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PRODUCT.|PHILOSOPHY.|LIFE.

Drinking from a firehose...

...is not a good way to drink anything.

VCs don't invest in more than 7-10 companies at a time.

Students don't major in more than 1-2 areas at a time.

People don't have more than a handful of friends in their close inner group.

Entrepreneurs don't work on more than 1-2 ideas at a time (even the ultra-workaholics like Elon Musk only work on 3-4 at most).

The amount of water that a firehose can dispense is way higher than what we can consume. And trying to do so will do us more harm than good.

Similarly, trying to do too many things at one go will do us more harm than good.

And the firehose is only getting bigger by the day.

There is more content created on the Internet every second than we can consume in our lifetimes. There are more books published every hour than we can read in our lifetimes. There are more projects initiated every day than we can focus our energies on in our lifetimes.

And yet, we have a fear of missing out. We spend endless hours consuming content trying to stay on top of everything. We constantly attend to email and Slack to be on top of everything that is happening.

The simple truth is that we will never be on top of everything that is happening. Trying to do so is like trying to drink from the firehose.

Instead, we need to curate and filter and start from a default position of saying no to anything un-curated that comes our way. And this is where products today are all powered by recommendation engines. Amazon, Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Uber Eats, Headspace, Medium. You name it and it has a recommendation engine that helps you curate what you consume.

These are powerful algorithms shaping our lives. So use them well. Give them the right input. Don't blindly consume everything it sends your way. After all, the recommendations are blind to what's good for you. They keep sending more of the same kind that you engage with.

So exercise your great responsibility in what you engage with.

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