The alarm clock on the table has been going off a lot these past few days. The moment I open my eyes, I’m reminded of the testnet points: it was originally just for practice, but everyone automatically assumes that “mainnet definitely has to give you something,” and once that expectation sets in, people are prone to increase their stakes, get carried away, and stay up late grinding tasks… to put it plainly, practice turns into betting.

My stop-loss for myself is a bit cheesy: treat “points” as a zero-cost trial voucher, and at most spend on two things—time-wise, not more than an hour a day; money-wise, only use the gas/fee spend that I can afford (within my acceptable gas/fee allowance). If it exceeds that, I just close the webpage immediately. I also have a small chart (I’m used to it…) that records what I’m operating for: is it to learn the process, or is it purely because I’m afraid of missing out? Once the latter builds up too much, I should stop—otherwise the alarm ringing won’t be waking me up; it’ll just be reminding me that I’m back to working for expectations. That’s it for now.