(2023-07-11) Scheper Pt1 Of5the Most Depressing Time Of My Life

Scott Scheper Pt. 1 of 5: "The Most Depressing Time of My Life". Roughly a year prior, I had left the cryptocurrency company I had co-founded.

Over the next year, however, the market proceeded down a slow death march. Cryptocurrency prices across the entire industry dropped significantly.

My investment and investments made by my family and friends who trusted me were down over 95%.

We had to lay off almost half our company in a day

the technology really hadn't panned out; it needed more time to develop.

Meanwhile, the vision was redirected into something I wasn't proud of.

Fast-forward a year later, and there I was, on my couch, lying down in a vegetative coma of indolence

what I really desired was to serve people worth serving. Sure, there were some excellent people I got to serve at the cryptocurrency company; but, let's face it, the vast majority of those involved were in it to make money without having to do anything.

I was still fascinated with cryptocurrency, and I was intrigued by decentralized finance. I saw innovation coming out of that space. But I was leaning toward creating something in my craft of marketing and copywriting.

Specifically, I was intrigued by the idea of creating a newsletter, and it would be in a format inspired by my mentor, the late, great copywriter Gary Halbert. I began to grow inspired by the idea of creating a newsletter related to marketing, copywriting, cryptocurrency, and whatever else I was interested in.

I began to read all day on my patio. I read psychology and philosophy books

I had used a commonplace book in the past to store notes, but I ran into limitations. After a few days, I was reminded of those limitations

Yet, while reading, I felt there was an incommunicable power in taking notes by hand—whether that be in my commonplace book or on notecards. Writing things down by hand developed my understanding of what I was reading.

I felt the urge to connect my ideas as I spotted many patterns in my readings.

I started using MS-Excel to link my ideas. I also used it to diagram concepts and connections between them

Over the years, I have tried out every tool you can think of.

The closest tool I found for helping me organize my knowledge was Trello. Yet, even Trello was lacking compared to good ol' Microsoft Excel.

However, one morning I woke up and discovered a tool that changed absolutely everything.... (Zettelkasten)