics: Money - An look into the concept of money, and how understanding it can help us in Splinterlands.
Thinking about giving Splinterlands a try but haven't signed up yet? Feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!
All images used in this article are open source and obtained from Pixabay or Unsplash. Thumbnails borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Canva.