There’s a certain power to morning rituals, to routines, and to doing the same thing every day – you find yourself ready for a variety of challenges, and, if you’re a morning person like me, you can hit the ground running by 8:30, with your priority list or to do list on the road to being conquered.

If you’ve followed any of the self-help gurus on the internet over the past ten years or so, you know there is almost a cottage industry built around productivity. So take these with a grain of salt…what works for me may not work for you.

In any event, here’s the ritual I follow, with the specific crypto mantra that has helped me in the past eight months.

Before you ask “who are you and why should we listen to you?” – let’s just say that I’m pretty happy with the little crypto empire I’m starting to build. But I have a lot to learn…which is why you’ll see a good chunk of this devoted to research.

Step One: Fire Up a Specific Set of Sites

I have the following sites set to open up on Chrome:

• Gmail
• Google Finance
• Metacoin – yes, this site is one of the first things I check, to get statistics, read any comments, etc.
• Twitter – where, in addition to the Team Metacoin account, I spend most of my time tweeting under my Area 224 account, where I have tweeted for close to ten years.
• Poloniex (more on that in a moment)
• CoinMarketCap (which gets ripped on by quite a few people, I know…as it appears they really don’t vet their ads very well)
• LinkedIn (checking in on professional network stuff there)
• ESPN (well, duh), and
• POW Token – as I’m semi-obsessed with this one getting off the ground. That’s an AFFILIATE LINK over there. Use it and I get some bonus tokens, but, if this one gets to a penny a token in the next year, they’re handing you a few hundred dollars.

Step Two: Open Up Your Spreadsheet(s)

You of course have a system for charting your holdings – I use Excel, but there are scores of ways to keep track of what you hold and that’s okay.

In my case, though, my Excel systems have helped me to chart everything that’s important in crypto:

• What I hold
• What I paid for it
• What I sold it for
• What revenue has been realized from any Passive Income Programs (PIPs).

YOU HAVE TO HAVE THIS INFORMATION FOR TAX PURPOSES. IT IS PART OF YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.

I’m an American: I’m not going to get into a debate here on taxation and cryptocurrency – and, as always, we have advised you to get professional help from an accountant and tax advisor. Don’t take this responsibility lightly – if you want the RIGHT to get into cryptocurrency, you have the responsibility to pay your taxes and do everything that is legally required of you. Soapbox speech over.

Step Three: Go Line By Line

Here’s where I go down the list and track where my investments are. The ones that aren’t PIPs can be tracked by a combo of Poloniex and CoinMarketCap.

My holdings might change, but my HODLings aren’t changing very often. Here’s a list of the ones that I track currently:

• Bitcoin
• Ethereum
• Ripple
• Litecoin
• NEO
• Walton
• ChainLink
• COSS (to buy this one, you need to go to coss.io).

Weekly or so, I update the BRED Portfolio – I’ll tweet results and sometimes update the blog, too.

Next, I check the PIPs that I’m currently involved with. Note that this list is MUCH SHORTER than it used to be:

• Bitconnect. That’s an AFFILIATE LINK; however, I’ve begun divesting from my holdings there, using a three-step process to take profits. Instead of reinvesting daily profits, I’m (1) taking them in Bitconnect coins, (2) trading them for BTC, and (3) moving that BTC to another wallet.
• Hexabot. We talked about this on the blog and had our AFFILIATE LINK REMOVED ON DECEMBER 5.
• Chain.group. Another one I just heard about, and I have a small stake. Another AFFILIATE LINK.

I track all of my results in the main spreadsheet, and keep track of my total once per day – any more than that and you’re gonna drive yourself nuts.

One thing that I include on my spreadsheet is my tally on BTC Heat – which, yes, is a BTC game. Use that link to get started and it helps me grow my number of spins.

I mentioned POW Token above (still time to get yours with this AFFILIATE LINK) and one other thing that I’ve done to add to my stake is “validate” users. This can be an investment of a half hour or so; but, lately, they’re slowing down how many new users they bring in, so there has been less validation to be done.

I also check the price of POW on EtherDelta; if there’s more of a pullback or I’m feeling frisky, I’ll grab a few more for cheap.

Step Four: Twitter & Research

These two, believe it or not, can go hand in hand. That’s right: “Crypto Twitter” is great, and you can get great ideas about what coins you might want to research. Take it ALL with a grain of salt – you’re not going to get rich just because one random person tweets a coin’s cashtag and tells you it will “moon.”

People that I follow:

• Sherlock – this guy is good, clever, and on the cutting edge with quite a few trades
• Bambou Club – somewhere near the Adriatic; he’s also active on Medium with a periodic update on what’s going on in his world
• Notsofast – trader, miner, lover of altcoins (though he uses a different word for them)
• Tiffany Hayden – knows XRP backwards and forwards, but shares info about the tech side, too.

I could go on (and reserve the right to update this list down the road) but the point is that you pick a few people that share cool stuff and start hearing what they have to say. And, in my case, that means researching coins and platforms they are talking about.

Try to use a “10th Man” approach, too – if you see quite a few people talking about how great a coin is, or how this next ICO will make people rich overnight, figure out what could possibly go wrong with it. You might end up talking yourself out of making a semi-foolish investment.

A Note on YouTube

Right now, I can’t recommend any YouTubers that talk crypto. Why? My feed seems to be dominated by certain people who talk incessantly about their favorite passive income platform – it’s getting old, getting annoying, and extremely one-dimensional.

I’ll make more videos of my own in the future, but I actually want to add value when I do so – not just talk about my own multi-level marketing abilities.

AND…You Can Do All This In 30 Minutes!

That’s right, whether crypto is your day job or just a side hustle, you really only need to spend 30 minutes on this exercise. It will put you in the right frame of mind and get you ready to build your crypto fortune.

Go get ’em!