I started getting into the habit of reading some posts a few days a week, and when it's something that makes me reflect, and now I believe it's the second time that an insight from the book "The Richest Man in Babylon" has ended up relating to the content of a post. It's a little curious how these relationships end up forming, but I think that's the magic of a human being that makes us different from machines; the relationships are never obvious, requiring a person with knowledge of both sides to bridge the gap between the two bodies of knowledge.
In chapter/lesson 6 of 52 lessons in the book "The Richest Man in Babylon" - the version annotated by Karen McCreadie - there's a topic called "Focus and Profit from It," which is very interesting and extremely relevant to the moment we're in, where many users of crypto projects are questioning whether they're doing the right thing by dividing their professional attention with web3 projects whose tokens are constantly falling amidst all the global uncertainty. If you're curious, check out more about this relationship below!
I'll be much appreaciated if you Votes, Reblogs or give any Tips. Thanks and have good reading! 🍀
Current Scenario - 85 seconds to the end!
An interesting piece of data that shows how bad the overall global scenario is is the Doomsday Clock. This clock, upon reaching midnight, would mark the apocalypse, and it gets closer to the apocalyptic hour as more dangers to humanity emerge. In 2026, on January 27th, the clock reached its closest point to midnight since its creation in 1945 by Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, exactly 85 seconds from midnight.
The world finds itself in the midst of various conflicts in different regions of the globe, similar to previous world wars, but without the formality of calling these conflicts global, even though, due to the interconnected economy of globalization, the impacts of wars affect the global economy through production chains in various countries and the increase in the price of products. Furthermore, we have had to factor in climate change, with increasingly sudden and unprecedented events, and the risk of yet another disease affecting the entire world. Furthermore, to make things even more complex, agreements have recently been made for the use of artificial intelligence in the military industry, a technology known for its anomalies, where there is a chance it will give a completely different response than expected.
Amidst all this, we have the choices. In the post I read, I was reminded of how unpredictable things really are, because you don't expect something unexpected, and it sounds a bit silly to say that, but it's not. In the crypto world, we recently had Bitcoin's all-time high of over $120,000, and that wasn't that long ago, just a few months ago. Then nobody imagined what happened in October 2025, and then Bitcoin's fall even further, reaching close to $60,000.
And when I say nobody, I'm including projects that didn't have the cash to withstand that fall, in smaller niches within web3, like the web3 gaming niche. Many game studios ended up closing their doors because they had to make a choice: continue developing in the dark, without knowing what the market will be like in a few months, or focus on my work, on my business outside of web3. This was a context similar to the post I read, where the user encountered an unforeseen event, and in the current crypto landscape, the choice to stay and continue becomes more difficult. But, as in the worst moments, the impacts tend to be amplified, so he decided to continue. But what about you?
Focus and Win at It!
Within this context of choices, there is precisely a perfect chapter, called "Focus and Win at It!". The chapter begins with a passage from the story, in which Kobbi sought advice from Arkad, the richest man in all of Babylon, on how he too could accumulate wealth. At the end, she says: "You brought a new understanding to my mind. You made me realize why we never find wealth: we never look for it."
When we are in a scenario with multiple options, it's like those programs where you choose a door to go through, but we commonly try to go through several doors at the same time—participating in a Web3 project, working at a company, participating in a community. Our day has 24 hours, and while you focus on one of these doors, the people behind the other doors continue working, and life keeps turning for everyone. So, when you look for wealth in many different places, are you really looking for it in the right way?
Just like a GPS that, from time to time during your trip, loses its way and says the famous phrase "recalculating route," we also have moments when, after making certain decisions and taking certain paths, it can be a good strategy to stop for a moment and recalculate your route. Often, when recalculating, the GPS indicates the same route it was on; it was just a bug. The same can happen to you. Recalculating doesn't mean changing, as happened with the user in the post; it's more about stopping for a moment to review the route you're taking. Focusing doesn't mean being blind to everything else, but rather directing energy toward the right choice.
As the book highlights, most people don't receive formal education on how to manage and handle money, and as Kobbi said, "we never look for it," meaning: are you really looking for wealth in the right place? Is your current choice the best one? What does it cost you to dedicate a day to confirming this, and if necessary, dedicate even more time to it? At the end of the chapter, there's a suggestion: "make a list of all the things you dedicated some time to (whether in action or thought) in the last week..." I liked that part about considering thought, because sometimes we don't even realize how much space something ends up occupying on our hard drive called the brain, "...Consider where you dedicate your time and where your focus is directed. Is there anything among them that leads to accumulating money and becoming financially secure?"
This final suggestion is incredible and I believe it would be useful for anyone, and I add it as an idea to think specifically about residual money, or so-called passive income. Study businesses and projects that can reward you without requiring a large part of your time, or preferably without requiring any time at all, and it continues to generate income. This is a very interesting topic...
