NFTs are a blockchain-based method for minting digital files of original artwork that is revolutionizing the art world. With this new technology, artists can reach new audiences with their work, gain the ability to directly transact with collectors, be able to earn royalties on future sales, provide verifiable provenance to their buyers, and enjoy many more practical and creative benefits.In January 2022, there were over one million NFTs sold totaling over $2 billion, with over 500,000 unique buyers.

NFTs(Non-Fungible Tokens)

When talking to artists who hadn’t yet entered the NFT space, many identified the same barriers to entry.<ul><li>They don't understand how to find buyers for their NFT.</li><li>They have environmental concerns.</li><li>They believe that NFTs are a trend.</li><li>They don't understand how it works.</li><li>They have security concerns.</li></ul>

Top Five Barriers to Creating NFTs

Much of the hesitation around wading into the NFT space has to do with uncertainty and confusion: artists don't know how the technology works, how to find buyers, or how to keep their assets secure. What could change - is greater access to educational resources. This can be done by seeking out other artists working in the space and connecting with the community on platforms like Twitter and Discord. Curators and art advisors working in the NFT space can also give guidance and help them walk through creating their first NFT.

Three Changes That Would Increase Adoption: Education

Artists who had already created NFTs told us their biggest challenge was learning how to accurately price their work. Artists who are reluctant to join the space say the same. Pricing a work shouldn’t be arbitrary and needs to factor in medium, collector demand, the artist’s reputation, how much time it took to complete, and other variables. This is, again, where partnering with a curator or working with an online gallery can help, as they'll have a wealth of experience in pricing work and a strong sense of the market trends.

Pricing Guidance

Artists don’t want to go at it alone. Many said they would be more willing to enter the space and create an NFT if they could partner with another artist, gallery, or platform to not only show them how to get started but who could help market and reach the right collectors. This speaks to the number one barrier to entry for artists: finding a buyer for their art NFTs. Artists can partner with online galleries and platforms to promote their work, and artists who create NFTs will likely find new audiences waiting for them online.

More Partnerships

Let's talk about challenges and opportunities to increase adoption of art NFTs. 

Stashed ideas

3 Ways to Increase NFT Adoption Among Artists

Economic sanctions are penalties levied against a country, its officials, or private citizens, either as punishment or in an effort to provide disincentives for the targeted policies and actions.<ul><li>Economic sanctions can range from travel bans and export restrictions to trade embargos and asset seizures. </li><li>They provide a policy tool short of military force for punishing or forestalling objectionable actions. </li><li>Economic sanctions can also be a blunt and ineffective policy tool, imposing insufficient costs on the targeted governments and disproportionate ones on their most vulnerable populations.</li></ul>

Economic Sanctions

<ul><li>Embargoes: broad bans on trading with a country</li><li>Export controls bar the supply of specified products, services, and intellectual property to targeted countries</li><li>Capital controls can restrict investment in targeted countries or industries, or broadly bar access to international capital markets for a country's issuers</li><li>Trade sanctions can include import controls for specific countries, regions, or industries</li><li>Asset freezes: Assets within sanctioning jurisdictions can be seized or frozen, preventing their sale or withdrawal</li><li>Travel restrictions: Officials and private citizens, as well as immediate fa<warningtag>mily members, may be denied travel access to sanctioning jurisdictions. </warningtag></li></ul>

Sanctions Can Take Many Forms

The success of sanctions can be measured by the achievement of the desired policy goals, or simply by their cost to the targeted countries and individuals if punishment is the aim. They can also impose costs on the targeted country's citizens as well as the sanctioning country's companies.If the goal is to change the behavior of targeted countries and individuals, their incentives and options will ultimately matter at least as much as the sanctioning powers' leverage.

The Success of Sanctions

Economic sanctions are a powerful tool in dealing with countries that defy U.S. foreign policy interests or the world order at large.

How Economic Sanctions Work

Interviewing for a new job can be exciting — every conversation is a chance to say exactly what you want in a new role or company, and to make the case for why you deserve it. But one thing that can trip up even the most enthusiastic candidate is figuring out how to discuss money in job interviews.It’s natural to want to be paid fairly for your work. And yet discussing pay plainly with someone you hope to have a long working relationship with, not to mention with a hiring manager who has way more inside information than you, can feel unnerving.

Discussing Money In A Job Interview

Experts say you should go into every first interview with your salary expectations in mind. You ca check industry salary reports, use online databases and tap your network to figure out where you stand in the market.As for timing, there are a few different schools of thought as to when to bring up salary in a job interview.More companies are beginning to state their pay upfront, in which case you might discuss salary in first or second rounds. If you’re confident in what you want your salary to be, you might bring it up on the early side to make the most of your time.

When To Bring Salary Discussion

Avoid stating your salary expectations first. State a number too low and you could shortchange yourself in the future. State one too high and HR might move on to another candidate expecting lower pay.Instead, you can respond to the question by kicking it back to HR. Be kind and curious: “I appreciate that compensation is an important aspect to the job, and it has to work for the both of us. Given you’re the hiring manager in this role, and the expert on what the company can offer, I’d like to hear what you have in mind for the salary range of this position.”

What To Do If The HR Asks For Salary Expectations

Be clear about your absolute minimum and put that number at the bottom of your range. Your target number should be on the lower end of your range, too. Identify a high enough ceiling to give yourself room to negotiate upward later on.How wide should your range be? That’ll depend on how much you want the job, how much the pay matters to you and how much leverage you have at that point in the hiring process.

What To Say If Pushed For A Salary Range

Here's how to discuss pay during the hiring process.

How to answer ‘What are your salary expectations?’ and other tips for talking pay in interviews

Somewhere, lost amidst shouty internet headlines about <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90712286/is-the-great-resignation-bs-statistics-show-its-not-all-that">the Great Resignation</a> and a growing <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1270ee18-3ee0-4939-98a8-c4f40940e644">anti-work movement</a>—some workers who can afford it are quietly hitting pause. Instead of quitting one job to immediately embark on another, a growing number of American workers are choosing to take time off to do nothing at all—at least for a little while.

Doing Nothing At All

The pandemic is forcing people to make a change and to think about life and about themselves in a way they probably wouldn’t have ever done normally—about how precious and short life and our time is.

The Precious Life

There are many times over the course of our lives when sabbaticals can be especially beneficial—including before college or grad school, while building families in our 30s and 40s, after moments of great loss, in pre- or early-retirement, and, more generally, for people who are thinking about gap years, when they’re taking a year off from routine, and they’re still learning, but they’re doing it in a very different way—they’re doing it more inwardly.

The Sabbatical: Inward Learning

The Great Resignation has sort of been the Great Realization.There’s a real need for us, as a society, to ask the question: If we’re living longer and people are working for longer, how do we still have relevance in an increasingly digital society? Why is it that we don’t have midlife wisdom schools? Why don’t we have a place where people can go and reimagine and repurpose themselves?

The Great Realization

Mid-career sabbaticals have tripled over the past four years—and the gap year is losing its stigma.


The Great Resignation has morphed into the Great Sabbatical

A fundamental aspect of implementing a business's access control system is developing the access control policy. An access control policy is the strategic foundation of all the best access control systems. Every company should decide the data and resources each employee should be able to access.

Access control policies

An access control policy documents and specifies the resources that employees, management, contractors, business partners and customers can access. It also states when and where such access can take place. An access control policy points out the following high-level concerns:<ul><li>Necessary resource access types.</li><li>Access scope</li><li>Regulatory compliance considerations for access</li><li>Coordination across the organisations' departments</li><li>Control types that enable access management and oversight</li></ul>

Defining access control policy

Determining everyone's proper place is the result of extensive thought and planning. For example, company CEOs have ultimate control over all business decisions and need access to extensive data. Yet CEOs wouldn't have access to detailed accounts payable or receivable accounting systems as a measure to prevent internal fraud. CEOs might also not have free access to a factory floor because they lack the training and gear to move safely around.

How to determine access

Smart business practices require predictability, risk management, regulatory compliance and process controls.  Access breaches can cause damage, such as the loss of computer systems, theft and injury. An access control policy enables a business to anticipate and lower potential risks.

The need for an access control policy

Key elements to include in an access control policy: <ul><li>Building access, including specific areas like warehousing, shipping docks, utility rooms for electrical panels, parking lots, etc.</li><li>Computer, communications and other digital infrastructures.</li><li>Data on databases, servers, individual workstations, laptops, etc.</li><li>Business processes.</li><li>Physical safety of personnel in case of an emergency, like a natural or man-made disaster.</li><li>Regulatory and legal compliance standards.</li></ul>

All aspects of business operation require an access review

Models are the step between creating a policy and implementing it. They include detailed rule descriptions that don't depend on any given hardware, software or other mechanisms.  Mechanisms can be software-based, such as an access control list or a physical item like a key or swipe card. Proper documentation will record which mechanisms will be used where.

Models and mechanisms

Learn how to create an access control policy and what to include.

Developing an Access Control Policy - business.com

Coincidences are actually all around us all the time; it’s just a matter of looking for them. For example, if you’re together with four other people and you ask which month they were born in (or what astrological sign they have), it’s odds-on that at least two will coincide.

Coincidences: There’s nothing spooky going on

Self Improvement

Chances are they're happening all the time, you might just not recognize it.Some coincidences do seem truly amazing – such as cases where someone is walking past a phone box when the phone rings, and on picking it up it turns out it’s for them. In those cases, we’re forgetting that even rare events do happen, but they only seem amazing if we choose to ignore the zillions of times when, for example, people walk past a phone box and nothing amazing happens.

Coincidences that seem truly amazing

Chances are they're happening all the time, you might just not recognise it.

Why do coincidences happen?

In our professional and personal lives, we all face numerous uncertain situations, which are usually out of our control. We may overestimate the likelihood or the effect of our fears and anxieties. This expectation of the worst is known as Catastrophizing.
Example: A wrong email sent to your boss can trigger a panic attack about being fired, or a failed test could make one imagine dropping out of school.

Catastrophizing

Catastrophizing is natural in young adults as our lives are usually uncertain and unsettled till the age of 35. 
Also, when we are in our 20s, our brain region of solving problems and handling uncertain situations, the prefrontal cortex, is still developing.

The Age Of Uncertainty

<ol>
<li>Stop worrying about the future, or dwelling on the past too much, and stay in the present, as it is the only reality there is.</li>
<li>Focus on the facts, not on the imaginative speculation in your head.</li>
<li>Go through the worst-case scenario in your mind and try to play out the thing that you fear, and what your next action would be. </li>
<li>Try to play out the best-case scenario in your head, understanding that it is just a child-like fantasy, just like the worst-case scenario.</li>
</ol>

Minimize The Catastrophizing

<ol>
<li>Understand that life is not black or white and lies somewhere in the middle, the grey area.</li>
<li>Get comfortable with things not being perfect all the time.</li>
<li>Get more data or more experience about the thing you fear. The more you know something, the less fearful it becomes.</li>
</ol>

Fears Aren’t Facts

What to Do When Your Mind (Always) Dwells on the Worst-Case Scenario

Many of us can feel underestimated. You're excellent at work, but you may not be paid your worth, or your potential is not acknowledged. Your parents can't believe you made the dean's List. Some of your friends are surprised when you meet someone great.
These messages can be painful. When people underestimate us, they hold negative assumptions that can make us question our own abilities.

Feeling underestimated

When you are underestimated, it's vital to know that the situation has nothing to do with your capabilities. It might be triggered by racism, gender, age, etc.
Consider what you can control. You can't control how others behave, but you can focus on what you can control, such as your values.

Shaking off underestimation

If you're feeling underestimated professionally, it could help to break away from prejudiced social circles and reach beyond your job or industry to connect with others.
Consider joining some intellectual group not connected to your job so that you can relate to people in a different way that demonstrates your abilities.

Expand your social circle

It can be beneficial to align yourself with supportive people who are also working toward similar goals. For example, connecting with other women who are driven, desire to do more, or are competitive in a healthy way.
Be committed to a long view of your vision. Press on toward your dream despite the naysayers.

Find strategic support, play the long game

Don't underestimate your value. Be the first person to put you in the right place. You belong up here, not down there.
When you realize that a person underestimates you by trying to shame, gaslight, or humiliate you, turn the tables in the moment. "We're going to have to agree to disagree." They will be uncomfortable because you're not going with their assumption about you.

Value yourself

It’s all too easy to doubt yourself when others underestimate you, but with a bit of awareness you can retain your confidence.

 How to Cope With Being Underestimated

Motivation is a complex process to explain or to realize fully.
Motives are internal experiences that can be categorized into needs, cognitions, and emotions that are influenced by environmental events and social contexts. These internal and external forces can be used to increase motivation by targeting either physiological or psychological needs.

Motivation is a complex process

<ul>
<li>Teachers that plan lessons to be interesting, curiosity-provoking, and personally inspiring have better success in motivating their students to read.</li>
<li>Leaders have better success in motivating their employees when they take the employees' perspective and invite them to create their own self-endorsed work goals.</li>
<li>Parents are more successful when they try to truly understand why their children don't want to do something and then take the time to explain to them the benefits of the activity.</li>
</ul>
Most successful interventions do not try to change another person's motivation or emotion directly. Instead, they make changes to the person's environmental conditions and the quality of his or her relationships to encourage them to leave behind neglectful or abusive ones.

Motivational strategies that show success

According to Self-Determination Theory, there are three basic psychological needs which we want to satisfy:
<ul>
<li>Autonomy (self-determination). We are motivated when we have a choice in terms of tasks, time, team, and technique.</li>
<li>Competence (capability and effectiveness). Mastery is a mindset. When we strive toward something greater than ourselves, it demands effort.</li>
<li>Affiliation needs (association and belonging). We are motivated to form long-lasting positive relationships with others.</li>
</ul>
External rewards do not work because we don't do rule-based routine tasks. Instead, we need to create environments where intrinsic motivation thrives, where we can gain satisfaction from the activities themselves.

The basic psychological needs

<ul>
<li>The need for closure. It motivates us to arrive at a stable conclusion. To satisfy the need for closure, we can provide clear expectations and well-defined, measurable goals, regular feedback, and timelines.</li>
<li>The need for cognition is our desire to understand experiences and things in our environment. Providing reasons for why tasks need to be performed can help satisfy the need for understanding.</li>
<li>The need for meaning motivates us to understand how we relate to our environment, especially after traumatic events.</li>
<li>The need for power motivates us to want to be noticed and to desire to influence other people, to be in command, and to have high status.</li>
<li>The need for self-esteem refers to how a person feels about the self.</li>
<li>The need for achievements is guided by the motive to achieve success and to avoid failure. The need for achievement can be satisfied by accomplishing challenging tasks.</li>
</ul>

Recognized psychological needs

If you change the contents of your thinking, then you change your motivational state. The same applies to other cognitive aspects like goals, mindset, values, perceived control, identity, etc.
Self-concept is learned and comes from how we represent our characteristics. We are motivated to change our behaviour in ways that confirm our self-view and avoid those that contradict. We also observe the behaviour of others that we may want to become. These possible selves become long-term goals that generate and sustain the motivation to develop toward the hoped-for ideal.

Our concept of self plays a major role in motivation

<ul>
<li>Others can be motivated by giving feedback on changes in emotion, behaviour, and well-being.</li>
<li>Praise can create positive emotions, while mastery programs can increase a sense of competence. </li>
<li>Positive feedback, expressing gratitude and awe can be used to induce change.</li>
</ul>

Emotions as feedback

Monitoring one's goal-setting progress increases our capacity to persevere with our long-term goals on our own. Self-control is the central part of the process of self-regulation and is essential for sustained motivation.
Our ability to suppress, restrain, and override a desire or temptation is quickly depleted when we pursue a long-term goal. We can increase our ability for self-control by good nutrition, training, experiencing a positive effect, and when our psychological needs are met.

Learning self-control

Stress can impact our motivation. To cope with stressors involve planning, execution, and feedback.
<ul>
<li>During planning, we analyze if a life-changing event is positive, negative, or irrelevant to our well-being. If it is a negative event, we find resources to manage the event.</li>
<li>During execution, we determine how to cope with the stressor. When the stressor is low, reappraisal is a good strategy, but when the stress is very high, distraction is more effective.</li>
<li>During feedback, we can use it to reappraise the stressor or to change coping and emotion regulation strategies.</li>
</ul>

Motivation and stress

<ul>
<li>There are clear goals.</li>
<li>Gain immediate feedback.</li>
<li>Challenges need to be matched with personal skills.</li>
<li>The task has to be challenging enough to require a person to employ their skills and promote concentration and engagement.</li>
<li>Focused attention on the task at hand is essential.</li>
<li>Perceived control of the situation.</li>
<li>Loss of self-consciousness.</li>
</ul>
Intrinsic motivation and self-initiative are created by activities that are challenging, require skill, and have clear and immediate feedback.

Factors of activities that promote motivation

Feedback, if done well, can leave people feeling motivated and positive. 
<ul>
<li>The power of expectations. Establish from the outset what the feedback is intended to accomplish as the person receiving the feedback owns their emotional reaction. </li>
<li>The power of accuracy and specificity. Be specific and ensure to provide feedback on performance, not the person's character.</li>
<li>Feedback is focused on the future and revolve around discussing ways how to get there.</li>
<li>Believing in the project. Your feedback highlights your personal investment and expresses your belief that the work has great potential.</li>
<li>The power of relationship. Feedback is a form of connection. Use what you know about the person to give better feedback and to keep them accountable.</li>
</ul>

Feedback and motivation

We are motivated when we use goals that spell out in advance when, where, and how we will achieve it.
We plan beforehand how we are going to overcome possible problems. For example, if your goal is to eat less sugar, your implementation could be "When the dessert menu arrives, I will order coffee."

Goal setting and implementation Intentions

Dr Daniel Siegel's model of wellbeing consists of nine areas of integration as ways to promote harmony and increased motivation:
<ol>
<li>Integration of consciousness that allows for awareness and clarity of our mind.</li>
<li>Bilateral integration happens when we reconcile our thinking and emotional brain.</li>
<li>Vertical integration allows for greater body awareness and a form of creating a mind-body connection.</li>
<li>Memory integration focus on memories and how it affects our wellbeing.</li>
<li>Narrative integration is how we find meaning and explain our experiences.</li>
<li>Mental state integration concerns itself with the need for being alone versus the need to be social.</li>
<li>Interpersonal integration is about how we relate to others.</li>
<li>Temporal integration is about our sense of time and our thoughts about permanence and certainty.</li>
<li>Transpirational integration is about the expended sense of self.</li>
</ol>

Integration - understanding of the self

Motivation is not enough. To encourage lasting change, we need reminders, repetition, and habits.
<ul>
<li>Reminders: Schedule your gym times in your planner with your client meetings. Set out your running clothes the night before.</li>
<li>Repetition: Regular reminders can create repetition, which is essential for lasting change. Track your progress on a visible chart.</li>
<li>Habits: We form habits when we keep up our reminders and repetition, as the brain creates new pathways associated with a particular behaviour.</li>
</ul>

Techniques for sustaining motivation

To be able to motivate requires a great amount of practice. These skills do not come naturally but can be improved upon with practice. Some techniques to enhance motivation:
<ul>
<li>Acknowledge what the person says to show that you're really listening.</li>
<li>Clarifying and summarizing can deepen mutual understanding.</li>
<li>Validating a person's feelings is essential to create a safe space where they don't feel judged.</li>
<li>Ask how he or she managed to overcome a similar situation.</li>
<li>Help the person to reframe the situation.</li>
<li>Celebrate their wins to increase positive emotions.</li>
<li>Expose limiting beliefs by asking how true is that belief and how has it affected them.</li>
<li>Consider the opposite view they currently hold to allow for a different interpretation.</li>
<li>Assumptions are about why, if this happened in the past, must it happen again.</li>
</ul>

How to motivate people

Although it might seem simple to come up with strategies and recommendations on how to motivate ourselves and others, it rarely works. So what does work?

How to Motivate Someone, Including Yourself

Mindset is a determined set of attitudes, beliefs, in which guide the individual's life either fulfilling their potential or hindering them from it. 
It is the engine behind the process of how we pursue our goals, our perspective in life, and the behaviors we exhibit towards other people and society.

Defining Mindset

<ol>
<li>Meta - this mindset level encompasses our attitude towards the world. Our perspective in life is fundamentally based on this level including the work we do, and our perception of our roles in life.</li>
<li>Macro - this mindset level focuses on our mental disciplines to put our personal and business mission into motion.</li>
<li>Micro - this mindset level is what produces the concrete steps necessary to create a viable and sustainable roadmap for our projects and future ventures.</li>
</ol>

The Three Levels of Mindset

These five key focuses are the core outcomes that many leaders and entrepreneurs seek to achieve for both personal and business successes: 
<ul>
<li>Personal Satisfaction</li>
<li>Meaningful Contribution</li>
<li>Innovation</li>
<li>Resilience & Scalable Growth</li>
<li>Financial Robustness.</li>
</ul>
Each focus requires a specific mindset pattern in order to further develop and continuously assess one's current mindset in order to adjust theirs to better support their goals.

Five Key Focuses

<ol>
<li>Eradicate the belief that mindset is a pattern that is difficult to change.</li>
<li>Determine what your current focus is.</li>
<li>Explore and ascertain your meta mindset. Identify the journey that you are on and whether or not you're willing to continue the said journey.</li>
<li>Delve into what your micro mindset is.</li>
</ol>

4 Steps in Taking Control of Your Mindset

Mindset is a tricky phenomenon. It is often like being on autopilot but without awareness of the program.

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Adeeb Schultz
@adeebschultz

3 Ways to Increase NFT Adoption Among Artists

How Economic Sanctions Work

How to answer ‘What are your salary expectations?’ and other tips for talking pay in interviews

The Great Resignation has morphed into the Great Sabbatical

Developing an Access Control Policy - business.com

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

Adeeb Schultz@adeebschultz

3 Ways to Increase NFT Adoption Among Artists

How Economic Sanctions Work

How to answer ‘What are your salary expectations?’ and other tips for talking pay in interviews

The Great Resignation has morphed into the Great Sabbatical

Developing an Access Control Policy - business.com

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Adeeb Schultz
@adeebschultz