It sounds radical: let yourself do what you want as long as you track it.

There are now hundreds of digital NFTs each worth more than a million dollars each. Just like Reddit stocks, they change in value dramatically, they come with a story and they’re fun to talk about with your friends and peers.

The side-effects of this kind of basic respect appear in unexpected places, and depend on your own personal quirks and hangups. Work ethic improves because you’re willing to work through tough spots and ugly dilemmas. Social interactions improve because you’re willing to accept that you may be judged or misunderstood.

Rather than going for the maximum challenge you can handle (for a mercifully short time) you’re looking for that “just challenging enough to improve” window. And once you find it, you live in it.

For example…Getting healthy — is eating junk food really a way to “treat yourself” and “enjoy the good stuff in life” … or are you telling yourself a story that isn't really true?

And we have many advantages compared to the polymaths of the past. The internet, after all, is now full of free online courses in many different disciplines, and it is easier than ever to hook up with an expert teacher through apps like Skype even if they are based hundreds of miles away.

We say we want one thing, then we do another. We say we want to be successful but we sabotage the job interview. We say we want a product to come to market, but we sandbag the shipping schedule. We say we want to be thin but we eat too much. We say we want to be smart but we skip class or don’t read that book the boss lent us.

Starting from scratch is usually a bad idea.

The human body employs hundreds of feedback loops to keep your blood pressure, body temperature, glucose levels, calcium levels, and many other processes at a stable equilibrium.