July - kashvireads #7

🖼️ First NFT Purchase, 📲 Minimizing distractions & 📝 Copywriting Tips

Hello 👋🏽

July has been hectic but I mean that in the best way possible. I’m constantly working 💻 on things that I enjoy doing along with finally catching up with the people I love (in-person). 🤍

At the moment, I’m educating myself about NFTs, copywriting and audience-building. 📝 I bought my first NFT and I’m so excited to tell you about it. More on that towards the end! 🖼️

Without further ado, let’s review July ⚡

📘 What I’m Reading:

  1. “Indistractable” by Nir Eyal: A book that’s all about taking control of our attention by understanding our distractions. It is an indispensable guide to how we can combat our addiction to technology and master the skill of the century: becoming indistractable. 📲

  2. “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo”: An intense drama novel that recalls the life of ageing and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo, who is finally ready to reveal secrets of the past and tell the truth about her glamourous life. 🎥

*Reviews are posted on Instagram!

🎧 What I’m Listening To:

  1.  Crazy About Crypto: A live Twitter Spaces crypto talk show for pioneers to share their crypto journey with the world. The host does a great job making guests feel comfortable and asking genuine questions. I really like listening to the conversations on this show and enjoy their format. 🤑

  2. Becoming Indistractable with Nir Eyal on The Inspired Learning Podcast: In this episode, the host (aka @booksforwealth) & Nir Eyal talk about why distraction is an often misunderstood term and how one can become closer to indistractibility. They also discuss “The Social Dilemma” 📚

🎶 July Playlist:

Stoned at the nail salon, Traitor, Bezos & more …

📚 Advice from Books:

"We can change the way we talk to ourselves in order to harness the power of self-compassion. This doesn’t mean we won’t mess up; we all do. Everyone struggles with distraction from one thing or another. 🗣️The important thing is to take responsibility for our actions without heaping on the toxic guilt that makes us feel even worse and can, ironically, lead us to seek even more distraction, in order to escape the pain of shame. 🙏🏽Self-compassion makes people more resilient to letdowns by breaking the vicious cycle of stress that often accompanies failure. If you find yourself listening to the little voice in your head that sometimes bullies you around, it’s important to know how to respond. 💌Instead of accepting what the voice says or arguing with it, remind yourself that obstacles are part of the process of growth. We don’t get better without practice, which can be clumsy and difficult at times. 🥴A good rule of thumb is to talk to yourself the way you might talk to a friend. Since we know so much about ourselves, we tend to be our own worst critics, but if we talk to ourselves the way we’d help a friend, we can see the situation for what it really is. 🤝Telling yourself, ‘This is what it’s like to get better at something’ and ‘You’re on your way’ is a healthier way to handle self-doubt. ❤️ ."

- Indistractable, by Nir Eyal

💭 A quote that summarises this month:

“Never be so polite, you forget your power.Never wield such power, you forget to be polite.” - Taylor Swift

📸 Photo of the Month:

🌎 Interesting Links that you can Explore:

  1. 10+ Copywriting Mistakes and How To Double Your Conversion: This is an excellent thread by GrowthTactics on Twitter that has helped me grow as a writer and improve my choice of words. This one thread alone is a copywriting masterclass. ✍🏽

  2. How a 12-Year-Old Made Over $160,000 in Ethereum on NFTs in One Day: In this article, Will Gottsegen breaks down how a tween launched their project, “Weird Whales”, a set of pixelated whale icons inspired by a stock image, and became an “overnight” success in the NFT world. It’s an amazing story and I’m excited to see how this project plays out in the long term! 🐬

  3. How To Turn Notes Into Action: An informative thread by Julian Shapiro that shares a framework for acting on advice that we keep taking notes for. The “Starting Principles” part is my favourite because it highlights how committing to high-level principles can remove the friction that makes advice unlikely to be acted on. 💯

  4. Alternative Investments to Look Into: The world is in a very different place than it was for my parents and older sister. For them, investing has always been buying stocks or saving. However, things have changed. Learning how to invest is no longer “gated” and everyone can participate. Not only in the options above but things like NFTs, collectables, sports cards, sneakers etc. In this article, Gary writes about these options in addition to the pros and cons. There is also a ton of wisdom towards the end. 🙏🏽

  5. Creativity and Entrepreneurship, 10x Creator Course: A rather long but yet amazing thread by Justin Mikolay that every creator should read. I've been following his work for a while but this is probably my favourite thread from him so far. Key takeaway: you don't have to be binary. 🤝

  6. Filter Coffee: Your morning shot of daily business & tech news packed with hot trends, startup signals and tech news 📈 I intern here! And the newsletter is SO fun. I highly recommend subscribing to it, especially if you're Gen-Z ☕ Fun fact: I discovered Substack through this startup! Leave a comment

My First NFT Investment

Alright alright alright - it’s time to tell you about World Of Women! It is a collection of 10,000 tokens showcasing unique Women to promote diversity in the NFT space. They were randomly generated digital collectibles of various rarity living on the Ethereum blockchain as ERC-721 tokens and hosted on IPFS. A whopping 15% of all sales will be reinvested in cryptoart! They support multiple causes (with blockchain proof) and the mission at large is to empower women through art and by promoting diversity. The whole collection is the work of Yam Karkai in her signature hand-drawn and colourful style using Procreate and Adobe Illustrator. 

I came across it on Twitter and really liked how they were operating. I slid into the Discord as well and started studying their website to learn more about the utility attached to these tokens. I really liked their roadmap and was moved by how determined the team is. I participated in all the giveaways but had no luck, haha. I was pretty sure that I was going to miss out on the project until they reduced the mint price. I was wondering if the investment is worth it and that’s when my friend Fazn came along and offered to be my minting partner! He has been really kind about it and is also starting his NFT journey. The launch was at around 1 am IST, so I slept right after we minted our first WoW tokens (#408 is mine).

When I woke up in a couple of hours for college, I opened Discord to read that GaryVee joined the server and invested in the project! This increased my faith tremendously and was a massive reassurance about the investment. I was super happy to see his tweets as well as his support in Discord. Even though I was in the middle of a class, I minted one on my own (#4236) and I’m really happy with what I’ve got! They might not be super rare but I look forward to being a part of this community and witnessing how the devs build this world. You can see the art in the thumbnail of this post!

Although my goal is to eventually sell one so that I can stack ETH, I’m bullish on the utility of WoW and thus plan on HODLing the other. Writing about it here is my way of documenting my journey in the metaverse. This is the first time I bought an NFT on my own (unless you count ENS domains lol) and I feel really good about it. I’ll keep you guys updated on how things roll every alternate month or so. If you’re still reading this, know that I appreciate you a ton but also that none of this is financial advice. I’m just a 19 year old kid trying out alternative investments because I can! Please do your own research before you get into any of this :)

🙏🏽 Thank you for reading, and for subscribing to this. I appreciate all 424 of you. If there’s anything that I can help you with, please connect with me on the social links below. Feel free to reply to this email with any thoughts you’d like to share! Hoping that August will be a great month for us all! I can’t wait to write to you again :)

All the love,Kashvi 🦉