We live in such a fast-paced world. Everything is expected to happen NOW, immediately, without hesitation.” C’mon! Get up! Chop! Chop! Move… NOW! No, like yesterday, actually. Get going!”
That’s the sort of directive that’s established here in this rapid world we’re in. And because of this haste-ridden protocol we’re accustomed to follow, we become so overwhelmed so easily. I mean, there’s simply so much to do that we can’t keep up. Or at least it feels that way, don’t it? Right now, you’re probably thinking of about a dozen and a half different things you gotta do and you may even feel you’re wasting time just sittin’ here reading this blog. Maybe you’re even multi-tasking, perhaps doing research in another tab cause ya gotta finish that paper or maybe you’re reading this on your phone while texting people ‘cause you gotta keep up on that social life. We’re doing a lot of shit, but we aren’t really focused. We’re moving just to move. We’re going just to go. Working just to work. Doing just to do. All this with no real target in mind. Ambiguous ambition, if you will. We’re being active just for the mere dear sake of being active. We tend to believe that ya gotta have some activity in life going on. Otherwise you’ll be wasting time. Wasting time! Oh no! The absolute bane of society here, right? Man, I’ll tell you the time you enjoy wasting is NOT wasted time. Being able to do nothing and mean it, well, there’s admiration in that, fellow procrastinator, admiration indeed. It’s quite a perk to hold the uncanny ability to do whatever you want, even IF that thing you want to do is absolutely goddamn nothing. Yet look at us. We’re all moving so freaking fast to destination: no where. We’re buzzin’ an hoppin’ around like busy little fucktards. We’re in a hurry, always in a hurry to get things done, to run from one task to the next, never stopping to rest, never taking time to just like, chill once in a while. We lock ourselves in a perpetual state of nonstop momentum. And it frankly, just tires us the fuck out. We’re left feeling depleted, just worn down entirely. We’re burdened by stress and tormented by the pressure to “pull up your boot straps” and keep going, despite all this lingering stress and headaches we’re experiencing along the way. And it’s this “better keep up the pace” mindset that makes life seem so dull, a dreary mess, where nothing seems to have a point. Work ‘til you die. I’m sure you heard that phrase before, but that’s literally what happens if you keep pushing yourself. Don’t push yourself. Pace yourself. Take your time to do things. Slow it down. Way down. And for god fucking sake, take a break once in a while, will ya? Sheesh. Look what’s happening in our lives. From our work commitments to our responsibilities at home and even our social commitments, we have so much booked in our schedule that we never put aside time to be fully and completely relax -- other than of course, the holidays, which is the one time of year where people do let loose and stop pushing themselves to succeed, as we covered earlier. We gotta finish that report, we gotta fix the leak in the bathroom, we gotta go meet up with our friends at the bar, we gotta pick up the groceries, pay the bills, e-mail our boss, put the dishes away, take out the dog and the trash, shop for a new pair of shoes, give our parents a call. Of course, you might have been trying to skip that last one. Point is, there’s always something we’re running around and doing. Always. But here’s the thing, fellow procrastinator, you’re gonna love this… It’s okay NOT to succeed all the time. Now I don’t mean in the sense that you wind up UNsuccessful. That would be a bit counterintuitive. Of course, failure is inevitable at times, and more or less part of the learning process, so failure isn’t what makes you unsuccessful either. It’s okay to fail. Mistakes are Meh. So when I say you don’t need to succeed I don’t mean you need to flip and do the opposite and completely fail. Besides failure is just an obstacle not the end result. I simply mean you don’t have to always “git r dun”, so to speak. You don’t have to constantly be moving about or making things happen, and you don’t have to do it so hastily at that. You can do…absolutely fucking nothing. At least once in a while, and that’s completely okay. It’s perfectly fine to do nothing. In fact, I’d reckon it’s better to do nothing and feel great about yourself, than it is to do *something* and feel completely wasted. A wise man once said ““It’s better to have loft and lost than to have never loft at all.” Stop making yourself so damn busy. You’re *too* busy. And a lot of people may hear that and take that as a compliment. If they’re told they’re too busy, they’ll be like “heck yeah!” and celebrate it like it's some sort of good thing. Spoiler Alert: It’s not. Being “too” much of anything isn’t good. Like at all. Everything *is good* in moderation. Everything is good in balance. You must balance yourself. Take a step back from your oh so busy schedule. And relax (and not just during the holiday at that!) I know I’ve made that point a lot lately, but I’m trying to get you to see that it is indeed *possible* to let go of all these duties, all these obligations, put them to the side and give yourself a break, without becoming some sort of failure. You don’t fail by resting. You fail by trying too hard and not succeeding. What I’m trying to say here is you don’t have to “succeed” as in try to achieve, make progress towards a goal, or otherwise do something productive in order to meet some form of accomplishment all the time. Certainly, it’s healthy to make progress in your life, but will you just take it, easy, man? Slow down a bit. If you think about it, all those little tasks we do throughout the day -- whether it’s vacuuming the carpet or preparing a PowerPoint presentation, or going over a textbook or meeting notesor whatever finicky task you put effort towards is some effort or attempt to “succeed” in some way. It’s our intention to move forward in some way, and ya know we feel we gotta do it quickly. Like it’s gotta happen now or never. I know it’s odd to say not to always “succeed, so let me re-word and put it this way: you don’t have to *always* be working towards success in order to succeed. Part of succeeding is resting, taking necessary breaks. Part of succeeding is letting go of your duties and obligations for a bit, while you, get this, do NOTHING. Let your mind rest. Let your body recover. Let your emotions recharge. Become calm. Become Lazy! It’s the old tortoise and the hare tale. If you run too fast, you’ll burn out, and wind up exhausted but if you take your time, you’ll get there…slow n’ steady. To put it in a single word, “Eventually” is what sums up the mindset you need to adapt. Saying to yourself “eventually” you’ll figure it out, “eventually” you’ll get there, “eventually” you’ll make it happen will relieve so much tension and so much stress, as opposed to the single-worded mindset of NOW. The standard time frame of *anything* happening in society though is instantaneous. With the ability to swipe right to find a date, order pizza at the click of a button, and ask a device sitting on your kitchen counter any question in the world and get an immediate answer, we’ve become so adapted, so used to getting what we want within seconds. And it’s easy to become addicted to that instant gratification. Because the world arounds us offers access to what we want in just a few short quick moments, we tend to apply that to ourselves and our own means of goals and lifestyle choices. For example, you don’t want to wait to build a successful career, you want that successful career NOW. You don’t want to take time to build a happy and healthy relationship, you want to find the love of your life NOW. You don’t want to puts around trying to make yourself happy, you want to be happy NOW. But here’s the thing, folks… Speed causes stress. Speed is what causes us to be on the edge and so uptight. It is the reason we put so much pressure on ourselves to the point where we’re toppling over trying to carry and lift that burden. The more we rush, the faster and harder we crash. Think about how many arguments you could have avoided if you took a step back to reflect instead of hastily jumping to conclusions. Think about how many dress-induced panic attacks you could have forgoed had you taken the time to relax instead of constantly moving. Think about the goals you could have accomplished if you hadn’t burned out before reaching them. If you really sit down and think about it, the sole reason any of your problems in your life become so overbearing is because you were rushing to try and find a solution, instead of “eventually” finding one…later. Even if a problem pops up unexpectedly, like your car breaks down or you go through a heavy break up or your best friend dies, while these things happen quickly, it doesn’t require a quick and immediate reaction on your part. Life is full of unpredictable shenanigans. You have the choice to either jolt up and acton your initial reaction and feeling or take the time to step back, reflect on your thoughts and emotions, then move forward with a strategic decision. Acting on your immediate response usually leads to terrible consequences. When has it ever helped you to yell immediately when you feel anger? When has it ever been beneficial for you to scream when something stresses you out? When have you ever gained an advantage by doing something out of jealousy? Impulse is a terrible habit, yet it's easy to pick up. In the world of immediate gratifications, we tend to let our emotions take the steering wheel and drive where were going, and, well more often than not, that leads us to quite a messy crash, where we hurt ourselves, we hurt others. So much pain, so much drama, so much life hassle, worry, and stress can all be avoided, completely null n’ void if we just take the time to relax ourselves, ya know give ourselves a break and allow ourselves to slowly, but surely, find the best course of action in any given scenario. Now of course, taking your time to do things like solving your problems doesn’t work as a band-aid. It doesn’t just magically heal your wounds and cure the pain. But it does allow you to properly treat the pain rather than rushing Think about a surgeon, he’s gotta take his time, slow n’ steady, in order to perform a successful operation. Imagine if you had a surgeon rushing to get his job done. You wouldn’t want him picking around your body. He’d cause more harm than help if he was swiftly sharpening his scalpel, then proceeding to go to stab town. Treat your life like your job is a surgeon, not a racecar driver. Your goal is to be accurate and efficient, not win the race. Now before we wrap up, I want you to repeat this phrase with me, as it’s the real main takeaway I’m trying to make here. You ready? Here it is: I'm my best when I’m at rest Say it with me now: I’m my best when I’m at rest. You have to give yourself a day off, a real day off, not a fake day off, where you take the day off from work and wind up spending the day catching up on errands and chores. Just like your phone needs to be plugged in to recharge its battery, so to do you need to be plugged in (to the couch and at) in order to recharg eyour battery. You need to embrace your inner sloth, be slow, smooth, and deliberate in all your decisions. And for god’s sake man, take it easy. -N8
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Well fellow ProcrastiN8rs, here we are, a new year, and same ole’ lazy me.
I’m not one to follow the tradition of making a grand New Year’s Resolution, as I’ve talked about in previous years.]I mean it’s nothing but a waste of time. You wind up striving for an accomplishment that is beyond your capability. You start going to the gym to lose weight only to wind up back at the McDonal’ds drive thru about a month later. You go start your big successful business only to wind up bankrupt and jobless when you realize you're way above your head. That’s the thing about New Year’s Resolutions is they're too vague and too big to ever truly make happen. You gotta make easy goals, lazy goals -- small little ones you can actually do, even if it ain’t really that much. Accomplish “just enough”, not anything extravagant. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to make big moves. After all, you’ll likely burn out in attempts to do so, leading yourself to exhaustion before ever finishing what you set out to do. Remember, slow n’ steady wins the race. Move like a sloth, climbing up that tree, to the top of your goal, nice and freaking slow. Take things nice n’ slow, man, like our spirit animal, the good cuddly sloth. Relax on into your goals. Don’t push for them. Goal achieving doesn’t need to be any sort of hard work or vigorous effort. Make your life simple. You’ll get there…eventually. Ah, the favorite word of a true procrstin8r -- eventually. Eventually is not a time frame, but a mindset. You have in mind that no matter what, you’ll get there, you’ll make it happen, you’ll make do. It may not happen tomorrow, or even really any time soon, but it will happen *eventually*, at some point, in the future. This mindset alone makes it easier to accomplish goals because for one, you’re no longer pressuring yourself to achieve things by a certain deadline or due date. For another, you give yourself plenty of rest to have energy to actually get the thing done that you want to do, as opposed to exhausting yourself to the point of mental, physical, and emotional fatigue. And finally, you also have a positive outlook towards your goals, because even if you hit failure, it’s no big deal; you trust the process and will still get there “eventually.” Now let’s take a deeper dive into why “Eventually” is better than a New Year’s Resolution Deadlines are bullshit. All they do is force things to get done within a certain time frame, not necessarily done with quality effort or even thoughtful effort. And it goes to say, the “deadline” of one single year, underneath a New Year’s Resolution is likewise, bullshit and absolute garbage. Look at the amount of video games that are rushed to the shelves, to hit a specific launch date, only to be bug-ridden messes upon release. Had game developers taken the time to create, I don’t know, an actual functional product, instead of blitzing through the production process just to land the mark on a very specific date on the calendar, then they could avoid the whole causing PCs and consoles to crash on launch day thing. Don’t be the game developer rushing their new game to the shelves. Take your time. Release the game…eventually. That is to say, don’t be so concerned about making your goal happen within a certain time frame that you negate doing any sort of good job at it. Quality is better than punctuality. Live life at your own pace. Do things when you want, if you even want to in the first place. And certainly, don’t put yourself under the pressure to enhance your life in an elaborate way within only twelve months. The more you focus on being on time, the less you focus on doing well. And even if you do manage to do well AND still meet the supposed deadline you set for yourself, well now you’re left completely depleted of energy, just completely drained. Move forward, but not too quickly. Achieve but don’t overachieve. Accomplish goals but don’t *strive* for them. Minimize effort and maximize results. That’s the key formula here. Put in a little bit at a time. I mean how do you eat a whole elephant? One. Bite. At a time. How do you travel 10 million miles on foot? One. Step. At a time. How do you become a millionaire? One. Cent. At a time. There’s a lot of pressure here, in this gun-ho work hard ‘til you die society that you gotta make something absolutely HUGE happen within a year. And if you don’t well that just makes you a lazy son of a bitch. But so what if I’m a lazy son of a bitch? Look, I value my own sanity over the approval of others. Aim to do the same. Stop giving a fuck about what people want or expect of you. Live your life in such a way that you fulfill your own desires, not in a way that fulfills the desires of others. Besides, most people that disapprove of your “lazy” ways have no independent thoughts or feelings for themselves. They follow a life protocol they’ve been handed as a child, and criticize anyone who doesn’t follow the outline (which they didn’t even write for themselves) to an absolute T as an adult. They basically never grow up and stick to the brainwashed beliefs they were force fed as a child. It’s the reason people get upset when you don’t go to college or have kids or work a day job. That’s the story they were told to follow as kids and that’s the story they try to play out, even if they secretly don’t actually want kids or don’t want to work a corporate job. They suck up and don’t complain, because that’s what “you’re supposed to do.” You’re supposed to go to school and get a good-paying job. You’re supposed to raise a family. But us lazy sons of a bitches don’t suck up or buck up for anything we don’t want to participate in. People only hate us because we’re doing what they want, and they meanwhile don’t have the balls to do it. Most people would rather fit in and be miserable, than do something different that makes them happy. These corporate owners use this psychological need to belong against us. The whole premise of the “get a good job, get married, have kids” timeline is just to make you an obedient little corporate slave who produces offspring and creates even more obedient little corporate slaves. It’s all a ruse to keep you working and billionaires stuffing their fat wallets. Your only freedom is laziness. Laziness allows you to do what you want, when you want as opposed to doing what you’re told to do and when you’re told to do it. So when you’re told to make a Resolution, lay back in bed and give it a solid “No.” I’ll tell what, fam, in regards to achieving a resolution in a year. That just ain’t happening. I mean, let's be honest with ourselves here, Like, seriously. There’s really nothing HUGE you are going to accomplish within a single year. That’s just simply not enough time to make any sort of significant changes to your habits, personality, mental, emotional or physical wellbeing. I mean face it, 365 days is too little of a time frame to make these big moves everybody expects us to make. Any worthwhile goal is going to take more than a year. That’s a fact. Big goals take a BIG amount of time. And one year is pretty short, in the grand scheme of things. Here’s the thing about making a New year’s Resolution, in a nutshell. Either… A. You wind up burnt out before you even get a chance to make your NYR happen, or.. B. You get it done but wind up doing a very shitty job at it Low and slow is the way to go. Be lazy about your goals. Embrace your inner sloth and climb up that tree…eventually. Don’t try to jump up the branches swiftly -- you’ll probably end up falling and hurting yourself. Go carefully, slowly. Take it one little move at a time. Don’t push yourself to get up and go and do something BIG by the year 2023. I mean, it’s not that you can’t or won’t do something BIG and admirable and noteworthy. It’s just that, you’re willing to take a bit more than a year to make that happen. Procrastinate and put off your New Year’s Resolution ‘til later. You’ll do it….EVENTUALLY! Take it easy, N8 The holidays are a precious time of the year. It’s really the only time of the year, we, collectively as a society get to embrace our Leisure and kick our feet up, without any sort of backlash or criticism. You can truly relax, for once, and not have to jump up and run from one obligation to the next. What’s more is no one is gonna give you shit about your lack of work ethic, as they usually would on a quote on quote “normal” day. You, for at least a temporary moment in time, get to experience what it’s like to live a life of desire, doing what you want, when you want, instead of building a schedule around what you have to do or what you’re expected to do. Obligations and expectations are thrown out the window during the holidays. There are none. There’s just relaxation and peace of mind. There’s only being at ease. It’s quite an exception here in this hard work, success driven culture in which we live in. If you want to spend the entire day lounged up in your PJs sipping eggnog and eating cookies during the holidays… No one really cares. No one judges you. It’s all good. Go ahead. Go do you. Put on those warm fuzzy reindeer pjs with snowman slippers and dive onto the couch. You’re just being festive. Now come any other time of the year, then you’re just being a self-indulgent prick or a good for nothing bum. God forbid if you decide to take a day off from work to eat those cookies in your oh so cozy pajamas at any other point throughout the year. The holidays is a time to, well for lack of a better phrase, actually fucking enjoy yourself. You get to see what it’s like to not have to work, not have to do chores, not have to attend some sort of event, not have to…do anything, really. It’s completely under your discretion what you choose to do. Wanna do nothing but play video games? Have at it. Wanna binge watch shows on Netflix? Go for it. Want to just snooze the day away? No problemo. It’s really the only time of year that we have this supposed “freedom” in which our country of America was built on. You have freedom to do whatever the fuck you want and having that freedom feels fucking awesome. Laziness is freedom. We feel free because we can be lazy (and not be judged for it!) You know, otherwise, outside of this little holiday fantasy world, snoozing the day away or binge watching or playing video games is all seen as nothing but a waste of time. It’s a waste of time to enjoy yourself. You must constantly be making sacrifices for your big corporate overlords. Don’t sit around. Get up and go! Is the message we’re constantly bombarded with. You must exert all your energy and effort into being productive to the point where you’re physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted -- just straight up fatigued from the amount of shit on your plate. Having any sort of rest, well ha! That just makes you weak, that just makes you a good-for-nothing lazy bastard. You don’t get to achieve happiness unless you work for it, is essentially what we’re told. We’re brainwashed to believe that happiness is an accomplishment and not a feeling, that it’s something we must work our asses off to get. You can’t be happy until you “make it”, until you’ve got the big mansion and the fancy car, the cool smart watch, and your own private yacht….or so we’re told. Yet,then we celebrate the holidays, where we ain’t doin’ shit and you know what? Feel happy, feel *real* freaking happy. I mean there’s a reason people say “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and it’s because people are satisfied with what they have in the present. They’re not trying to impress anyone or earn any sort of approval. In fact, they’re not trying to take anything from the world for themselves; they give. They give what they can afford and it’s enough. It’s the thought that counts. The holidays is when people give what they have, rather than trying to give more than that. It’s the season of giving and people put aside their otherwise constant struggle to make a name for themselves and instead embrace generosity and harmony. We come together in our laziness, saying all the Dudes in the world are just enough. I’m a dude, he’s a dude, she’s a dude. We’re all Dudes. Just abiding doing our own thing, wearing festive PJs and sipping a beverage here, man. And in this act of abiding to our lazy nature, in this release of working hard to get more, we feel jolly and merry inside. You see, looking for happiness in some measure of wealth and success will prevent you from ever attaining any sort of happiness at all. You’ll put yourself in a perpetual loop of wanting more, getting more, then wanting more again. You’ll always want a bigger house, a nice car, a larger paycheck, a grander set of jewelry. Yet, during the holidays what you have to give is already enough; you ain’t gotta earn more or be more. The holidays are the only time of year you’re seen as well…actually freaking human, not just a cog in the machine, not some sort of wage slave or work grunt, but an actual human being. It’s fascinating isn’t it? How “wonderful” it is to be human. It feels so peaceful, so liberating. It’s a Joy to the World! Typically, when it’s not the holiday time of year, you feel trapped in an ongoing pursuit to make more, do more, be more. But during the holiday, there’s no “more” to seek after. What you’ve done is enough. Who you are is enough. It’s not about what you can do or what you can provide that makes you special. Your very existence, at its core, is enough to be wonderful, charming, beautiful, and sexy. Gone are the to-do lists. Gone are the screaming bosses slamming a huge pile of work on your desk minutes before you clock out. Gone are the cynical people telling you to get off your ass and do something. Just go home and enjoy yourself. That’s what you’re encouraged to do during the holiday. Simple as that. In doing so, people are in holly good spirits. Imagine for a second, if people were this laid back all the time, if we could all be lazy throughout the entire year, and not just a short little burst towards the end of it. Well, we’d have a much happier society. The suicide rates would drop. Mental health would increase. People would be giving, looking more out for others, rather than themselves. We’d be living in a much more harmonious society if we allowed laziness to be okay always and not just during the holidays. There would be peace on earth and mercy mild. Think about it, man. How many times do you hear “Keep the Christmas spirit alive all year round?” It’s a common consensus among many. Yet how can you “make spirits bright” all the time if you’re constantly undergoing the stress of a never-ending series of obligations and expectation?. If you’re expected to dress the right way, talk politically correct, eat properly (no cookies, eggnog, or figgy pudding)? How can you be bright if you’re living a dull and dreary life of matching the “norm”, of following the same tryhard routine day in and day out, rather than having the freedom to express yourself in colorful ways like those bright Christmas tree lights? You feel dull because you’re locked to chains of being what others expect you to be, namely an obedient little corporate slave, who’s entire existence is to serve for the profits of your overlords. Freedom comes from laziness. Freedom comes in doing what you want, in saying you know what? My time and effort is worth more than what you’re paying me and I’m allowed to take the day off if you want. Freedom is having the courage to say “You can’t fire me. I quit. I’m done working. You don’t own my happiness.”
Freedom is taking happiness back in your hands, back under your control. It’s doing things on YOUR TERMS, not your bosses, not your judging peers. YOURS. You do what you want, when you want. You be your own boss That’s where laziness comes in. It’s all tied together. You see, when you truly embrace your laziness, you’re not working to earn approval or trying hard to accomplish one thing or another. You’re simply…just enjoying yourself. Good old fashioned enjoyment. So stay home this holiday. Not to mention, the fact that we’re literally living through a global pandemic, there’s no better excuse than now to sit at home and quarantine yourself, aka relax and be in your lazy. I’ve always said that [New Year’s Resolutions are bullshit,] namely because it’s often associated with striving hard to achieve some sort of big ass goal that never really amounts to anything. New Year’s Resolutions are designed to push you into being “more”, which as we already talked about doesn’t lead to happiness. If you must go into the New Year with some sort of new goal or mindset to adapt, then I suggest you take one of the lazy. Make it a point to make the other 360+ days of the year like you would a holiday. Relax and do what you want. Of course that won’t prevent people from judging or criticizing you.[ Haters are gonna hate. Procrastinators are gonna procrastinate.] Besides, that fat jolly man in a red suit does the opposite of what we all do. Guy relaxes and does what he wants for the whole year and works ONE, one single night of the year, then takes a twelve month vacation. Strive to be like that lazy Santa Claus. Strive to do absolutely jack diddly squat all year long. Make a grand total of ZERO progress. Take all the time off you need. Go on vacation from your vacation. Be the least impressive version of yourself. Embrace your inner-sloth and intertwine yourself with lazy. In fact, being lazy is no longer something you do. It’s who you are. You aren’t lazy. Lazy is you. Hark the harold, all dudes sing “Glory to the new Sloth King!” Here’s to a marvelous 2022, fellow procrastin8r. Take it easy during this next trip around the sun. -N8 Well fellow procrastin8r, here we are, another end of the year, another Christmas. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, as they say. And frankly, I love sitting inside playing video games, watching Christmas movies, and sipping chocolate while surrounded by family. It’s a day where traditionally, I spend the whole day in my PJs. (Of course, I suppose I do that nearly any day, but I at least get the festive ones out with gingerbread men or snowmen.) It definitely is wonderful!
It’s just about the only day of the year where businesses actually close. Even when I was caught up in a day job at Wal-Mart, before I decided to make a living from the couch, the store was actually closed on December 25th. Wow! Imagine that! Big corporate retailer closed? Sounds like a dream. Maybe they just don’t wanna look like a complete Scrooge, even thoug they are the other 364 days of the year. (Of course, they didn’t really give us the day “off” because technically we already received two days off per week and they just made it so that Christmas just so happened to be one of those two days. But I digress.) Point is, even greedy corporate companies let their workers take the day off. No other holiday do we collaboratively as a society decide to like, take it easy, ya know? We’re always forcing employees to show up for work, especially in the retail industry. It almost is, we’re almost living in a sort of fantasy world during Christmas, where we leave behind this work hard driven culture for 24 hours. I mean even Independence Day, the great American holiday, is not just a day to enjoy barbecues in the summer park and watch fireworks at night. It’s a day to buy sales. And good god, Thanksgiving has pretty much just come an expansion pack to Black Friday at this point. Don’t even get me started. Get up and go shopping for these limited time deals! Every holiday, besides Christmas, we’re expected to do something. Even if we remove the whole go to the store to shop for the exclusive deals thing in other holidays, there’s still something we’re expected to do that requires us to leave the house in order to celebrate it, like walk around trick or treating for Halloween or go bustling through a crowd to watch a parade on St. Patty’s Day or take your date out to a fancy restaurant on Valentine’s Day. You get the picture. Most holiday celebrations involve some sort of exciting activity, whereas Christmas it’s a rather passive activity. Sit inside, open gifts, eat food. That’s it. You don’t have to leave the house. And sure, you may have to travel to your aunt or grandma’s house or whatever, but you don’t have to leave *that* house once you’re there. Also you may argue that you have to do Christmas shopping and decorating. A lot of it at that. But that’s prep work. That’s stuff you do BEFORE the actual holiday itself. I’m talking about the holiday, not all the ridiculous BUY NOW propaganda you get leading up to the day or the pressure to find a tree, cut it down, and decorate it with lights and ornaments that you gotta slug down from the attic. I’m talking about December 25th, not the days or weeks leading up to that specific date. Christmas (again, December 25th, not the season prequel to the main event) is legitimately the ONLY day of the year where it’s acceptable, at least in the judgement of society, to not have to do stuff, the one day of the year where no one gives you a glaring eye if you say you don’t want to work or leave the house. I mean people may ask, Oh what are you doing for Christmas/the holiday? And you’ll tell them “Oh I’m going to so and so’s house.” And what are you gonna do there? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You’re gonna sit in the house all day, maybe open presents, maybe eat a big hearty meal. But you know what you aren’t doing? Leaving the house to do shit. And Christmas is the only day of the year where that sort of activity, or lack thereof, is completely respectable, perhaps even encouraged. There are such fond memories of the holiday. I mean, you remember waking up as a kid Christmas morning? That pure blissful excitement! Pure bliss. Man, I’ll tell you what, as an adult, I’ve been chasing after that excitement of Christmas morning during childhood. Nothing beats it. The mystery of when Santa’s gonna come, what he's gonna bring. It was really something. And I’ll tell you what, the thing I enjoyed most, like any kid, was getting to open those presents and play with my new toys all day. No school, no homework. My mom didn’t even make me do any chores on Christmas when I was a kid. It was awesome! A day to completely relax and be in my lazy, doing whatever I want. Likewise, as an adult: no job, no work, just playing with toys all day, doing what I want, embracing my laziness. Anyway, we’re gonna take a look at what makes Christmas such a holly jolly lazy good time in today’s blog entry, and without further ado, let’s dive…right into it! Laziness is the spirit of the holiday Parents let their kids play with toys and don’t really expect them to go around the house doing very many chores. Employers let their employees stay home with their families instead of coming in for work. Everyone is given a “real” day off, without any expectation to do anything productive. It’s quite a rare phenomenon in this work hard culture in which we live in, truly. I mean it’s not every day, namely once a friggin year, that you can sit at home and eat milk n’ cookies because it’s festive. Yeah, try telling your boss you wanna snuggle up in your jammies with some fresh chocolate chip cookies and a cold glass of milk any other day of the year. He’d look at you like you're crazy and better not think about it if you wanna keep your job. He won’t allow it. Heck, try telling that to your friends that’s how you’re gonna spend your weekend and they’ll think you’re a lazy loser who doesn’t wanna go out. But on December 25th? It’s completely acceptable to eat cookies and drink milk all day. It’s fine to sit by the fire in nothing but your underwear downing a mug of egg nog. It’s okay to be lazy…for a day. Christmas is the one day of the year where laziness is absolutely and completely okay, at least in regards to general public and its consensus. You’re not looked down upon for getting drunk on eggnog for breakfast. You’re just being festive. You’re not seen as a bum for not dressing up in a three piece suit and instead wearing reindeer slippers and a santa bath robe; you’re just spreading holly good cheer. It’s odd, isn’t it? I mean how things that *typically* have such a bad stigma in society are 100% acceptable for one day. Like what difference does it make if it’s December 25th or July 17th or September 23rd? It’s just a date on the calendar, really. There’s this arbitrary ruleset of what’s acceptable behavior during the other 364 days of the year that seem not to apply on just this one. And often this ruleset dictates that you be professional, you be hardworking, diligent, or otherwise a productive member of society. Yet it’s funny -- it’s funny how the one day of the year where no one is being productive is the happiest of them all. Think about it, man. We’re told that hard work is the key to success and success leads to happiness. There’s such a heavy push in propaganda to frankly work your goddamn ass off in order to live life to its fullest. Yet, then we see the joy in people’s hearts during Christmas time and are inspired to “keep the Christmas spirit alive all year long”. And what is this spirit? Where does it come from? Well, look around. Are people working on Christmas day? Are they striving hard to achieve some sort of big goal? Are they on the clock, on the grind, making money moves? No. Of course not. They’re at home or the homes of their families, relaxing, enjoying company. I mean unless they’re some sort of Grinch. But hey, even that guy eventually feasted on the roast beast. But in essence, people are being lazy for an entire day on Christmas, not having to work, not exercising and instead sittin’ around, stuffing their faces with fruit cake and figgy pudding. And in doing so, in embracing their laziness, well it's a common consensus that it’s the most wonderful time of the year. People are merry because they’re relaxed. They have no obligation. They have no commitment. They have no work or effort required of them. I mean in the sense that they don’t really have to do anything productive or useful. Certainly, one could argue there’s a bit of a commitment in gathering the gifts and going about your plans for the holiday, whatever and wherever that may be, but in doing so, you really don’t have to put in a whole lot of effort, compared to your daily life, of ya know, working 9 to 5! Just show up. Be present. That’s enough. It’s the only day of the year where it seems like your very existence as a human is worthy. Otherwise, your worthiness tends to be determined by the sheer amount of profit, fame, or achievement you can make for yourself. There’s a lot of expectations and pressure in society to always make more, do more, be more. Not on Christmas day. On Christmas Day, you’re enough as a person just for being here (and maybe wearing a Santa hat). You don’t have to complete a series of tasks or maintain a certain level of productivity to earn any level of value. You have value just for being you. You can relax and celebrate the holiday. There’s no goal to fulfill, no accomplishment to be made. Just the pure blissful opportunity to enjoy yourself with other fellow human beings of whom you are close to. Outside of this little fantasy bubble of Christmas day, we’re always moving, always trying, always doing something productive, as a means of individual victory. Life becomes an onslaught of worries and stressors due the never ending cycle of checking one thing off your to-do list, just to add two or three more. Furthermore, we seek only to improve ourselves and our own livelihoods, or at the very least survive and fend for ourselves. During Christmas, on the other hand, we come together. We unite. We join together in our laziness. Christmas reminds us of the importance of Leisure Leisure is the big “L” in L.A.Z.Y. It’s important to take time to take a break, to do nothing, to fully and completely relax. Otherwise, you’re like the hare who couldn’t finish the race because he was too tired. Without giving yourself proper time to rest, you’ll never finish the race, you’ll never finish anything. You’ll fall short of your goals and wind up exhausted, completely burnt out. You’ll do your best to make do, but realize you aren’t really going anywhere because you’re flat out too fatigued to move at all, yet alone make big moves. You feel dead, a walking zombie. Your body has become an animated corpse, fueled by coffee to keep it from completely rotting Frankly, one day in the entire year isn’t enough Leisure at all. Come December 26th (Well maybe the 27th since the 26th is a Sunday this year), you’re gonna snap back to reality. Man, that’s gonna be a heavy Monday isn’t it? I mean all Mondays are pretty darn heavy, but this one in particular, the one right after the holiday, is pure agony. How can we say that we need to keep the Christmas spirit alive all year round, then in the same breath say “Back to work on Monday” or worse, “Gotta start a New Year’s Resolution.” The point here is that Christmas is the merriest time of the year, and it’s the ONLY time of year where we fully embrace our Leisure. And in our relaxed state of mind, we’re able to see the beautiful decorations all around us. Everything from the mistletoe to the holly to the plastic reindeer in your neighbor’s yard. It all seems rather…spectacular. Yet the minute we go back to our ordinary lives doing ordinary things, the spectacular-ness of the world all but seems to fade away. The world becomes grey and it’s just another day. December 26th just another day of the ordinary. But you’re not looking around you. Notice the decorations in life throughout the year Only on Christmas, do we see the brightly colored lights on people’s porches along with the giant inflatable characters and Christmas wreaths. We spot the stars and angels on top of trees, illuminating from the windows of houses on the street. We listen to the carols of people singing and hear the bells ring. We smell the freshly baked gingerbread cookies and taste the chewy cinnamon along with a cold glass of eggnog. During Christmas, we notice the little things -- all the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells the world has to offer. Perhaps all those festive things would become rather dull though if we were to see it every day. The Christmas tree would be just another plant. The colored lights, just another bulb. We’d become oblivious to the beauty of it all. We tend to do that in our everyday lives with the beautiful decoration of nature that surrounds us, just ignoring it. Perhaps we’re too up tight, we’re too high strung, we’re too goddamn stressed and on edge to feel any sort of appreciation towards the elegant allure of the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of this little rock in space we call home . Give the gift that keeps on giving -- your laziness Enter that state of mind you feel on Christmas day, one of true happiness and jolly good spirits. Become tranquil and achieve inner-peace. Relax into your own self. Stop trying to become more than what or who you already are. Be lazy Know that you are enough. You’ve done enough. You don’t have to strive to be enough. You don’t have to work hard at it. You may not be the best, but that’s okay. Neither is your aunt Nancy’s fruit cake. Besides, you’ll get better…eventually. But for now, you’re already a present to the world. So go be you. Go be that lazy bastard you are. Don’t stay wrapped up inside. Don’t top yourself with a bow in attempts to look pretty. Show who you are. Besides, some of the ugliest gifts can have the prettiest of wrapping papers. That is to say: some people attempt to look good in the way they “present” themselves but they really have a distasteful character on the inside. And hey, maybe you’re a bit ugly. I’m ugly too. We all have scars and flaws that we’re afraid to show. But remember, your gift is in who you are, not what you can do or what you can provide. I never wrap gifts. Of course that might just be because I’m too lazy, but part of me also wants to show what I’m giving without hiding it. I apply the same principle to real life. You don’t rewrap the gift you give on Christmas after you give it. So when you give yourself, don’t hide and wrap yourself back up. You say you’re lazy. Well, show the world how joyful it is to be lazy. Merry Christmas and take it easy, N8 Ahoy there fellow ProcrastiN8r! Christmas is just around the corner and I bet you’re looking forward to the holiday. It's a chance to see your family, eat good food, exchange gifts, and of course relax all day in your xmas onesie while sipping hot cocoa and egg nog.
It’s no wonder people say “Keep the spirit of Christmas alive year round”. I mean people are in a jollier mood than usual this time of year and it would be awesome to achieve that 365 days a year, not just for a few days or a couple weeks at best. I’d say a vital factor in lifting people’s spirits up so merrily isn’t so much the gingerbread houses or the stockings on the wall or the bright colored lights decorated on a tree. There’s no gift nor elf nor fat man in a red suit that brings the joy people experience during the holidays. Religious people will say it’s the birth of Christ that brings about this merry good cheer within people’s hearts (Keep the Christ in Christmas, they’ll say) But I’m not one to believe such superstitions. Besides, Christmas was only moved to December in order to match the date of a pagan Winter Festival. At any rate, the reason people feel “it’s the most wonderful time of the year” is because, well, it’s the holiday, meaning there’s no obligations, no work, no stress. People can fully and completely relax and live in the moment, rather than worrying about what needs to get done at work. Certainly, there’s preparations to do for the festivities, especially if you are the one hosting the party -- cleaning up the house, cooking the meals, contacting the guests, but it becomes more of an opportunity to create lasting memories, as opposed to a boring chore. In other words, it comes from a place of desire rather than obligation. And that is something we must try to live by, Christmas or otherwise. See, the attitude we use to approach our celebration of Christmas should be one we use to approach in everyday life, whether it’s December 25th or not. As we sit by the fire in our reindeer PJs, we’re being lazy. And laziness is what makes the holidays so memorable, so enticing, so merry, because we’re fully and completely relaxed. It’s easy to have a good time when you’re calm. It’s easy to appreciate the little things when you’re at ease. Laziness is relaxing, fundamentally. And by being lazy, we are in turn relaxing and enjoying ourselves. On the contrary, if you’re not relaxed, if you’re stressed, uptight, and on-edge, it can be quite difficult to find very much to appreciate about life. To put it bluntly, working too hard makes you a miserable fuck, or a Scrooge if you will, who’s always complaining about one thing or another, finding a perpetual list of things to be angry or upset about. We must aim to achieve a Permanent Holiday in our minds, to embrace our laziness all year long and truly find inner-peace. Of course, in order to achieve that, one of the things we must do is eliminate the need for hard work. After all, think about how much less stressed you’d be if you didn’t have to run to your 9 to 5 grind Monday thru Friday and could still afford to pay bills. Passive income, that’s what you want, or at the very least, easy income. You want to make a living without working your ass off at a day job and live that life of a permanent holiday. You want to be lazy and get away with it. You want to quit schlepping a typical 40 hour a week job and still get paid enough to put food on the table and a roof over your head. Fortunately for you, there are plenty of ways to make money from the couch, and one of those methods we’ve talked about here recently is Play to Earn gaming. Yes, you read that right : playing video games to earn money. And I’m not talking about setting up a Twitch channel and gathering a following or testing games or writing reviews about. I’m talking about just plain simple playing. Certainly, playing video games all day and getting paid fits the mantra of living a permanent holiday. I mean I don’t know about you, but gaming all day definitely sounds like an ideal holiday for me. Anyway, we’re going to take a look at another one of these Play to Earn games in todays blog, called LvlUpand without further ado, let’s dive…right into it! WTF is Level-Up? Level-Up Gaming is a registered LLC in the United Arab Emirates and they are in the early stages of creating a platform for third-party developers to publish their game and easily add “Play to Earn” features. Basically by playing the games on Level-Up, players will be able to earn the native LvlUp token, a real cryptocurrency, based on the BSC (Binance Smart Chain). More details on how the earnings all work in a bit. But for now, let’s look at what Level-Up gaming is all about. Basically, we’re seeing here what will soon be a platform for developers to integrate their game into a Play to Earn model, without having to go through the whole song and dance of setting up their own token on the blockchain, writing out a whitepaper, preparing tokenomics to show how funds will be allocated, and all the other intricacies that come about when creating a P2E (or Play to Earn) game. It makes creating P2E games more accessible for developers and gives gamers a lot more options to choose from. It’s a win/win. This could potentially be the next “MiniClip” but for P2E. Maybe I’m dating myself, but MiniClip used to be the biggest website to play online flash games. MiniClip banged on the hype of flash games back in the day, and perhapsLevel-Upcan bang on the hype of P2E and become huge. We could quite possibly see this blow up into a “central hub” of sorts for play to earn gaming. Additionally, they want to attract advertisers to further increase revenue, as well as the prize pool (like watching an ad before playing a mobile game or seeing a banner like you used to on flash game sites). That’s the vision at least. This is a long-game project (pun intended). Right now, there’s only one game available on the website, and it’s one they created themselves (no third party developer yet) called Pacotto. Pacatto is basically just a reskin of Pac-Man, with crypto symbols like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin instead of ghosts. It’s a good start, but they’re definitely going to need more games on the platform for it to really take off. It’s enough to demonstrate how the platform works in rewarding player LvlUp coins, but doesn’t really show any “level” of innovation. Like at all. While a Pac-Man clone is fun, it’s not enough to really set the platform apart to be honest. I mean it simply lacks originality. It’s literally a copy/paste of another game that’s been around in arcades since the 80s. Plus, there’s only 6 levels in Pacatto. They do say they want to add a “boss” level to it and also have a Beat ‘Em Up arcade style game in the works. But as it stands right now, Pacatto is simply too dry to help make this platform what it wants to be. In my opinion, I think they really need something that stands out to truly reach the “level” they’re trying to achieve here. MiniClip had Helli Attack, Newgrounds had Sonny, PopCap had BeJeweled, Zynga had FarmVille. Ya know, there needs to be “THE Game” that really attracts mass adoption. Pacatto isn’t it. But hopefully either the team themselves or one of the third party developers they manage to partner with can make that game. (By the way I just lost THE GAME). In the mean time, it’s still possible to earn just playing Pac-Man, but believe me, after about a week of grinding the same half a dozen levels of this classic maze runner copycat, you’ll get a bit bored of it. And this is coming from a guy who plays a lot of Dead by Daylight, which in reality is just a 3D horror-themed version of Pac-Man. Instead of running from ghosts, you’re running forma killer. Instead of picking up power pellets, you’re dropping down power pallets. Fundamentally, the gameplay is the same, in the sense you are navigating through a maze (or maze-like structure of obstacles), trying to outwit your opponent and get the upper hand. Now that we know what Level-Up is all about and aims to be, let’s look at the cost to get started as well as how much money you can earn when you play. https://www.level-up.game/ How much does it cost to get started? I can see why that may be a big concern. No doubt a lot of these Play to Earn games have quite a barrier to entry with their huge upfront costs of NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) ,those in-game assets you can buy, sell, and trade, but also need to start playing. One thing that sets Level-Up apart is the fact you DO NOT have to purchase expensive NFTs (like Heroes from BombCrypto, for example, which we covered before, now go for roughly $50-60 each, as of writing, and you need at least 15 to play efficiently, so you're looking at $750 just to start playing a game like that, that is so NFT reliant). Don’t get me wrong, NFTs are cool in the sense that you get to literally own part of the game, and that loot you find or character you unlock is no longer just pixels on a screen but a *real* asset you can buy, sell, and trade on the market. But NFTs make the entry price to Play to Earn games quite steep and can turn the average gamer away. High-priced NFTs more likely attracts “investors” who aren’t really interested in playing the game at all and really just want to make a quick buck. You can start playing to earn with as little as a dollar. Keep in mind though, the higher your initial investment, the higher your return will be. I'll get to that in a sec. But basically all you need to do is buy their coin and HODL! And there's no minimum amount you need to HODL to qualify for the rewards either. The coin "LvlUp" is on the Bincance Smart Chain Mainnet Network, so you’ll need some BNB (Binance Coin) to swap for the token. Don’t forget to have extra BNB funds to cover gas fees, too! Buy BNB from Binance or Crypto.com then transfer your funds to your MetaMask wallet. MetaMask is a free browser extension at MetaMask.io Here's a link to buy it on PooCoin: https://poocoin.app/tokens/0xc3bd3e021801a34104fcb5e29de6689a9b204513 How much can you make? Since it’s not really an NFT reliant game (or platform of games more accurately stated), instead of earning profit based on the NFTs you own, you earn profit based on the LvlUp token you HODL. The way it works is you play games to earn an ROI on your LvlUp coin from 2.5 - 5% DAILY, depending on the trading volume. You can earn anywhere from 0 to 100% of that 5%. We'll call it the "claim prize" for simplicity's sake. So, let's say you put $100 in LvlUp Coin, for example. The "claim prize" would be 5% of that $100, so the max you could earn in a day is $5, with a one hundred dollar initial investment. (Of course, as mentioned this claim prize percentage fluctuates and you could be looking at anywhere between $2.50, or 2.5% and $5, or 5%, with that initial $100 investment). Let's then say then you play enough games to earn 20% of the claim prize. So 20% of the $5, nets you $1. (If the total claim prize was at $2.50, then you’d be looking at 20% of that and earn 50 cents). Now if we up that to $1000, well then you're looking at up to $50 a day in the claim prize, again depending on the trading volume, which determines the percentage profit of that claim prize. That’s pure profit, by the way! Let me explain… See, unlike a lot of other Play to Earn models, the coin stays DIRECTLY IN YOUR OWN WALLET. This is absolutely HUGE, guys. It's not put in some type of temporary pool you need to "collect” from and be charged a tax when doing so, like BombCrypto, or even a certain level you have to reach before claiming, like [Heroes & Empires]. A lot of these types of games will charge upwards to 30% to collect your coins and also have a minimum balance to collect. Not LvlUp. Here, you can just sell your coin on the exchange, since like I said it's in YOUR wallet. They're not taking the coins from your wallet; they simply keep track of the public balance. In other words, you can pull out your investment AT ANY TIME. The risk is real minimal here. Of course, since it is a coin on the crypto market, the price of LvlUp coin can fluctuate and you can lose money on your investment in the typical market investment way. But as far as losing money IN the program itself, that's one risk that's eliminated here. I'm not here to give you financial advice, of course Please do your own due diligence before making any sort of investment decision. This is for entertainment purposes only. Anyway, let's talk about earning that "claim prize," shall we? Every time you play a game, you get more percentage of the “claim prize". Right now, they only have one game ,like I said. It's basically a Pac-Man clone. It usually takes me 2-3 games for me to reach 100%, and it's important to note that LOSING A GAME adds percentage. You DO NOT have to consistently win. It's not Win to Earn. It's literally PLAY to earn. Although,you should note that the higher score you get, the higher the percentage gain of your daily claim prize will be. In other words, winning does allow you to hit that But you don’t HAVE to win. It’ll just take you a bit longer, and require you to play more games if you’re losing and dying easily. You can still hit that max daily claim no matter how skilled you are at playing the game. They're planning on launching more games in the near future, but even with just the one, man I mean, I'm making 2.5 - 5% ROI on the DAILY just by playing friggin Pac-Man. That's 2.5 - 5% PLUS the performance in the market (or maybe minus to be fair). Keep in mind, you can easily earn 2.5 - 5% ROI daily by playing Pac-Man, so even if the token price continues to dip in the market, you still have that 2.5 - 5% "buffer" to at least break even. Of course, since it is a coin on the crypto market, the price of LvlUp coin can fluctuate and you can lose money on your investment in the typical market investment way. And as always, never invest more than you’re willing to lose. Also, keep in mind, I’m just a lazy dude with an opinion, not some sort of professional financial guru here. Accounting for gas fees, (it does cost gas in BNB to collect), it's still 2 - 4% and some change daily. Not bad for running around a maze, eating pellets and ghosts. Heck I used to *pay* tokens in the arcade to play that game, not earn tokens for playing it. Wrapping Up: Level-Up is an easy and awesome way to earn a bit of crypto playing games. While right now, there’s a very limited selection in those games, and by limited I mean there’s only one: Pacatto, the potential here is HUGE. In just a few minutes per day, you can be earning profits on your investments. It’s kind of like staking crypto, but you get to keep the funds in your wallet, and instead just need to play a few quick games. It’s genius I know I haven’t talked about staking here before, so I’ll go over it briefly (and perhaps it’s something we can dive deeper into in the future, as it is an effective way to make passive income with your crypto). You basically put your crypto from your wallet into a pool that can be used as liquidity for people to exchange. Staking usually offers high profitable incentives. For example, as of writing, Axie Infinity offers 113% APR for staking AXS, PancakeSwap offers up to 67% APR in their coin CAKE and SplinterLands, an NFT trading card game, offers up to 50% APR in SplinterLands Shards (SPS) Usually there’s an unstaking fee or a delay of up to a month before you can access your funds into your wallet. Level-Up, on the other hand, offers similar high APR, but without the need to actually stake and take the funds out of your wallet into a pool and instead just the need to actively play games. We’ll see how big this platform can grow in the future, but for now, I mean, it’s literally playing Pac-Man to earn a bit of income. That’s some lazy money, my dudes. Anyway, I’m gonna wakka wakka on outta here and go take a nap. Take it easy, N8 Well fellow ProcrastiN8r, the future of the MetaVerse is here. And what that boils down to is the future of getting paid to lay on the couch all day is here! That’s right, thanks to the MetaVerse and the onslaught of NFTs (Non-Fungible Token) popping up, making money online has never been any easier, and the profit potential will only continue to grow as we continue to blur the lines between reality and virtual reality.
See, my lazy dude, through the power of crypto, we’re able to transform digital pixels into real things and because of that, the time we spend in virtual worlds (ie. playing video games) can be compensated for *real world* value. In short, you can play to earn. The more you level up in game, the more you level up in real life. The more loot you earn in game, the more loot you earn in real life. Games and reality are becoming interconnected. And it’s, for lack of a better phrase, fucking aweome! You know, maybe that Lazy Utopia where we all get to live a life of luxury and leisure is possible with this whole MetaVerse thing. I mean up until this point the only way to earn money was through your physical labor. You had to provide a real product or service in exchange for payment. Even methods of lazy money-making I talked about previously require at least some form of being productive in real life...despite how little effort it may take like copying and pasting articles into an AI bot to write content or taking surveys online or downloading apps. You know, all of that sort of stuff, even though it’s not as labor intensive as say, a “real job”, it still requires some sort of physical proof of work. You have to type up a writing paragraph or click bubbles in a questionnaire, record a video or voice review. You get the picture. You’re still doing *something*. Although you use the computer as a tool or means to provide the work, you’re still giving in some sort of PHYSICAL labor, though quite minimal at that. Online money-making is *already* easy, no doubt, but it gets even easier with this whole MetaVerse thing as you’ll soon see. Having an “Online Job”, where you work from home, even though you don’t have a Belligerent Bastard of a Boss breathing down your neck, you still gotta complete a task that directly impacts the reality in which we live in. At the end of the day, you’re doing things like affiliate marketing or freelancing or online tutoring to have some type of impact in the real world. Affiliate marketing for example helps someone sell their product in return for a commission paid to you. Freelancing provides some sort of service or project for a business or individual client. Online tutoring gives education. See, what I’m getting at here? There’s a real tangible *something* you provide in your efforts to make money online in a typical (non-MetaVerse) way. But all of that is about to change. Now with the MetaVerse beginning to build right now, you can have *digital* labor or digital time earn you compensation. You don’t create or provide any real world service or product. You completely do everything within the digital space. Virtual coins, characters, and other assets you win in a game become real valuable things. In case you missed my last little blog entry here, we covered how digital assets are gaining IRL value thanks to the cool technology of the Blockchain, and that basically amounts to the ability to play video games and get paid. I already covered in great detail one of these Play to Earn games called BombCrypto, which is an easy to play (and easy to earn) Bomberman themed idle game. And today, we’re going to take a look at another NFT game. Again NFT, that’s Non-Fungible Token. It’s a *unique* asset and sort of certificate of ownership of a digital asset, like an in-game item. No longer is the gold you find in a cavern or the gun you find in a vault in a wasteland just some meaningless pixels on a screen. No longer is that super rare cosmetic you unlock just a bragging right. It holds real value in cryptocurrency. Each NFT is can be bought and sold for a specific crypto. Basically imagine earning money off all those Loot Boxes you puchased. In the case of BombCrypto, it’s a token called BCOIN (or BomberCoin). You play the game and earn real crypto that can then be exchanged for fiat and withdrawn to your bank account. Digital assets become real tangible income, not just points on your screen. And see, you’re not giving any physical work or time to provide value in the real world, you’re doing it fully and completely in the digital world. You’re living in the digital world through these NFT games. Yet you can potentially earn money *as if* it were real. You see what I mean? You’re not selling a product or providing any sort of service. You’re just...EXISTING...in the digital space. You’re spending time in the digital world doing digital things, earning digital items. Yet creating real (monetary) value for yourself in doing so. And that’s the idea behind what I dub” as “digital labor” in the MetaVerse. Although let’s be real here, it ain’t really labor at all. It’s really just sittin’ around playing video games all day. NFTs give you the opportunity to monetize your gameplay, without resorting to creating a Twitch channel and building a following or editing videos for YouTube or selling shit using an affiliate link to your followers. It truly is PLAY to earn, not “build an audience” and earn. Just play. Of course “NFT” is a bit of a buzz word now. And the market is only becoming flooded with them. Most of the NFT games out there are trash, and most of the upcoming ones in the future are going to be...well, trash. But that’s the case in any game store: Xbox, Steam, Playstation, Google Play, Apple -- the majority of games on *any* platform really kinda suck. There are diamonds among the wreck, but you really gotta sort through a lot of shit to find them. Speaking of diamonds, many games nowadays *already* have some form of “premium” currency. Brawl Stars has Gems, Dead by Daylight has Auric Cells, RuneScape has Bonds, just to give a few examples, but the list goes on and on. The Blockchain transforms this premium currency in games from pure profit for the developers into profit for the players. It’s no longer just a set of some premium points you have within a game but a real crypto that can be traded on the market and later exchanged for cash. Of course, I don’t want you to get so excited about the idea of NFT that you immediately go jump on any project that mentions their game has NFTs in them. When push comes to shove, you are making an investment. There’s always an upfront cost to purchase NFTs and start playing and you’re going to have to factor that in before you “press start to play.” Just like an arcade machine, you may win a prize or...you may just lose your token and wind up with nothing. So it goes without saying that you should NEVER invest more than you’re willing to lose. Treat it like a trip to Dave n’ Busters or Chuck E. Cheese. Pretend you’ll never ever ever see that money again. Certainly there is potential gains to be made here. And the amount of effort to earn those gains is very little. It’s minimizing effort, maximizing results for sure. It’s lazy af to earn money on NFT games. But. Huge BUT. I don’t want to talk NFT games up so much to the point where you start to ignore the risks at stake here. Scam Projects can rug pull and liquidate all their assets, making the coin nearly worthless or evne impossible to trade. Legit projects can fall victim to FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) of hodlers who chose to panic sell, causing the token to crash hard like a durnken sailor off a roof. Whales, who own large portions of the token, can sell of their profits and severely impact the supply and demand causing a similiar crash. People can simply just stop playing the game because they are bored of it. The developers can close down the game server. These are some of the potential risks you have when getting involved with this Play to Earn model in gaming. You’re NOT guaranteed to make money playing NFT games and I personally am not a financial advisor giving you advice to do so, as a disclaimer. Not every single game with “NFT” in its description or gameplay is going to make you bank. Certainly, there is opportunity to profit hundreds if not thousands of dollars in playing these NFT games, But you have to be aware of what you’re getting into. Even legitimate projects can be pummeled to death with a series of unfortunate events. As a matter of fact, this past week, CryptoMines, one of the LAGEST NFT games in the market essentially got demolished. Now they did promise to pay out until they run out of funds in the reward pool, but after that, well, it’s GAME OVER. It was a space themed game, where you built up a fleet of spaceships and workers to go mine planets, earning you $ETERNAL token in return. It was a very idle “one click a day” game. Send out your fleet and your done sort of thing. I suppose people got excited about the easiness of earning because over a few months after launch of the game, the price of $ETERNAL rose from just a few cents up to $600 and even began racing neck and neck with Binance Coin itself. However, whales decided to close out -- take their money and run. This triggered a panic-stricken mindset among holders of the coin in the market. Despite the tax of 30% to claim from the CryptoMines app into their wallet, people just tanked the tax and sold their $ETERNAL as quickly as possible by the masses. The price went down from $600 back down to just a few cents in less than a week. The developers did everything they could to try and calm the emotional storm within the market by adding updates, adding more liquidity, doing live Twitch interviews...all to no avail. The market simply got the best of the project and the spiral downhill was was completely out of their (the developers) control. Sometimes even projects that aren’t scams end up being a loss. You gotta keep that in mind. This is a very profitable and very easy, yet very risky business. You gotta know that going in. They claim they are working on a full 3D version of the game, complete with more interaction and stats beyond just “Mining Power” in a project called CryptoMines Reborn, but as for the original CryptoMines (or “Legacy” as they call it), it’s a good as gone. While I do enjoy sharing profitable NFT games to play and earn, I also want to give you insight on what to look out for. I think it’s more important to have that tool and knowledge under your belt so you can make your own informed decisions about whether to invest or not. Again, I’m not a financial advisor and you’re solely responsible for the choices you make with your money. Plus, I’ll admit Crypto mines WAS going to be one of the profitable NFTs I was going to share with you guys, but as you can see, that pretty much failed before I got around to it (damn, ole procrastinating). That said, I do have at least 3 more NFT games with high-earning potential that I want to share with you, which hopefully won’t close before I cover them. Anyway today, we’re going to look at another one of my favorite Play to Earn/NFT games and this one called Heroes & Empires, and without further ado, let’s dive...right into it! WTF is Heroes & Empires? Okay picture this: AFK Arena or Idle Heroes but with NFTs. Got it? Good. If not, don’t worry I’ll go over some detail. Heroes & Empires is basically a medieval fantasy themed party building idle RPG. You don’t actively cast spells, move your characters. You just click “battle” and watch an autobattle. Sit back, relax, have Netflix open in another tab. Simple stuff. Even if you’re not a gamer, you can get this shit. The main gameplay is the party management and formation. And it’s a lot more complex than the other Play to Earn game we covered last week, Bomb Crypto. There’s a lot of layers to it. But anyway, let’s keep it simple for now. You create and level up your party of heroes, complete campaign quests, take on PVE challenges, and take down opponents in PVP. And of course, summon new heroes along the way. While you’re away, not actively you’ll earn AFK awards in gold, xp, and loot. Gold is your main resource. It’s like souls in Dark Souls and is used to level up your Heroes. You basically want to put together a team with good synergy and level them up to progress the campaign, gain more rewards, and eventually hav eone of those rewards be crypto of course. Synergy is an important gameplay mechanic, by the way. One in which I wish I read up on before starting to play, but I’ll explain the nitty gritty details and tactics in a bit. Let’s take a look at how to get started with playing first. How tf do you start playing Heroes & Empires? 1 .Following similiar steps in getting started with Bomb Crypto, you want to pull up your MetaMask Wallet, and in case you don’t have one yet, simply head on over to MetaMask.io and download the extension. Record your secret phrase. As in...WRITE IT THE FUCK DOWN.. And keep it some place safe. And some place safe, believe me, is NOT anywhere on your computer or on the cloud. Use that good ole fashioned pen and paper shit we used to use back in the ancient times and write it. Don’t share this with anyone. If someone has your secret seed phrase, they have all the funds in your wallet. 2. You need to send BNB from Binance or Crypto.com exchanges to your MetaMask wallet. Remember, to send extra to cover gas fees! Cars can’t run without gas and neither can the block chain. You can purchase BNB with fiat (like US Dollar) from your bank account to the exchange. 3. Once you got all that outta the way, you’re going to head over to Pancake Swap or Poo Coin and swap BNB for HE token (Heroes and Empires Token). You need at least 5 Heroes, not 5 Hero Token, but 5 HEROES in order to begin playing. 4. Go to the Heroes and Empires Market place at https://market.heroesempires.com/ , connect your wallet via Meta Mask and purchase your first 5 Heroes. You cannot do quests or even earn AFK rewards if you have less than 5 Heroes. The only thing you could do with less than 5 Heroes is maybe flip the NFTs on the market, but you can’t actually play the game. Hero prices range from about 20 HE for the common/weaker ones to 1200 HE for the stronger, more rare ones. With the current price of HE at 30 cents each, you’re looking at $6 per hero minimum. Times that by 5 for your full party and you’re looking at a total of just $30 (plus gas fees) to get started. That’s a lot cheaper than the hefty entrance fee of $60 in BombCrypto or your typical new game on PC or console. (Edit: fixed prices) But that also means you’re earning elss. At least right now anyway. Keep in mind, this game JUST launched, so if you do decide to buy some NFTs here, you’re getting in early and getting in early can mean you pick it up cheap before the price soars. Of course, it can also crash and there’s no guarantee you’ll make a profit, but the potential is certainly there, and I think this one certainly has potential. CryptoBomb is far less intuitive and that token (BCOIN) is already worth a couple dollars each. We’re looking at a game that looks and feels a lot more polished, at least as far as idle games go anywhere. It fits your standard top view 3D graphics you find on mobile games and has a lot of mechanics that encourage actual strategy, not just click work or click rest. Anyway, let’s get into what kind of team you should set up to start. Dude, what friggin Heroes should I buy? Now you can of course the poor man’s team and go ahead and grab the cheapest Heroes you can find. Friendly Golem, Chicken Bomber, Knight Minion, Trainnee Sniper, and Caster Minion is just about the thriftiest team you can buy. You can often find deals on the marketplace for less than 20 HE each for these. It’s enough to get you started, but progression will be slow and you won’t unlock the ability to earn HE, yet alone cash it out for quite a while if you While going the cheap route,,you’re missing out on Heroes with good abilities, and more importantly Team Synergy. Synergy is basically bonus passive effects that can really turn the tide in battle. Each Hero has a race and a class. When there are two Heroes (or more) of the same class or same race, they get a Synergy bonus. That bonus continues to stack up to 5 Heroes. The races are Beast, Demon, Elf, Goblin, God, Human, and Undead. The classes are Assassin, Knight, Mage, Mech, Ranger, Warrior, and Warlock. Now, I’m not going to go over each and every synergy, but I’ll go over some noteworthy ones. You can check out the full list of class/race synergies here: https://support.heroesempires.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408265840025-Hero-s-Races-Classes Noteworthy Race Synergy... Elves are borderline broken af If you have a full team of 5 Elves gives a 50% chance to dodge. So right off the bat, enemies basically can't hit you. It's already broken but it gets more ridiculous. Then, you get a 50% attack speed buff for 4 seconds after landing a dodge. And you're pretty much dodging every single second. So Elves are basically super speed attackers that can't get hit. Undead are ridiculous too, lowering one enemy to 20% of their health AT THE START OF THE MATCH. This pretty turns a 5v5 into a 5v4 from the get go. Plus, they lower enemy’s defense by whopping 50%., meaning they become a pretty much unstoppable force. Noteworthy Class Synergy… Mechs are the machine take over of the world. They have the ability to combine into a Super Mech like the Power Rangers in Zordon. After transforming, it basically gains boss-type stats and can heavily wreck the absolute shit out of opponents. They also explode on death like a Self Destructing Geodude and deal massive damage to enemies. So even if enemies manage to survive the explosions, they still got Zordon hanging out waiting to go for the coup de grace. Warlocks gain lifesteal up to 50% at a full team of 5, plus they gain mana regeneration, allowing them to keep casting powerful spells. This makes them extremely hard to kill, much like a team of dodgetty fuck elves. Speaking of hard to kill, the super OP Hero that can pretty much be put into any team , regardless of synergy, because of his tankiness is called Timble. Note that down. You want this guy on your team. He basically has the ability to gain defense and recover HP every time he’s hit. He doesn’t have much DPS himself, but his survivability is insane. He doesn’t even need DPS because there’s actually atime limit to each battle and oftentimes, TImble can just tank hits until the time runs out, forcing a win for him and his team. He can usually be taken down by multiple opponents or high damaging spells, but in a typical 1v1, he’s borderline impossible to kill. As of writing, he’s about 200 HE, which is about $60. So he’s a little on the pricier side, but totally worth it if you can grab him. Plus considering there are rarer heroes Also note, there’s kind of a rock, paper, scissors mechanic. Certain races have an advantage (damage buff) against others, similar to element types if you’re familiar with the Pokemon franchise, like how water beats fire and fire beats grass. In this game Elf beats Undead and Undead beats Goblin. Again not gonna list all the advantage types, I’ll just show you the chart from the official Heroes and Empires white paper. Great got my team! Now what? You can go to “Play Now” from the main home page, login/connect with MetaMask and then you’re in. You’ll automatically start earning AFK rewards without you having to do anything. Of course, if you want to maximize your efficiency here, you’re going to want to start doing the Campaign battles. This will get you earning extra xp and more important extra gold. XP doesn’t level up your characters (and furthermore ability to bring down enemies). All it does is increase your “plyaer level”, which for all intents and purposes is just a number. There are some extra challenges that earn you gear, gold, and even HE that are tied directly to your player level, but other than that, it’s not something to get too caught up on. The main thing to focus on here is Campaign stages for now. Now I’m gonna break this down real simple so you know what you’re trying to achieve: Your goal here is to get to Stage 5-1 in the Campaign, That’s the level you get to actually unlock the cash out option. Otherwise you have HE that’s sitting in the game, but can’t be claimed to your wallet. Hit the “Battle” button and put together your formation. I recommend putting your ranged attackers (mages, rangers, warlocks) in the bank and your more tanky/melee characters (warrior, knight) up front, unless the enemy team has an assassin. An assassin is able to sneak past enemy front lines and attack the back line directly. If you’re really getting stuck on a stage, pay attention to where the enemies tend move and place your party members to counter them accordingly. If for example you have an Assassin taking out your warlock/healer in the back, try putting a knight there to counter their sneak attack. The Journey to 5-1 You definitely want to make a heavy push to get to stage 5-1 as quickly as you can, because then you’re just playing and not playing to earn. You can win a total of 40 stages per day. Eahc chapter has a different set of stages within it (1-20, 2-30, etc). So even if you do push, it still will take a couple days to hit that point. In order to reach the 5-1 stage quickly , and get those 40 stage wins per day, this will probably require you, at some point, to shell out a bit more investment on your part for HEs. I shouldn’t say required. More like, efficient. But I guess paying to level up is always efficient in any game, right? I mean, it’s technically not completely necessary to buy any extra HE token. Like your typical mobile idle game, you CAN earn premium currency, in this case HE through gameplay alone. No purchase necessary (other than your initial 5 NFT Heroes anyway). See what happens is when your HERO (not to be confused with Player level) reaches a certain threshold ((10, 20, and 40), you have to pay HE in order to LIMIT break and continue leveling that character. The stages in the campaign simply get way too hard for you NOT to pay HE token and level up your characters past the threshold. You can, like I said, use the supply you earn in-game, but again you won’t be able to claim any tokens to your wallet until tage 5-1, so it’s up to you. You don’t have to worry about going past level 60 too much, because at that point, you SHOULD be able to hit that ever shiny stage 5-1 Now, if you decide to go the “f2p” method of earning HE and not putting any more money than your original NFT purchase (which is your “game purchase” essentially) and want to rely on getting more HE through gameplay alone, the main way you’ll be earning HE in the beginning will be through daily, weekly, as well as “progression” quests. Daily and Weekly quests reset within the time given in their title. Of course, some of the daily and weekly quests are locked behind unlocking certain features in the game, which again comes down to hitting certain campaign stages. Once you’ve gotten to 5-1, you’ve unlocked everything. You’ve got the full game. You’re kind of really just playing the “demo” up until that point. Other milestones in the game include… 2-12 for Madness Tower 2-20 for Clan 2-28 for Colosseum 3-1 for Store 4-1 for Summon 5-1 for Withdraw The Tower gives you extra gold and even Hero shards (used to summon rare/epic heroes) I recommend taking this part of the game slow, as you’ll want to be able to defeat at least one challenge each day in order to earn your Daily quest bonus. A Clan may be worth joining for more extra rewards, but don’t be getting your hopes up in joining a clan for free. Many clans charage a minimum of 80 HE token as a “tax” in order to join as a member Gotta be careful too here because some of them will just take your HE You’ll have to reach out to the clan leader via discord and send HE to their personal wallet address. There’s no in-game way to pay for joining a clan, and the developers haven’t come out and said anything about people externally charging membership fees. So for now, it ain’t against the rules and it’s the way Clans sort of work in Heroes and Empires. So you’ll either have to wait for Stage 5-1, allowing you to claim your in-game earned HE or buy more HE on Pancake Swap/Poo Coin to join a Clan. Why join a clan though? Well, you get an easy daily quest you can complete (participate in a Clan battle) and can also earn access to the Clan store to buy shit. The way the daily quest is you earn points for completing quests. Every 20 points earns you a treasure chest (up to 100 points). Higher tier chests, unlocked through the daily/weekly chests have higher rewards, some of which include up to 75 HE. You’re always guaranteed certain quests each day/week like “complete a campaign quest,” complete a stage start a match in the colosseum, You can also play the Dungeon, which is kind of a “roguelite mode”, where each of your Heroes has one life and you try to make it as far as you can. The Dungeon restarts every 58 hours. Just an additional way to earn more gold, shards, or summoning scrolls. Earning HE tokens/profit. The Coll\osseum, or PVP mode which is unlocked at Stage 2-28, is where the easy earning of HE tokens come in. Of course up until 5-1 you can only use those HE to level up your characters and can’t claim it yet. And you may be thinking, as I did, that Summoning Heroes would be the most profitable thing to do, but no, not quite. While you can at level 2-28 start summoning heroes and sell them on the marketplace (without your funds being locked up in game instead of your wallet), it costs a summoning scroll, which alone is so rare and hard to find in quests AND 50 HE. Yeah, so unless you pull a Hero worth more than 50 HE, it really ain’t worth it. You’re going to get mostly commons, which sell for a measly 20HE or less. You don’t even break even in most Hero pulls! Of course, you *could* get lucky and pull an Epic worth thousands of HE, but let’s not rely on luck and look at a more stable earning method. You earn 3 HE for each win in the Colosseum/PVP match. And you can have up to 3 free wins per day. It says you have 3 “chances” but chances just means wins, because you can lose several matches in a row but only spend a free ticket when you actually win a match. And as long as you keep battling, you WILL eventually win 3 matches. You can also pay 5000 gold to purchase more tickets into the Colosseum or earn additional tickets through quests. But let’s say you ignore the daily/weekly quests. Let’s say the campaign has gotten too tough for your heroes and the tower is impossible. You’d have to pay more HE to level up and progress stages but you don’t want to do that. Well, 3 HE per win in the colosseum and 3 wins total gets you 9 HE. At 30 cents a pop, that’s a little less than $3 a day, which adds up to $90 a month. (Edit: They recently added an update where you only get 1 HE for a lose, so you're no longer gaurnteed a 3 HE reward from a victory. Still you're looking at anywhere between 90 cents and $2.70 per day on a single account, not including daily, weekly, and tournament ranking rewards You can also use 5k coins to purchase an extra ticket to the colleseum for another PVP match. The higher Stage you are at the higher AFK rewards you can earn, which means the higher amount of colosseum tickets you can purchase per day, thus higher amount of HE earned per day. Keep in mind though that coins are also used to level up your characters, so you have to make the decision to "cash out" and play in PVP to earn HE or push your game progress further to unlock a higher AFK earning rate ) And like BombCrypto, you can use multi accounts to maximize profits, and while there’s no limit to how many accounts you can be playing on your device at once, you can own a total of 5 accounts. So the absolute MINIMUM you can earn per day, assuming you eventually compound your HE and get 5 full accounts, is $15, which is $450 per month. Not bad playing a freaking idle game. But that doesn’t even include the HE you earn through quests as well as the ranking system. Basically the higher rank you are, the more HE you earn as a bonus each week for earning that rank in PVP. You can potentially earn THOUSANDS from this each month. Of course, while the game is Play to Earn it’s also a bit of Pay to Win. The top players are the ones who poured thousands and thousands of dollars in this game .But you can eventually reach maybe the top 3000 realistically. Speaking of top players and climbing ranks, one of the best ways to find out good team builds, is to look at what the top players are using once you have access to the leaderboards. You can basically look at what Heroes and formations the TOP guys are using and then copy that load out for yourself. Wrapping up: There you have it, another NFT Play to Earn game. I tried to make it as concise as possible and get you on your way to earning that easy peasy income. We’ll cover another NFT game next week as well, but until then, I got some Coliseum battles to fight. Well, fellow ProcrastiN8r, hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving. Personally, it’s my favorite holiday. Absolutely! I mean it really breaks down what a holiday is about: food. No distractions. Nothing extra. No fat man in a suit riding a sleigh of reindeer. No bunny hopping around in a field of flowers with a basket of eggs. No leprechaun dancing on a pot of gold with a rainbow. None of that shit. Just let’s sit down and eat. It’s the laziest of holidays. No need to decorate with lights or trees, or dress up in a costume or run out to the store and purchase a gift list. Just sit your ass at the goddamn table and eat a ton of food. And the food is awesome. The mashed potatoes, the stuffing, and the gravy, the creamed spinach --- good God the gravy! I love me some gravy. I’m pouring that all over my plate. And of course, ya got the turkey, which to be quite frank is probably my least favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal as a whole. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, I love me some turkey. But compared to the other delicious fixings on the table, it’s really just subpar. Let’s face it ya’ll, mashed potatoes are the heart of Thanksgiving. But anyway, besides the food, you know what else I’m really thankful for? NFT games. You know me, always looking for the easiest way to make money from the couch. Like you, I’m too lazy to get a real job. So today, I’m happy to share with you one of my most profitable methods of lazy money-making as of recent. I’m always thankful for ways that let me make a living while lounging around all day, not really working. Let’s take a look at this new online money-making method ofNFT games. And without further ado, let’s dive...right into it! First of all, WTF is NFT? NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. It’s basically a certificate of ownership that you own a unique digital asset. Now before you go scratching your head, let’s break that down. For something to be *fungible*, it means that it’s easily replaceable. Take a dollar bill for example. Someone could take your dollar bill, rip it to pieces, then hand you another dollar bill, and you likely wouldn’t give a fuck because you still have a dollar bill. Likewise, a share of Amazon holds the same value as any other share of Amazon. Fungible assets can be traded or swapped among assets of the same type and still be just as valuable. Non-fungible, on the other hand is NOT (non) replaceable. It’s something that holds *unique* value. Pokemon cards (or really any trading cards) are non-fungible assets. Your shiny Charizard is quite different from a Machop, for example. Sure, they’re both Pokemon cards, but each card is unique; each card is non-fungible. You don’t replace card with the same exact card in a trade. Every house in real estate is non-fungible because it has a unique structure and location. Works of art, too, have this non-fungible attribute to them, as one painting can be quite distinct from another, especially if they’re original works. It’s why the original painting of the Mona Lisa is worth far more than a replica.because well, the replica is easily replaceable. Some assets, like mass produced books can be fungible, but can have attributes that make them non-fungible. For example, having just a basic copy of a book can easily be replaced by another copy, but... you could have a signed copy of the novel or maybe a first edition one. They’re not making any more copies of that sort of thing and those hold value for their uniqueness. Basically, when we’re saying something is non-fungible, we’re saying it is truly unique or limited edition. It’s the type of item collectors drool over because the availability is so limited. Now that we understand what it means for something to be “non-fungible”, let’s take a look at that second word there: “token”. When we talk about token, we’re of course talking about the world of crypto. And as we went over before, crypto is basically verifying data through the blockchain technology. That technology, the blockchain, is used to keep track of where money is and who owns it. Well, that technology can be used not only for money/currency but also for assets, digital assets. It can keep track of who owns, say a digital picture or music file or e-book. A Non-Fungible Token is basically a certificate that proves ownership of a specific digital item. Just like the blockchain is able to show data that says “hey this Bitcoin is yours”, it can also say “hey, this picture is yours.” We’re basically looking at a technology that allows us to incorporate the digital world with IRL The things you own digitally can have real world value thanks to the power of the blockchain. And you can see how that sort of tech naturally hits the gaming community. I mean you think about gaming, it’s like salsa to the tortillas when it comes to NFTs. I mean seriously, games are designed to get you collecting all sorts of items, whether that’s powerful weapons, cute pocket monsters, or horses,; games *already* encourage players to collect unique and rare items. And there’s absolutely no tangible value in catching all 150 Pokemon or finding a legendary item in Diablo or spending billions of gp on a partyhat in RuneScape.. Yet, us gamers do it. I can’t tell you how many *hours* I’ve spent in games, collecting rare items. And for what purpose other than my own satisfaction and maybe some bragging rights and reddit karma in the relevant gaming communities. So in case you doubt the value of NFTs, keep in mind games already offer digital assets with no other incentive other than to be able to say you own it IN THE GAME, yet people invest loads of time trying to earn them. Rare items in games *already* have value, without any blockchain or cryptocurrency attached to them. They hold a certain level of prestige and it’s enough to get people to invest with their time to earn them, and remember folks TIME IS MONEY. When we talk about traditional games (ones with any sort of NFTs in play), I mean all you get is the ability to boast about what item you got in the game; there’s no monetary gain or value to what you have. It’s literally just pixels on a screen. That’s it. Yet… that’s already enough of an incentive to keep players invested. Players will spend literally hundreds of thousands of hours to earn fantasy items in a virtual space. God knows how many hours I spent earning gp in RuneScape, personally, or Blood Points in Dead by Daylight. Years of my life at this point. Plus, gamers will also pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars for exclusive cosmetics in DLCs. Thing is when you buy that green paint for your gun in Call of Duty or that cool skin for your favorite character in Brawl Stars or Fortnite, you just straight up lose money. It’s a total expense. You can’t resell it on a marketplace, and even if you could it would be for in-game currency and never exchangeable for any real currency. That’s what sets NFTs apart in gaming, because with NFTs, you not only get the item in-game, you have proof of ownership (through the block chain), that that cool monster or sword or pony or whatever is actually YOURS. Not just part of some game, but part of...the universe, or metaverse if you will. And because you own it, like any real tangible thing you own, you can sell and trade it. It’s no longer bound to the game and the virtual space within it. You have legitimate confirmation that you own that thing you won in the game. We’re talking here about your in-game achievements, loot you find, creatures you collect, and characters you unlock becoming REAL WORLD goods that can be traded for real money. This is groundbreaking. We’re blurring the lines between our physical world and the world of the digital. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg stood in front of us a few weeks ago and made this whole big speech about how the MetaVerse is coming. There’s all this talk about the MetaVerse. This is it. It starts right here. It starts with NFT gaming. We now see digital assets hold real world value and allow games to create a “play to earn” model, where the time you invest into a game can actually earn you monetary compensation (and not just bragging rights). There are now a plethora of and this is just the beginning. Over the next coming weeks, I want to share with you some of the profitable NFT and Play to Earn projects I’ve found and today we’re starting with one called “BombCrypto” Now before we dive in here, I want to throw out an important disclaimer as I always do, and here goes: I am NOT, I repeat NOT a financial advisor. I’m just a lazy dude with an opinion. I’m not offering you any sort of advice. It’s your money and you have to make your own decisions with it. Do your own research before you invest ANYTHING. Make informed decisions. This article is for your entertainment purposes only. Anyhoot, with that out of the way, let’s take a look at the first NFT game we’re going to cover called Bomb Crypto. What is BombCrypto? It’s created by Senspark, a gaming company with a history of successful games, including Gold Miner, which debuted back in the early 2000s during the peak of flash gaming in your browse ( I remember playing that shit on Miniclip) and Stickman Battle, which became a rather successful app on iOS and Android. They have over 100 million downloads for their games, in total between all of them. This is important to note because we’re looking at a company that knows how to make games and has a track record of making them rather successful/popular. They have over 50 employees and aren’t just some small startup with less than half a dozen entrepreneurs. They’ve basically established themselves as a trusted brand. I mean they’re no Naughty Dog or Insomniac by any means, but they are doing quite well as an indie studio. An important thing to look at when deciding whether or not to put your money in a project is knowing who’s behind it. In this case, one of the reasons I like this one is because Senspark has their reputation on the line. They want BombCrypto to be just as, if not more successful than their other games for the sake of maintaining their brand’s integrity. Companies with a smaller history or a staff with unknown or unsuccessful projects tend to lean towards the scammy side of things. Another thing to look at is their vision and goals. Read the whitepaper and make sure it’s clear. In this case, it appears to me Senspark has very clear goals about what they want to accomplish with this project. Anyway, enough about the company who created it, let’s take a look at the game itself. BombCrypto is based on the Bomberman franchise, complete with 8 bit graphics. Now in case you didn’t grow up in the classic era of gaming, you basically go around a maze, planting bombs that explode after a certain amount of time. You have to blow up walls, enemies, and treasure chests, all while making sure you don’t walk into your own bomb blast. Now, I LOVE Bomberman. One of those classics that really captures a good mix of strategy and action. Like basically imagine Pac-Man but with explosives. It’s so fun! So when I first heard there was an NFT game based on Bomberman, I had to sign up immediately. Unfortunately, to my disappointment, BombCrypto is nothing like that adrenaline rushing race to navigate the maze while timing your bombs correctly. In fact there’s no action involved at all, and very little strategy. It’s pretty much an idle game with a BomberMan theme. You can’t control the characters. You can’t select where they move or where they place bombs. It’s essentially one of those “auto-battler” games but with BomberMan. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a *bad* game. Just an entirely different meal than what I thought I was getting served. It’s not what I expected. At all. Actually I wouldn’t even go as far as to even call it a game though. It’s more like just a time waster, which as a procrastin8r I don’t mind. I did play a bit of Tap Titans and Clicker Heroes idle games back in the day when I was bored. It’s easy enough to play passively and still get the joy of “winning”. Idle games aren’t typically my style, but if you’re really into them and you love classic Bomberman, this will be right up your alley. I mean I definitely see the appeal in idle games though. You get the perks of “gaming”, like that false sense of achievement in leveling up, without needing the skill and concentration that’s usually required to actually game. They can be addicting as hell. And some of the idle games can get quite complex when you start adding multiple tasks, characters and dungeons to level, prestige bonuses for starting over, the list goes on and on. This one, however, doesn’t have any of that and is really quite simple to play, which leads us to the next part. How do you play BombCrypto? There really isn’t much “play” going on here, if we’re being honest. It’s clicking a couple buttons, if you want to count that as gameplay, which is no more or less tahn your typical idle game to be fair. Let’s face it though, the reason you’re here though is to make easy money from the couch and not necessarily find the hottest new game to play. I mean that would only be a bonus if you could, right? Anyhoot, you need at least one hero to get started and can have up to 15 “active” at any given time. The Heroes have two modes “Work” and “Rest”. If you put them to work, then they pretty much go play the BomberMan simulator, blowing up rocks and bricks and collecting treasure. This treasure is worth REAL crypto. That’s right, the loot you earn in the game can be traded for loot IRL. Like any idle game nowadays, there’s some form of an energy system. In this case they call it”mana”. Once a hero runs out of mana, they automatically enter the “Rest” state. Heroes in the Rest state can’t move. They’re in sloth mode. They’re being lazy. They can’t place bombs or earn you any treasure for that matter. They’re just a sitting duck. Now I should note here that it’s not *completely* idle. It’s more like “semi” idle. See, you have to have the browser open in order for your Heroes to work and navigate the labyrinth to find treasure using explosive goodness, so it's not *completely* passive. If you close the browser or logout, your heroes won’t be bombastically exploring the map. They DO continue to regain mana if they are in rest though, even if you close the game/browser. So the best strat is to open the game, put all your heroes to work, wait a bit, smoke if you got ‘em, and once they go into “Rest” just close the game and come back later. While in rest mode, they have a comic bubble appear abov etheir head with "Zzz" and cannot place bombs, move, or collect treasure. Ideally, if you want to maximize your profits, you want to aim to do this every 2 hours. Heroes regain mana/energy at a default rate of 0.5 per minute. They have a max mana depending on their Stamina stat, with 1 Stamina giving you a max of 50 mana. You’ll probably be getting a lot of Common/low leveled heroes too, so with a .5 mana regain per minute, you’re looking at exactly 100 minutes, so like I said roughly 2 hours. Now you can upgrade the mana regain rate by purchasing a house. But trust me, unless you’re willing to shell out thousands of dollars, you’re going to be relying on the “Rest” function The houses are mad expensive, but we’ll get to the prices of starting to play in a second here. You can have 15 “active” heroes, and up to 500 heroes in total. Thing is, inactive heroes don’t regain energy, which is kind of lame if you ask me, so there’s really no point in having more than 15 unless you wanna gamble your chances to find a more rare hero with higher stats. As I mentioned, each Hero has a list of stats. I told you Stamina was one of them. The other stats are Power, which determines how much damage they do with their bombs, Speed, which obviously determines their movement speed, as well Bomb Number and Bomb Range, which are both sort of self explanitory. Basically, higher stats = faster clearing of maps. And that’s really the goal here, clear as many maps as possible, open as many chests as possible, earn that juicy loot! Anyway we’ll go over some more in-depth tactics behind maximizing profits and efficiency soon, butI just wanna go over the basics for now. In sum, you’re looking at semi-idle game, and semi-idle means semi-afk. In other words, you can be doing other shit on your computer or even phone and make money, while your Heroes do all the “Work” for you. I really think the main appeal here is earning money and maybe having a BomberMan themed screensaver, because that’s essentially what it is - a screensaver. The game is completely on autopilot. There isn’t much “play” to it at all. That said, it is quite “da bomb”. How do you get started? 1. First order of business is you’re going to need a MetaMask wallet., as you’ll be using that to login to the site by connecting your wallet. MetaMask is a free Chrome extension. When you sign up, you’ll get a secret phrase. WRITE THIS DOWN. I mean WRITE IT. get out a piece of paper and pen, write it down, and store it someplace safe. I don’t recommend copying//pasting or saving it anywhere on your computer or online. That’s because if you get hacked or keylogged or something and someone gets a hold of your secret phrase, they get a hold of your wallet and all your funds in it. Take the security measure to protect yourself by writing down that phrase physically. 2. Now once you have the extension downloaded, you’ll need to make sure you connect to the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). You can find out how to do that on the official Binance website here. https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/connecting-metamask-to-binance-smart-chain 3. After your wallet is all set up and connected to the correct network (the BSC), you’ll need some BNB (Binance Coin) in your wallet. You can purchase this on Crypto.com or Binance exchanges with fiat then transfer/withdraw it to your MetaMask. Make sure you have enough extra to cover gas fees. Like a car needs gas to run, the blockchain needs gas to confirm transactions. Gas is the reward/fee that you pay in order to incentivize miners to actually provide the hash power that runs the blockchain. If miners weren’t paid for their hash power, then no one would mine crypto, so we give them fees/gas for their service of mining. 4. Once the funds (plus gas coverage) are in your wallet, head on over to PooCoin or PancakeSwap to exchange your BNB for BCOIN (or Bomber Coin). You want to search for contact Addresss: 0x00e1656e45f18ec6747F5a8496Fd39B50b38396D When it comes to NFTs or any crypto project, Always double check the official website of the official project to make sure you’re sending your funds to the right place. There are scammers that try to use fake contracts/fake tokens to try and steal your money. It’s basically an elaborate phishing scam to make it look like the token you’re looking for when it’s not .4.Connect your metaMask wallet to BombCrypto to login and begin playing. You need at least one hero NFTBomber Hero to get started, which costs 10 BCOIN (+ gas), and at the time of writing, BCOIN is priced in at around $8 each, so you’re gonna need $80+ gas fees (maybe $90 to be safe) MINIMUM to start playing the game. Now I know what you’re thinking. That sounds like a lot of money, but hear me out. There’s ALWAYS an upfront cost when it comes to gaming in general. The typical new game will run you about $60. You also need to buy a system or PC plus a controller or keyboard/mouse in order to play the game. Plus, if you’re on console and are playing a multiplayer game, you need to shell out an extra fee to use the online services. The initial cost to start playing *any* game can run you HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of dollars. And here’s the thing, once you play your traditional game, once you pick up a copy of God of War or Minecraft or Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, Overwtch, Fallout 76, or whatever tickles your fancy, that’s a straight up EXPENSE. You can play the game for hours upon hours, unlock all the in-game rewards and levels and still never see any sort of return on your investment. Gaming as a hobby can run your wallet thin and it comes at a complete cost to you. Best you can do is resell the game on the market, but that only applies if you get a physical copy of the game or are selling your peripheral (controllers, mouse, etc). Most game purchases nowadays are digital downloads and offer no course for the buyer to resell it. You basically put down money as a loss to you. Either way, whether you play games with NFTs or not, there is an upfront cost to get started. The difference is with NFTs you can earn that money back and then some. You can earn money playing games, doing something that would *normally* cost you money to do anyway. So really $90 isn’t much. That said, I actually recommend getting at least 15 Heroes for a full active party and putting in $1220 ($1200 for the Heroes and $20 to cover gas fees) . Again, NOT financial advice here. To be honest, one hero isn’t really worth your time or money. It would take literal DAYS to explode open one chest, yet alone an entire treasure room using only one hero, unless of course you get really REALLY lucky. And I imagine you wouldn’t see any sort of return on your investment for months, maybe even years. Whereas having a full team can begin nettin you profit in as little as a month (results may vary of course due to the random nature of Heroes). See, upon purchasing a Hero, you’re given a certain rarity. This ranges from Common, Rare, Super Rare, Epic, Legendary, and Super Legendary. The drop rates of those rarer heroes are well, quite friggin rare. Chances are, your first Hero will be a Common. And common Heroes suck! They’re the one with the low stats and remember lower stats = slower clearing of maps (which means slower profits as well). The more rare the hero is, the higher thestats will be and the faster you’ll find treasure/clear maps and earn yourself a profit. By the way, you’ll need to pay a BNB gas fee for not only exchanging funds for BCOIN but also for “minting” a new Hero as well as “processing” your request. Overall, to start playing BombCrypto, you’re paying It’s only a couple cents with each gas fee, but those small fees can add up. In general, you want to save on as much gas fees as you can by eliminating actions that require gas, which in this case is minting new Heroes. That’s another reason why there’s an advantage to putting in a bigger up front investment as you can mint multiple Heroes at once (in batches of 5 or 10), which saves you more gas as opposed to minting one Hero at a time. Once you mint your Hero and process it, you can click Treasure Hunt and begin playing. RIght now, there’s just one mode, but Senspark plans on adding more modes in the future. If you don’t see your Hero, try clicking the red chest at the top left of your screen and clicking “Claim” next to Hero Rescue. You may also need to open your brown chest (labeled “Chest” in text) from the main screen As your hero, you can get a knight, a cowboy, a frog, a witch, vampire or a doggo. But it doesn’t really matter what “class” they are. What matters is their stats and abilities and those stats and abilities don’t seem. One type of Hero (eg. cowboy versus frog) doesn’t favor one stat over the other. It’s all random. The different classes of character types seem to be nothing more than cosmetic. In addition to stats, you can sometimes pull Heroes that have Perks that give extra bonuses, like the ability to move through blocks. The best two perks and really only noteworthy ones are the one that gives +.5 energy per minute while resting and the other that has a chance to not consume mana when throwing bombs. The other perks are meh. You don’t get to choose your perks or your stats. It’s completely based on RNG. You’re rolling the dice here. How much can you make? With a full party of 15, assuming mostly commons and maybe a few rares, you can earn about 4 BCOIN per day, which after we do some math (4 x $8 per BCOIN) is $32 per day. This number can grow if you happen to get lucky with your Hero pulls and get those Heroes with higher rarity, because again rarity determines stats and stats determine treasure hunting speed. There's also a slight chance (emphasis on slight) that you can find a prison and unlock a free hero. I actually managed to pull a Legendary from a purchase and this dude is fast af boi! Put it this way, my “main” account has a full team of 15 Heroes and earns about 4 BCOINs daily. The alt account, where I got the Legendary in has only 11 Heroes, yet earns 7 BCOINs ($56) daily . Less Heroes but one Legendary makes the profits practically double. So you definitely want those Heroes on the high end of the rarity chart I gave you. You need a Minimum of 40 BCOIN to cash out from your game’s Red Treasure to your actual wallet. They then charge a 3% fee to “Claim” your BCOIN into your wallet on MetaMask. You have to pay a gas fee to Claim and then another one to exchange it back into BNB then another fee in gas to send that BNB from your MetaMask to Binance or Crypto.com (SO MANY GAS FEES), so maybe closer to $30 per day. Again that’s as of writing anyway. If we take a look at the price chart, we can see a solid growth in the price of BCOIN. It could go up, it could fall down. But I think in the long run as more and more people join this game (perhaps millions as Senspark, the developer managed to pull off with other games in the past), the price will only continue to rise as BCOINs become more and more valuable. Just my opinion, man. Do your own research of course. Using Multi Accounts to Compound Profits After you hit that cash out threshold, you could just take your money and run, or you can use it to compound your profits. Now, I’m going to tell you this so you avoid the same mistake I did and take a better, more strategic course of action. I had a full team of 15 Heroes and mistakenly thought I could swap the energy depleted Heroes out for ones who are fully rested and recovered. It was only after I upped my roster to 17 Heroes that I realized, the Inactive Heroes DON’T RECOVER ENERGY! They need to be “active” and at “rest” in order to regain history (which sounds like complete oxy moron). Basically, any number of Heroes you have above the 15 cap are literally just sitting in your account, not recovering energy, not earning you money. Now the developers do have plans to open up a marketplace, where players can buy, sell, and trade their Bomber Heroes. After all it is YOUR Hero NFT. If luck is on your side, you could probably just sell your rarer heroes for a straight up profit. Selling commons would probably barely get you to break even. Also while we’re on topic of the Bomber Hero marketplace, once it’s opened, it’s probably a better run for your money just to buy rare, epic, or legendary Heroes rather than minting new ones. They’ll of course, I would imagine, be more expensive than just 10 BCOIN, but doing so would guarantee you don’t get a shit hero with all 1 stats. But yeah, until they actually add the marketplace, extra heroes (above the 15 max active cap) are just sitting ducks. You’re kind of wasting your BCOINs if you decide to mint more heroes when you’ve already hit the cap because otherwise that Hero is just sitting there doing nothing, not even regaining energy or anything. Man, and I thought I was lazy! Fortunately, the developers have confirmed you CAN have multiple accounts. This opens up an opportunity to be earning off newly minted heroes, instead of just having them wait in oblivion. So what I do is withdraw BCOINs and transfer those BCOINs to an alt account. MetaMask makes it easy to add and switch between multiple accounts. All you do is click the top little right hand circle within MetaMask and then go to Add Account. By the way, I wait until my balance is 42 BCOINs (not 40) before withdrawing in order to cover the 3% fee and still be able to mint 4 full Heroes then mint them in my alt account. Once I hit a full team of 15 in about three accounts, I’m going to slowly start splitting my BCOINs between profit takes and “upgrading” my account by minting new heroes (hopefully some more Legendary or rare ones). Now you can have multiple accounts, but you CANNOT run them on separate devices *at the same time*. You have to login one account, do a treasure hunt, logout then rinse and repeat with your second, third, or maybe even fifth account. It takes about 20-30 mins for a team to run out of energy, so I reckon the max amount of accounts you can have (at least without sacrificing energy) is around 3-5 accounts. Playing it on Your Phone: One of the best ways to maximize your profits is giving yourself the ability to play this game on the go. I mean that way you’re not having to sit in front of your computer into to hunt treasure and earn BCOIN Most mobile browsers, unfortunately (at least the default ones liek Chrome, Safari, or FireFox) don’t allow browser extensions like MetaMask to be installed. And if you download the MetaMask app, it doesn’t allow you to connect to sites; it only lets you send and transfer funds within your wallet. Booo! Fortunately you can download a browser that allows installation of extensions called Kiwi Browser. Now this is an Android only app, available on the PlayStore. Just download the browser, go to Metask.io, download the extension for Chrome, and BOOM you can use it to connect to BombCrypto from your freaking phone! I even use this while I’m at the computer so I don’t have to keep switching tabs and can just look at my phone on the desk at a glance. Wrapping Up:
So there you have it, I think I covered pretty much everything about BombCrypto, at least enough for you to get started on your own if you choose to. It’s a very easy money-making from the couch method. Like I said, you’re pretty much getting paid to run an idle game, letting your Heroes do all the quote on quote “work”. I hope you found this guide/review useful and if you feel I left out anything or have any questions, be sure to leave it in the comments below or hmu on social media @a_procrastin8r In the coming weeks, I’ll go over some more NFT gaming opportunities to keep on your radar, but for now I gotta go earn some treasure while taking a nap. Take it easy, N8 Time is such a fascinating concept. No species on the planet, besides human beings, understands the fact that time is always running out. Since the day you were born, the clock started ticking for you. And as a being of consciousness, you’ve had (and still have) the ability to choose what exactly to do with your time. And there’s this idea that you should always choose to do the productive thing. You should always be performing something ambitious or putting effort into something useful.
Heck, I’d reckon if sleep weren’t necessary to actually, ya know, survive, sleeping would be seen as a pointless or perhaps even harmful endeavor. Sleeping would hold the same level of stigma as shooting up dope, like it’s only something you do if you’re a stupid junkie. Forget rejuvenating your mind and body. Forget relieving stress. Just pull up your boot straps and git r’ dun! I mean already, people say “sleep is for the weak” and advocate forgoing rest in order to work, exercise, or otherwise “continue to hustle”. It’s this attitude of “don’t sleep unless you absolutely NEED to”, and even then, push yourself to stay awake for one more workout routine, for one more project complete. Just keep the hustle up and don’t stop! Sleep will only slow you down. Hustling and Bustling. That’s all we do, or are expected to do at least. We’re always in a rush, or very well pressured to be in a rush. We’re in such a hurry to get things done that we don’t take time to “stop and smell the roses” or take it easy once in a while, for that matter. We’re always jumping from one task to another, one obligation to the next. And never really take the time to...relax. And any time we try to spend in Leisure (the big “L” in L.A.Z.Y.), it is seen as a complete and utter waste of time. Being the only conscious beings in the world, who are aware of what time is and how it works, we end up pressuring ourselves to always make use of that time rather than watch it fritter away. A squirrel doesn’t choose to spend his day collecting nuts, he just does it out of pure instinct for survival. Likewise, a lion doesn’t choose to spend his day hunting gazelle, he just does it to satisfy his hunger. Animals don’t plan or schedule how they’ll use their time efficiently, they sort of just go with whatever hunch they’re feeling. But ya know what? Because of their lack of awareness of time, they don’t feel so pressured to get things done with that time, like we as humans do. They do what they want, when they want, without any sort of There’s admiration in that, quite frankly. -- doing what you want with your time, rather than chaining yourself to a freaking schedule and beating yourself up about being late. The lion feels no guilt or remorse by lying in the field all day. He just feels like he wants to sleep, so he does. Now if that lion were a person, we might call him out for “wasting his time”. Think about an employee who sleeps on the job. They're not only wasting their own time, but wasting company time as well, at least that’s how it’s seen in a corporate central society. Certainly, there’s a limited amount of time we have in life. None of us get out alive, so you might as well have fun while you’re here and appreciate every single moment. And for all intents and purposes, there’s no sense in wasting any of that limited time you have. Now of course, with that said, that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be vigorous about your time, just conscious about it. In other words, you must consciously choose what to do with your time, even if you choose to do something rather unproductive. You must Procrastinate with Purpose. It’s your time, so do what you will with it. And that’s the key: doing what you *want*, as opposed to what you feel *required* to do. It’s more important to live a life of desire than one of obligation. Don’t indebt yourself to always be out on the hunt. Lie down and take a nap on the planes, like that lion, to put it in a metaphor. In more straightforward terms, don’t feel like you’re required to always hustle about to do something. Doing nothing has its merits. You wouldn’t believe that though, would you? Not in this work hard culture we’ve been raised in. The premise is set for us to believe that if you ain’t doing shit with your time, then you ain’t shit, period. In this profit-driven society, we’re constantly bombarded with messages to make every single minute of our lives productive. In fact, the mere act of existing doesn’t make you valuable in our culture. You must work hard, achieve some sort of grand feat, or otherwise make big moves in order to amount to anything worthwhile in the eyes of society. But I believe, there’s value in a person just being a person, even if they so happen to choose to lie on the couch all day, even if they do nothing. Today we’re going to take a look at how to make the best of your time in life, even if that means quote on quote “wasting” it. And without further ado, let’s dive...right into it! We’re all completely wasted! Every second of our lives is spent towards some means of productivity, whether that’s grinding 8 hours on the daily at your day job, cleaning up and doing chores at home, or paying bills, there’s always something we’re doing to make use of our time. Life becomes an eternal to-do list. Once one thing is checked off, about three or four more tasks take its place. It’s a never-ending call of duty. And that’s the false notion I really want to address here today: that we must consistently MAKE USE OF our time. It’s okay to have a small to-do list. It’s okay to be lazy ,contrary to popular belief. Making use of your time means performing noteworthy achievements or making progress towards said achievements. While there are kudos for doing that, to a certain extent. I mean it is good to level up and earn a praiseworthy accomplishment or two once in a while. But if you’re constantly doing that, if you’re always no matter what being productive, despite how physically tired or emotionally drained you may feel, well that means you’re never taking time to unwind and rejuvenate that energy loss. And if you don’t take time to unwind, then you’re tight and on-edge. You’re mentally unhinged and emotionally unstable. You deplete yourself of energy and wind up, well, pretty damn wasted. In attempts not to waste time, you end up wasting yourself. I mean let’s face it, just like there is a limited amount of time we all have, there’s also a limited amount of stamina we have too. Doesn’t matter how much or how long you “push” yourself, at some point or another, you are going to hit fatigue. Of course, the message of encouragement will be to “just suck it up”, to keep moving, and never give up. Giving into the pressure to call it quits makes you weak. Look, man, taking a break doesn’t mean you’re giving up. It means you’re respecting your own mind, body, and spirit. Conversely, if you quit that makes you strong. It takes strength to recognize your limits and know when it’s time to take it easy and stop your achievement streak for now. It’s actually rather weak to ignore all the signs in your mind and body to stop, just to “prove thyself” or whatever. Besides, you can always continue your goal later. You can finish up your achievement...eventually. Slow n’ steady wins the race. If you try to rush to the finish line in one go, you’ll exhaust yourself before even getting there. Cut the go-getter and tough guy mantra and instead BE HONEST with yourself. After all, telling the truth is the one thing you should NOT procrastinate on. You’re lying to yourself about how much you can handle. It’s more stoic and classy to say “okay enough is enough here. I’m done.” than to barbarically insist like an irrational caveman: “CROGG NO HURT! CROGG GO ON! Calm you tits, dude. Relax. Seriously. Be lazy one in a while. You need it. Laziness is evolution. Laziness is smart. Laziness is nature’s “energy-saving mode.” It’s pretty goddamn dumb to continue working, to continue trying, to continue busting your freaking ass when your body is collapsing, your heart is torn, and your mind is breaking down. I mean you want to talk about a junkie. You ever think that maybe, just maybe you’re addicted to work and overachieving. Like a junkie, you seek the “high” of earning rewards or approval from all your try hard efforts and wind up doing yourself more harm than good. Sure, it may feel good to get more done than you had anticipated, but at the end of the day, you’re screwing yourself over by refusing to give yourself enough rest. By skipping rest in order to work all the time, you’ll age faster, lose your physical strength and coordination more quickly, and feel your mental ability decline much sooner than if you actually took the time to relax and recover when you need to. Sure, there’s a big hype to always perform well and be on the ball, so you go ahead and force yourself to “push beyond the limit.”Meanwhile you’re destroying yourself in doing so. As you “push through the pain”, you become a ticking time bomb and it’s only a matter of *time* before you explode. What’s more is you keep adding fire to that fuse; you keep adding stressors to your life by continually putting more on your plate than you can eat. You’re overstuffing your face with too much junk. Yes, eating is healthy. Just like achieving goals is necessary. But too much of it is no bueno. It’s NOT good! You should aim for a life of balance. To have leisure mixed with accomplishment. The “work/life”balance , if you will. The ProcrastiN8r never does TOO much of anything and always does “Just enough”. Strive to do “just enough”. That is the key to balance. And if there’s one principle to live by, it’s “balance.” But that could be a whole other topic for a whole other day. We’ll say that’s “just enough” for now and get back to it eventually. For now though, let’s get back to this whole little diddly about time. There’s no down time. We’re constantly on the grind, always exerting effort towards *some* task or another, non-stop persisting to get more things done. We never really settle down or ease up. Weekends are a laughable excuse for a so-called “break”. It simply isn’t enough time to recuperate after a long 40+ week of working. We have chores to do, groceries to shop for, bills to pay. There’s really hardly any time at all to just chill. We have to many obligations to attend to to allow ourselves to fully and completely embrace our Leisure. Even recreation is something we don’t permit to restore our energy. The time we spend on hobbies is time spent either trying to improve our skill, learning new techniques, or otherwise achieving some sort of goal. We even use recreational time itself to be proactive. You don’t play guitar simply to enjoy playing music, but to practice scales or chords. You don’t go out for a jog just to enjoy the outdoors and relish in the feeling of breathing but to get a good cardio work out. You don’t cook to appreciate the tastes and smells of food, but to prepare a meal for your guests. You get the gists. In doing things we enjoy, we fail to make that time enjoyable. We turn what should be a Leisure into productive work. We must focus on finding pleasure in the things we do, allowing our hobbies to relax us, rather than become just another pressure in life for us to get better at. Don’t pressure yourself, man. Just enjoy what you do, without any sort of ulterior motive (like improving skill, completing a project, winning a game, etc.). Play to have fun, not to win. Value satisfaction over victory. Look at the Dude, he bowls not to win or get a strike. He bowls because he likes it. He revels in the joy he gets from bowling. And that’s it. He abides and does his own thing, regardless of how productive it is or isn’t. He does the thing just to enjoy it. And that’s how we have to aim to spend our recreational time. Vacation, too, becomes not a time to relax and take it easy, but an opportunity to make the best of it and take advantage of all the excursions at the place you choose to travel to. We build ourselves a hard itinerary to follow -- scuba diving in the morning, jet skiing in the afternoon, fireworks in the evening, and clubbing late at night. Everything on vacation is scheduled and pre-planned. We then pressure ourselves to fulfill said schedule of activities we had planned, even if we feel too tired to do it. We wind up coming back home after a week or two and need a vacation after our vacation. You know the feeling. You come home from your tour in Europe or trip to the beach or hike out in the Grand Canyon or wherever your vacation destination was and you just feel so drained. We’re all waste, completely burnt out. We have no energy. And the time we could use to revitalize that energy is instead used to deplete it even further. We’re running on empty and barely getting by. The time you enjoy wasting is NOT wasted time. Giving yourself ample amount of time to not put yourself under any obligation or pressure yourself to achieve a certain goal and instead just waste that time doing nothing allows you to really revive yourself and feel fresh. You’ll for once in a very long time, feel rested, feel at peace, feel happy. Give yourself that much needed break. And when I say break, I mean it. Don’t constantly be forcing yourself to do things you won’t actually enjoy just because you don’t want to waste your time. Embrace your Leisure every once in a while. Fully and completely relax. Fully and completely be at rest. It’s much better to waste time than it is to waste your enjoyment of life. Take it easy, N8 Well fellow ProcrastiN8rs, the weather’s getting cold. You know what that means. Time to hibernate and refuse to leave the house for the next few months, staying warm on the comforts of the couch.
I don’t know about you, but man, I HATE the cold! Much worse than the heat. Don’t get me wrong, being hot is uncomfortable. Especially when you’re just like...standing there and sweating your balls off. I mean, it’s one thing to be working out or doing some heavy physical labor and working up a sweat. That happens. That’s kind of expected. If I’m moving around a lot or exercising, I’m gonna sweat. It’s inevitable. But it’s a whole other realm when I’m literally just standing there and freaking pouring buckets of perspiration from my skin. The act of being idle becomes a sweaty activity. It can be so hot that being lazy is impossible, because even if you’re just lounging around doing nothing, you feel sweaty and out of breath, like you just ran a marathon. That, my friend, is certainly uncomfortable. I’ll admit. It’s not something I particularly enjoy, but I’ll tolerate it. But cold? Cold is actually painful. It literally HURTS to be cold. I mean you reach the point where you can’t even move. Your face, toes and fingers transform from human appendages to icicles and your muscles become numb. You’re literally frozen. It’s awful. There’s a fine line between *slight* discomfort and genuine PAIN, so I’ll take heat over cold any day. I’d much rather be a bit sweaty than frigidly paralyzed by icy air. Like is it really a healthy inhabitable place where the AIR hurts you? Of course, living here in the Northeastern part of the States, cold weather is something I inevitably face every year. And the only thing colder than the air outside is the heart of a dirty scammer! That’s right, my lazy dudes, winter is coming and ‘tis the season of ripoffs and fraud. Every year, during the winter season, you’ll see a slew of scammy websites, apps, products, and investment opportunities pop up left and right. While the outside world is decorated with lights, tinsel, and mistletoes, the Interwebs is decorated with fake deals, false promises, and scammy companies. What a jolly good time! Maybe people want to get a little extra cash to spend on the holidays. Maybe they want to take advantage of people’s willingness to spurage on “Black Friday” deals. Maybe, just maybe, people are on edge because they’re in pain from all this cold weather. No but seriously, for whatever the fuck reason, things take a bit of a spiral during the cold time, weather that has anything to do with the weather or not. But we’re not here to theorize about why or how that happens. We’re here to make you aware of what’s coming. Along with the bombardment of scams you’ll see crop up, we also see the impending doom of a dip in investment portfolios. Both the stock and crypto markets have a history of taking a bit of a downfall around this time of year. So unless you’re Amazon, Wal- Mart, or some other big billionaire retailer making bank during their month long Black Friday, it’s easy to lose money if you’re not careful. Last week, we covered the ProcrastiN8 Red Flags to Look Out for to Avoid Online Money-Making Scams and one of the reasons I decided to do that is because we’re about to see a blizzard of scams slam down from the skies. Today, I want to encourage you to hibernate, to relax and stay warm during this winter season. We’ll take a look at the type of bitter cold scams and frostbitten money loss traps you should look out for this season. Because just like cold weather, cold scams can cause you real PAIN! Again, I want you to be able to make a living from the comforts of your house, so I’ll share with you the experience I learned in making money online for about a decade. So grab that blanket and sit on by the fireplace, grab a mug of hot cocoa and let’s dive...right into it! The Super Awesome Deals are Super Not Real! We all want to get that special gift for that special someone...and maybe that special someone just so happens to be ourselves. Either way, when it comes to gift buying, we want to save money. Saving money in some “super deals” has become the whole gimmick of the season. Black Friday has slowly expanded into Black Month at this point, with “pre” Black Friday sales launching as soon as we howl at the moon one last time on Halloween night, Black Friday used to be a single day where stores would sell all their overstock at a huge discount, but it’s turned into a month-long phenomenon. Now stores are purchasing products for the sole purchase of being sold/displayed during Black Friday time; no longer selling just their overstock of supplies but going out of their way to buy MORE supplies just for the sake of filling the shelves. I say Black Friday “time” here too because as a key note, it’s no longer a single day of the year, but a whole fucking season of sales. And here’s the thing, it’s not even really *that* great of a deals anyway. See, there’s a lot of hype for grabbing a good deal. So much to the point, where stores aren’t offering the deep discounts that they used to during Black Friday time and instead are offering similar discounts to the random sales they have throughout the year. You’re really not saving that much. It’s all marketing. They sell you the *idea* that you’re getting a really good deal, when really it’s no more of a discount then you would have gotten during a random sale day in June, for example. Sometimes, they don’t even cut prices at all, but play off the psychology that people are out on the hunt for a good deal, so they just label it as such. Even legit companies become quite scammy this time of year, just to feed off the hype. To demonstrate how willfully hyped and ignorant people become during Black Friday, my dad and my aunt used to go out Black Friday, not necessarily to shop, but just to absolutely fuck with people. They’d grab something, totally worthless, like a pack of M&M’s and shout“OMG M&M’s ONLY A DOLLAR A PACK!” Next thing ya know, hordes of people would sprint over to grab this “exclusive deal” on candy. The kicker, the M&M’s weren’t even on sale. They were just the normal price you’d pay They used this same tactic with tampons, condoms, and even adult diapers. People would go nuts over this stuff. I ain’t kidding. Now, they aren’t marketers or anything, but they understood at a very fundamental level, people are willing to buy *anything* if they are given the premise that there’s a “limited time” to get it. It’s all about selling FOMO. Buy now or you’ll miss out on this great price! It’s the perfect opportunity to sell your snake oil. But seriously, imagine what marketers are trying to play here. The other thing too, you gotta keep in mind is that you aren’t saving money if you’re spending money you weren’t going to spend in the first place. People will buy things just for the pure reason that it’s on sale, thinking to themselves about how much money they’re saving. “Oh I better get it now while it’s so cheap”. Thing is, it doesn’t matter how cheap it is if it’s not something you really wanted to buy. Like okay, maybe if you need extra toilet paper and there’s some on sale or maybe you need a new lamp or something. But if you buy a big screen TV on an impulse just because you don’t wanna miss out on a deal, well I have news for you, bucko: you ain’t savin money. You don’t spend money to save money. It’s that simple. Of course, you may justify the purchase to yourself by saying something along the lines of “Well, I was thinking of getting one eventually. I might as well get it now while it’s on sale.” Well, that’s why you budget and save up for it. Now you’re gonna put it on your credit card because you don’t have the purchase in your budget. And then what, pay interest on the card purchase? You’ll end up paying more in interest than the amount you quote on quote “saved” on the sale. On top of that, as I mentioned, there’s probably a sale for that thing you want with as much, if not MORE of a discount than you’re getting during Black Friday. Now going along the lines of the deals aren’t worth it, it’s around this time of year that you’ll start seeing ads for straight up scam deals. This relates back to spotting a scam by seeing something that’s “too good to be true.” You’ll see something like the notorious “$28 mini laptop” WOW! What a deal! Twenty eight bucks for a laptop! If this isn’t raising red flags though, I don’t know what to tell you. There’s no computer you can build for that cheap. And even if you could, you can guarantee it’d be ridden with spyware or maybe explosives. You’ll end up getting shipped a box full of rubber bands, a surgical mask, and a RubberMaid container...or something else. I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what: that whatever’s in the box upon delivery will most certainly NOT be that little laptop you were hoping to get. This is just one example of a common “too good to be true” type deal. Scammers use it as a way to get your money, or worse, your personal info. A lot of these sites will have you enter your credit card info,. I can promise you, even if you are shipped the actual product you ordered (which spoiler alert: you won’t be), you’re risking sharing your information with some random company. The kicker is you probably won’t even get it shipped in time for Christmas anyway. These companies are usually from China or other foreign overseas countries that take weeks if not months to ship something. If you really need a cheap last minute gift or deal, do what I do, go to Five and Below or a dollar store. They have cheap deals year round and it’s not a scam. Or better yet, just stay at home. Be lazy. Forget holiday shopping. It's all corporate propoganda anyway. Let’s move on and talk about some other scams to look out for during this cold season... The Opportunity of a Lifetime! If they aren’t offering you a deal of a lifetime, well then they’re certainly going to try to offer you the opportunity of a lifetime. While the elves are busy making toys, scammers are busy making scam programs. You’re going to see EFT games, alt coins, and High Yield Investment Programs (HYIPs), all promising HUGE returns right around this time of year. This is to get you to shell out your hard earned money to fill the owners’ stockings. You’re going to see a lot of BIG projects with very ambitious goals or otherwise promises to fulfill pop up like Christmas trees in people’s houses right around now. Funny how everyone gets so inspired by eggnog and figgy pudding to achieve such grand things. Those grand things will melt away like a snowman, as each program disappears as quickly as they came. And sure, they may pay, at least for a little bit. But the program will close, the site will shut down, all before you get a chance to hit any sort of profit margin. But don’t be discouraged from investing in them at all. There are strategies you can use to come out on top. It’s a risky game, but one worth it if you manage to pull it off. You gotta play HYIPs like James Bond plays his dating game: get in early, get out fast. The early bird gets the worm, as they say. And as much as a prcorastin8r as I am, investing in an HYIP or new alt coin or EFT is nto something you want to be late to the party for. If you’re interested in how to play the HYIP game, I have an article about that I wrote before. Anyway, unless you’re playing the game the right way, you’re going to lose. Even if you do play by the right rules, there’s still a risk. It’s a gambling man’s game for sure. Just don’t be throwing your money at investment opportunities of new startups or otherwise “groundbreaking” technology or whatever. That’s all story and fluff. ‘Twas the night before losing all your money, if you’re not careful. And finally, the last thing to look out for, is not necessarily a scam, but definitely a loss trap with your investments. The Markets Will Dash Down Faster than a One Horse Open Sleigh! I don’t know if it’s people selling off their stock shares and crypto coins in order to have a bit more spending money for those oh so mediocre Black Friday deals, or if people are just following the trend and panic selling, but historically winter is a rough time for trading. I mean even right now, as of writing, the crypto market as a whole is on a steep downtrend, crashing negative 20% in just a week. But that’s all normal. It’s nothing to worry about, man. I’m no stock broker, investment expert, or otherwise financial guru. I’m just a lazy dude, so I’m not offering you any sort of advice or anything. I’m just laying out my opinion, man. But for real, the minute the temperature drops, the market drops too for a few weeks, maybe even all the months of winter, but it always recovers right around the time the first flower begins to bloom in the spring. I always see it as the real Black Friday sale. Like oooh look dividends are on sale! Bitcoin is on sale! These Axie Infinity EFTs are on sale! The worst you could do is panic sell. Never panic do anything, yet alone sell your investments. Relax and stay calm. HODL! Things will warm up, eventually. Just lay low and hibernate your investments. Brace yourselves, winter is coming! Take it easy, N8 Well, fellow procrastin8r, we just turned our clocks back and I know your lazy little self appreciated that beautiful extra hour of sleep.
It seems like an outdated practice to do that though, quite frankly. I mean, no one likes it. No one even understands why we do it. It’s just something we do. I’m surprised we don’t have more people up and arms about this whole “clock mandate” thing, crying “You can’t make me! It’s my right!” like they do with masks and vaccines *rolls eyes*. Don’t get me wrong, if I can take an extra hour in bed, I’ll go ahead and take it, but changing the time on our clocks seems like an unnecessary ritual to perform in order to achieve that. I just stay in bed, if I don’t feel like getting up despite whatever the numbers on the clock say. Nonetheless, every fall, we wind our clocks back an hour and it throws our biological clock out of loop for a few days, making us feel tired at odd hours, But in less than a week, things get back to “normal” once we adjust to the new schedule. Of course, nowadays our phones just automatically change the time for us and it’s almost unoticeable - the fact that we do change clocks. Heck, to be honest if it weren’t for the fact that my microwave and oven didn’t automatically change the time, I wouldn’t even notice that we altered the clocks to begin with. Being a lazy bastard myself, I tend to just leave the oven and microwave clock at the wrong time. I figure they’ll eventually tell the right time if I leave ‘em there long enough. After all, we’ll change our clocks yet again later in the spring. Anyway, I’m not here today to go on and on about clock changing today, as that would be a rather boring topic for a blog; I just figured I’d start with an amusing little anecdote. But today I want to once again, dive back into the roots of what this blog was all about and that is of course making money from the couch. When you’re making money from the couch, you’re naturally going to look to find ways to make money online. That can be quite a daunting task because let me warn you folks: there are so many freaking scams out there on the Interwebs. While making money online can be easy, it can be even easier to get scammed and waste your time or even money if you’re not careful. Now one thing I hate wasting is my time. I don’t mean that in the sense that I like to make every single minute productive. You know damn well I’m not. What I mean is if I am actually going to do (or at least attempt to do) something productive, I want it to be worthwhile. I want to minimize effort and maximize results, baby! That’s what laziness is all about, as I say all the time. So needless to say, I don’t want to be scammed out of my time or my money, as that requires me to put in effort and get no results in return. Any work I actually do should be worth my time, damnit! Likewise, any money I invest should reap in profit. I don’t want to spend hours and hours doing surveys, downloading games, watching ads, or whatever only to not get any sort of pay out, nor do I want to shell out my wallet only to watch it wash down the drain. In the time spent on a scam site, I could have been, I don’t know, playing Dead by Daylight or some shit, then I’d at least, ya know, have fun. It would be *worth* my time for the pure sake of enjoying myself. In the money invested in a scam site, I could have ordered pizza or something. Cowabunga at least my mouth would be satisfied. When I say I don’t like wasting my time, I mean to say I don’t like spending time on something that offers no benefit in return for the time that I invest. To clarify even further, I don’t consider lying around doing nothing is “wasting time”, as at least then you’re getting to relax and ease your stress. So I hate scams as much as you do. Making me work and put in effort and get nothing in return goes against my lazy mantra. Making money online *is possible though*. There are apps that pay you to play games. There are websites that pay you to watch videos and take surveys . The problem is, a good chunk of those sites and apps, probably an overwhelming majority, are nothing but a complete scam and waste of time. People will say that making money online is a scam, and to be fair, they aren’t completely wrong. I mean, saying “making money online is a scam” is much like saying “cops kill people”. It’s a broad statement and certainly not all websites and apps are scammy; just like not all cops are bad killers, but put it this way: there are so many “bad apples” that the entire apple farm is tainted. In other words, because there are so many scams out there, every online money-making method out there has a bit of a bad rap, even those that are legit. Now I’m telling you folks, there are legit ways to make money online, and I’ve covered some suggested methods in the past. But, given the fact that the vast majority of websites and apps out there are gonna try to either waste your time or steal your money, it’s good to have the “know how” in the ability to spot these scams so that you can avoid putting yourself through the hassle of doing extra work only to never be compensated. It’s worse than working a 9 to 5 job if you get scammed, because at least then you’re getting paid *something* for your hours. What am I saying here? The whole corporate grind is an entire scam in and of itself! I mean, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You want to escape the 9 to 5 job and make a full time income from home. You’re sick of being a corporate slave and want the freedom to work from home. Anyway, it’s important to know what you’re getting yourself into. Look, I want you to succeed. I want you to build an online income and earn cash the lazy way. I’d hate to see you waste your own time, as much I’d hate to see myself waste mine. After all, we’re in this together. We’re gonna achieve success as procrastin8rs and say together fuck getting a real job. So, in order to succeed in this whole online money-making thing, you have to be aware of what a scam looks like. After all, if you can avoid wasting your time in a scam, then the time you spend *trying* to make money online will be actually...profitable, because you’ll know you’re using a legit site or app. Look, I’ve been making money online for nearly a decade now, and believe me, I’ve seen a lot of bullshit. I mean A LOT of bullshit. I’ve learned the ins and outs of the methods these scammers use to try and steal your time for ad revenue, collect your data for their own monetary gain, or just flat out rip you off. My bullshit detector is sensitive and I’m able to recognize when a scammer is lurking behind a flashy, appealing design of a website/app. But I’m going to save you the time of literal years of experience in online money-making by sharing with you today how to spot a scam. I wasted my time so you don’t have to. I got scammed so you can avoid falling in the same trap. Now I could put together a list of names of these scams so you can definitely avoid them, but honestly there are just too many to list. I may provide a few examples, especially if they’re still around, but I’m too lazy to gather every app or website I’ve ever been scammed by. Many of them are already offline. They got their paycheck, packed their bags, and headed off. And while there are some scams still around, it’s only a matter of time before they close too, or reopen with a different name more accurately stated. See, because fact of the matter is, scams are ALWAYS going to be out there. When one closes, another soon opens its doors. So not only is creating a list of scams more work/research than I’m willing to do, it’s also quite impractical. It would have to be a list that kept growing bigger and bigger every day. You don’t want to have to keep checking back on the list as much as I don’t want to have to keep updating it. So rather than making a list of “scams to avoid”, I instead did the lazy thing for us BOTH, by writing “how to avoid scams in the first place”. I basically compiled here today a set of red flags to look out for when it comes to making money online. Once you know what red flags to look out for, you’ll be on your way to making money successfully, as you’ll be able to avoid the types of places that’ll have you make money rather UNsuccessfully, to say the least. So here it is another ProcrastiN8r List! Eight top red flags to look out for to avoid online money-making scams. And without further ado, let’s dive...right into it! RED FLAG #1: If It Sounds Too Good to be True, It Probably Is It’s an old saying, one in which I personally wish I listened to, but it’s true. If you’re being offered riches for seemingly nothing, then there’s probably a catch. And the catch in this case is wasting your time and/or money or even exposing your personal information. There are apps out there that promise to send you hundreds of dollars directly to your PayPal account just by downloading a few games, for example. Sounds enticing. But ya gotta think, what company is going to pay you a couple Benjamins just for a single download? You’re not reviewing it. You’re not testing it for bugs. You’re just downloading it with a click of a button. No business person in their right mind is going to pay THAT much for a single download. You’re not that important. Other sites, like TuneGaGa (SCAM) offer upwards to 40 cents PER video you watch. Like c’mon now get real. No marketer, advertiser, or indie artist in the world, ever, is going to place that much value on a single view on their video. I mean I know you like to think of yourself as some sort of deity, but I’d hate to break it to you, your view ain’t worth that much. It’s just not. Cut dry and simple. I’ve seen it before over and over. These sites will offer high-paying rates to watch videos BUT in order to qualify to watch videos, you need to pay a membership fee. These membership fees can run you up to hundreds if not thousands of dollars. It’s nothing but an elaborate ponzi scheme, disguised as some sort of VIP membership. There is no membership. You’re putting funds into a ponzi and getting paid by people that paid into the ponzi after you. You can earn FREE MONEY online, including by downloading games in legit paying apps like Mistplay, PlaySmart, and Cash Alarm. Likewise, you can watch videos on sites like Swagbucks and InstaGC to make money. It’s true. But it ain’t gonna make you rich. Not by any means. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Not even close. But it can be easy money. Easy money, however, is never LOTS of money. Keep that in mind when you get excited about the marketing schemes that tell you can be rich by playing games or taking surveys or whatever sort of task these apps/sites have you do. RED FLAG #2: The Minimum Cash Outs Are Way Too High Apps that legit pay usually have a cash out minimum of $20 or less. Often, as low as $1. Any of these sites or apps that require something like $50, $100 or even more to cash out are really just trying to get you to waste your time and earn ad revenue off of the time you do spend on the app/site. These clever little sleeze balls will have you earning like $10 per game download on your phone. And you’ll be thinking “Wow, I’ll be rich in no time.” But then reality will smack you in the face. Because what happens is once you reach about $90 in your account balance, then you start earning 1-2 cents per game download. And lo and behold the cash out threshold is $100. You literally have to download hundreds of games to reach that. Usually these high cash out thresholds have you WATCH ADS in order to cash out. Now legit apps do have you watch ads to EARN, but never to cash out. And it’s just like “ph watch this one quick ad to get your cash out.” Oh no! You have to watch dozens upon dozens of ads to “prove you’re real”. Yeah, prove you’re a real idiot for falling for their scam. Face it, it doesn’t matter how many ads you watch, you’re never getting paid. Maybe they’ll pay. Maybe they won’t, but they set the cash out threshold so high and make the requirements to cash out so ludicrous (like watching hours worth of ads) in hopes that you just give up and never cash out anyway. They probably wouldn’t pay you even IF you did jump through all the hoops. But they can just throw out the “the user didn’t meet the minimum requirements” card to cover their asses because they’re banking on the fact you’ll call it quits before you ever reach that point where they would be obligated to pay you anything. The Google Play Store is full of these shady apps and it sucks that Google, being such a big company and trusted brand name allows shit like that all over their store. Just be aware that if the cash out is close to the numbers of a regular pay check from a “real job”, it’s a friggin scam and a half, man. RED FLAG #3: If They Use “Reviews” to Vouch for their Legitimacy, They’re Probably NOT Legit It’s pretty common for a company to brag about their 5 star rating or even use customer testimonials to vouch for their product or service, but there’s a fine line between wanting customers to verify the quality of what you offer and using it as a ruse. If the company seems a little *too* pushy about how their customers feel about them, well either they’re really insecure or trying to hide something (like the fact that they’re a scam). It’s okay to mention that people love your product/service, but really going over the top about it is a sure red flag. Look, people love us. Look, people trust us. You should love and trust us too. It’s the same tactic psychopaths use to lure people into trusting them. Use other people’s trust to gain trust. Don’t fall for that bullshit. It’s manipulative. This also leads us to FAKE reviews. Scam companies will use bots or even hire people to write glowing reviews for them. You gotta read the reviews. Do you see a pattern in how they’re written? While they may not be exactly copy/paste, they may be using AI like quillbot to reword reviews or use the old fashioned method of using a thesaurus to replace words with similar words. Something you gotta look out for in spotting a fake review. Does it even sound human? There’s a certain language that real people use in conversation, yet alone reviews online. There’s a certain cadence and dialect people use. Robots can’t seem to pick it up. It quite simply doesn’t sound...natural. For example, “This is the most amazing app I have ever had the pleasure of downloading. I’m so glad that I have found it. It brings me great joy!” has artificial tone written all over it. Okay. Let’s break that down. Like.. No actual person speaks like that, especially about a friggin mobile app or online website. Do people a little *too* passionate about how awesome the app/website is? A lot of fake reviews come across as a “love letter” of sorts, as if they’re courting their soulmate, not reviewing a freaking app/website. “This is truly the most incredible website I ever had the opportunity to find.” a fake review may read. Like, you also see how that sounds generic, like it could pertain to *any* website or app, not just the one you’re looking at. Be careful of reviews that are too generic sounding as well. RED FLAG #4: If You Have to Spend Money to Earn Money, You Probably Won’t Earn Anything If you have to pay for any sort of subscription or membership, if you have to purchase “ad packs” to qualify for PTC (paid to click) ads, then I can almost guarantee you that you’re looking at a scam point blank. Now there are a few exceptions to this rule. For example, Better Bits Club is a PTC that requires you to purchase ad packs to earn, but they have been paying for nearly half a decade and still going. That’s a very rare exception though and in most cases, paying up front means giving away your money to scammers. And sure, they MAY pay you back *some* of your money. But any day they can just decide to stop paying. You don’t want to take that risk. Most money-making methods that I use online are FREE to earn. You don’t have to pay to be a member or any sort of hidden fees to make money. You can start for free and can always earn for free. I mean imagine applying for a job and they tell you that you have to put a deposit down in order to be an employee. They promise that your paycheck will more than compensate for the upfront fee you pay. You’d be like “Get the fuck outta here. You ain’t takin’ my money!” Well, it’s the same thing with these online businesses. Don’t let them tell you that you have to PAY money to MAKE money. That’s not how it works RED FLAG #5: Support? Psh, You’re On Your Own Kid One simple way to spot a scam is simply send an e-mail to their support/customer service. Do they get back to you? I mean, does a HUMAN get back to you. I’m not talking about some automated response. Of course, you’re going to get an automated response. But, does a person answer your question? If not, then you can pretty much write it off as a scam completely. No legitimate company is going to ignore communication from their current or even potential clients. Now I understand that some start up companies (who are NOT scams) don’t have the proper systems in place to effectively handle all the support requests coming in, but I’d say if you still have no reply after a full week, a full week, seven days, that’s plenty of time to get back to you, then they’re probably not ever going to give you any sort of reply and like I said, you can write it off as a scam. A real company wants to talk to clients; they want to answer questions. They’re not going to ignore you. Slow support is one thing. No support is another. I’m a bit of a sloth myself, so I like to take it slow and I’m a it forgiving when it comes to support taking a while to get back to me. However, I ain’t gonna tolerate absolutely NO reply at all. That means I’m out. Look, if you can’t get a hold of support, that’s such a blaring red flag. Out of all the companies I’ve gotten scammed by in my years of online money-making, I’d say a solid 100% of them lacked any sort of support. And by the way, I should mention that many of these companies will have active support for a while, but then one day just disappear. So let me throw you this: if they stop answering support questions, it’s only a matter of time before they stop paying as well (if they haven’t already stopped already, because chances are you’ll be reaching out about a missing payment). Damn, I’d go as far as to say if you have to reach out to support about a “Missing Payment”, you already know you’re not going to get an answer and you already know it’s a scam. RED FLAG #6: Lack of Updates and/or Social Media Presence means Lack of Pay Outs If the website hasn’t been updated, no news, no word on social media, nothing for I’d say over a month, then you’re looking at a scam right there. No legit company is going to disappear like that ever. Legit companies want to have an active presence online. The online space is so important when it comes to marketing and customer relations, as well as brand building, that there’s no reason a legit company would ever forgo that all of a sudden. Silence speaks loudly and says “WE’RE A SCAM AND NOT PAYING ANYONE ANY MORE!” Seriously, every single one of these scams, and I mean that, every single one, either deletes their social media accounts or stops posting updates all together, including on their own website. While I myself find myself guilty of lacking the social media game, as you can see clearly, I keep the site updated and fresh with new content. Whether it’s blog posts, news, replies on the in-house forum, *something*, there should be a set of regular updates, I’d say at least once a month, minimum. Otherwise, this demonstrates the company is inactive and being inactive means they took the money and ran. RED FLAG #7: Asks for a LOT of Info Before Paying Out It’s common practice for even legit companies to ask for a name, e-mail address, and maybe phone number, but anything beyond that should be approached with extreme caution. Oftentimes, scammers will use this as a method to gather your data and sell it (or possibly use it for identity theft). Be extra careful when you have to fill out your address or other personal information. While you almost can’t avoid at least providing your e-mail/phone, I’d recommend using a burner e-mail and burner phone number (you can get a free one from Google Voice) just to be used with these apps -- that way your name is never tied to your main email address and phone number. You can even go as far as making an alt account for your social media. Scam apps will ask for a bunch of information about you immediately upon signing up, like even your current residential address or picture of your ID. They might as well be asking for your social security, bank pin, and Driver’s License number at that point. It’s kind of like the creepy dude who wants to know where a girl lives before he even knows her name. Now that said, there are legit apps that require your full name and address and other seemingly confidential information. JustDice, for example, has a range of apps that pay you to download and play games and are all 100% legit. They do ask for Face ID using your phone’s camera to verify you're a real person and receive a cash out. So while it’s not a complete red flag here to be asked personal information, it’s still something to be wary about. Do your research and know who you’re sharing your information with before making that decision to actually share it. A simple Google search is all you need to do and see if the company is someone you can trust with your personal info. RED FLAG #8: They Say They’re NOT a SCAM All liars will tell you they never lie. All cheaters will tell you they will never cheat. And all scammers will tell you they will never scam. Seriously, think of major brands and trusted companies like Amazon, Google, McDonald’s Coca-Cola. You don’t see them advertising how they’re not a scam. They don’t have to. Because they aren’t a scam. It’s a simple as that. See, a company with any amount of legitimacy to it doesn’t need to sell to you the fact that it’s not a scam. They don’t have to state that at all. They just go about doing their business and in doing so, it becomes very clear that they aren’t a scam. You know why? Because they aren’t! And they ain’t gotta justify it either. In a legitimate company’s natural practice of business, they’re not going to scam you and they don’t have to say it. Imagine you go to a store and the minute you walk in the cashier says to you “Don’t worry we’re not gonna scam you.” You’d be like “What?” Then they say “We’re not going to use facial recognition to track you and your buying habits then sell your data to other merchandisers.” You’d be like “yo, I’m gettin’ the fuck outta here.” Then go call the cops or something. The same principle applies to online business and not just brick and mortar. Saying you won’t do something is sketchy af. It should raise your eyebrows of suspicion whenever a company mentions to you that they’re not trying to rip you off. Like if a salesman walks up to you and says they aren’t going to try and rip you off, doesn’t that make you think they’re going to *actually* try and rip you off? It’s nothing but a pathetic lie and of course our final big red flag Wrapping Up There you have it. The ProcrastiN8 top red flags to look out for to avoid online money-making scams. I hope you find it useful and can begin avoiding the loads of wastes of time that are out there. Now that you know what to look for, you’ll be less likely to fall victim to a scam and can instead find legit earning methods on your own. The time you save not getting scammed is time you can use to sleep, play video games, or do whatever you want. Stay lazy, my friend and make that money from the couch. Take it easy, N8 |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2022
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