☀️ Light, Celsius death blow, a better analytics, & dopamine hits

Hey, Happy New Year!

If you're into this type of thing, then I hope your yearly reflection and planning went well. I'm still finishing up mine as we speak, but I think a little extra time is ok for something that is so insanely valuable to me. As Marc Andreessen said:

But... on that note, today's newsletter does not really have any big plan or even a central theme. It simply features a few random non-related topics that I hope you'll find interesting. Hope you enjoy.

I received a bunch of nice responses to last week’s email about my morning routine, a lot of you gave me some good tweaks I can use (thank you).

In the responses, a few people asked how they can get enough sunlight to kickstart their circadian rhythm if they live somewhere without much sun, such as when it’s rainy and gloomy outside, or if you’re just up too early for the sun to be up.

Huberman touched on this. In short, the truth is that nothing beats outdoor light, even on a cloudy day, it may just take longer (might need 20-30min in yucky weather).

But If that doesn't work, then a backup is using specialty light therapy lamps.

My personal setup is to use my two Elgato Key Lights (these are the go-to lights for home video recording). I attach them to my desk to pop over my monitor and then set the color temp to be around 4000k (roughly the same as the morning sun) at max brightness. These are not quite as good as the specialty lamps, but I don't need anything extra on my desk, so I'm ok getting close-ish.

I turn them on when I start working and keep them on for an hour or so. If nothing else, it really helps kill the gloomy day vibes of winter.

Something that won't help with gloomy vibes however...

Bad News Bears for Celsius Users

The judge presiding over the Celsius bankruptcy case just killed some of the last remaining hopes of those caught up in the debacle.

The judge just ruled that the customer deposits inside of Celsius at the collapse were the property of the estate, not the property of the depositors.

See, Celsius had a very specific Terms contract in place.

Feels wrong, doesn't it? How in the world is this even possible?

If I go and deposit my cash into my JPMorgan Chase bank account, and then Chase goes belly up, I'm still owed the cash. The cash is the property of Travis, not Chase.

Why is this different?

The reason comes down to the fact that Celsius was not a bank. If you remember, the always-pompous Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky was well known for saying, "Banks are not your friend". 😑

It seems that the way Celsius deposits were legally structured made them investments, not bank deposits, and investments can go to zero.

There is something else though. I hate to even say it, but unfortunately it's possible that even those who actually got their money out of Celsius before the collapse could be liable, and be ordered to return the funds.

There is some time limit on that. Twitter told me up to 90 days before the collapse, but that's just Twitter so no real clue.

A Very Tiny Upside

The only good thing to happen out of all of this is that New York's Attorney General is suing Alex Mashinsky for all kinds of sketchy shit, including making false statements about the financial health of the business. It is a civil suit, aimed at taking all his money, but would also restrict his future endeavors in the financial world.

Google Analytics is Terrible – Start using Clicky

(this is not a paid ad btw)

For years I've been a Google Analytics hater. It's a bloated product that just keeps getting worse, and GA-4 is a monstrosity.

And my biggest gripe... It's just so damn difficult to actually dig in and find any useful information! The info that I care about is usually buried three layers deep.

Clicky is much better at this. When you log in to Clicky, you instantly get a dashboard where you can quickly see all the data that matters to you (and it's customizable). So within 5 seconds I can see all my visitors, top pages, links that lead to those pages, etc.

Now it would be disingenuous of me to claim that Clicky is better at everything. It's definitely not. In fact, I treat Clicky and GA as almost separate products.

For me, I have both on all my sites. GA is definitely superior when doing deep-dives or syncing up ads. Clicky is superior when I just want to glance and get a feel for what's happening.

My recommendation: Try Clicky if you don’t already have it, and keep GA running in the background in case you ever need to dive deeper. I easily use Clicky 10x as much as GA.

An app to stop mindless distraction

I'm a dopamine junkie. Social media, financial news, email, etc.

When I'm aware of the hazards, I can remain strong. I build systems that prevent me from falling into the rabbit hole (like mornings spent in Airplane mode).

But, like most, I have more moments than I'd like to admit where I'm a sucker to dopamine hits.

It's not the intentional time spent on these activities that's the problem. The problem is when I unintentionally spend my time in these black holes.

When my caveman self has taken over and is opening Instagram after I just closed it. That's the problem.

I found some apps to help with this.

The tools are ScreenZen for my iPhone, and Pause for my desktop browsers (Chrome / Firefox).

These tools don't block the culprits, but instead, they try to shake me out of auto mode by making me wait a few seconds before opening.

Now, whenever I open one of the problem-apps it makes me wait for 5 seconds and then asks "are you sure?". If I'm intentionally doing it then I proceed, and if not then many times it shakes me out of my faulty autopilot.

Talk to you next week,-Travis

Huge Disclaimer in Smaller Font

This content is being provided for information and discussion purposes only and should not be seen as a recommendation to do anything at all, especially not to buy or sell a security. Opinions expressed are that of the author, who is NOT a registered investment adviser, or a financial professional, or can barely even tie his shoes half the time. Do not try and copy the author or you’ll probably lose all of your money and have a rather bad day. There will also be affiliate links in here because I like free money.