The ancient struggle was not having enough.

The modern struggle is having too much.

Too much news, too much sugar, too much of everything at your fingertips..There's only 1 way out.

Let's lay it out:

On one side, you have "Team Dopamine":
* 24/7 news cycle, full of clickbait headlines
* Social Media, friend's pics that disappear in 24 hours
* Endless varieties of sugar & porn

going up against your tiny, 3 pound brain running 20,000 yr old software
Even if you are a smart person who tries their best to stay healthy & happy... you are going up against Fox News, TikTok, PornHub, Robinhood, Instagram

These are weapons of mental destruction.
Thousands of our smartest engineers & data scientists work at these companies.

They run constant experiments. Fighting against each other for every moment of your attention. So you open THEIR app.

It's skinner's box, rats pushing buttons for rewards. But you're the lab rat.
So what do we do?

We have everything. More than any species, at any time period in history. It's wonderful...but also deadly.

Food injected with syrup sugar
Painkillers you can't live without
Video games where you can fly and kill
Porn better than any date you'll ever have
we used to live in tribes, fighting other tribes for scarce resources.
now we live alone, fighting our urges against endless options.

How to resist day trading on Robinhood? Swiping on Tinder? Or pushing a button on DoorDash & getting chicken wings delivered to your condo
The answer is self-defense.

Defense from yourself.

Preventing yourself from getting addicted to stuff that's so god damn addictive.

This is a skill. A skill worth building.

Here's how I think it plays out.
Fasting is easier than dieting.

I think people begin to do technology fasts.

Like intermittent fasting. They'll create an 12 hour "online" period, followed by a 12 hour "offline" period (8hrs sleep, 2 eating, 1 exercising, 1 hour offline hobby)

Airplane mode, at home.
More and more people will start to carry "dumb devices" (eg. the Lightphone) and create "Zen Rooms" that have no screens or wifi.

Apps like Calm will grow. Hobbies like gardening, tabletop games, and outdoor adventure will continue to rise in popularity.
Just as most people in America are on track for obesity due to shitty food diets

most people will stay hooked to the fast food information diet of facebook, instagram, slack, and CNN.

But 1% will recognize the problem, and can afford to fight back.
And maybe founders will start building services that ask LESS of you.

> less attention, more intention
> less sitting, more moving
> less options, more choice
> less noise, more signal
> less feeds, more curation

who will build the "Whole Foods" brand of tech?
..of course if you're reading this on twitter... you're already in the wrong place ;)
I send out startup ideas like this 2x a week on my newsletter: https://t.co/hyXkTjtm0Q

More from Shaan Puri

Reading this article, the story sounds pretty wild. But I spent a weird amount of time with Martin Shkreli, and I’m not surprised the journalist fell in love w him

A few years back my team built an app called Blab. It was like clubhouse before clubhouse.


When he first joined the app I had no idea who he was. I just saw that his live streams instantly had 3-4K viewers. More than anyone on our tiny platform.

I googled him and it came up: “Martin Shkreli, most hated man in America”

I assumed he was bad news

And he was... but also he wasn’t.

He was a douchebag, but he was in on the joke. He was a dick, but he was also very entertaining.

In the mornings he would live stream himself analyzing stocks or walking through drug discovery pathways.

In the afternoon he’d let people call in and debate him live on air. A CNN reporter tried to get him to go on TV, he refused, and said debate me here on Blab, no edits, no tv time limits.

At night he’d host late night convos - and eventually fall asleep on cam

The guy was a pain in the ass but man he drove traffic.

We had big celebs like Tony Robbins, the Jonas brothers etc... he outperformed them all.

At one point he was bringing in 100k users per month directly to his channel. And Bc he was so entertaining, they stuck.

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