Author: Bethany Crystal
Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow
When I woke up this morning, I intended to write a blog post about why Halloween is the best holiday to foster neighborhood unity in New York City. However, when I logged onto Slack, I saw colleagues sharing their experiments with the new ChatGPT search feature they just launched yesterday.
Opening Twitter, I saw some similar discussions:
'This is the Google killer.'
'This new tool changes everything.'
'It will completely change the way you use the internet.'
'Goodbye, old everything. Hello, new things. If you can't keep up, you are already behind.'
By 8:05 AM, I had also conducted a few small chat log tests myself, successfully found myself in the ChatGPT search, and installed the browser extension in my Chrome browser, setting it as my default search engine, replacing Google.
Wow, everything is happening so fast.
So, I decided to abandon my original article plan and instead write this piece about new technology.
If you woke up this morning feeling 'Oh no, here we go again...', trust me, you are not alone. Let's take a deep breath together and delve into this topic.
How to avoid falling into the 'I can't keep up' trap
Seeing such disruptive comments circulate around is indeed stressful. These seemingly huge changes happen almost every month, if not every week, making it feel overwhelming.
I can be a bit impulsive and extreme, so whenever this happens, I always have to restrain myself from doing either of the following two things:
Fight or flight? I have two polarized instincts when facing new things
Abandon everything you were doing before, throw yourself into the new thing, quickly familiarize the entire team, and immediately start exploring collaboration opportunities to get ahead in the competition. This is the new world order, and there's no turning back.
Or, completely reject new things, give up entirely, and vow to permanently shut down all technology, drastically change direction, and imagine yourself living an entirely agricultural and isolated life in some northern state while waiting for the inevitable robot apocalypse.
Overall, this reflects the 'fight or flight' mentality often triggered by new technology. However, I find that my actual response is always somewhere in between.
In my 15-year career, I've worked in tech startups and venture-backed companies and received many emails about 'disruptive! unprecedented!' technologies. Unfortunately, I can easily be influenced by those visionary builders and entrepreneurs who view the world from a long-term perspective. This led me to truly believe at one point in 2018, while working in venture capital, that companies no longer needed to go public through traditional banks, new social media apps couldn't stand out, and Ethereum would become the ultimate technology of the blockchain.
Of course, these expectations didn't fully materialize.
I gradually realized that after the initial hype, there is a longer and more challenging phase of habit formation and strategic integration. This phase can last for months or even years. While a few early adopters may quickly grasp new opportunities, if you're not among that top 5% (I'm not), blindly chasing every new trend is meaningless.
So, I began to focus on the inevitability of change. While I cannot control when change happens, I can control my response. Instead of feeling deep anxiety of 'FOMO' for every new trend, I prefer to approach change with a playful and curious mindset—thanks to my experiences in the cryptocurrency field.
Lessons learned from the crypto community
This isn't my first time feeling 'FOMO' or encountering imposter syndrome in the realm of new technology. Through three years of close collaboration with the crypto community, I've learned that even when feeling behind, showing curiosity and actively participating still has its value.
I admit that 'FOMO' was a significant reason that initially drew me into this ecosystem. Although I've been in touch with builders in the crypto space for years, it wasn't until 2021, a year after my first child was born, that I truly yearned to understand the field firsthand.
Because I hadn't personally toiled in the crypto space for years like others, I felt a significant imposter syndrome when entering this field. I felt like an outsider with a non-technical, non-crypto background. I genuinely believed that unless I could discuss the nuances of blockchain consensus or governance on a white paper, I wasn't 'smart enough' to fit into this field.
This mindset is actually a trap. Once you start believing that you're not 'smart enough' or 'brave enough' to try something, you fall into a fixed mindset. And that can really hinder your growth in the future.
When I first decided to dive deep into cryptocurrency, I started joining Discord channels and almost constantly refreshing Twitter. My computer was bombarding me all day with notifications about new cryptocurrencies, new communities, new businesses, new conferences, and new technologies. I compiled all of these into a massive list of things to learn.
Should I attend the developer conference in Denver or Amsterdam? Better not to miss out. Which airdrop should I participate in? Why not try both? Do I know this DAO? Am I familiar with the latest on-chain governance? Have I attended that demo day? Not yet, but I will definitely look into it.
In those early days, I often asked myself:
The deep anxiety that comes from trying to keep up in the cryptocurrency space
'Why do I feel like I just caught up, only to feel behind again?'
'Was all my effort on the previous project in vain?'
'How do I distinguish which tools and trends are truly important and which are merely secondary?'
'How do I find time to learn new things again?'
What I didn't realize was that in my efforts to explore, I was actually continuously improving myself. This improvement was slow, but then it suddenly happened.
While learning, I'm also working. I assist venture capital firms in coordinating communication among builders in their network. I help tech teams explain their work in simple terms. I also help hybrid organizations, like crypto-native foundations, design strategies based on both traditional and non-traditional best practices.
It turns out that I didn't need to suddenly master esoteric scientific knowledge to succeed in this field. I just needed to understand how to apply my strengths in a new environment.
It took me a long time to break free from that fixed mindset, but I'm glad I did. Now I know that no matter which industry I enter next, I can do it again.
Finding calm amidst the chaos of new technology
This morning, when I saw the first message on Slack saying 'ChatGPT search is Google's killer', I did feel a familiar panic of 'I'm falling behind'. But now, I'm used to that feeling and know what will come next, so it no longer feels as panic-inducing or unsettling as it used to.
Therefore, I chose to pour myself a second cup of coffee, personally tried out ChatGPT search, and then wrote this blog post.
So, is this latest innovation truly the 'ultimate' technology that will change the world? Who knows? But in the meantime, why not play around with it yourself and see what you think? I dare say others aren't as far ahead as they seem. After all, we're all still within the same 24-hour release window. Let's see what new changes come next week...
Game over, end-of-the-world technology? Maybe. But we still can't get the fonts on DALL-E images to display correctly, so there's no need to panic just yet...
